Drip Pan,what, 10 bucks, why not?
It has a port allowing it to be plumbed to a drain.
If you don’t utilize that feature and cap it only holds a few gallons and if the heater goes and you aint around for days or weeks its the same as not having one. If its a slowwww leak, the port is capped and you look at it daily you’ll be ok.
Its good if you are in a mobile home(particleboard sub floor)or an apt/condo 2nd floor,but ya still need a place for it to go so no floor drain,cap it and keep an eye on it.Condos and apts usually have the h2o htr in the same closet as the ac and maybe plumbed to the AC condesate drain,Maybe.
Mine is in the cellar and I still dont want water playing out on the floor so I put the heater on 3 bricks in the plastic pan,keeps it up and you can see under,plus the unit will displaces quit a bit of water in the pan.Its plumbed over to the floor drain. It can leak all day and I don’t care. I do shut it off when out of town,power and H2O
Be sure to make the pressure relief valve come over the top and down the side into the pan.
H2O heaters usually start to go slowly as the leak through the rusted out portion so monitoring a capped drain pan will do the trick.If the relief vale goes its a different story.
I once saw a mobile home in Melbourne Bch Fl that the heater leaked while the were up N for the summer.The entire floor swelled up to twice its thickness and need to be removed.All the funtirure and appliances were damaged at the base.
The next day I went to the folks winter mobile home and drilled a 3 inch hole in the floor next to the heater for drainage.That was a quick fix and easier than uninstalling and reinstalling to place the pan.
Your probably done by now.
Quite correct about it being a slow leak... started out slow, 2 days ago.
It was slow enough I could still pressurize the tank (years ago I learned from experience to have a cold-water shutoff before the tank!) and turn on the breaker, could still take a shower.
Last day it has sped up quite a bit, so now the water is off and the 240 is disconnected.
With any luck by noon or so the new one should be in. As long as I can get a good drain on the current one...