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No Hot Water

If you smell gas near the heater, leave the building before you do anything else and call from outside.

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When this becomes an emergency

What a pro does

The diagnosis splits on fuel first. A gas heater that's gone cold usually comes down to the thermocouple, the gas valve or the venting, and venting is the one worth taking seriously in older Pennsylvania houses. A lot of them still put an atmospheric heater on a shared masonry chimney with the boiler, and once that flue liner deteriorates the appliance can't draft properly. The plumber checks for spillage at the draft hood before touching anything else. Electric units point at the elements and the thermostats instead, and a tank that gives you a few warm minutes then quits is the classic sign of a dead upper element or one that's caked. Sediment is the other big one here. Water off the limestone aquifers around Lancaster, York and Chambersburg carries a lot of dissolved mineral, and that mineral bakes onto the bottom of a gas tank until the burner is heating rock. That's what the rumbling is. The plumber checks the anode rod too, because a tank with a spent rod is on borrowed time no matter what else gets fixed.

Frequently asked questions

That points inside the tank rather than at the street. When the sacrificial anode is used up the steel shell itself starts corroding, and you see it on the hot side only. It's a sign to have the tank looked at soon rather than a reason to panic overnight.
It does. Mineral drops out of solution as water is heated and settles on the bottom of the tank, so the burner has to push heat through a growing crust. The tank works harder, runs less efficiently and generally doesn't last as long as the same unit would on softer water.
It's a common arrangement in older houses and it works when the flue is sound and correctly sized. What causes trouble is an old unlined chimney, or a heating system replaced with a modern sealed unit that no longer feeds the flue, leaving the water heater venting alone into a chimney too large for it.
Rarely straight. Gas tankless units want a bigger gas line and their own sealed vent to the outside, and in a stone-walled basement that vent run is the awkward part. It can be done, but it's a project rather than a same-afternoon replacement.

No Hot Water?

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