Haymarket, VA Gas Water Heater Leak
Friday, November 22nd, 2019 by Brad Dawdy
Challenge
Mr. L. called us when his existing gas water heater started to leak. With a growing family he wanted to explore increasing the size of the water heater upon replacement. After looking things over and inspecting the gas system we informed him that the existing gas line supplying the water heater was not large enough to support the larger heater.
Solution
We explained how we could replace the existing gas line with a larger one and that would then in turn allow us to upgrade the size of the heater. Also that several changes needed to be made when the new heater is installed to bring everything up to recent code requirements. After pricing out all of the options he decided that the additional work was worth it to bring the system up to code and provide more hot water for his family.
We started by pulling a permit and increasing the gas line size from the manifold to the heater. We then bonded the gas system per new code requirements. We then installed a new 75-gallon gas heater in an emergency pan. We added a new 5-gallon expansion tank (per code) as the older heater did not have one installed. We filled and fired up the heater and tested all of our work. We then had the installation inspected by the local plumbing inspector.
While on-site we installed a three-stage cartridge filter that the customer had previously bought.