No hot water is miserable and it feels urgent. Before you call anyone, there are a few things worth checking, because a reasonable share of these calls turn out to be one of them.
There is also one situation where you should stop reading and call immediately, so that one is first.
Stop and call now if the tank is leaking
If there is water on the floor around the tank and it is coming from the tank body itself — not from a fitting or a connection at the top — the tank has failed.
A tank that is leaking from the body does not get repaired. It also does not stop on its own, and it will get worse. Shut the water supply to the tank off if you can reach the valve, shut off the gas or the breaker to it, and call.
Water pooling under a tank is different from water dripping from a valve or a pipe connection at the top. Those are repairable. The body is not.
The five-minute checks
Electric tank: the breaker. Water heaters are on their own circuit. If it has tripped there is no heat. Reset it once. If it trips again, stop — a breaker that keeps tripping is reporting a fault, and repeatedly resetting it is not troubleshooting.
Gas tank: is other gas working? If your gas range and your furnace are also dead, this is not a water heater problem.
Gas tank: the pilot. Older tanks have a standing pilot that can go out. The relighting procedure is printed on a label on the tank itself, and if you are comfortable following it, follow that rather than any instructions from the internet including these. If it lights and goes out again, that is usually a thermocouple and it needs a visit. If you smell gas at any point, stop, leave, and call from outside.
Newer gas tanks often have electronic ignition and a status light that flashes a diagnostic pattern. Count the flashes — the label on the tank translates them, and telling us the pattern on the phone can shorten the visit considerably.
The thermostat setting on the tank. People turn it down and forget, or somebody else turns it down. Worth a look.
A vacation or holiday mode that was set and never cleared.
Is it actually no hot water, or is it not enough? These are different problems with different causes, and the distinction matters more than people expect.
Not enough hot water is a different problem
If you get hot water but it runs out sooner than it used to, the tank is not dead — something is reducing its effective capacity.
The usual causes are a failed lower heating element in an electric tank (you get the top portion of the tank's worth and then cold), sediment accumulation reducing the volume available, a failing thermostat, or simply more demand than there used to be because the household changed.
Sediment is the quiet one. Minerals settle in the bottom of the tank over years, taking up volume and insulating the burner from the water above it. A gas tank with heavy sediment often makes popping or rumbling noises as water trapped under the sediment boils.
Lukewarm rather than hot
Usually a thermostat or, in an electric tank, an element. On a gas tank it can be a burner not firing properly.
It can also be a crossover — a mixing valve or a fixture cartridge letting cold water into the hot side, which shows up as lukewarm water everywhere and confuses everyone until it is found.
Hot water at some taps and not others
Then the tank is fine and the problem is between the tank and those fixtures. A closed or partly closed valve, a blockage, or a failed fixture cartridge.
When it is the tank and it is old
If your tank is old and one of the components has failed, the useful question is not just what this repair costs but what you are buying with it. That decision has its own article in this batch.
What to tell us on the phone
Whether it is gas or electric. Whether you have no hot water at all or not enough. Whether the tank is leaking. What the status light is doing, if it has one. And roughly how old the tank is if you know — there is usually a date in the serial number on the label, and we can read it if you photograph it.
That description often tells us what to bring, which is the difference between one visit and two.
Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, New Westminster. 604-865-7979.
Related: No hot water · Hot water tank repair · Hot water tank replacement
