Las Vegas gets most of its water from Lake Mead, and that water carries a lot of dissolved calcium and magnesium. Utilities commonly describe valley water as very hard, around 16 to 18 grains per gallon. You see it as white spots on glass shower doors. Inside your water heater, the same minerals are doing far more expensive damage.
When water is heated, minerals drop out of solution and settle as scale. In a tank heater, scale collects at the bottom over the burner or around the lower element. In a tankless heater, it coats the narrow passages of the heat exchanger. Either way, efficiency drops and parts fail early.
That sound is water trapped under a layer of sediment, boiling and bursting through it. It means the burner is heating rock before it heats water, which wastes gas and overheats the tank bottom.
Sediment takes up space inside the tank and insulates the water from the heat source. A 50-gallon tank with several inches of scale behaves more like a 40-gallon tank with slow recovery.
Electric elements buried in scale overheat and burn out. Drain valves clog and will not open or close properly. Temperature and pressure relief valves can stick with mineral deposits.
Draining a few gallons through the drain valve every year removes loose sediment before it hardens. In very hard water areas, a full flush with the cold supply running is more effective.
The anode rod sacrifices itself to protect the steel tank from corrosion. In Las Vegas it often wears out in three to five years. Replacing it is inexpensive compared with replacing the heater.
Tankless heaters should be flushed with a descaling solution regularly, often once a year here. Many units show a service code when scale starts to restrict flow.
A water softener or scale-reduction system protects the heater along with every faucet, fixture and appliance in the house. We can help you size a system or prepare plumbing connections for one.
Our licensed plumbers handle water heater repair & replacement across Las Vegas, Henderson and North Las Vegas. Call (702) 555-0148 or request a free estimate.