Pick one and we will keep it short. Three taps and you are done.
We run calls seven days a week, and we answer the phone around the clock.
Last step. We will call you back to confirm the window.
An emergency deserves a person, not a web form sitting in an inbox. Call the shop and we pick up.
No heat, no water, an active leak, or a backed up main. These move to the front of the line, day or night, weekend or holiday.
Your request is in and somebody will call you back to confirm a window. Here is what we have:
No hot water, or a wet basement floor. We can usually have you back in hot water the same day, and we will tell you straight whether the tank is worth one more repair or finished.
A water heater gives you two kinds of bad morning. A part quits and the water runs cold, or the tank opens up and you find out at the bottom of the stairs. One is a cheap repair. The other never is.
Every plumber in the county writes “ten years”. The published figures are all over the place. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates about 15 years on average for a storage tank, off a survival curve fitted to federal survey data. Even that is contested on the record. In DOE’s 2024 rulemaking, Bradford White pointed out that DOE’s own 2010 analysis said 13 years, and that the curves for electric tanks ran lower.
What inspectors and insurers see is shorter. InterNACHI’s chart says 6 to 12 years. The Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety went through 700 claims and found the average age at failure was 10.7 years, with failures climbing sharply from age 5. That last one is the number to act on. Five years is not when a tank dies. It is when you stop getting to ignore it.
| Source | Tank | Tankless | What kind of number it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| DOE, 2024 final rule | about 15 yrs | about 20 yrs | Modelled average off federal survey data, not a measured failure age |
| DOE 2010, cited back at DOE by Bradford White | 13 yrs | n/a | An earlier federal estimate a manufacturer says fits the evidence better |
| EPA ENERGY STAR analysis, 2008 | 13 yrs | 20 yrs | Assumptions inside a cost comparison, resting on 2004 to 2005 inputs |
| InterNACHI inspection chart | 6 to 12 yrs | 10 yrs | What home inspectors watch fail |
| IBHS, 700 insurance claims | 10.7 yrs | n/a | Average age at failure. Claim files only, so it says nothing about the tanks still running |
| Rheem | 8 to 12 yrs | 15 to 20+ yrs | A manufacturer’s own article |
A steel tank full of fresh, oxygenated water wants to rust, so every tank ships with a sacrificial anode. The water eats the rod instead of the steel. Once the rod is gone the tank is next, which is why a dying water heater shows up as rust at the bottom and then a leak, not as a part anybody can swap. In the IBHS study, 69% of failures were a leak or a burst.
You will meet the 50% rule: if the repair costs more than half a new unit, replace. That is Rheem’s rule, out of a manufacturer’s article, and it appears in no government or insurance source we could find. A convention dressed as engineering. What actually drives the call:
The water heaters we get called back to were mostly installed by somebody else, recently, and the tank is never the problem. It is the parts nobody sees.
Gas or oil replacement needs a permit here. USBC Section 108.2 exempts swapping a mechanical appliance only where it is “not fueled by gas or oil”. Electric is where counties split, and Prince William publishes that electric for electric in the same size and spot does not. Lose hot water on a Saturday and Section 108.1 lets emergency replacement start first, with the application filed by the end of the next working day.
Prince William Water publishes its East system, off the Occoquan Reservoir, at 3.5 to 7.0 grains per gallon, which it classes Moderately Hard. So somebody has probably offered you a softener to save your water heater. PNNL-22921, a national laboratory review written for DOE, rates the efficiency impact of hard water on every residential water heater type the same way: negligible. The 24% efficiency loss figure in circulation is not a measurement. It is the Water Quality Association extrapolating to 30 grains per gallon, far above anything published here, off a study it paid for and supplied the heaters for. What that study measured on a gas tank was 70.4% down to 67.4%.
A 1986 field study at four real hard-water sites, which nobody selling softeners quotes, found gas efficiency fell about 5% over twenty years’ worth of scale and electric did not move. PNNL also found that a thin film of scale protects the steel, so zero hardness is not the goal. Then the part that ends the argument. PNNL puts the lifetime penalty of soft water on a glass-lined steel tank at up to a 50 to 60% reduction, and A.O. Smith’s manual says a softener may decrease tank life, and requires the anode rod to be inspected annually on softened water. Soften for your fixtures if you like. Not for the water heater.
Turn it down. At 170 mg/L hardness, PNNL calculates a 0.06 inch layer of scale building in about 4 years at a 140 degree setpoint and nearly 30 years at 120. Same tank, same water. CPSC urges 120 degrees on scald grounds: third-degree burns from two seconds at 150 degrees, six seconds at 140, thirty seconds at 130. Pulling the other way, Loudoun Water names Legionella as the organism of concern in hot water tanks. No number is safe to print on a web page, so we set it with you.
DOE’s rule covers water heaters manufactured on or after 6 May 2029: uniform energy factor 2.30 for electric storage tanks of 20 to 55 gallons, 2.50 above that. A UEF over 1.0 needs heat pump technology, so most new electric tanks will be heat pump units. It is a manufacture date, not a ban on installing what exists, and gas is untouched. There is also a carve-out almost nobody publishes: a new Small Electric Storage class covers 20 to 35 gallons and stays on plain resistance heating, which matters in a closet. Separately, the 25C and 25D credits were terminated for anything placed in service after 31 December 2025.
Sometimes. DOE says about 20 years against 15 for a tank, but InterNACHI’s chart says 10, no better than a tank. A tankless unit has no anode and no volume of water, so hardness has nowhere harmless to settle. In the testing PNNL reviewed, tankless units did not slowly lose efficiency. They stopped, on a clogged control device. Noritz and Navien both draw their treat-and-flush line around 3 to 7 grains per gallon, which is where we sit. More on the tankless page.
A weeping fitting and a splitting tank look alike on a concrete floor and mean completely different things. One is a part. The other is on a clock. That is a short visit to settle, and we would rather look than guess. Call (703) 491-6542. Virginia Class A licence 2705131990, family owned, over 40 years in the trade.
Most water heater calls are handled same day. We answer 24 hours, and a real person picks up.
