Most homeowners only think about their water heater when something goes wrong: no hot water, strange smells, or a sudden leak. But long before a tank fails, there’s a small internal part quietly doing most of the protection work: the anode rod. This rod is designed to corrode instead of the steel tank, acting as a sacrificial barrier against rust. Once it’s depleted, the tank itself begins deteriorating from the inside out. The problem is that most people never inspect it unt