Read the plate. Check the evidence.
Find supported President water-heater date codes, older brand-label context and the separate model number needed for manuals. Confirm the manufacturer and serial system before decoding.
Browse President manuals and guides →Check a documented system
Water heaters with confirmed manufacturer and numbering family; unrelated devices using the same name are outside these date-code rules.
Choose the equipment family
Match the product, manufacturer and documented serial layout before interpreting a date. The model is a separate label field; a date code alone does not identify capacity, installation date or warranty entitlement.
For President water-heater labels: a confirmed State-family tank can use year/week or documented older letter-month/year systems. Historical month alphabets differ: one table includes I and a later table skips it. In the chart’s year/week layout, 0904 means year 2009, week 04; it does not mean April. Use the labelled build date to resolve context.
Scope matters
Research reviewed October 16, 2026. This independent tool applies published rules and retains unresolved years and model candidates.
Water heaters only after confirmation of this manufacturer, product family, date-code layout and documented era.
YYWW: first two digits year; next two production week. The 2024 manufacturer guide permits week 53. No model, capacity, fuel or installation date is encoded by these four digits. 2008 is a conservative supported-range limit, not an asserted universal changeover. The October 2016 SAP change uses a 13-character printed date-plus-serial. A bare nine-digit barcode/SAP serial has NO date code and is deliberately not decoded. The supplied historical inspection chart lists additional names, but that relationship does not prove the manufacturer of every product bearing the same brand. This option requires independent confirmation from the unit label or model-specific documentation.
Confirm that this is a water heater and that its rating plate or model-specific manufacturer documentation uses this exact numbering family. A historical brand list or a matching serial shape alone is insufficient.
Water heaters only after confirmation of this manufacturer, product family, date-code layout and documented era.
Manufacturer/CPSC notices document the A-L/M month series with I omitted: L 07 is November 2007; M 07 December 2007. This rule is intentionally limited to the observed 2004-2007 family. The supplied historical inspection chart lists additional names, but that relationship does not prove the manufacturer of every product bearing the same brand. This option requires independent confirmation from the unit label or model-specific documentation.
Confirm that this is a water heater and that its rating plate or model-specific manufacturer documentation uses this exact numbering family. A historical brand list or a matching serial shape alone is insufficient.
Water heaters only after confirmation of this manufacturer, product family, date-code layout and documented era.
The January-June 2004 recall serial-prefix table includes a leading plant character before the month. Do not strip an arbitrary leading letter from every later serial. The supplied historical inspection chart lists additional names, but that relationship does not prove the manufacturer of every product bearing the same brand. This option requires independent confirmation from the unit label or model-specific documentation.
Confirm that this is a water heater and that its rating plate or model-specific manufacturer documentation uses this exact numbering family. A historical brand list or a matching serial shape alone is insufficient.
Water heaters only after confirmation of this manufacturer, product family, date-code layout and documented era.
Archived State manufacturer FAQ lists 1991-2002 and A-L with I included, I=September. This differs from later skip-I formats; do not combine the month tables. The supplied historical inspection chart lists additional names, but that relationship does not prove the manufacturer of every product bearing the same brand. This option requires independent confirmation from the unit label or model-specific documentation.
Confirm that this is a water heater and that its rating plate or model-specific manufacturer documentation uses this exact numbering family. A historical brand list or a matching serial shape alone is insufficient.
Reading your result
Some systems reuse letters or only encode the last one or two year digits. Every supported interpretation is retained. A decade supplied from reliable records can narrow the reading; the tool does not automatically pick the newest year.
Usually the model is a separate plate field. Where published serial ranges actually identify a model, the result shows model candidates and links to their manuals. Overlapping ranges remain ambiguous.
After a lookup, the address includes the serial in a fragment beginning with #serial=. Use “Copy share link” to share the serial and selected context. Opening the link runs the same lookup. The fragment is not a query-string result page.