hot water heater help

MrsSstrug

we're back!!! i will post few things on spain later but our hot water heater decided to die while we were gone.  the person watching our dog thankfully was home when the relief valve decided to blow out, sending water all over the basement back room. he had someone come out to look at it but left it to us to make the decision on what to do next. DH is looking up things on line to see if this is something a Home Depot/Lowe's run can fix or if we need to replace the whole thing. has anyone dealth with this? or any good plumber recs? Roto-Rooter was the only guy that has looked at it so far.

megstoo

What a mess to come back to.  At least you had someone at the house when it happened!  I have no reqs about homedepot/lowes but for a plumber we've used Kesterson's Plumbing and I highly recommend them.  We were able to get same day service and they didn't charge for emergency same day (it wasn't an emergency for us) - the replaced the pipes in the bathroom vanity that was starting to do a slowish leak. 

mrs.marie.g

hope spain was amazing. welcome home. sorry you came home to that.

1) how old is your hot water heater

2) What happened exactly?

2) My coworker has used Gaithersburg Plumbing before on his rental and he's VERY happy with them(they aer in the air park) I think Harvey Hotel does residential (but they may only be commercial but its worth a shot)

MrsPhilDunphy

Oh! That happened to us! And our basement would have been totally flooded had I not been running late to work that day. However, I'm a plumbing idiot and couldn't possibly tell you what was wrong - I do know that our plumber was able to replace a part (some kind of regulator or something?) rather than the whole shebang. He's great, but based in PG. Email me if you'd like a rec, though.

SecretServiceWife

Welcome back!!!

I don't have a plumber rec - but a lot of times you can fix whatevers wrong rather than having to replace it.  But, that also depends on how old it is... A friend's water heater recently stopped heating the water, but it was crazy old (like, 17 years or something), so instead of fixing it they just got a new one.

MrsSstrug

mrs.marie.g:

hope spain was amazing. welcome home. sorry you came home to that.

1) how old is your hot water heater

2) What happened exactly?

2) My coworker has used Gaithersburg Plumbing before on his rental and he's VERY happy with them(they aer in the air park) I think Harvey Hotel does residential (but they may only be commercial but its worth a shot)

i sadly don't know how old it is (we have been in the house four years) but i don't think it was new when we bought it.

it seems to be the "release valve" or something like that. i wasn't there when it happened but something popped off and water started coming out.

NoVABrideNS

So sorry to hear this happened to you!  We bought a fancy new one several months back, and my only advice is DONT USE SEARS!!!  We had a horrible experience with them when we needed a simple repair.  I'll never shop there again.  I recommend Home Depot in a pinch.  Good luck!