During the hurricane, our hot water heater went out (probably because of the flooding in the basement) and now it won’t relight. The plumber sent by our home warranty company says that water probably got into the gas valve and that that replacing the whole unit would be quicker and about as cheap as just replacing the valve.
He also says that according to code and law, if he works on this unit, installed in 2004, he has to add an expansion tank. This increases the time and expense of the valve-only repair. New heaters come with the expansion tank.
They want $985 to install a new 40-gallon natural gas water heater. (The warranty company says they won’t cover it, but homeowner’s insurance might. Since it’s related to the storm, I’m guessing they won’t either, but I’m checking.)
My questions:
Is he right that replacing the valve isn’t much cheaper than doing the whole tank?
Is he right about the code requirement for the expansion tank?
Is this price for a new heater reasonable?
We’re in Baltimore County, Maryland.
In the meantime, I’m going to talk to our insurance company and call a few plumbers, but the wisdom of the Dope would be appreciated.
I can only address the first question, it is generally better to replace rather than repair a hot water tank. The cost of the repair will be a significant percentage of the cost of replacement and after about 10 years they aren’t very energy efficient so a newer model will save you money.
Walk through Lowes anbd look at the price of water heaters, gas valves, and expansion tanks. If there is good access to the tank, it should only take a couple of hours to replace it or the gas valve.
If you have city water, the expansion tank is necessary. If the city hasn’t installed a back flow preventer yet, they should soon. Have you had troubles with the relief valve leaking?
$900 sounds high to me. Could have to do with laws protecting union workers. Installing water heaters is no big deal. I have installed a few. Unless you pay extra, I doubt newer water heaters are much more efficient than a 2004 one.
A plumber can install new water heater with their eyes closed and the labor estimate is a 99% gaurantee because of this.
If you opt for repair and updating, the labor becomes a pain and the range of the estimate goes from ‘might save a few pennies’ to ‘this is more expensive than a new water heater’.
I am just glad you didn’t get suckered into buying a hot water heater. If ya got hot water, why heat it?!
ETA: ^^^this comment will be countered by someone on the SDMB who can’t just have a sense of humor and leave it at that.
every tank type water heater is a hot water creator and a hot water maintainer; the later function makes it being a ‘hot water heater’ a correct statement.
Completely off the cuff, but almost $1000 to buy and install a water heater (40 gal is also pretty small, innit?) seems high to me. I’d make a couple of calls and wouldn’t be surprised if you could cut that bill significantly.
Home Depot lists 40 gallon water heaters for roughly $300ish to $500ish. Figure 2 hrs of labor @ $125 an hour (a number I am just making up) and ISTM you should be able to do this for ~$550 to $750.
I also need to replace my leaking water heater. My plumber, a one-man operation that I’ve used for years and has always been reasonable and reliable, is saying $800-900 for a 50-gallon Rheem Fury, installed, including the addition of the expansion tank. Naturally, this includes disconnecting/removing the old unit, too.
$1200 for an AO Smith 50 gallon gas power vent heater. It took them a few hours to get it installed. I thought it was a bit steep, but the heater went out on a Friday and the wife wanted it fixed the next Monday so I didn’t have time to shop around. It’s only got a 6 year warranty too. They also had to add an expansion tank.
As it happens, our homeowners insurance is covering it (less our deductible). I had another plumber come out and give us an estimate, and it was $1,250 but that includes an additional 4-year warranty (total 10) over the unit the other plumber was installing. And since the insurance company is paying that difference, I decided it was worth it to get it done now and not to have to deal with it again in a few years.
Apparently, water heaters being made these days are much less durable than those of years past. The unit in the condo I’ve just moved out of was installed in 1987 and although it looks a little ratty, it is still working fine after 24 years. New ones today are rated for about 6 to 10 years. Planned obsolescence, or is there some good reason why we should have to replace them twice as often?
$900 in addition to the cost of the new heater? Too high. I had a new heater installed in my last house for about $900, but that included the new 50 gal heater. If he has to run a bunch of new piping and install valves, that could run the cost up, but an expansion tank is pretty easy to put in.
Back-flow presenters have become more ubiquitous with municipal water supplies. A number of reasons for that. The leading reasoning is the whole supply could potentially be contaminated by forcing water into the system at any faucet. The expansion tank doesn’t need to be on the water heater it just needs to be located somewhere in the system after the back-flow prevention.
Prior to back-flow prevention, pressure created by heating water was absorbed back into the municipal supply. Now that it can’t expand in that direction, an expansion tank is a good way to do that. A house without a expansion tank might not see any ill effects because the piping in the house can often absorb the extra pressure created by thermal expansion. If for any reason the piping in the house can’t handle the pressure it will leak at it’s weakest point, usually a relief valve designed for that purpose.
I had to replace mine just a few weeks ago after catastrophic failure of the old. The heater was around $400 (40gal Whirlpool, 9 year) and the delivery, install labor & haul-away was $319. This was from a Chicago area Lowes. No sales tax on appliances here but I did need to buy a $50 Chicago permit.
Third major appliance to fail since I bought the place ~15 months ago…
I’ve never heard of expansion tanks on domestic hot water systems that were not part of a heating boiler, but will freely admit to not knowing every state’s and county’s plumbing codes.
As for the price, I was quoted about $750 by Sears seven years ago to replace a 40-gallon heater. About $100 of this was for the county permit. Adding insult to injury is that this was on my schedule as pre-emptive maintenance, rather than waking up one morning to a cold shower and/or flooded garage.
I am not a plumber, but have installed a few (out of necessity). If you know someone who can do the installation, they may do it during their free time for some easy cash.
Is that 24 year old heater actually rated/warrantied as a 24 year heater, or is it a 10 year heater that has just happened to last 24 years?
My last one was the same brand and slightly smaller- it lasted about 17 years, but was only rated at 10 years.
Most water heaters use cathodic corrosion protection, and there’s an aluminum/magnesium anode in the tank with the water; when it finally corrodes away, then the metal of the heater itself will begin to corrode. Unfortunately, those anodes tend to be kind of hard to get at, and most people forget to get them replaced, and the heaters corrode and crap out.
If your anode doesn’t corrode very fast due to water chemistry or something, then your heater may last significantly longer than expected.
You’re right. The expansion tank is part of the boiler system. No boiler - no need for an expansion tank. Or at least I’ve never seen on on a water heater.
You might want to check what all he is doing for $985. We just got a new water heater that was covered by our insurance. They didn’t cover $100 for the guy to remove the old one (which we did ourselves) and some $100+ fee to reconnect to the city water line. That sounded like crap to me, but the one being replaced was origional and had to fit in a different way.
Check on the warranty that comes with them installing it. You will feel like an ass if something goes wrong but isn’t covered because you installed it yourself.
