What's wrong with our water heater? (apartment, house, landlord)

[mkal]

We have a gas water heater in our attic. 3 weeks back, we stopped getting hot water. My husband re-lit the pilot flame, as per the instructions in the manual. We got hot water. But this morning, we are out of hot water once again. What is wrong with the water heater? We are first time home owners and we are not sure what to look for. Would it be a costly fix? Should we call a plumber? If so, could someone suggest a reliable plumber?

Thank you.

[dansdrive]

Could be any number of things. Being you are new to this I would highly recommend you get a plumber in to resolve the problem. To have some idea what it might be you can check out this site so you have some idea what the plumber is telling you so you won't be taken with the repair cost. Good luck and hopefully its just an adjustment or something simple.

Troubleshooting a Water Heater - No Hot Water is Produced

[weluvwakeforest]

Originally Posted by mkal

We have a gas water heater in our attic. 3 weeks back, we stopped getting hot water. My husband re-lit the pilot flame, as per the instructions in the manual. We got hot water. But this morning, we are out of hot water once again. What is wrong with the water heater? We are first time home owners and we are not sure what to look for. Would it be a costly fix? Should we call a plumber? If so, could someone suggest a reliable plumber?

Thank you.

Jay Kabala, Licensed Plumber
Ace Plumbing
337-8805
gas water heater "guru"

[MI-Roger]

And how old is the water heater? The problem may be a simple as a failed thermo-couple, a $5 part. Easy to replace, sometimes a little tricky to allign properly because repalcements are usually "universal fit" and you have to find the right combination of little adapters in the box to position the tip properly in the pilot flame.

Better to spend $5 on a thermcouple than $500 on a new water heater!

[mkal]

the water heater is around 3 years old. It looks like the pilot flame is off.
I must also mention that we haven't used a whole lot of hot water in the
last couple of months. Would the pilot switch off if the usage is below
a minimum?

Is the thermo-couple something that is easy to locate and replace?
Would it involve opening up the heater? My husband is not particularly handy.

[geoff2v]

Originally Posted by mkal

the water heater is around 3 years old. It looks like the pilot flame is off.
I must also mention that we haven't used a whole lot of hot water in the
last couple of months. Would the pilot switch off if the usage is below
a minimum?

Is the thermo-couple something that is easy to locate and replace?
Would it involve opening up the heater? My husband is not particularly handy.

This probably isn't helpful, but in an apartment we lived in several years back the water heater was in the basement. Fine, but the problem was that it would flood down there a bit sometimes, and knock out the pilot light. Landlord solved it somehow, and it stopped happening. Is it possible that it's getting flooded out and that's knocking out the pilot light? If so, there might be some lag time between when the light gets snuffed out and you notice, because there'd still be residual heat in the system.

[dba4life]

Had the exact same symptoms a month ago. It was the thermocoupler. We paid $85 for it to be fixed from a plumber.

[CaliBoy]

I've replaced water heaters myself and it is not that difficult of a task for your average sized water heater, especially if you have someone helping you with the lugging of the old heater away (you should take precautions for water evacuation). But, if you are not adept at handling plumbing issues, you should call a plumber.

Also, I imagine homeowners replacing their water heater may need to obtain a local permit. If you have a licensed and insured plumber doing this, I imagine they'll handle that for you (and add the charge to your bill, of course).

However, if you cannot clean the basic maintenance parts or replace the part that is causing you problems, you might consider a tankless system either as an electric or gas. We're looking into it ourselves, and are seriously considering an on demand tankless system especially since we don't use a ton of hot water and do not have a lot of people living in the house (though I don't know the efficacy of such systems when it comes to large families... could be good or bad).

Good luck!

[MI-Roger]

Originally Posted by mkal

the water heater is around 3 years old. It looks like the pilot flame is off.
I must also mention that we haven't used a whole lot of hot water in the
last couple of months. Would the pilot switch off if the usage is below
a minimum?

Is the thermo-couple something that is easy to locate and replace?
Would it involve opening up the heater? My husband is not particularly handy.

The thermo-couple is a small diameter tube, usually silver in color, a little bigger than pencil lead in diameter and 12 to 18 inches long. One end is threaded into the gas valve, the other end is held by a bracket and positioned in the pilot flame. Even though it is threaded into the gas valve it contains no gas ,so don't worry.

The only tricky part is getting the flame end positioned properly in the pilot flame. The replacement thermo-couple kit will probably contain a half dozen different adapters which will all change the position a little bit. Trial and error to find the right combination of bits and pieces to get it positioned. Not difficult at all, but a little bit finicky.

A bad thermo-couple will cause the control valve to "think" the pilot has blown out. The control valve shuts off the pilot gas, and with no pilot the main burner will never receive gas either. The water gets cold and home owners assume the water heater has failed.

If you can re-light a pilot, you can replace a thermo-couple.

[mkal]

Thank you for all the suggestions. My husband re-lit the pilot flame last night. We have hot water again. We will look into replacing the thermo-couple ourselves. If it doesn't work, we will use the plumber recommended in this thread.

The tankless water heater sounds interesting. We are just a family of 2, so it might be a good fit for us.