The question that decides the cost
Almost every water heater call comes down to one thing: is the fault in a component, or is it in the tank?
Components are cheap and repairable. The tank is the heater. Once the steel has gone, you are not repairing a water heater, you are patching a container that will fail again.
Getting that judgment right before you spend money is the whole game.
Faults that are worth repairing
No hot water at all. Usually the element or the thermostat. Both are components, both are replaceable, and on a heater less than about eight years old it’s the obvious call.
Water too hot, or tripping the breaker. A stuck thermostat. Cheap, and worth doing.
Lukewarm rather than cold. Often one of two elements in a dual-element unit, or a thermostat that’s drifted. Diagnosable and fixable.
A dripping pressure relief valve. That’s the valve, not the tank. Replace the valve.
Faults that usually mean replacement
Water underneath the unit. On a tank heater, water at the base is nearly always the shell. Nobody repairs that.
A tank that’s already been patched. If someone has already welded or sealed it once, the next failure is a matter of when.
Rumbling combined with age. The noise is scale boiling under a crust. On an old tank it means the end is close, and paying to descale a tank that’s about to fail is money spent twice.
Anything on a tank over about ten years old. Not automatically, but the economics change. A €200 repair on a heater with two years left is a bad trade.
The cost logic, honestly
A repair is worth doing when the heater still has years in it. A replacement is worth doing when the repair is more than about a third of a new unit and the existing one is old.
Greg will tell you which side of that line you’re on before he starts, even when the replacement is the bigger job for him. Replacing a heater that only needed a thermostat is a short-term win and a long-term loss of trust.
On brands, on this coast
Ariston dominates here, and Greg knows them best — if yours is an Ariston he can usually tell you the swap from a photo before he arrives. Roca and the other common makes are straightforward too.
The unit itself is picked up from Leroy Merlin or Suministros de Fontanería Calahonda before the visit, so the job is usually done in one go rather than a diagnosis followed by a return trip.
What to send
A photo of the unit, one of the connections, and the make and model if it’s visible. That’s usually enough for a fixed price before anyone travels — and it means you’re not paying a callout to be told what you already suspected.
Every installation Greg does carries a one-year warranty on the workmanship. He covers the coast from San Pedro de Alcántara to Benalmádena, working out of Calahonda.
