You’re not a handy man or handy woman. You work in a cubicle. When you learn that your water heater is on the fritz, you panic. You don’t know what to do. Can you fix it yourself? How? What can you do?
First, take a deep breath. OK, it’s alright if you cry a little bit. Do you feel better? Great. Now, it’s time to get to work. You need to determine the problems before you can fix anything. Standard water heaters are made up of a large tank, usually around 30 to 60 gallons, a drain valve, a pipe that takes cold water in and another pipe that lets hot water out.
Common water heater problems include water that is warm, but isn’t as hot as you would like, no hot water at all, or smelly, discolored water coming out of your faucets and showers. One simple solution is to crank up the heat on your water heater.
You can manually increase the temperature on your heater, but be careful. You obviously don’t want to set it too high. If your water is ice cold and you can’t get any heat, you likely have a mechanical issue and you need replacement parts or a new water heater altogether. If your water smells, you can drain it and clean it out with a cleaning solution you can buy at most hardware stores. If you’ve done this and it continues to stink, call a professional plumber in Boulder City to diagnose the problem.
Water heaters are complicated, but there are things you can do to help. You can drain your water heater, change the temperature, and clean it out to try to solve simple issues. When all of that fails, don’t be afraid to call a plumber.
