New tank, a tankless conversion, or a straight answer on whether the one you’ve got is worth fixing — in Gilford, and the first question we ask is where your water comes from. Because in this town it comes from three different places, and each one is hard on a heater in its own way.
Gilford doesn’t have one water system. It has pieces. Along the Laconia line — the Route 11 plazas, the Lakes Business Park, a handful of lots near the Bypass and Route 11A — Laconia Water Works runs mains into town under state utility approvals, and charges the outside-the-city customers a premium for it. Up the hill, the Gunstock Acres Village Water District pumps its own wells to 750-plus accounts. And a good share of everything else is on a private well that belongs to whoever owns the land.
Why should a water heater care? Treated city water and a drilled well in the Belknap foothills are not the same water. Well water here can carry hardness, iron, or a low pH, and every one of those eats tanks — scale on the bottom, a spent anode rod, pinholes at the seams. A tank on Laconia water and a tank on a hillside well can be the same model and live very different lives.
Then there’s cold. Water out of the ground in a New Hampshire winter comes in somewhere in the low 40s. That’s the number a tankless unit has to fight.
Not sure if you’re on the district, Laconia water, or a well? Look for a pressure tank in the basement. If there’s one there, the well is yours — and so is the water quality.
We start with the boring questions. How many people, how many showers back to back, is there a soaking tub, does the house fill up on holiday weekends. A Gilford ski house that sleeps twelve on Presidents’ Day and two the rest of the month needs something different from a retired couple on the shore year-round.
On a well, we pull the old anode if we’re repairing, and we look at the bottom of the old tank if we’re replacing. What comes out tells us a lot. Heavy scale says hard water; a rod eaten to wire in four years says aggressive water. Either way you’ll hear about it, and we’ll set the new tank up to be flushed and checked rather than forgotten.
Tankless gets a fair hearing. In the right house it’s great. But a unit sized off the brochure comes up short when the inlet is 42° in February, so we size from the cold number. We install propane and gas tankless; we don’t install electric tankless. At our inlet temperatures it wants more current than most houses here have to give.
Installed, a standard electric tank starts around $2,400. A 65–80 gallon electric runs $5,000–$7,000; propane or natural gas tanks run $6,000–$9,000. An indirect tank off a boiler you already own runs $2,200–$3,400, while replacing an oil-fired boiler itself starts at $16,000. Gas or propane tankless runs $9,000–$13,000 installed, gas line and venting included. Repairs on a unit worth keeping usually run $500–$700.
On a Gilford well, the usual suspects are hardness, iron, or acidic water. Hard water builds scale that the burner or element has to heat through; aggressive water eats the anode rod and then the tank. Pull the old tank’s anode or look at what’s in the bottom and you’ll usually see the answer.
It does. Treated municipal water is generally gentler on a tank than untreated well water, though not always. On a well it’s worth checking the anode every couple of years and flushing sediment. On Laconia Water Works, you may get the full life out of a standard tank without much fuss.
Sometimes. If the house fills up on weekends and everybody showers at once, endless hot water is appealing. But it has to be sized for incoming water in the low 40s, and if the house closes for part of the year it must be drained properly. We install gas and propane tankless only.
Gilford’s Planning and Land Use Department says plumbing work requires a permit, and they’re the people to ask if you’re unsure. We handle the paperwork on our installs. An unpermitted heater can come back to bite you on an insurance claim or at sale.
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