Water Heater

[marydell]

What is exactly the thing one wants to do immediately after spending many dollars to have a room built in one's basement?  Replace the water heater, of course! 

The damn thing blew its safety valve last night just as we were getting ready to go to bed.  Large piles of water dumped into the brand-new carpet in Mike's office, OF COURSE, because the water heater is just on the other side of an access door from the office.  Fortunately I have one of those pseudo-steam carpet cleaners, which is a champ at sucking water out of a carpet, and since it was clean water, we should be ok on that front. But SHEESH.

Also fortunately, we have a coffee maker that heats water rapidly, so I got to wash my hair with (some) hot water this morning. SHEESH.  The new water heater is in place and doing its thing now, so that's a very good thing, and we even still have a leetle bit of money in the bank for whatever breaks next, as long as whatever breaks next is VERY SMALL, so we are fortunate and we know it. But even so, I say SHEESH. 

Comments

[kouredios]

Oh no! I'm so sorry. We've been wrestling with our own water heater this week, but at least we didn't get water all over the place (this time!) *sympathy hugs*

[anne]

Oh good grief.

When I was a child, I had a book whose refrain went, "Summer, autumn, winter, spring. What happens to Aaron? Everything!" It often seemed à propos.

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Oy..I count myself lucky that my hot water heater sprang a small slow leak -- even though it took time for me to figure out what was going on, nothing actually flooded. The damage was more related to chronic moisture rather than acute flooding.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Aiee! what is it with my f-list and water heaters recently? Maybe I should unfriend everyone, in case it's *me*. ;P

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you haven't friended the "right" people...my hot water heater already leaked. ;-)

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Fixed that. ;)

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

LOL..now let's see if that heater leaks again.

BTW, I love your website. "You need an eye exam" wins the internets.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

^_^ - I should update.

I'm looking at the water heater here, now...

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

It will wait until after you turn away, thinking that all is well. Silently the water beads well up...

[trinker.livejournal.com]

It's worse than horror movies.

(OTOH, I used to live on a boat. water leaking was far more dire then.)

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

I always thought all boats leaked, more or less. Just like raincoats, in areas that you least like.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

A well-fitted steel boat doesn't leak at all...and if it does, it's a major issue, because unwanted water leads to rust!

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

Why do they always have to go that way?

Everyone I know, including me, discovers that the water heater needs to be replaced by going down into the basement and discovering it's ankle-deep in water.

Universal design flaw?

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I think they're designed to hold a fuckton of water and eventually explode, with merely busting a gasket and dumping water on the floor being the good, non-explodey alternative. So yeah, I'm not wild about the design.

We looked at getting one of the tankless on-demand heaters this time, because they're more efficient and don't explode, but they start at $800 and our plumbing company has never installed one, so we opted not to do that. I'm all for them getting an opportunity to learn how to mount a unit directly to a house foundation wall...as long as it's somebody else's.

[bifemmefatale.livejournal.com]

I feel your pain. My water heater's out too.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Aw, drag! I hope the landlord is the one on the hook for it, and not you...and that it's fixed soon!

[bifemmefatale.livejournal.com]

Supposedly the service guy will be here by 1. *crosses fingers*

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Oh, good! This is the worst sort of weather for being stuck with cold water.

[zelda888.livejournal.com]

May I pick your brain about brands? We recently ripped out our semi-functional kitchen and started over, and when it was all done, I said, "Well, now we've replaced all the major stuff in this house-- roof, furnace, AC, washer-- everything except the water heater ohmighod did I just say that out loud?" So I'm kind of expecting it to go any second now.

Plus, I've long wanted a carpet steamer thingie, but been daunted by the nearly-a-thousand price tag. What can you recommend?

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Our carpet cleaner thingy is a Bissell upright cleaner--not really a steamer, more of a shampooer--that cost about $250. It has a tank that you fill with hot water and cleaning solution, and it sprays that on the rug as you go along, and it has rotating brushes that scrub the rug, and then it also is vacuuming the water out of the rug into another tank at the same time. It's like a heavy bulky vacuum cleaner, size-wise. It works well on our rugs, which are all low-pile. For a really deep-down dirty rug I would rent a steam thingy from the grocery store (that's where we get them around here anyway) but for normal mud tracks, spills, and baby and cat barf the Bissell does really well.

I'll see what brand the water heater is tonight when I get home, if you like - basically we called the plumbing company we use, told them what was up, and they gave us a price for a water heater + labor. So they picked it for us, which means I have no idea if its better than other water heaters, other than knowing that it's better than the broken one. :)

[zelda888.livejournal.com]

Well, that sounds like *exactly* the same thing the grocery store rentals do; they don't actually heat the water either. I figure if I have my own I'll use it more often, so things won't have a chance to get truly icky. And at less than 1/3 the price of what I'd been looking at-- sold. Thanks!

We are also fortunate to have a plumber we trust, so maybe I'll do a little preliminary poking around at Consumer Reports, then see what he has to say when the time comes. Glad you have a hot shower to look forward to!