Water heater repair in Reading, PA

Lake Ontelaunee and the Maiden Creek plant

Almost every tap in the city is fed by the Reading Area Water Authority, known locally as RAWA. Its main supply is Lake Ontelaunee, a reservoir on the Maiden Creek about six miles north of downtown, ringed by Berks County farmland. Water flows by gravity from the lake to the Maiden Creek filter plant, where it is screened, coagulated, settled, filtered and disinfected before it heads south into the city mains.

Because Ontelaunee is fairly shallow and drains a watershed of fields and small streams, the raw water changes with the weather. Summer heat warms it into the 70s, heavy rains stir up silt, and in recent years algae in the lake has clogged filters at the plant badly enough that RAWA asked customers to cut back on use. For a water heater, the practical results are a moderate mineral load, a fine silt that settles in the bottom of tanks, and inlet water that drops to around 40°F in deep winter.

Rowhouse cellars from Centre Park to Southside

Reading was a railroad, hosiery and iron town, and the housing shows it. Centre Park, Callowhill, Penn's Common and the streets climbing east toward Mount Penn are lined with three-story brick rows from the late 1800s, many now split into two or three apartments. In those homes the heater usually sits in a stone or brick cellar at the bottom of a steep, narrow stair, often beside an old boiler that shares its chimney.

Further out, Northmont, Hampden Heights and Glenside mix twins and single homes from the 1920s through the 1950s with roomier basements. Millmont and the blocks near the Berks County line have postwar houses where a 40-gallon gas tank sits next to a forced-air furnace. Landlords with several units in one Southside building often have a row of small electric tanks along one wall, each metered to a different tenant.

Schuylkill floods and Berks County winters

Reading sits where the Schuylkill River bends past the city's west side, and low blocks near the river and along the Tulpehocken and Angelica creeks have taken on water in big storms, including the remnants of Ida in 2021. Cellars in those areas flood from rising groundwater and backed-up drains even when the street stays dry, and a gas burner that sits in that water usually has to go.

Winters are colder than many people expect for southeastern Pennsylvania. Cold air settles in the Schuylkill valley, and January mornings in the single digits are common. Rowhouse cellars with leaky stone foundations and unheated front vaults can drop close to freezing near the street wall, which chills the heater, slows its recovery and threatens the copper lines that run along the front of the house.

The problems Reading plumbers see most

• Silt and mineral layers in tanks fed by Ontelaunee water that no one has drained since the tenant before last.
• Backdrafting once the boiler is gone and the heater vents by itself up a tall rowhouse chimney.
• Flood-damaged burners in cellars near the Schuylkill and the city's creeks.
• Worn elements in the small electric tanks common in subdivided Centre Park and Callowhill buildings.
• Pilot and thermocouple trouble on aging standing-pilot tanks in cold, drafty cellars.
• Undersized tanks serving more tenants than the original single-family plumbing ever planned for.

Cold-start pilots that keep dropping out in a stone cellar are covered in why a pilot keeps dying in a cold cellar, and burnt-out elements in a tenant's electric tank are handled in testing and swapping a tank's thermostat and element.

What water heater work costs in Reading

Labor in Berks County runs a bit below Philadelphia and its collar counties. The things that lift a Reading invoice are cellar stairs too steep for a dolly, a liner run up a three-story chimney, and gas piping that needs to be enlarged before a tankless unit can go in.

City licensing and permits in Reading

Pennsylvania has never adopted a statewide plumbing license, which leaves each city or borough to set its own rules. Reading does license plumbers through its own Plumbing Board of Examiners, so the person replacing a heater inside city limits should hold a Reading plumbing license, not just a license from a nearby township. City permits staff handle the paperwork for a tank swap, and a Reading inspector later visits to examine the gas hookup, the flue connection and where the relief line drains.

Any contractor working on a home in Pennsylvania should also carry a state home improvement contractor registration from the Attorney General's office, with that number printed on the estimate. Suburbs such as Wyomissing, Muhlenberg Township and Exeter Township enforce the Uniform Construction Code with their own inspectors or contracted agencies, so a Reading license alone does not cover work there.

Chimneys and venting in Reading rows

A great many Reading rowhouses were built with one masonry chimney for a coal boiler, later converted to gas or oil, with the water heater tied into the same flue. When the owner swaps that boiler for a high-efficiency unit vented in plastic pipe, the heater is suddenly the only appliance using a tall, cold chimney sized for something far bigger. On a frigid morning, the small flow of exhaust can stall and roll back into the cellar.

Plumbers in the city generally fix that one of three ways: a stainless flue liner sized for one small burner, a fan-assisted tank exhausting through the back wall, or a sealed direct-vent model. Side vents on row homes must keep their distance from windows, doors and the lot line shared with the next house, so the back of the house is usually the only workable spot. A carbon monoxide alarm in the cellar and on each floor is cheap insurance in any of these homes.

Hot water for a split-up rowhouse

Many of the big rows near City Park and along Centre Avenue now hold three apartments, and the plumbing was never laid out for that. One 40-gallon tank feeding three showers runs dry quickly when Ontelaunee water is cold. Separate tanks for each unit let tenants pay for their own heating and keep one family's long shower from leaving the others with lukewarm water.

Where there is room for only one appliance, one big fast-recovery gas tank or a tankless unit sized for January water can serve the whole building, but the gas line from UGI's meter often needs to be larger, and splitting the bill becomes the owner's problem. Met-Ed customers putting in a heat pump water heater need a cellar that stays reasonably warm, which rules out many drafty stone basements near the street.

Repair or replace in Reading

On a tank under about eight years old, most repairs are worth doing in Reading: thermocouples, elements, thermostats and relief valves are inexpensive next to hauling a tank up a rowhouse stair. Past ten years, a rusty base, a leak from the tank itself or flood damage almost always means a full replacement. UGI and Met-Ed, which is part of FirstEnergy, have at times paid rebates toward high-efficiency tanks and heat pump models, so ask the installer which programs are open this year.

Around Reading

West Reading and Wyomissing, just across the Schuylkill, have their own borough governments and permit offices and a mix of tidy rowhouses and larger stone homes. Shillington and Mount Penn are small boroughs with older twins and rows of their own. Muhlenberg Township, Exeter Township and Spring Township have newer subdivisions where heaters sit in finished basements or garages, and several of them buy water from different authorities than the city.

Water heater questions from Reading