Water heater repair in Fishers, IN

Where Fishers tap water comes from

For most of its history, Fishers bought its water from the privately owned Indianapolis Water Company, which built Geist Reservoir on Fall Creek in the 1940s and Morse Reservoir on Cicero Creek in the 1950s to feed a growing capital. The City of Indianapolis purchased that system in the early 2000s, and in 2011 operation passed to Citizens Energy Group, a public charitable trust. Today nearly every Fishers subdivision is a Citizens Water customer, even though Fishers itself sits in Hamilton County rather than Marion.

Citizens blends surface water from the reservoirs and rivers with groundwater pumped from wellfields, and the mix changes with season and demand. Both halves pass through Indiana's limestone and glacial gravel, so the result is hard any way you slice it. Many homeowners near Geist report numbers anywhere from the upper teens into the twenties, measured in grains per gallon, when a plumber or softener dealer runs a test kit, and the reading can shift between spring and fall.

That is why so many Fishers garages and basements have a softener humming beside the heater. A working softener is the best protection a tank or tankless unit can have on this supply. When it runs out of salt, gets bypassed during a remodel, or its resin wears out, the heater starts collecting scale again almost immediately.

Subdivision basements, sump pits and garage installs

Drive along 116th Street, Allisonville Road or Olio Road and almost everything you pass was built after 1985. Neighborhoods such as Sandstone, Thorpe Creek, Saxony, Britton Falls, Sweetwater and the streets around the Geist waterfront are made up of two-story homes, many with full or daylight basements. In those houses the heater normally stands in an unfinished mechanical room beside the furnace, the softener and, very often, a sump pit.

Ranch homes and slab-built houses in parts of the older Fishers core and in some townhome communities near the Nickel Plate District put the heater in a garage corner or a first-floor utility closet instead. Garage installs in Indiana need protection from cars and from the cold, and a tank against an uninsulated garage wall works harder through a January cold snap than one in a basement.

Since entire Fishers subdivisions were framed during the same boom, neighbors on a cul-de-sac often find their heaters giving out in the same couple of summers. Builder-grade tanks from the late 1990s and early 2000s are long gone in most homes, and many of their replacements are now ten or more years old themselves.

Storms, sump pumps and the Geist shoreline

Central Indiana gets spring thunderstorms that can drop inches of rain in an evening, and the clay soils around Fishers do not absorb it quickly. Basements here depend on sump pumps. When the power goes out during a storm and the pump stops, the first appliance to get wet is often the water heater, because it sits low in the same utility room.

A gas tank whose burner compartment took on water, or an electric heater with wet controls, should be checked before anyone relights or resets it. Burner assemblies and gas valves that have been submerged are generally replaced rather than dried out. Owners near the reservoir or in homes that have flooded before often add a battery backup sump pump and set the heater on a raised stand.

Winter matters too. Polar air outbreaks push incoming water toward the low 40s, and a household with teenagers, a soaking tub and a dishwasher running in the evening can empty a 50-gallon tank long before the last shower.

The problems plumbers see most in Fishers

• Scale-crusted electric elements in basement tanks where the softener ran dry for months.
• Tankless units throwing flow or overheat codes because the heat exchanger has a calcium lining.
• Sump pit floods reaching the burner or the lower thermostat during spring storm outages.
• Drain valves packed with calcium chips that refuse to open when someone finally tries a flush.
• Relief valves dribbling after the softener or a pressure-reducing valve changes system pressure.
• Undersized tanks in large two-story homes once a bigger tub or extra bathroom goes in.

Typical water heater prices in Fishers

Fishers prices track the rest of the Indianapolis north side. Basement stairs in finished homes, a softener that has to be re-plumbed, and a half-inch gas branch that cannot feed a new tankless unit are what move a job toward the high end.

Indiana licensing and Fishers permits

In Indiana, plumbers are licensed by the Indiana Plumbing Commission, which operates through the state's Professional Licensing Agency. The license number of a plumbing contractor can be looked up online through the state, which takes a minute and is worth doing before anyone cuts a pipe in your basement.

Fishers runs its own permitting and inspections rather than relying on the county, and replacing a water heater generally requires a plumbing permit from the city. City inspectors check that the T&P line runs to within inches of the floor, that fuel-fired units have a proper shutoff and vent, and the electrical disconnect on electric heaters. Homes just across the line in Indianapolis, Lawrence or unincorporated parts of the county answer to different offices.

Duke Energy supplies electricity to most of the city. Natural gas in Fishers is mostly delivered by CenterPoint Energy, which took over the former Vectren gas territory, though some addresses near the Marion County line are served by Citizens Gas. Your bill will tell you which; both have offered efficiency rebates at times.

Living with the hardness

If your Fishers home has no softener, plan on flushing a tank once a year and expect electric elements to need attention sooner than the warranty might suggest. Tankless owners without softening should expect to descale at least yearly, and installers often recommend a scale-reduction cartridge on the inlet in addition to a whole-house softener.

With a softener in good order, the picture changes. Sediment slows dramatically, but softened water eats through the sacrificial anode faster, so pulling the rod for inspection deserves a spot on the calendar by the third or fourth year. A powered anode is a sensible upgrade on a new tank that will see softened water for its whole life.

Set the softener to treat the water feeding the heater, not just the kitchen. Plumbers in Fishers still find homes where the softener loop was left out of the heater supply when the basement was finished.

Sizing for big north-side households

A typical four-bedroom Fishers home with three and a half baths was built with a single 50-gallon gas tank. When owners finish the basement and add a fourth bathroom, or swap a tub for a large soaking tub, that tank falls behind. A 75-gallon gas tank, two tanks piped together, or a properly sized tankless unit are the common answers.

Tankless units need a gas line that can carry their full load, and in many subdivision homes the original line was sized for a furnace and one tank. Ask for a gas load calculation before committing, and remember that tankless heat exchangers on Citizens Water are the first thing to suffer when softening lapses.

Repair or replace in Fishers

When a Fishers tank still has a few good years left, say it was installed within the last seven or so, a dead element, igniter, thermostat or leaky relief valve is cheap to put right. Past ten years on unsoftened hard water, most tanks are full of scale and the steel is thinning, so a leak at the base or a second repair in a year usually points toward a full swap. Any heater that sat in sump water should be evaluated before it is put back in service.

Around Fishers

Noblesville to the north and Carmel to the west each run their own building departments, and Carmel treats its own well water rather than buying from Citizens. McCordsville in Hancock County and Lawrence in Marion County sit along the south and east edges, with their own permit rules. The Castleton area of Indianapolis, just over 96th Street, shares the same hard Citizens supply.

Water heater questions from Fishers