Before you replace it in Iron Station
Our published rule applies here exactly as it does in Charlotte, and it is the same rule whoever answers the phone:
- Under 8 years old: we repair it. Elements, thermostats, gas valves and dip tubes are serviceable parts on a tank with years left in it.
- 8 to 12 years old: we repair it if the fix lands under about $500. You are risking $250 to defer $2,000.
- Leaking from the tank body, at any age: replace it. A perforated tank cannot be patched.
What decides which of those you are in is partly the water. Yours comes from the Lincoln County system, or a private well, and that is the supply whose chemistry has been working on the inside of your tank for its whole life. Where the water is soft and lightly buffered it corrodes rather than scales, which means tanks end by anode depletion and perforation rather than a slow decline. A leak from the shell is a genuine end-of-life signal here rather than something to nurse along.

What Iron Station itself changes
The housing in Iron Station
Iron Station is unincorporated Lincoln County rather than a town, and the housing is rural: older properties on land, newer builds on large lots, and very little of the uniform subdivision stock that makes the rest of this region predictable. There is no single typical Iron Station water heater, which is exactly why we ask more on the phone here than we do almost anywhere else on this list.
The pipe era
Genuinely varied with the build years. Older rural properties can still have galvanised supply, which restricts hot and cold together and will not be improved by a new tank.