I simply replaced the water heater in my residence. As you can see this one has some bad rust areas on bottom and leading. This was from when I moved in about four years back and I found that the supply connection was leaking and had actually been like that for exactly what looked like a while. I replaced and it worked fine. It hasn't started leaking again but I felt it required replaced for my piece of mind. It might work for another 10 years or 10 days, not sure. At worst, the Thermostat is in best shape and it could be recycled and the rest scrapped.