Water Heater Troubles

7/12/2017 (Permalink)

One of the most common sources of flooding in a residential property is a failed water heater.   At the same time, property owners tend to put very high expectations on it to operate with no malfunctions.   In fact, Hot Water Heaters are relatively simple appliances and tend to be trouble free and last a long time, making it easy take them for granted.

 The typical expectations are:

• Heat up between 30-80 gallons of cold water and maintain the desired temperature, 24 hours a day
• Depending on the size of the household, it may get emptied and refilled one or more times a day
• Rarely does a water heater get serviced by anybody, let alone a trained plumber, at any time during its lifetime
• Its proper function is critical to the users, just listen to the disappointed comments when it unexpectedly shuts off, or begins leaking.
• its literally shoved into an out of the way corner and forgotten for years until something goes wrong

At the same time, the failure of this appliance has a predictable track record studied by the insurance industry.  The typical failure mode is for the containment vessel to rust through over time and begin slowly leaking or suddenly bursting via corrosion issues.   The age at failure ranged widely from 1-30 years (average of 10.7 years). 

Finding out the age of your water heater can sometimes be tricky. But, all water heaters have a Rating Plate that lists important data such as the model and serial numbers, manufacturing company’s name, length of warranty, wattage of elements installed (on electric models), gallon capacity, input BTU rating (gas models), and more.

If you would like to save yourself the cost and heartache of having water damage from a failed water heater, consider taking a look at the make/model and determine the date of manufacture so you can take action with repairs or replacement before a disaster takes control of your life. 

Also, consider calling SERVPRO of Glendora/San Dimas & Irwindale/Baldwin Park.  We will come out free of charge and give you our expert advice on next steps to eliminate the risk before a failure occurs.