I re-installed my electric water heater today and thought everything was fine. It was filling when I turned back on the water valve, but after 2 hours, no hot water was coming out (it is getting power too). I think this may be a problem too but I don't know what it means -- when I turned off the cold inlet valve and turned on the hot water at the faucet the water ran for several seconds and then stopped. I thought perhaps that I had installed the hot/cold lines on the wrong side of the heater but the cold side does have a plastic insert that I assumed was the inlet tube for the heater. Could the inlet tube be clogged with rust now? This house has galvanized pipes and the water has been off for a couple of weeks. Any help appreciated.

Around 3 weeks ago, I started noticing a funky smell in the back basement. I thought it might be a mildew smell from some wet cardboard. I throw the wet cardboard away, smell is still there. then I notices some white gunk near my floor drain. And when I run water, the floor drain starts bubbling. A clog. I call a plumber, who runs his power router thing through the sewer line, and clears the clog out. I poor a bunch of bleach through the floor drain, and consider it done. A little while later I go back, and the smell is back. I look in the floor drain, and there's a big hole in the side of it. After calling the plumber back, and him using his camera, he tells me it's a groundwater drain. So what happened was that when the sewage backed up, it went into that hole, and now I have sewage all underneath the basement floor. They said it could take a few weeks to clear up. So I bought a hose, hooked it up to the basement sink, stuck in in the groundwater drain, and turned the water on. I flushed the damn thing for close to 2 hours, whenever brown water was flushing out I would keep the hose there until it ran clear. I kept rooting the thing around trying to flush as much as I could out. The smell has gone down a little bit, but not much. It's been 1.5 weeks since the clog was cleared. At this point, what can I do? If I block the floor drain the smell goes away, but I need the floor drain open because a lot of water flows down there. I poured gallons and gallons of water down the drain so I know the trap is fine, I can see the water and it's clear, but it still stinks. Will pumping some Rid-X down there help? The plumber said the last resort option was to remove the floor drain, jackhammer out the concrete, dig up the dirt, and install new rock, and a sump pump. Not a cheap proposition. Should I try to flush the groundwater drain out again? Should I give it more time to see if it clears up? Any ideas are welcome