Write down the code and brand off the sticker. Tell us both when you book, and before anybody gets in a truck we’ll tell you what that code usually means on your unit and what it usually runs, including the ones that turn out to be a reset you can do yourself in five minutes without paying us a dime.

It’s a spectrum. A one time ignition lockout, a scale related flow code, a clogged inlet filter screen or a fouled vent termination outside are a reset, a cleaning or a descaling, and some of them we can walk you through on the phone in five minutes and it costs you nothing. Heat exchanger, gas valve, control board and overheat faults are the other end, and on our own jobs those have run fifteen hundred to three thousand.

For the right house, yes. You’re trading a higher install cost and real maintenance for hot water that doesn’t run out, a smaller gas bill and the floor space back. Where it doesn’t pay off is light hot water demand, and we’ll tell you when a good tank is the smarter buy.

Meaningfully more, and the unit is only part of it. The bigger variable is what your house needs to accept one. That can mean upsizing the gas line, new venting and combustion air, and isolation valves. We provide pricing before we start work so there aren’t any surprises.

Endless, yes. Unlimited, no. Stay under its flow rate and it heats all day, but ask for more than it’s sized for and it just hands you cooler water. Shut a faucet off and back on and you get a slug of cool water, the industry’s cold water sandwich, and yes, that’s really the name.

Flow rate and temperature rise together, and people skip the rise. Tulsa winter water comes in near 50 degrees, so a unit rated at 11 gallons per minute really gives you about half that in January. Two showers at once is usually fine on a properly sized gas unit.

More often than not, yes. A 50 gallon tank burns around 40,000 BTU and a whole house tankless runs 150,000 to 199,000, so the half inch line that fed your old tank almost never covers it. Our Oklahoma license (#180753) covers gas piping, we do our own gas work and we pull the permit.

Almost never. Your old tank drafted up a B vent, and a modern tankless is sealed combustion that needs its own dedicated venting, usually PVC or stainless out a side wall with a matching air intake. If the tank shared a flue with your furnace, that flue is now oversized.

For one sink or a shop bathroom, an electric point of use unit is fine and we install them. For a whole house in Oklahoma it’s usually the wrong answer, because it wants three or four dedicated 40 amp breakers and a service upgrade that costs more than the gas work you were avoiding.

Yes, and in Tulsa it isn’t a suggestion. Our water is hard, and the scale it leaves narrows the heat exchanger until you get flow codes and an early failure. Descaling means circulating vinegar or the manufacturer’s solution through the unit with a pump, and we won’t set a tankless without isolation valves.

A full annual service is more than the acid flush. We rinse the inlet water filter screen, inspect the burner, check combustion and gas pressure while the unit is firing, which is the only time an undersized gas line shows itself. Under an hour, once a year.

A well maintained tankless should give you around 20 years, against the 6 to 15 you’d expect from a conventional tank. Neglected descaling on water as hard as ours is the most common way we see these die. The parts are serviceable too, so an older tankless is often worth repairing.

We don’t install customer supplied water heaters. Your warranty is as good as the person that warranties it, and when we buy from Winnelson or Locke we can carry a failed unit in and talk to a person. On the rare exception, the estimate says so in writing and we don’t warranty the unit.

Yes, and we service every brand. Around Tulsa we see Navien, Rinnai, Rheem, Noritz and A.O. Smith most. On the first visit we look at the install before we start replacing parts, because a unit that keeps throwing codes is often an install problem. Undersized gas line, wrong vent, no isolation valves.