Spray paint on water heater?

[Curiousfifi]

So during a yearly inspection of my apartment, upper management finds rust on the valves of my water heater and says they will need to fix it. Well, the maintenance man just came by with a can of silver spray paint and painted it silver. I called the office after he left and they asked him about it and they said its okay because it's an electric water heater and not gas. Is this really okay? I have pics if you want to see.

[HayZee518]

water heater

rust on water heater valves? are you sure? most valves or rather all valves are red bronze or red brass valves. I don't know where he's coming up with this "rust" issue.
spray painting them doesn't solve anything.

[Curiousfifi]

Pics

I don't know. Maybe I said the wrong thing. Here are some pics.

[HayZee518]

water heater

that fitting isn't a valve. looks to me to be a "sharkbite" tubing fitting. the cold water inlet to the heater screws into a steel or cast iron female pipe fitting. a little bit of water will rust the steel but not to the point of failure.
I guess for aesthetics the spray paint looks better.
even if the heater were gas, the paint doesn't present a problem.

[mrcaptainbob]

That sure looks like flex copper tube directly connected to an iron nipple. The greenish bumps that were under that neat paint job may be a result of dielectric corrosion. I'd scrape away a bit of that silver paint and check on both sides of that fitting and verify if copper on one side, iron on the other. If that's the case, a dielectric fitting should be installed between the two.