Tuckers Air Conditioning, Heating & Plumbing Blog

How to Tell if Your Water Heater Needs to be Replaced

Water heaters are incredibly sturdy machines, but they don’t last forever. Though you can extend your water heater’s lifespan by a number of years with proper care and maintenance, eventually you will need to replace it. Since you probably don’t want to suddenly find yourself taking a cold shower, you will want to replace your water heater before it actually gives out completely. That means keeping an eye out for the signs that your water heater is reaching the end of its life. Let’s take a look at some of those signs now.

Drop in Output

If you have a high enough demand for hot water for a long enough period of time, you can certainly exhaust the amount of hot water that your water heater has on hand at any given time. That water will eventually be replenished. However, if your water heater is consistently failing to deliver hot water under even moderate demand, then you might have to replace it soon.

Age

Water heaters tend to last anywhere from 10 to 15 years. While there are the occasional outliers that last longer than that, most water heaters will die around that age. If your water heater is getting close to 15 years old, especially if it’s having issues like the ones listed here, you should see about replacing it.

Repairs

Typically, water heaters shouldn’t need repairs more than once or twice every few years. If yours needs to be repaired every few months, it means that the wear on the system is causing parts to fail more rapidly than they should. It’s a good indicator that you need to replace your system.

If you think that your water heater needs to be replaced, call Tuckers Air Conditioning, Heating & Plumbing. We serve all of Gaithersburg, MD.