Water heater repair

Eight to twelve years for a conventional storage tank, with maintenance and water chemistry moving that range substantially in either direction. An annually flushed tank with a replaced anode rod often reaches fifteen; a neglected tank on hard water may not see nine. Tankless units are rated for twenty years or more, which is a large part of their case.

Read the serial number on the label on the side of the tank. Most manufacturers encode the manufacture year and week or month in the first four digits. Search the brand plus "serial number date code" to decode yours. Use the manufacture date rather than the installation date, since units often sit in a warehouse for months.

Not immediately dangerous, but it is telling you something. The noise is water trapped under a layer of sediment on the tank floor, boiling and escaping. Sediment insulates the burner or lower element from the water, so the tank works harder, recovers slower and overheats its components. A flush helps; if it has been years, it may only partly help, and a rumbling tank in its second decade is generally near the end.

Usually a depleted anode rod. The rod is sacrificial, it corrodes so the tank does not, and once it is consumed the steel begins rusting instead. Replacing the rod early is worthwhile; if rusty water has been appearing for a while, the tank interior may already be compromised. If the cold water is also discoloured, the problem is the supply pipe rather than the heater.

Not necessarily. Dry the area and watch where the water comes from. Fittings at the top, the relief valve on the side, and the drain valve at the bottom are all repairable. Water seeping from the shell or from under the jacket is the tank itself, and that cannot be repaired. Tracing it takes two minutes and decides between a $200 repair and a replacement.

Almost always excess pressure rather than a faulty valve. If the house has a pressure reducing valve, the plumbing is a closed system and heated water has nowhere to expand, so pressure spikes every heating cycle. A thermal expansion tank solves it. Check static pressure too. Anything over 80 psi is out of code and needs the regulator addressed.

Age first, cost second. Under eight years, repair almost anything. Eight to eleven, repair if the fault is cheap and simple. Twelve or more, replace. Money spent on a tank that old buys an unknown amount of time. A useful rule of thumb: if the repair costs more than half of a replacement and the tank is past eight years, replace it.

On electric: check the breaker, then press the red reset button behind the upper access panel (with the breaker off first). On gas: check that the gas is on and, on a standing-pilot unit, whether the pilot is lit. On any unit, confirm nobody has closed the cold inlet valve. Those four checks resolve a fair proportion of no-hot-water calls at no cost.

It is extremely rare and requires multiple safety systems to fail at once. The thermostat sticking on and the temperature and pressure relief valve failing to open. That is precisely why the relief valve exists and why it should be tested annually. A relief valve that has been capped, plugged or piped incorrectly removes that protection, and that is genuinely dangerous.

Yes, and it is one of the few maintenance jobs that is genuinely straightforward: turn off power or set the gas to pilot, attach a hose to the drain valve, and drain several gallons until it runs clear. Twice a year in hard water. Be aware that old plastic drain valves sometimes weep after being opened, so know where your shutoff is before you start.