Water Heater Repair & Replacement

If your water heater is leaking, making noise, or you have run out of hot water, MVP Plumbing repairs and replaces tank water heaters across Baytown, Mont Belvieu and the surrounding area. We are a licensed master plumbing company — MPL 38224 — and we can usually look at it, bid it and replace it the same day.

Around here a water heater lasts about ten to twelve years. Box-store brands tend to go sooner. If yours is in that range and something has changed, it is worth getting looked at before it fails in a way that involves your ceiling.

Signs your water heater needs attention

• Water on the outside of the house from a small pipe. That is the pan drain doing its job — the heater is leaking and the pan is carrying it outside instead of through your ceiling.
• Water in the pan, or around the base of the heater. Sometimes it is a fitting or the T&P line. Sometimes it is the tank.
• Not enough hot water, or it runs out faster than it used to. Often sediment taking up volume inside the tank.
• Rumbling or popping while it heats. Sediment on the bottom of the tank, with water boiling underneath it.
• Rusty or discolored hot water when the cold water is clear.
• It is over ten years old and you have started thinking about it. That instinct is usually right.

Repair or replace

Not every leaking heater needs replacing, and we will tell you which one you have before anything is taken out.

Repairable: leaking supply connections or flex lines, a failed T&P relief valve, a leaking drain valve, a failed thermocouple or gas control on a gas unit, a failed element or thermostat on an electric unit, a corroded flex connector.

Not repairable: a tank leaking from the tank itself. The steel shell rusts from the inside out, and by the time water is coming through it, there is nothing to seal. Anyone who tells you they can patch it is selling you a few weeks.

A recent job — two heaters in one Mont Belvieu attic

That decision is worth explaining, because it can sound like a plumber talking a customer into twice the job. It is arithmetic. Two heaters the same age, in the same conditions, sharing the same water — when one fails, the second is not far behind. Doing both in one visit means one attic access and one labor charge, instead of paying for the setup twice inside a year or two.

If your two heaters are different ages, or one is in a garage and one is in an attic, that logic does not apply and we will say so.

A recent job — same-day replacement

What a replacement actually includes

A water heater replacement is not just swapping the cylinder. Done properly it includes:

1. Draining and removing the old unit. In an attic that means getting a full tank down safely without damaging the ceiling below.
2. A new drip pan, correctly sized, plumbed to the existing drain line. If the pan or its drain is compromised, the next leak comes through your ceiling instead of outside.
3. New flex connectors. The old ones are the same age as the heater and are the most common source of the next leak.
4. A properly run T&P discharge line. The temperature and pressure relief valve is the safety device that stops a water heater becoming dangerous. Its discharge line has to run to an approved termination, sized correctly, with no reduction and no threaded end.
5. Correct venting on gas units, checked rather than assumed, because the old vent was sized for the old unit.
6. Testing and cleanup. We fill it, check every joint, fire it, and confirm you have hot water before we leave.

Brands we install

We install State water heaters as our standard tank line. Alongside them we sell and install State, Navien and Noritz on the tankless side.

Brand matters less than most marketing suggests, with one real exception: parts availability. A unit nobody in the Houston area stocks parts for means a cold week when it fails, instead of a day. That is the reason we steer toward the brands we do.

Tank or tankless

If your tank heater has failed, it is a reasonable moment to ask whether to go tankless. The honest answer is that it depends on your gas supply, your venting, where the unit sits and how your household actually uses hot water. A tankless conversion is a bigger job than a like-for-like replacement, and it is not automatically the right call.

We will price both and explain the difference rather than pushing you either way. More on tankless water heaters.

Related work

While we are there, the things that most often come up alongside a water heater are a main shutoff valve that will not close all the way, and uninsulated exposed lines. Both are covered on our repiping and water line page. If your heater failure came with a drain backup as well, see drain cleaning.

Water heater service in your area

We replace and repair water heaters in Baytown, Mont Belvieu, Anahuac and across the rest of our service area. No hot water at a bad hour is one of the calls we take on our 24-hour line.