Is your hot water heater leaking?

It is typical situation in Florida where water heater is located in the garage and it’s what you would typically expect to find… it is surrounded by a lot of stuff and in fact sometimes we get lucky and it is not buried under junk which we find is very common.
First let me say that the older your electric water heater is more chances you will experience hot water heater leaking and need electric water heater repair.

When we go to check any water heater we’re going to look and make sure that the pipes coming into and out of water heater are not leaking and there are no solder joints that are showing signs of leaking and the valves themselves don’t leak. We want to inspect the top of the water heater for any rust stains.

In the past we had cases were drains were cracked and only leaked intermittently on top of water heaters.

We always inspect inlet and outlet ports on the water heater in most cases the relief valve is dead center on the top of the tank so we will check that port as well to make sure that that’s not leaking.

Always pull the covers off from where the electric water heater elements are, but always turn the power off at the breaker before we do that because we don’t know what we’re going to find underneath there.

We will check upper and lower heating elements to make sure they are not leaking… We can pull the insulation back and check the threads on the back at the boiler drain and while we’re here at the boiler drain will can put on a pressure test gauge to see what the house pressure is and check for any thermal expansion issues.

Those are the main points that we go through, a check-list if you will, to find a leak in electric water heater. At this point we need to mention that it can be really hard to notice small leaks if you have never done this before and do not know what to look for. Also, we recommend you leave this issue to be take care of by one of the professional licensed plumbers in St Augustine FL, because you are dealing with water and electricity at the same time and it could potentially be a very dangerous situation.

Call W. Smith Plumbing St Augustine FL at (904) 669-2514 with any and all of your water heater issues and we will take care if it for you right away.

You can get more information on how to properly maintain your water heater (draining) by visiting this page.

Check out this very entertaining video about water heater exploding from MythBusters