Tankless installation and repair in the San Fernando Valley
Across the Valley we put in, fix and descale gas tankless units, whether the home is a house, a condo or an apartment. Picture the range: a 1950s or 1960s ranch house in Canoga Park, Reseda or Granada Hills whose heater hangs in the garage, a hillside home south of Ventura Boulevard with long pipe runs to its bathrooms, and newer houses in Calabasas and Santa Clarita, where the median home dates from the 1980s. Choosing a size means adding up the hot water a household can call for at the same moment, then asking how many degrees the unit must add on a winter morning, when the supply is coldest. A heater picked with summer tap water in mind comes up short in January.
Often it is the gas line, not the heater, that settles whether a tankless unit can go in. In many older Valley homes the pipe running to the water heater was laid for a tank, and a tank burner needs only a small fraction of what a tankless burner draws at full fire. Connect the new unit to that pipe and the flame can starve, and an ignition code appears the moment a second shower opens. SoCalGas supplies gas from Canoga Park to Malibu and Santa Clarita, and the piping past its meter is yours. We size that piping for the burner's full input and pressure test every new section. If the meter itself looks undersized, you hear so before buying anything, because a bigger meter would have to be requested from SoCalGas, and inside the city of Los Angeles a meter change is also one of the triggers for a seismic gas shutoff valve. Venting is done to the letter of the manufacturer's manual, clearances included, and the old tank's flue is never reused for a tankless unit.
A repair starts by reading the display. The code usually narrows things to one part: an igniter that has worn out, a flame rod fouled with residue, an intake or vent that is blocked, scale tripping the overheat limit, or a flow sensor that has stopped sensing. Almost every one of those is fixable. The exception is a heat exchanger with a crack in it, and you will hear that in plain words rather than be sold a patch. Permits come from whoever governs the address: LADBS inside the city, where a water heater replacement is an Express Permit with no plan check; the Building and Safety departments of Calabasas, Agoura Hills, Hidden Hills and Santa Clarita; LA County Public Works for Westlake Village, under the City's contract; and Malibu's Building Safety Division. We close the permit after the inspection, and nothing is installed or repaired until the written quote has your approval.
What hard water does to a tankless heater
Hardness is dissolved calcium and magnesium, and heating water drives those minerals out as solids. In a tankless heater they come to rest on the heat exchanger, and the layer they form insulates the metal from the flame. To hold the same temperature the burner fires harder, ignition can bring popping or rumbling, and overheat codes begin to cut ordinary showers short. LADWP calls anything over 7 grains per gallon hard, which puts its Jensen water and the Las Virgenes supply over that line, and LADWP reports hardness by source rather than by street, so the blend at your tap can shift. Santa Clarita groundwater is in another class, and SCV Water itself says it leaves spots and scale. The usual answer of a salt softener is closed to most homes there, because salt-discharging self-regenerating softeners are banned in the Santa Clarita Valley Sanitation District to keep chloride out of the Santa Clara River.
Descaling happens on the wall, with nothing removed. With the isolation valves shut, the plumber hooks hoses to the service ports and lets a small pump push a mild acid through the exchanger until the scale has dissolved. A clean-water flush follows, and the inlet screen gets cleaned. A heater hung without isolation valves needs its pipes cut before it can be descaled, so we never hang one without them. In LADWP or Las Virgenes water, a yearly descale is a sensible starting point; where Santa Clarita groundwater feeds the house, look at it after six months. Either way, the first service shows how much scale is building and sets the interval from there, though the manufacturer's schedule wins if it calls for more frequent service.
Signs your tankless heater needs service
- Hot water turns lukewarm when the washer or a second shower starts
- An error code, then a burner that quits in the middle of a shower
- Plenty of heat in summer, not enough on a winter morning
- Popping, rumbling or a whine as the burner fires
- A shower that swings hotter and colder with nobody at the valve
- No descale for over a year, or water lines without service valves
Tankless or a tank in a Valley home
A tankless heater does not suit every house. It pays its way when two showers and a dishwasher routinely outrun the tank, or when the floor space a tank fills is worth having back, as in a crowded garage or a condo closet. In a household that draws little hot water the argument is thinner, especially if a larger gas pipe would have to cross finished walls or a slab. A properly sized tank can be the better choice there, strapped to the wall at two points, with a line from its temperature and pressure relief valve carried to a safe spot. The Valley learned why the straps matter in 1994, when investigators found that unsecured water heaters had tipped over in the Northridge earthquake.
Fewer than half the homes on the Valley side of Los Angeles are detached houses. In a condo or apartment the heater often lives in an inside closet, and the path a vent can take decides what will fit. A new vent through an outside wall can need approval from the association or the building owner, and we sort that out with you before any quote. In a long single-story ranch house, comfort often depends less on the heater than on a recirculation pump paired with it. For a straight tank swap, see the water heater page. You hear the recommendation before the quote, and you can call at any hour.
What a correct installation includes
- Gas piping sized to the burner's maximum input, settled before a model is chosen
- Venting that follows the manufacturer's manual, clearances included
- Isolation valves on the hot and cold lines, ready for descaling
- For condensing units, a condensate line run to a drain the code accepts
- Sizing based on winter supply water, not a summer reading
- New gas piping pressure tested, flow and temperature measured when the heater first fires, and the permit closed after the inspection