I went through a national home improvement chain to have a new water heater installed. The old water heater worked but was past it's life expectancy, so I decided to replace it before it failed.

The contractor came out yesterday and started draining the old water heater. He realized he had to do extra work to bring it up to code, namely installing a power vent heater. I ok'ed the extra work and that's when he told me I would not have hot water until they finished.

He said he "spun out the regulator" and can't replace it. What he meant was he cut the thermocouple wire and spun out the regulator and the heater won't work without a thermocouple.

Why would you need to remove the regulator to drain the tank? I understand why he would need to cut the thermocouple wire to remove the regulator, by why does he need to remove the regulator?

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