Water Heater Location in the Home

In older homes built before the 1970’s, it was a lot more common to install water heaters inside the house. Older homes tend to rely on gas water heaters, next to a gas furnace located in the laundry room or in a separate mechanical/utility closet. This is common in Plano/Richardson/Carrollton where a lot of homes are older construction.

Although this became less common over the last 50 years, it didn’t disappear entirely. You will still find many newer homes designed with the gas or electric water heater tank in an interior closet for one reason or another.

An advantage of this approach is that the water heater is often centrally located, and it doesn’t take long to get hot water at the fixtures. Another advantage is that these water heaters are easier for a homeowner to inspect on a more frequent basis.

Unfortunately, when these water heaters start to leak, they pose a much higher risk of damage to the home. They are almost always required to be installed with an emergency drain pan underneath, but a catastrophically leaking water heater can easily outpace the drain piping and overflow the small pan. We see this all too often.

Many people who have water heaters like this are interested in potentially relocating them to a different spot for this reason and so that the closet space can be used for other purposes. Most of the time, though, moving the water heater can be an expensive job which involves rerouting gas piping, water lines, vent ducting, etc… It is often better to simply plan on replacing the water heater proactively when it gets to be around 9 or 10 years old. This eliminates the vast majority of the risk of damage.