Water heater leak cleanup is one of our most common calls in Spanish Fork, and hard water is a big reason why. Utah County water carries a lot of dissolved calcium and magnesium. It settles as scale in the bottom of the tank, the burner or element overheats that spot, and the steel tank corrodes faster. Plenty of tanks here rust out before they reach the age on the label.
A ruptured tank can dump 40 or 50 gallons at once, and then keep going because the cold supply keeps refilling it. Shut off the cold water valve on top of the tank. For a gas unit, turn the gas control to off. For electric, shut the breaker. Then call us.
Water heaters usually sit in a basement utility room, and that room tends to share a wall with a finished family room or bedroom. The water runs under the wall plate and into carpet pad on the other side. Our crew checks both sides of every wall near the heater with a moisture meter, extracts the water and sets drying equipment.
Not every water heater leak is the tank. We also see leaking T&P (temperature and pressure) valves, corroded fittings and flexible supply connectors that split. A slow drip from one of these can run for weeks and do more damage than a sudden rupture, because it keeps the bottom plate wet long enough to grow mold.
Draining and flushing your tank once a year cuts down on scale. A drip pan with a drain line costs little and saves a lot of drywall.
