Open 24/7 for emergencies
A new gas water heater off post at Fort Belvoir runs $3,379 to $5,485 installed, Fairfax County permit included. Cook Inlet’s houses date from 2002 to 2004.
Price range
$3,379-$5,485
8yrs @ 7.99%
$48/mo
15yrs @ 9.99%
$36/mo
Monthly figures on the starting price, the whole price financed, on approved credit. The lender sets the final terms. How financing works
Get your price in writing
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Rather talk now? (703) 997-9757
5.0 stars across 1,132 reviews
Two of our plumbers wheeling a new water heater up a Northern Virginia walkway, the van at the curb.
Licensed and insuredVirginia Class A contractor #2705192276
24/7 emergency serviceOften same-day, and we will tell you honestly when we can get there.
Our own plumbers, our own trucksNobody here is a subcontractor with a magnet on the door
The price is settled before the workYou see the number in writing before anything is taken apart
What it costs
Installed, from our water heater estimator, which is the price book. Everything is in the number: the permit and the inspection, the expansion tank, the drain pan, hauling the old one away, and the labor.
Electric tank, installed
$2,757 to $5,493
or $46/mo at 0% APR for 60 months
Gas or propane tank, installed
$3,379 to $5,485
or $56/mo at 0% APR for 60 months
Power vent tank, installed
$5,957 to $7,494
or $99/mo at 0% APR for 60 months
Tankless, installed
$8,886 to $10,486
or $148/mo at 0% APR for 60 months
Monthly figures: 60mo @ 0% APR on each starting price, the whole price financed, on approved credit. Longer plans lower the payment and cost more in total. The lender sets the final terms. How financing works
How the house vents picks the row; where you land inside it is the tank size and the warranty. A hybrid heat pump water heater is quoted at the visit, never from a page.
Keeping the one you have? A yearly water heater flush slows the sediment down: $99 right now, normally $199. A tankless descale is $300, regularly $350. Or get the flush every year with Comfort+ membership, $199 a year, along with a dryer vent cleaning, a sewer camera inspection and heating and cooling maintenance visits.
What’s different in Fort Belvoir
Cook Inlet holds most of the off-post houses with 22060 mail, and Fairfax County’s dwelling records date them tightly: 51 built in 2002, 106 in 2003, 101 in 2004, every one over a full basement, every lot connected to gas. In a house like that the water heater is usually a 40 or 50 gallon gas tank standing in the basement near the furnace, venting up through the house. A tank that came with the house has passed its twentieth birthday, and most tank water heaters are done well before that. If the label on yours still reads 2002, 2003 or 2004, price the replacement now, before the tank picks the day.
Because it burns gas, the swap takes a Fairfax County permit even for an identical model, and that permit is already inside the $3,379 to $5,485 range. If the old tank quits outright, Virginia lets the new one go in first with the paperwork right behind it, so nobody waits days for hot water.
FEMA’s flood map puts Cook Inlet and the Backlick Road houses in Zone X, minimal flood hazard, and the USGS elevation service puts Cook Inlet around 120 feet above sea level, well up from the tidal river. So a creek over its banks isn’t the usual worry. Groundwater is. Fairfax County’s soil survey maps Cook Inlet on clay that takes water in very slowly, with the water table as close as two feet down, and after a long rain that ground stays soaked against the basement walls. NOAA’s storm records show what a heavy rain does here: on June 28, 2016, Route 1 flooded and closed at Belvoir Court. When water comes up through a basement floor, the water heater is usually the first appliance standing in it. Check the sump pump too; one that ran nonstop and still lost ground gets replaced.
Backlick Road is a different water heater. With gas unavailable to nearly every lot there, the choice is an electric tank, $2,757 to $5,493 installed, or propane on the gas row if a propane tank sits in the yard. About half of those houses have no basement, so the heater lives in a closet or utility room on the main floor, where the pan under it and the line draining that pan decide where a leak ends up. On post, The Villages at Belvoir repairs and replaces water heaters in its homes; residents there put in a service request with The Villages.
What you’d notice
Most standard gas tanks keep heating through an outage. A power vent tank or a tankless unit needs electricity to fire, so it goes cold with the lights. Sandy’s gusts hit 58 to 63 miles an hour at Fort Belvoir in 2012 with trees down across the county, so it’s worth knowing which kind you have before the next storm.
