No hot water, rusty water, or a tank that’s finally leaking — we replace and repair water heaters across Moultonborough, sized properly for the house instead of just matching whatever was there.
Moultonborough has more shoreline than any other town on Lake Winnipesaukee, and a housing stock to match: substantial second homes strung along Long Island, the Gold Coast, Suissevale, Balmoral, and out toward Center Harbor Neck, plus a genuine island population reachable only by boat. A large portion of these houses are occupied for a fraction of the year and shut down for the rest.
Nearly all of them are on private drilled wells, with a pressure tank and a pump control sitting in a basement or utility room that is the single most freeze-vulnerable spot in the building. Some parts of town fall inside the Lakes Region Water Company franchise, and portions of the town connect to the state Winnipesaukee River Basin sewer system, but the default assumption here is well and septic.
Winterizing a Moultonborough lake house is a bigger job than most owners expect. You’re draining a well system, not just a municipal service — the pressure tank has to come down, the pump line has to be relieved, and the whole distribution system blown out. Add a whole-house filter, a softener, an ice maker, a wet bar, an outdoor shower, a boathouse sink, and irrigation, and you have a dozen separate places water hides. Miss one and you find out in April.
Island properties are their own category. Everything — tools, a new pressure tank, the water heater — goes over by boat, and once ice starts forming in the coves the window closes. Island work gets scheduled early and firmly, and we’d rather tell you honestly in November that we can’t get there than leave you guessing.
If your Moultonborough house has a whole-house filter or a water softener, tell whoever winterizes it. Softener resin tanks and filter housings hold water, crack when they freeze, and are the single most commonly missed item on a do-it-yourself shutdown.
Most water heaters get replaced with whatever was there before, which is fine if the last one was right and a mistake if it wasn’t. A 40-gallon tank that ran out of hot water every morning for twelve years will do exactly the same thing for the next twelve. We ask what actually happens in your house — how many people, how many showers back to back, whether the tub is oversized — and size from that.
Tankless is genuinely good in the right house and oversold in the wrong one. The thing nobody mentions in the brochure is incoming water temperature: a tankless unit rated for a warm climate loses a large share of its output when the well water coming in is in the low 40s, which is normal here for much of the year. A unit that delivers plenty in Virginia can leave you short in a New Hampshire January. We size for the cold-inlet reality, not the box.
For seasonal camps there’s a third consideration: whatever goes in has to be drainable, because it’s going to be shut down every fall for the life of the unit.
Installed, a standard tank water heater in the Lakes Region typically runs $1,400–$2,600 depending on size and fuel; a tankless unit runs $3,800–$6,800 installed, more if gas line or venting work is needed. Repairs to a unit worth saving usually run $200–$600.
A standard tank water heater generally lasts 8 to 12 years. Hard or acidic well water — common across the Lakes Region — shortens that, sometimes considerably. If yours is past ten and you are seeing rust in the hot water or moisture around the base, you are on borrowed time and better off replacing on your schedule than on its.
In a year-round house with high hot water demand, often yes — endless hot water and lower standby loss. But New Hampshire's cold incoming water cuts a tankless unit's real output well below its rated flow, so it has to be sized bigger than the label suggests. In a small or seasonal camp, a tank is usually the better value.
Usually yes. Most plumbing installations and major replacements in New Hampshire require a permit from the local building department or the state, and your licensed plumber pulls it. It matters more than people think — an unpermitted install can complicate an insurance claim and a future sale.
Tell us what’s happening and we’ll give you a straight answer — what it likely is, what it should cost, and when we can be there.
Describe what’s happening and where the property is. We’ll come back with a straight answer on what it likely is, what it should cost, and when we can be there. If it’s an emergency, say so in the first line.
We reply to every request within 2 business hours.
