Water heater repair in Sterling.

The typical owner-occupied home in Sterling went up in 1979, and over half the rest date from 1980 to 1999. That is a different repair from the new Loudoun suburbs. A water heater here has probably been replaced once or twice already, and the plumbing around it, the shutoff valves, the dielectric unions, the vent, is older than the tank. A repair visit in Sterling often finds a bad part and a tired fitting next to it, and we point out both.

Fifty-seven in a hundred owners heat with gas and forty-two with electricity, a split as even as Loudoun gets. In the older Sterling Park houses, a gas tank still often vents up a masonry or metal chimney with a draft hood on top. If that chimney is cold, cracked or capped wrong, exhaust spills back into the room and the burner can shut off. The forty-two percent on electric tend to be in townhouses and condos, where an element or thermostat is the likely fault.

Over a third of homes are townhouses and more than one in seven is in a condo or apartment building, so a lot of tanks sit in closets on finished floors. The water comes from the Potomac, and the Potomac plant’s published hardness ran from about four to nearly eleven grains per gallon in 2025, which is moderate to hard. Scale on the elements and in the bottom of the tank is the normal result. Loudoun Water’s FAQ lists white flakes in the faucet screens as calcium from the water heater or bits of a dip tube.

Route 7 splits Sterling, and the drive from Cascades to Sterling Park is longer than people expect. When you call, tell us which side and which fuel, and we bring the right parts the first time.