Hot Water Heater Basics for New Homeowners

If this is the year you’ve gotten a new home, congratulations! With homeownership comes a whole slew of responsibilities, however, and one of them includes HVAC maintenance. Other aspects you’re required to look after include the hot water heater as well.

You may be staring at this valuable resource right now wondering what exactly you need to do with it. If this sounds like you, don’t worry, we can help. Here are some basics on hot water heaters worth knowing as a new homeowner.

1: Yes, You Need to Clean It

Hot water heaters require cleaning and maintenance in order to do a few things: 1) heat up the water when needed, such as when washing the dishes, running the washing machine, and taking a shower; 2) keep the hot water clean and flowing throughout the plumbing. Just like HVAC, maintaining a hot water heater has its benefits: for one, you increase its lifespan and extend the number of years it’ll remain an efficient heater. For another, it makes certain you have the proper amount of domestic water running to your home.

A few tasks you can perform every so often are to clean out the tank and replace the anode rods. For more details on what anode rods are and how to clean a heater, please refer to our blog post.

2: Failure is Not an Ideal Option

It’s dangerous to leave aside the maintenance tasks for too long! Hot water heaters are built with a pressure and temperature controlled tank. If the water in the heater becomes overheated, the pressure will build to the point where the thermal expansion will blow out the bottom. This can cause the unit to take off through your home just like a rocket!

There are other risks you should always keep in mind with your water heater. There’s a chance the natural gas used to fuel the heater can leak out, and an explosion could occur. Carbon monoxide may also leak out from the fuel burn. A minor risk of electrical shock, if your heater is an electrical one, can occur if the heater was improperly installed.

Because these are such great risks to families, a hot water heater requires a permit for installation. The purpose of this permit is to allow a third-party to come and inspect the heater and make sure nothing was missed and the family living within the space is safe from harm. Our technicians at Rep-Air are licensed and equipped with the needed skills and knowledge of codes and safety procedures to inspect and maintain your water heater safely and efficiently.

3: You Have Two Options

By options we mean the type of water heater for your home. These two options are tankless and tank heaters. Tank water heaters are the most common type of heater you will find in homes. They store gallons of heated water at a time, and are an economical choice for some homeowners. There are lower up-front unit costs, for example, with tank heaters compared to the tankless ones.

Tankless, in comparison, heat your water on demand but don’t store water. What happens instead is the water will pass through a series of coils to and from the unit. Because of this, tankless heaters are a good choice for environmentally conscious homeowners, plus they take up way less space than tank ones.

As for fueling the heaters, you have two common choices there as well. Natural gas and electric hot water heaters are usually the kinds you’ll find in the marketplace within BC, the main reasons being they’re the most efficient to maintain, they’re some of the least expensive to purchase, and they’re the easiest to fix by a technician if something goes awry. Some companies may offer other fuel options, however they may not be the most environmentally friendly or the least expensive options if those are what you’re looking for.

If your new home comes with a heater that’s a tank, but you’d rather have a tankless one instead, you do have the option to replace it. Even better, rebates and financing options are available to homeowners who want to make the switch from tank to tankless.

Get a Licensed Technician to Help!

You will need to call in an expert if there are any signs that your hot water heater is having problems. These signs include but are not limited to having no hot water (despite it being cranked all the way up), your water is under or overheating, and the thermostat is faulty. For more details on the signs you can refer to our blog post on that subject as well.

Give our team a call for all your water heater needs. Our licensed technicians can also help you make the switch from tank to tankless, if you would like. At Rep-Air Heating And Cooling we provide our customers with many options that will best suit your needs from heating and cooling to refrigeration. Contact us today for your complimentary quote: 1-844-218-3362 or contact@repairheatingandcooling.com and don’t forget to take a look at our website: https://repairheatingandcooling.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram!