Maintaining a Tankless Water Heater: Tips & Tricks

[Video – 2:23]Tankless water heaters are becoming more popular. They allow you to have hot water on demand, are more energy efficient, take up less space, and generally have a longer life span than the traditional tank-style water heater.

There are maintenance tasks associated with tankless water heaters to ensure they work optimally and don’t fail prematurely.

Basic Steps for Maintaining Your Tankless Water Heater

  • Flush yearly to prevent mineral build-up
  • Check for leakage or damage
  • Check air intake inlet for debris
  • Check exhaust outlet for debris

Watch the full video to see how we do it. If you would like a tankless water heater installed or need help maintaining your current one, we would be happy to help.

Video Transcript:

[00:00:01.690] – JJ Donaldson, owner of Merit Plumbing in Sarasota, Florida

Good morning, everyone. This is JJ with Merit Plumbing. Just wanted to do a quick video about tankless water heater maintenance. One of the requirements for your annual maintenance for your tankless water heater is that at least once a year, you flush out the water heater, especially here in Florida, where we have a lot of hard water issues. So what we do is we have a maintenance plan for our customers where we come out once a year and flush their water heater.

[00:00:28.220]

So it’s a pretty simple process. We have a pump here with a special solution for flushing the heaters. And basically, we just turn off the unit and we recirculate that solution through the heat exchanger here where all the heating takes place. And that helps to remove the hard water minerals that can cause premature failure and help keep you up to date with your warranty, because part of the warranty requirements from the manufacturer is that they are flushed once a year. Even if you have a water softener, the manufacturers still want you to flush the tankless water heater once a year because they don’t know if your softener is working properly.

[00:01:09.710]

They don’t know, is anyone adding salt enough? Is it regenerating properly? So even with water conditioning equipment, you still want to flush the water heater once a year to maintain the warranty. So what we do is we circulate the solution through for about 45 minutes to an hour. And then the other thing we do is open up the front cover, and I look inside to see if there’s any signs of leaking anywhere, any damage.

[00:01:38.170]

This unit is only a few years old. It’s nice and clean. There’s no signs of staining or water leaks anywhere. And then the other thing we check is the inlet up here where the air intake is. On this one, you can actually take it apart.

[00:01:55.310]

And so we’re looking to see, are there things like insects or mud dobbers making nest in it? And then also, this is the exhaust vent that carries the exhaust gases outside of the home. We also go to the outside of the home and look in there as well to see if there are any insect nests or bees or wasps that need to be cleaned out of there so that the garage air intake and the exhaust do not get clogged. So that’s your basic maintenance for a tankless water heater.