Roadrunner Pool Services › Guides › Repair
What a heater that will not fire is usually telling you, and the point where another repair stops being worth it.
Heaters in this valley work fewer months than in most of the country, but they work hard when they work, and they sit idle in heat and dust the rest of the time. Both of those age a unit.
In rough order of how often we find it: not enough water flow, which is usually a dirty filter or a closed valve rather than the heater at all; an igniter or flame sensor at the end of its life; a high-limit switch doing its job because flow is low; a pressure switch; or a gas supply problem, which can be as mundane as a partially closed valve or as involved as undersized gas line for the appliance. Rodent damage to wiring is more common here than people expect.
Most of those are genuine repairs on a heater worth repairing.
Past roughly ten to twelve years, the calculation changes. Heat exchangers corrode from the inside, especially on pools that have run with aggressive or scaling water. Once the exchanger is compromised, you are putting parts into a unit whose core has a limited life, and the next failure is usually the expensive one. At that age we will tell you plainly that a repair is a bridge, not a fix, and what the replacement costs, so you can decide rather than find out in two months.
Flow first, always, because a heater blamed for not firing is often a filter that needed cleaning. Then combustion, the ignition chain, the safety switches, and the exchanger's condition. You get the diagnosis and a number before any work happens, and new repair customers get the diagnostic free on the first visit.
Size to the pool and the spa, not to the old unit's label, and factor the gas line. We quote equipment and installation as one number, pull permits where the city requires them, and handle the warranty registration. We are an authorized warranty service center for Pentair, Jandy and Hayward, so a warranty claim later comes back to us rather than a shipping label.