Water heater repair in Lakewood, CA

Lakewood's wells and its two water providers

Most Lakewood homes get water from the city's Water Resources Department, which pumps it from about a dozen deep wells in the Central Groundwater Basin, the aquifer beneath southeast Los Angeles County. The Water Replenishment District of Southern California keeps that basin topped up by spreading river and recycled water at the Montebello Forebay grounds near Pico Rivera. Lakewood's newest well can by itself cover a large share of the city's daily demand, and the city has continued replacing aging wells with deeper ones.

Residents east of the San Gabriel River, roughly 6,000 households, are served by Golden State Water Company instead. A handful of blocks near the city's edges with Bellflower and Long Beach may be on other private systems, so the name on your water bill is the quickest way to tell which applies.

Both supplies are moderately hard to hard. A gas tank in a Lakewood garage will grow a layer of mineral scale on its bottom, and tankless units will eventually flag it with error codes. Because the city relies on wells rather than imported river water, that hardness does not swing much between seasons.

The original Lakewood tract houses

Developers Mark Taper, Ben Weingart and Louis Boyar built Lakewood at an extraordinary pace, at one point finishing dozens of houses a day. The homes were small, often around 1,100 square feet with two or three bedrooms, and came in a handful of floor plans with varied rooflines. Lakewood Center, one of the first big regional shopping centers in the country, opened at the same time, and in 1954 the new city incorporated and contracted with the county for services, a model copied statewide as the Lakewood Plan.

Most original tract houses have a detached or attached single-car or two-car garage, and the heater typically shares that space with the washer hookups. Some homes kept a heater in a small closet off the service porch or along an outside wall, which was common in early plans. Many owners have since added rooms or converted garages, and a heater that once sat in a garage may now be boxed into a closet in a family room, where it needs combustion air and a drain pan.

The older Lakewood Village area along the southwest edge, part of which lies inside Long Beach, predates the big tract by roughly two decades and has larger, more varied homes. Neighborhoods such as Mayfair, Lakewood Park and the streets around Rynerson Park and Bolivar Park are the classic early-1950s tracts.

Seventy-year-old gas lines and seismic risk

Many Lakewood homes still have their original 1950s galvanized steel gas piping running to the heater, along with an aging gas cock that may be hard to turn. When a heater is replaced, plumbers often find a rigid connection that should be a modern flexible connector, plus a missing sediment trap. Those are required corrections on a permitted job.

The Newport-Inglewood fault runs a few miles west through Long Beach and caused the deadly 1933 Long Beach earthquake, long before Lakewood existed. A future quake on that fault would shake Lakewood hard. State code calls for two straps tying each heater to the wall studs, and Lakewood's inspector checks them on every permitted swap.

The problems plumbers see most in Lakewood

• Scale-choked tanks that rumble and take ages to recover on Central Basin well water.
• Original galvanized gas piping with rigid connectors and no sediment trap at the heater.
• Heaters closed into converted garages without the combustion air openings the code requires.
• Corroded tank bottoms leaking onto garage slabs in homes near Mayfair and Lakewood Park; our water heater leak page explains the warning signs.
• Tankless units overdue for descaling in remodeled homes with no softener.
• Missing expansion tanks in homes where a newer pressure regulator has closed off the system.

Lakewood water heater prices

Lakewood's prices are in line with neighboring Bellflower and Downey. Replacing old gas piping all the way back to the meter, enlarging the line for a tankless heater, or moving a heater out of a converted garage closet are the jobs that push a quote higher.

Lakewood permits and California licensing

Permits for water heater replacements are issued at the Community Development counter in Lakewood City Hall on Clark Avenue, and the city has moved to an online portal for applications and inspection requests. Building and safety plan review and inspections are handled by an outside firm under contract with the city. Inspectors look at straps, vent pipe, gas fittings and where the relief line drains.

In Lakewood as elsewhere in the state, a plumbing job over $500 requires a C-36 contractor's license issued by the CSLB. Run the license number through CSLB before you hire, and get the permit fee and inspection written into the price.

SoCalGas, Edison and heat pump conversions

SoCalGas supplies natural gas in Lakewood and Southern California Edison delivers electricity. Neighboring Long Beach is different, since its city-owned utility runs its own gas system. Smell gas near a Lakewood heater? Clear the house and phone SoCalGas from the front lawn.

Lakewood's mild climate makes a garage a good home for a heat pump water heater. The challenge in a 1950s house is the electrical service, often a 100-amp panel that is already full. A 120-volt plug-in heat pump unit can sidestep that. Edison and California programs have offered Lakewood owners heat pump rebates at times.

Upkeep and replacement in a Lakewood house

Flushing a tank every year keeps Central Basin scale from caking on the bottom. Tankless units should be descaled once a year, more often if they serve a large family. Softening or a scale-inhibiting filter can extend the life of a heater noticeably.

A heater in a Lakewood garage usually lasts 8 to 12 years. When yours fails, plan to also update the gas connector, shutoff and strapping; our replacement overview explains choices for small tract homes.

Around Lakewood

Long Beach runs its own water, gas and permit offices, which sets it apart from most of the region. Bellflower is split among several water companies, including Liberty Utilities and Bellflower-Somerset Mutual. Cerritos has a city water system. Hawaiian Gardens and Artesia are small cities with their own permit counters. Paramount to the west shares the same Central Basin groundwater.

Water heater questions from Lakewood