Did you know that water expands when it is heated and that is why your water heater has or should have an expansion tank. Yep, it’s that little white or blue tank that is installed on the incoming cold water line on your water heater. Sooo, why does a water SOFTENER guy like myself care about the water HEATER, you ask? Because if that expansion tank is not there or if it’s not working correctly then it’s going to be the water softener that expands and contracts each time you use hot water and that extra expansion isn’t the best thing for a water softener. It also helps to insure that hot water has some place to go as it expands besides back up the plumbing and into the water softener which can cause catastrophic damage to a the softener and won’t be covered under warranty. At Royal Water Systems it is one of the things we ALWAYS check for when we do a free in-home estimates and we always make sure that it will be in the plumbing in-between the water softener and the water heater after installation of the water softener. Going forward we always check the expansion tank as a courtesy each time we service a softener or do filter changes in our customer’s homes just to make sure there is no threat to the water softener or eliminate the threat as soon as it appears. As we replace water softeners a lot of times we find that it was simply HOW the softener was installed that destroyed it pre-maturely and if we can help homeowners know what to look for, well that’s a win-win! www.rwatersystems.
Water Heater Expansion Tanks – Why We Care
