Water Heater Repair in Ann Arbor, Michigan

If you are standing in a Ann Arbor basement looking at water around the base of the heater, here is what to do before you read further: turn the cold supply valve on top of the tank off, turn the gas knob to pilot, and call us. From there, Temprasure sorts out whether the water is condensation, a relief valve, a fitting or the tank, which is a thirty-second decision for Al and the difference between a small repair and a replacement in your pre-war two-stories and 1950s–60s ranches, with university-era infill on every side home. Ann Arbor is roughly 16 minutes from the shop, and leaking-tank calls go to the front of the line.

Ann Arbor houses and what that means for water heater repair

Ann Arbor gives us almost every housing type in one zip code. The Old West Side and Old Fourth Ward are full of 1880s–1920s frame houses with stone or rubble foundations, fieldstone basements that stay damp, and furnaces that replaced boilers or gravity units sometime in the 1960s or 70s. Many of those homes still have cast-iron radiators fed by a boiler, and a surprising number have both a boiler and a separate forced-air system added for cooling. Burns Park and Ann Arbor Hills houses are larger 1920s–50s builds with plaster walls, so getting a second return or a bigger supply trunk in is slow work. The ranches and split-levels of the west side were built with 80,000 to 100,000 BTU furnaces that are now oversized for insulated versions of the same house. Condos near Briarwood and Pittsfield Village often have furnaces in closets or attics with tight clearances. Student rentals near campus run the oldest equipment in the city, and landlords routinely call us for emergency service and new-purchase inspections.

Well water in the rural parts of Ann Arbor and across Washtenaw County changes what fails. Iron and hardness consume the anode rod in a few years, the tank fills with sediment faster than it does on municipal water, and sulfur bacteria react with the magnesium anode to produce the rotten-egg smell that 48103 homeowners sometimes assume is a gas problem. Temprasure carries aluminum-zinc and powered anodes for exactly that situation, flushes tanks on a schedule for customers who want to extend them, and tells you honestly when a tank on well water has reached the age where the rod is gone and the steel is next. For the pre-war two-stories and 1950s–60s ranches, with university-era infill on every side farmhouses and acreage builds outside Pittsfield Village, that call usually comes a few years sooner than it does in town.

From the older streets near Nichols Arboretum to the newer subdivisions out by Pittsfield Village, Ann Arbor water heaters live hard lives: hard Washtenaw County water, cold incoming temperatures all winter, and a lot of them installed twelve or fifteen years ago and never flushed. We repair the ones worth repairing, replace the ones that are not, and either way we show you the reading or the rust that made the call. DTE Energy serves nearly every home here, so a gas tank replacement is a same-day job from our shop 7 miles away.

Local details we plan around in Ann Arbor

• The city's two historic districts, the Old West Side and the Old Fourth Ward, regulate exterior changes, so condenser placement on a street-facing wall often needs Historic District Commission sign-off.
• Ann Arbor has its own building department with its own mechanical permit process, and inspectors here want to see combustion air, condensate routing and flue sizing done by the book.
• The city's water is treated at its own plant and softened, so water heater sediment is lighter here than in surrounding townships on well water.
• The Huron River cuts a deep valley through the north side of Ann Arbor, and the Northside, Lower Town and Gallup Park neighborhoods feel it as morning fog, heavier dew and basements that sweat in July. The downtown core holds heat with all its brick and pavement, so attics and upper floors there run several degrees hotter than the leafy blocks of Burns Park and the Old West Side, where mature oaks and maples shade roofs and cut peak cooling loads noticeably.