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A new water heater installed with the permit runs $2,757 to $5,493 for an electric tank, $3,379 to $5,485 for gas or propane and $8,886 to $10,486 for tankless.
Price range
$2,757-$5,493
8yrs @ 7.99%
$39/mo
15yrs @ 9.99%
$30/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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Water heater repair and replacement in Catharpin, ZIP 20143: gas, propane, electric or tankless, priced before work starts. The water heater estimator gives your exact number.
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 Catharpin
Heating fuel hints at what your water heater burns, though the label settles it. The Census counts 334 owner homes in ZIP 20143: nearly half heat with electricity, one in three with propane, about one in fourteen with natural gas. Prince William County treats a gas or propane tank swap as permit work even when the new tank twins the old one. A matching electric tank set on the old one’s footprint comes off that list.
The median owner home here dates to 1986, and about four in ten went up before 1980. A tank lasts roughly a decade, so most of those houses have been through a few. When one fails outright, Virginia’s building code lets the replacement start before the permit is in hand, as long as the application reaches Prince William County by the end of the next working day.
Little Bull Run has its own flood gauge at Artemus Road. In December 2023 the creek crossed a record stage overnight and closed stretches of Pageland Lane and Artemus Road; in July 2025 it reached a preliminary crest of 7.88 feet. A creek over a road says nothing about your basement. But if floodwater ever reached a gas or propane water heater, leave it unlit until it has been inspected.
A tankless heater pulls gas in a much bigger gulp than a tank, which matters in a town where one owner home in three runs on propane. Before quoting, we look at the regulator and the line from the propane tank. Installed, a tankless runs $8,886 to $10,486. If you stay with a tank, the swap is simpler, and the quote still names the permit line.
What you’d notice
In a Catharpin house from 1986 or earlier, shorter showers usually trace to sediment on the tank floor, a worn element on an electric tank, or a scaled burner on a gas or propane one. A sound tank can often be flushed. One that weeps at the base is finished.
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
Prince William County requires a permit to replace a gas or propane furnace or a gas appliance such as a water heater, even like for like. Replacing an electric water heater with one the same size in the same spot needs no permit. Source.
A burst tank doesn’t wait on paperwork: under Virginia’s building code the replacement can start first, as long as the permit application reaches Prince William County by the end of the next working day. Source.
Prince William Water says the pressure reducing valve is the homeowner’s to install and keep up, that the plumbing code recommends one where pressure runs 80 psi or more, and that pressure rises with the height difference between your house and the water tank serving 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 Catharpin the fuel changes the paperwork: a propane or gas tank puts the county’s permit desk in the picture even when the new tank matches the old, and a matching electric tank set back where the old one stood doesn’t. A quote written without the fuel is a guess. Ask which line covers the permit and the haul-away.
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 Catharpin: Gainesville, Haymarket, Centreville, Chantilly and Bristow.
Questions
That depends on where your tap gets its water. Prince William Water’s 2025 entry-point tests ran from 44 to 180 mg/L, about 2.6 to 10.5 grains per gallon, and the utility rates its systems moderately hard. The ZIP alone doesn’t tell us which houses use it. On a private well, hardness varies from well to well, and only a water test tells you.
If the tank is sound and just noisy or slow to recover, yes: a water heater flush clears the sediment, and it’s its own visit. If it leaks at the base or the label shows a tank past the usual decade, put that money toward a new one. The water heater estimator gives you the installed number.
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 Catharpin 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.