No hot water
is not always a new heater.
A cold shower and a puddle under the tank are both heater calls. They are not the same repair, and one of them should not be postponed.
No hot water can be a failed igniter, a thermocouple, a gas supply that never recovered after other work, a tripped high-limit switch, a dead electric element, or a recirculation pump that has stopped moving hot water to the far bathroom. Those are parts. A competent visit tells you which one, and whether the tank around it is still worth keeping.
Water on the floor is a different category. A fitting, a valve, or the temperature-and-pressure relief line can leak while the tank is sound. A rust line from the shell, or water from under the jacket, is the tank. Resetting the heater, drying the pan, and hoping is how a slow leak becomes a ceiling in the unit below. If the tank is leaking, shut the cold inlet to the heater if you can, and shut the gas or the breaker if you know which one it is. Do not drain a leaking tank onto a floor that has no drain unless someone has told you where that water will go.
Age is a clue, not a verdict
A twelve-year-old tank that still holds and heats does not need to be replaced because of the birthday. A six-year-old tank that is wetting its own pan does. The label, the pan, the drip leg, and the shape of the corrosion tell the story. So does the installation: a heater in a closet above a living room is a different risk from a heater on a garage slab with a drain.
Tankless is not a personality
A tankless unit that codes out may need a descale, a failed sensor, an air supply problem, or a heat exchanger that is done. “Just flush it” is a maintenance step, not a diagnosis. We say which it is before anyone orders a replacement, and we say what the new unit has to connect to: gas, venting, condensate, and the size of the line feeding it. In older Los Angeles houses those four are often the real project.
The relief valve and the pan
The pipe coming off the temperature-and-pressure valve is not a drain you can cap because it drips. That valve opens when the tank is too hot or the pressure is too high. A drip from it can be a failed valve, a closed expansion path, or a tank that is already on its way out. Water in the pan under the heater is the fact that matters: follow it to the fitting, the valve, or the shell. A pan with no drain is only a basin. In a closet above a finished room, that basin buys you minutes, not a repair.
Sediment is ordinary in parts of Los Angeles with harder water. It makes a gas heater rumble and can bury a lower electric element so the tank heats poorly. Flushing an old tank that has never been flushed can also stir scale into valves and, on a tank that is already thin, start a leak you did not have that morning. It is maintenance on a sound heater. It is not a cure for rust coming through the jacket.
What a replacement actually includes
Swapping the tank is the middle of the job. In a Los Angeles house the work around it is often the vent that was never right, the gas line that is undersized for a larger unit, the pan and its drain, the seismic strap, the expansion tank, and the permit. A tankless unit adds intake air, condensate, and sometimes an electrical circuit and a larger gas line. If the estimate names only the heater, ask what happens to those pieces. A unit that is the right size and vented into a tired flue is not a finished installation.
If you have no hot water tonight and the tank is not leaking, say whether the pilot or the display is lit, whether other gas appliances in the house are working, and whether the water is cold at every tap or only at the far bathroom. Those three answers separate a failed part from a recirculation problem and from a gas supply that never came back.
Related service: Water heaters. For the visit itself, call 818-631-7296 or send the address.