Yesterday, the Village sent a plumber to replace the water meter in my house. What should have been a 20 minute thing, snowballed into calling my own plumber and having the Village Public Works department at my house for 5 hours to get my water working correctly again. And I also had to have my hot water heater replaced. So it was a fun day! (or not….)
But I did learn a lot about hot water heaters and thought I would take this opportunity to share. My last hot water heater was installed in 2008. And typically, a hot water heater needs to be replaced every 8-12 years depending on the design of the unit, water quality and quality of the install. I was apparently very lucky given how my old unit was installed to have gotten 16 years of service from it!
My home did not have lever shut off valves in the places they should be. Local plumbing code says there should be a water shut off before the water meter, after the water heater – and for pure expediency there should be one for the hot water heater as well. My home only had 1 working valve shut off. And of course it broke when the Village plumber turned the water back on after replacing the meter. Thus starting my adventure in plumbing yesterday – but I digress. I was going to write about hot water heaters.
I bet you don’t think much about how your hot water works. I know I didn’t! There is a lot to consider when you get a new hot water heater like:
- Natural gas or electric? My old one was gas and the new one is too.
- Tank size? Typically, they are 40 or 50 gallons. My plumbers recommended a new “skinny” 40 gallon tank for me. But depending on the size of your family and your hot water needs, you may want to consider a different tank size. There are a bunch of charts online if you search that can help you figure out what you need for your home – but I think working with your plumber might be the best way to figure out what you really need.
- Can you go tankless? My HOA rules require approval to do tankless – so even though I’d like the extra space, I ruled this out really fast due to the approval process. But tankless also requires different venting than a traditional hot water heater – and my plumbers say they need a lot of regular maintenance. So glad I didn’t go this route.
- Who is going to install it? I didn’t have a plumber before yesterday so the first thing I did was look for recommendations on my town’s Facebook page. Luckily, people ask for recommendations on plumbers regularly there so it was just a matter of searching the recos and I found a local company that was highly recommended multiple times. And BOY were those recommendations right – the plumber I called came right away and didn’t price gouge me either. The two guys that came to my house were just terrific – they know the code for the area and they were great problem solvers.
So I’m all set now for at least 8-12 years of hot showers, clean clothes and clean dishes. It sure was an adventure – complete with the smoke detectors going off twice, the Village Public Works team digging a large hole in my front yard to replace the water shut off from the water main, and oh yeah record heat! But all in all, I learned a lot about plumbing and I have water so it’s all good!
Learn Or Do 