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Fully licensed · Fully insured · WSIB covered

Drip Doctor Plumbing Solutions Ltd

Installation & New Work

Water Heater Installation and Repair

Tank and tankless systems diagnosed, repaired and replaced for houses, condos and commercial buildings, with an honest read on what your gas line and venting will support.

Request a Quote(742) 688-3747

No hot water: what gets checked first

Before anything gets quoted, the unit gets diagnosed. On a gas tank the usual suspects are the pilot and thermocouple or thermopile, the gas control valve, a blocked air intake screen at the base, or a tripped spillage switch telling you the vent is not drawing properly. Laundry lint chokes that screen often enough to look like a dead water heater. On an electric tank it is normally an element, a thermostat, or a high-limit reset that tripped for a reason worth finding.

Tankless units report their own faults. Navien and Rinnai both put a code on the display: ignition failure, flame loss, a flow sensor not registering, an overheat condition that usually means scale in the heat exchanger. We read the code and then verify it. Replacing parts on the strength of a screen code is how people pay twice.

One diagnosis worth knowing. If hot water everywhere has gone lukewarm and never gets properly hot, the water heater is often not the problem. A failed single-lever tub or shower cartridge can let cold cross into the hot line and dilute the whole system. A new tank will not fix that.

Tank or tankless, without the sales pitch

Tankless is not automatically the right answer and we do not treat it as an upgrade path. It is a set of trade-offs, and the building usually decides them rather than any preference of ours.

A tank stores hot water and refills it at a fixed recovery rate. It costs less to buy and install and works with the gas line and venting most houses already have. Its weakness is simple: once you have drained it, you wait. A tankless heats on demand and runs a long shower indefinitely, but only if the building can feed it.

A tankless fires at a much higher input, so the gas line back to the meter often has to be upsized, and running a larger line through a finished house is real work. Venting is its own requirement: a condensing unit vents out a sidewall in its own material with a condensate drain, and cannot share a chimney. In older Toronto houses the flue raises a related question, because a mid-efficiency furnace coming off a shared masonry chimney leaves an atmospheric tank that is often too small for it and needs a liner.

Tankless also carries maintenance a tank does not. In the harder-water parts of the GTA the heat exchanger scales, loses output, and eventually faults out. Descaling through isolation valves is routine, but it is still a service call, and a household that will never book it is better off with a tank. Rheem, Bradford White, AO Smith, Navien and Rinnai all make equipment we install. Which one suits you comes down to venting, gas, space and hot water demand.

Rental versus owned, which is an Ontario question

Plenty of people inherit a rented water heater with a house and never look at the line item again. If yours is rented, the tank belongs to the rental provider and neither we nor you can simply take it out. Check a recent bill for the provider name, call them for a buyout figure and return instructions, and settle that before an installation gets booked.

Once a unit is owned, the equipment choice and the manufacturer warranty are yours, and so is the eventual replacement. Both arrangements are defensible. What matters is knowing which one you are in.

The parts that fail quietly

The temperature and pressure relief valve is the tank's safety device, and its discharge pipe has rules for good reason: full size, no valve in the line, no threaded end, terminating low enough that a discharge is visible and cannot scald anybody. If a T&P is dripping, do not cap it. Either it is doing its job, or it has failed.

Thermal expansion causes the first case. If your water service has a backflow preventer or a pressure-reducing valve, the system is closed, and water expanding as it heats has nowhere to go but against the relief valve. An expansion tank charged to your static pressure solves it. We check on every replacement, because plenty of tanks sit on closed systems without one.

The rest is unglamorous. The anode rod corrodes so the tank does not, and it can be inspected and replaced. Sediment settles on the bottom of a gas tank and insulates the burner from the water. That is the rumbling. Dielectric unions or the manufacturer's own nipples belong between steel and copper. A unit sitting above finished space goes in a drain pan piped to a floor drain.

  • T&P relief valve operation and correct discharge piping
  • Expansion tank pre-charge checked against static system pressure
  • Anode rod condition on tanks worth keeping
  • Sediment flush on gas tanks
  • Burner, pilot assembly and flame condition
  • Vent connector slope, joints and any evidence of spillage
  • Heat exchanger descale on tankless units
  • Drain pan, pan drain and isolation valve condition

Questions

Water Heaters, answered.

Should I switch to a tankless water heater?

Sometimes. It depends on whether your gas line can feed one without being upsized, whether a sidewall vent and condensate drain are practical from where the unit would sit, and whether the household will book descaling in a hard-water area. Where those work out, tankless is excellent. Where they do not, the honest answer is a good tank at a fraction of the installed cost.

How do I know whether my water heater is rented or owned?

Check a recent utility or gas bill for a monthly rental line and a provider name, and look for a rental sticker on the tank itself. If it is rented, contact the provider for a buyout figure and their return instructions before booking a replacement. The unit is their property until that is settled, so we cannot remove it on your say-so.

Why is the hot water lukewarm everywhere in the house?

If it is every fixture rather than one, suspect a crossover before you suspect the tank. A worn single-lever tub or shower cartridge can pass cold water into the hot line and dilute the whole system. A mis-set mixing valve does the same thing. Both are far cheaper to fix than a water heater, which is why we test before recommending a replacement.

Water is dripping from a pipe beside my water heater. What is that?

That is almost certainly the temperature and pressure relief valve discharging. It means either the valve has failed, or system pressure is climbing because thermal expansion has nowhere to go on a closed system. Do not cap it or plug it. We check incoming pressure, test the valve, and fit or recharge an expansion tank where one is missing or flat.

Does a tankless water heater need servicing?

Yes, and it is the part people skip. The heat exchanger accumulates scale, particularly in the harder-water parts of the GTA, which costs you output and eventually throws a fault code. Descaling is done through isolation valves with a circulating pump and a descaling solution. If your unit was installed without service valves, we can retrofit them.

Can you replace a water heater in a condo or apartment?

Yes, with the building's cooperation. Isolating a riser or shutting water to a stack goes through property management and usually needs advance notice, and some buildings restrict which days work can be done. Access matters too, since the replacement has to fit through the door and into the elevator. We book Monday to Friday, with Saturdays by appointment.

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Mon–Fri 9:00am–5:00pm · Saturday by appointment. We do not advertise 24-hour emergency service. Messages received outside regular business hours are returned as soon as possible on the next business day.