Ruud brand water heater age decoder, manuals, company contact information.

The water heater age guide on this page works for these brands: Ruud & Professional water heaters.

In this article series for all water heaters we give contact information for water heater, geyser, cylinder, calorifier manufacturers and for water heater installation, operation, & troubleshooting manuals.

The page top illustration illustrates an older residential gas-fired Ruud water heater.

Ruud Water Heater Age Decoder & Manuals

Ruud water heater serial numbers encode the heater age in the first four digits of the serial number as

MMYYnnnn

or for some older Ruud water heaters the age may be encoded as

MYY nnnnn or as

AAN MYY nnnnn

Other Ruud water heaters that may be sold under a different brand name include

Professional Water Heaters and Richmond Water Heaters.

Illustration: Above, a Ruud Eclipse commercial grade water heater. Below: a Ruud water heater manufactured by Rheem in 1972.

[Click to enlarge any image]

Contact information for Ruud Water Heaters, Inc:

• Contact: Ruud Water Heaters, Inc., Ruud Water Heating Prodcuts, 101 Bell Road, Montgomery, Alabama 36117 USA, Tel: (334) 260-1500 Tel: 1-800-621-5622 (Customer service, warranty, parts), Technical service tel: 1-800-432-8373, Website: http://www.ruud.com/
• Ruud replacement parts: 744 Island Ford Road Randleman, NC 27317 (336) 495-6800
• Raypak Australia Ltd., 7 Geddes Street Mulgrave, Victoria 3170 Australia (612) 9535-3333 Websote" www.raypak.com.au
• Ruud Raypak International, 2805 Slough, Street Mississauga, Ontario Canada L4T 1G2 (905) 677-7999 www.raypakcanada.com
• Ruud Raypak Commercial Refrigeration products: 3885 Crestwood Parkway, Suite 500 Duluth, GA 30096 (256)259-7400
• See also RHEEM WATER HEATER AGE & MANUALS

Edwin Ruud was a Norwegian inventor who emigrated to the U.S. in the late 1800s, patenting his first water heater invention in 1889 - one of the early and key water heater inventors and designers in the U.S. By 1897 Ruud had incorporated as Ruud Manufacturing Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, forming the first high-production and oldest-recognized water heater producer in the U.S. - still in business!

Ruud.com website excerpt:

While working in Pittsburgh in the 1880s for industrialist George Westinghouse, young Ruud built the first automatic, storage tank-type gas water heater. The unit went into production around 1889 and patents followed soon afterward. Ruud eventually bought the rights to his invention and in 1897 organized his own company to make water heaters. - retrieved 2022/01/21 original source: https://www.ruud.com/about/

• See also earlier history of Edwin Ruuds water heater inventions described at
  
  ELECTRIC-WELD WATER HEATERS [illustrated just above]
• RUUD ECLIPSE ELECTRIC WATER HEATER MANUAL [PDF] (2003) commercial grade 85 & 105 gallon models. Illustrated above.
• RUUD LIGHT DUTY ELECTRIC WATER HEATER USE & CARE MANUAL [PDF] 30, 40, 50, 65, 80 and 120 gallon capacities

Below: an old Ruud gas fired water heater in Poughkeepsie, New York. We were concerned about the long horizontal run of the gas flue vent connector.

 

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Reader Q&A - also see RECOMMENDED ARTICLES & FAQs

On 2022-05-15 by (mod) - age of an old Ruud water heater - (made by Rheem)

@Joe,

Thanks so much for following-up.

Your building age (1973) serves as a great sanity-check on a guess that the water heater was manufactured in month 8 of 1972.

So we see on some older Ruud water heaters that the standard decoding of

MMYYnnnn

might for some heaters be simply

MYY nnnnn

or there may be preceding digits separated by a space as we show above on this page.

Note on your Ruud water heater label that the full serial number appears to be

R00 872 39340

And the label notes that the Ruud water heater was actually manufactured by Rheem.

On 2022-05-15 by Joe - age of original Ruud water heater installed in a South Carolina home built in 1973

@InspectApedia-911, Columbia, SC USA. Building was finished early 1973. Condo. Water heater is still working fine. I just replaced it because of its age. My AC unit was just replaced also. The AC Guys said it was the oldest still working AC unit they have ever seen. The AC unit was dated 1972.

Both the water heater and the Central Air Unit were working just fine. I replaced them both just to be on the safe side.

On 2022-05-14 by InspectApedia-911 (mod) - What is the age of my water heater?

@Joe,

possibly 8/72

What are the age and country/city of the home where this Ruud heater is installed?

On 2022-05-14 by Joe

What is the age of my water heater?

[Photo abovee]

On 2021-06-05 by inspectapedia.com.moderator (mod)

@Larry Scarfia,

It is interesting that the company doesn't give the dimensions of their water heaters even in the manual. However the contact information for Ruud is above and you might give them a call to ask

let me know if they're helpful

On 2021-06-05 by Larry Scarfia

What is the diameter of a rude 40 gallon natural gas water heater?

On 2021-03-27 by Nira

Age of water heater

On 2021-01-16 by danjoefriedman (mod) - want a catalog for A O Smith - Bradford White Water Heater & RHEEM Water Heater

The information and PDF downloads on the page above are free for you to use, Fahimkhan, but we cannot provide the water heater that you asked about.

We do not sell anything. No products, no services.

InspectAPedia.com provides building and environmental diagnostic and repair information. In order to absolutely assure our readers that we write and report without bias we do not sell any products nor do we have any business or financial relationships that could create such conflicts of interest. InspectAPedia is an independent publisher of building, environmental, and forensic inspection, diagnosis, and repair information for the public - we have no business nor financial connection with any manufacturer or service provider discussed at our website. We very much welcome critique, questions, or content suggestions for our web articles. Website content contributors, even if it's just a small correction, are cited, quoted, and linked-to from the appropriate additional web pages and articles - which benefits us both. Working together and exchanging information makes us better informed than any individual can be working alone.

A brief summary about InspectAPedia.com can be read at ABOUT InspectApedia.com - https://inspectapedia.com/Admin/About_InspectApedia.php

On 2021-01-15 by Fahimkhan

RUUD water heater is equivalent to A O Smith - Bradford White Water Heater & RHEEM Water Heater my email is
fahimbina786@gmail.com send me full catalogue sorry I didn’t introduce you myself I was working in jeddah S.A Bradford White Water Heater since last 28 years looking Job

On 2020-03-30 by danjoefriedman (mod) - combustion shutoff device has tripped on water heater - how to fix?

I'm not sure exactly what device on your heater has tripped.

Perhaps you can attach a photo.

In any case you can try cycling the power off video get off for 30 seconds or a minute or longer and then back on and you can look for resettable switches and controls such as a flue gas spill switch or a heater temperature high limit reset switch

Some flue gas spill switch detectors use a simple reset-button found right on the switch itself.

On 2020-03-30 by Bud

Help combustion shut_off device tripped locked out is there a way to fix it thanks

On 2017-05-04 by (mod) Ruud electric hot water age information

Dorothy you'll need to find the serial number as that's where the age is encoded.

On 2017-05-04 by Dorothy

Looking for the age of my Ruud electric hot water heater midel # PE 40-2

On 2015-02-19 by John

I have a Rudd Hot water tank with a serial # 1100co1603. can you tell me how to find out how old this is

...

Continue reading  at WATER HEATER LIFE or select a topic from the closely-related articles below, or see the complete ARTICLE INDEX.

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