What Belmont water actually does to a tank
Maintenance advice is usually written for hard water, and most of this region does not have it. Your supply comes from the City of Belmont, and the question worth asking is not how much scale it leaves but how corrosive it is. Soft, lightly buffered water forms no protective film inside the tank lining, so the anode rod is doing the entire job of protecting the steel.
That inverts the standard advice. An annual flush matters less here than it would in a hard-water city, and the anode rod matters far more. A tank that has never had its anode checked at eight years old is running on whatever is left of it, and once that is gone the tank itself starts corroding.
- Anode inspection is the one job on this list that changes how long the tank lasts.
- A T&P test with a pressure reading, because a weeping relief valve is usually pressure rather than a failed valve.
- A flush, with an honest warning first: on a tank over about ten years that has never been flushed, the drain valve frequently will not reseat once opened.
What Belmont itself changes
The housing in Belmont
Nearly twenty textile mills were built in Belmont up to 1930, and the mill villages that housed their workers are still standing and still lived in. Those are small, older houses with small, older utility spaces, and they sit alongside a wave of newer riverside and infill building that has arrived in the last fifteen years. The two need different conversations: the mill houses are usually a question of what will physically fit and what the wiring will carry, the newer builds are a straight repair-or-replace decision.
Where the heaters sit
Utility room, closet and crawlspace through the mill villages, where the space around the heater is often just large enough for the heater that is in it. Garage in the newer building. If you are replacing in a mill house, the size of the doorway matters as much as the size of the tank.