Have you ever thought about how to determine the age of Bradford’s white water heater? It is important to know how old your water heater is. By knowing your water heater’s age, you can also determine some actions such as service or maybe upgrading your water heater.
The next question is how to know the age of the water heater. To determine how old your Bradford White water heater, first, what you need to do is find its serial number. Bradford White puts the serial number water heater on the rating place located in the top center of the warning label.
After you got the serial number next, you have to pay attention to the serial number’s first two letters. Those two letters indicate the years and the month in which it was manufactured.
The first letter is the year and the second one is the month. For the years, Bradford White uses 20 years rotating letter (A-Z). However, there are some letters such as “I”, ”O”, “Q”, “R”, “U”, “V” that are not used.

For the month, Bradford White also uses letters (A-M). Letter A indicates January, and M indicates December. However, same with the year, the Letter “I” is not used in the code.
How to know Bradford White Water Heater Age from Years of manufacture
As mentioned above, the year when it was manufacture is indicated by the first letter of the serial number, which represents a 20 years rotating system. 20 years rotating system means that the same letter can have two different years. Let’s take a look at the table below.
1st Letter | Years | 1st Letter | Years | |
A | 1964,1984,2004 | L | 1974, 1994, 2014 | |
B | 1965, 1985,2005 | M | 1975, 1995, 2015 | |
C | 1966, 1986, 2006 | N | 1976, 1996, 2016 | |
D | 1967, 1987, 2007 | P | 1977, 1997, 2017 | |
E | 1968, 1988, 2008 | S | 1978, 1998 | |
F | 1969, 1989, 2009 | T | 1979, 1999 | |
G | 1970, 1990, 2010 | W | 1980, 2000 | |
H | 1971, 1991, 2011 | X | 1981, 2001 | |
J | 1972, 1992, 2012 | Y | 1982, 2002 | |
K | 1973, 1993,2013 | Z | 1983, 2003 |
Let us also take a look at the example of the serial number below
As written in the serial number, the first letter is D., Which means that manufactured years could be 1967, 1987, or 2007. To determine which year between the three options, we could also use other information from the rating plate.
If you can see in the last two lines from the bottom, there is a year: 2004. We can use that year to predict the possible manufactured year of the product. So regarding that information, the possible option is 1987.
Month of manufactured
The month when it was manufactured can be found in the second letter of the first two letters in the serial number. It is quite easier than the year because there is no same letter for two different months.
2nd letter | Month | 2nd letter | Month | |
A | January | G | July | |
B | February | H | Augustus | |
C | March | J | September | |
D | April | K | October | |
E | Mei | L | November | |
F | June | M | December |
In the serial number above: DH9560506, the second letter is H. it means that the product was manufactured in August.