I had water around the base of the water heater that would disappear and re appear the next day or so. Another plumbing company had come and looked at it and the technician decided with in 30 seconds that I needed a new water heater... My water heater is only 3 years old so decided to get a second opinion. The technician looked all around the water heater and said he could not see a leak. Then he checked my water softener and determined that the water was flooding out of the drain every time it dumped water in the cleaning cycle. He snaked the drain and corrected the line. It cost me a few hundred dollars to fix. I'm glad for the second opinion because it saved me thousands of dollars and all the hassle to fix something that was not really broken.