When Should You Expect to Have Water Heater Problems?
Call 281-302-6710 to talk with the water heater experts at Graham Plumbing Services. In this video, Sugar Land Master Plumber Bryan Graham talks about how much service life you can expect from your water heater — in other words, how old can the water heater be before you can expect to have problems with it.
Graham Plumbing Services is an A+ rated member of the Houston Better Business Bureau and the company has been serving customers in Sugar Land and surrounding communities since 2006. We offer a guarantee on our work, and we also offer free, guaranteed written estimates to fix most plumbing issues.
Here’s Bryan talking about expected service time before water heater problems appear.
This is a summary of Bryan’s video.
My recommendation on the service life of a water heater, if it is in your garage you can probably let it go for 10 to 12 years. If it leaks, it is not going to cause major damage. If it is in a place that it can cause damage, if it is in your attic or in your house, I recommend you replace them every eight years. The manufacturers, some would say 10 to 12 years.
Personally, if it is over my head in the attic I recommend that you go ahead and get it done every eight years. Let’s make sure we don’t have an issue. Make sure on the holidays or the weekends you don’t have a flood coming from your roof.
Also, you would hear the water heater sometimes start to knock. That usually comes from a lack of flushing. You haven’t flushed the heater, calcium builds up in the heater and then the calcium rocks will start jumping up and down in the heater making a knocking noise.
People always call me saying, I hear this knocking noise and I sounds like it is going to explode. It is not going to explode it’s just the calcium bouncing up and down. At that point it I usually too late to flush it, the calcium is too big to get out of there and it is time to replace it.
Another problem is if the water heater itself starts leaking from the tank, at that point it is un-repairable. If you can see a leak, if it is on top of it at the connections, we can repair the connections. If the pilot has gone out or something like that, we usually can do that repair, but if there is actually water leaking out of the tank, there is nothing we can do at that point. It is time to swap it out.
Don’t wait for water heater problems to appear. If you have a tank water heater in your attic that’s eight years old, or older, it’s time to swap it out. If your tank type water heater is in the garage and it won’t cause major damage if it leaks, you can probably change the water heater every 10 – 12 years.
To prevent damage in the event of a water heater leak, you should also be careful to check the pan around the water heater, if a pan was used with the water heater installation, and make sure the pan drain remains clear.
Water heaters require regular maintenance to prevent problems. Bryan describes this routine maintenance for tank type and tankless water heaters in this video.
Considering replacing your tank water heater with a tankless water heater? Watch Bryan’s video describing the pros and cons of tankless water heaters.