One of the joys of home ownership is that you actually have to take care of your appliances when they break or stop working. No landlords to call, here. Bummer. About a month ago our water heater stopped heating water. I was the lucky one to discover that there was no hot water after I had already gotten in the shower. We reset the breaker and it worked again. Lucky us. Last week, however, the same thing happened. No hot water. We reset the breaker, and nothing. Bummer x2. Naturally, neither one of us knows much about water heaters, so we called our dads to help us out. We got some good advice. My dad's an electrician, so he helped us figure out it was the heating element, since it was tripping the breaker. So, we had to drain our water heater. Our first try was a major fail. We couldn't get it to drain. After more phone calls to dads we figured out that there was calcium buildup blocking the drain. Duh... So we cleaned it out and drained the water heater.
Here's Graham playing in the draining water. He had a good time.
Once the water was all out Matt was able to get the old element off, and put the new one in. Have you ever seen the inside of your water heater? Sick. Ours looked like a beach in there. Yikes. Hopefully it lasts us a few more years. But, Matt did an awesome job with his home improvement DIY skills and got us all fixed up. Today we got to take nice warm showers. Ahhh... Cold showers just don't get you very clean, especially when you don't stand under the water. We may or may not have been kind of stinky over here. We did, however, warm water on the stove for Graham's bath. We figured we wouldn't be very good parents if we make him take a cold bath. Poor little guy.
Here's our water heater as it was draining. Like the ultra-ghetto get-up? Our water heater is in our garage, built into the wall, meaning that it sits inside a totally sheet-rocked cubby. Super awesome. So...if the water heater leaks, the inside of our house gets wet. Even more awesome. Hence the tarp, duct tape, and various objects to keep the tarp in place. We're awesome like that. : )
2 comments:
That stinks, we're having the same type of delightful issues... toilet leaks and washer leaks. And lot's of lawn care, be grateful for xeriscaping. :)
Totally know the joy of water heaters gone bad. Mine chose to start leaking over a holiday weekend...so that it nicely soggy-ed up the basement storage room by the time I got home. As a plumbing bonus this week, Bri&Megs triplets have discovered a leak somewhere between my bathtub and the laundry room ceiling. Awesome for me. Reminds me to text the plumber (yup, he's in the cell phone cause I use him that often).
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