No hot water
What you can safely check when there is no hot water, for electric and gas water heaters, and when to call maintenance.
About 3 minutes · no tools needed
Safety first. If you smell gas, leave the home and call the gas company from outside. Do not try to relight a gas water heater yourself.
- 1
Is it the whole home?
Check a second faucet. If only one faucet is cold, the problem is that fixture, not the heater.
- 2
Electric heater: check the breaker
Find the water heater breaker in the panel and push it fully OFF, then ON, once.
- 3
Gas heater: look, don't touch
Check whether the small window shows a flame. If it is out, do not relight it: tell maintenance.
- 4
Leaking? Turn off the water
If water is pooling under the heater, turn the cold-water valve on top of the tank clockwise and switch off its breaker (electric).
Stop and contact maintenance if
- · Any gas smell
- · Water leaking from the tank
- · The breaker trips again
- · The pilot light is out
What to tell them: Tell them whether the heater is gas or electric, what you checked, and send a photo of the label on the tank.
For property managers
FixRoute walks your residents through this by text, at 2am, and only sends a vendor when it's really needed.
Every fix like this one is a truck roll you don't pay for. See it handle a real request in the live demo.