Replacing a tankless in Statesville
A tankless that has failed is not automatically a tankless that needs replacing. Heat exchangers commonly carry twelve to fifteen year cover while the rest of the unit carries around five, and the exchanger is the most common terminal failure. We run the serial and check the warranty before quoting you for a new unit, because the part is frequently covered even when the labour is not.
Where a replacement is genuinely warranted, the second unit is usually a much simpler job than the first was: the gas line, the venting and the condensate route already exist and were sized once. In Statesville the permit goes through Iredell County Building Standards rather than the City, and a like-for-like swap in the same location is a considerably lighter permit question than the original conversion was.
Statesville is the Iredell county seat and it has been a town since 1789, which shows in the housing. Three separate historic districts are on the National Register here: Academy Hill, built mainly between 1885 and 1930, South Race Street, and the Commercial district dating from about 1875 to 1925. Around that core sits a much newer ring of subdivision building. A water heater call in the historic district and a water heater call off the bypass are effectively two different jobs, and quoting them the same way is how people end up surprised.

What Statesville itself changes
Where the heaters sit
Crawlspace, basement-adjacent utility space and closet through the older neighbourhoods around downtown, Signal Hill and the Race Street area. Garage and attic in the newer building out towards West Iredell and Brookdale. Access is priced before the visit.
The pipe era
The pre-1930 districts are the most likely place in our whole service area to still find galvanised supply in service. It restricts hot and cold together and it will not be fixed by a new heater. In the post-1990 ring, copper and PEX are the norm.