A drip from a valve can be fixed. Water from the tank itself can’t; once the lining goes, the only fix is a new heater, and sooner beats later.
That’s sediment on the bottom of the tank boiling as the burner or element heats under it. It’s the sound of a tank working harder every year.
If the basement took water
A water heater usually sits on the lowest floor of the house, so it’s one of the first things standing water reaches. Three checks, then call us.
Leave it off and don’t relight it. The warning label on a gas water heater says not to use it if any part has been under water, and to have a service technician replace the gas control.
Shut its breaker off at the panel, but only from somewhere dry. The elements and the thermostats get checked before it heats again.
Mop it up and look again in an hour. Water that comes back with no rain is the tank or a valve, not the storm.
Call us after a storm and we’ll check it: the gas control or the elements, the burner, the venting and the drain pan. If it has to be replaced, you get the price in writing before anything comes out.
Permits and pressure
Fairfax County requires a permit to replace any gas appliance, even like for like: a gas water heater, furnace or boiler. Replacing a fuel-burning appliance also needs a chimney vent certification. Source.
Virginia lets emergency replacement work start first, with the permit application in by the end of the next working day. Source.
Fairfax Water promises 20 psi at the main and no uniform pressure, and the pressure reducing valve on your side of the meter is yours to buy and keep up. Over 80 psi, the Virginia Residential Code calls for one, and an expansion tank with it. Source.
Our Virginia Class A contractor license, 2705192276, is on the side of the van.
Choosing who installs it
Questions worth asking anybody who quotes you, us included.
In a Cook Inlet basement, ask where the pan’s drain line goes and whether a floor drain or a sump pit is within reach. A leak with somewhere to go is a mop job. One without soaks the finished room next door.
A gas water heater always needs a permit, an electric one often does, and skipping it tends to surface when the house sells. Ask whether the quote includes it and the inspection.
Most houses here have a check valve or a pressure reducer on the incoming line, so the heated water has nowhere to go. An expansion tank gives it somewhere, and leaving it out is how quotes come in low.
A thermocouple, an element or a valve is a repair, not a new heater. A good plumber says so, and saves the replacement talk for a leaking tank.
Two of our crew going over a work order before the day's calls.
From our Google reviews
5.0 stars across 1,132 reviews. Read them on our reviews page.
James is a wealth of knowledge who provided a competitive estimate to replace our hot water heater. He is professional and courteous. Thank you for a great first call.
Where we work
Next door to Fort Belvoir: Lorton, Springfield, Alexandria, Woodbridge and Fairfax Station.
Questions
Replace it, in almost every case. A tank that old has outlasted what most give, and the failures that show up at that age, a seeping seam or a rusted bottom, can’t be repaired. A thermocouple or a gas valve on a newer tank is a different story, and we’ll tell you which you have.
Usually, yes: the gas line is already there. A tankless unit runs $8,886 to $10,486 installed, it needs its own venting out through a wall, and the gas line sometimes needs upsizing to feed it, which we check at the visit. On Griffith’s moderately hard water, plan on a yearly descale.
Installed, with the permit, the expansion tank, the pan and the haul-away: an electric tank $2,757 to $5,493, a gas or propane tank on the flue you have $3,379 to $5,485, a power vent tank $5,957 to $7,494, and a tankless unit $8,886 to $10,486. The estimator gives your exact number in about a minute.
Ready when you are
Call, or send the form at the top. The age on the label and what it’s doing tell us most of what we need, and you get the price before anything comes out.
SwiftPro Heating, Cooling & Plumbing
4230 Lafayette Center Dr N, Chantilly, VA 20151
44679 Endicott Dr, Suite 211, Ashburn, VA 20147
Virginia Class A contractor license #2705192276
SwiftPro Heating, Cooling & Plumbing is a licensed, BBB Accredited (A rating), independently owned heating, cooling and plumbing company in Chantilly, serving Fort Belvoir and the rest of Northern Virginia. Virginia contractor license #2705192276. 5.0 stars across 1,132 reviews on Google, Angi, Yelp, the BBB and Facebook. SwiftPro maintains a dedicated HVAC team and a dedicated plumbing team.
From SwiftPro Heating, Cooling & Plumbing in Chantilly. Housing figures are the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 2020 to 2024, for each place named; permit, water and sewer facts link to each office’s own page and were checked in September and October 2026.