If you have recently gone down into your basement and spotted large, undulating orange stains on the floor, these are water stains. You may wonder how water stains could be orange, as well as how those stains got there. Well, the problem may actually be your water heater. You should call a plumber for water heater repair. Read the following for more information.

Orange Equals Rust

Orange stains equal rust. It means that the water that formed these stains on your basement floor flowed through something that was exceedingly rusty, hence the orange discoloration. It also means that the water spent a lot of time contained in something that was rusted out, and that is how the water was able to accumulate so much rust.

Water Heaters Have a Tendency to Rust through the Bottom

Water heaters are notorious for rusting through the bottom. Why? They hold several gallons of water for lengthy periods of time, heat the water, which then activates the necessary agents in the metal and water to create rust, and then it slowly begins to eat away at the inside of the tank until the water can find an exit. That exit is usually the bottom of your water heater, where collections of sediment and rust particles accumulate and are corrosive on the bottom of the tank. Meanwhile, the rest of the water above that begins to change color. You can tell that your tank has rust in it when your tub or sink water is yellow or orange in color.

Orange on the Floor

After the bottom of the tank rusts through and releases a ton of rust-filled water, the sediment at the bottom of the tank come out. This mess spreads out across the floor around your water heater, which will be quite obvious, even with massive orange stains spread out on the floor. Water heater replacement is imminent at this point, since there is very little that can be done to restore the inside and outside leaks of the water heater.

As for the orange stains, there is good news. Once the plumber has replaced your water heater, you can clean up all of the orange stains. You may want to wait a few days until the stains look like a dry powdery mess. Then apply a rust removing cleaner, which you can buy in a spray bottle from just about any grocery or home improvement store. Douse the orange stains with the rust remover cleaner and wait a few minutes, Then power-wash the stains away.

Talk to companies like StateWide Mechanical II Inc. for more information.