Water heater service in Nolensville

A lot of newer homes in town are good candidates for tankless units, especially if they have a laundry room or garage wall where one can mount. Tankless gives you continuous hot water, takes less room and avoids the standby losses of a tank. It also needs a gas line sized for the unit, venting that meets the manufacturer's requirements, and descaling at least yearly in hard water. We will lay out both options.

A water heater in a brand new house is typically placed to suit the framing and the builder's schedule, not to be easy to service. It may be in a corner of a utility room with little clearance, or in an attic where the access is a pull-down ladder and a narrow hatch. That is fine until you need to replace it.

If yours is hard to reach, it is worth thinking ahead about a pan and drain line, and about whether a tankless unit on a wall would give you more room and easier service later.

When water heats, it expands. In an open system the extra volume flows back into the street main. Many houses now have a check valve or a pressure reducing valve that stops that backflow, which makes the system closed. In a closed system, the expanding water has nowhere to go, so pressure rises each time the heater cycles, and the relief valve may drip.

A small expansion tank on the cold line absorbs that growth. If your relief valve drips every morning, or your faucets bang when the heater fires, the tank may be missing or waterlogged. It is a small part that protects the heater, the fixtures and the valves.