Last year one of our water heaters was on its way out so we replaced it. Things seemed fine until one morning in March when I went to take a shower and there was no hot water. I checked the electrical panel and the breaker had tripped, so we reset it, and there was a popping noise and a slight burny smell. I called our electrical-type people–the ones who did the panel–to investigate, and after a bit of poking about, they discovered that the heater had failed in a rather spectacular fashion. It had somehow literally melted its wiring.
So I called the people who installed it (all they do is water heaters) and they sent a tech out who went over the entire unit and spent almost an hour on the phone with his office and the tank manufacturer. After discussion they chalked it up to a fault with the tank, as this one had replaced a much larger 80gal unit the POs had installed in 2000.
The tech put in a new tank (pretty easy work since his co-worker who did the install had corrected faults left by the POs’ lack of diligence, such as putting in a proper drain pan to minimize risk of damage to the floor). He didn’t complete the job though, as he was a bit green to the whole ‘which wire goes where’ thing, and the switch the POs had installed for the tank’s power wasn’t actually rated for the job. Another call to our handy electricians and they came back out, replaced the switch and wired things up properly. Thankfully, during this week of water chaos, we could make use of the guest bathroom shower for our hygiene needs.
While the electricians were here I had them do a fast switch swap out as well. A while back we picked up some timer switches for the bathrooms off Amazon. Agent Smith installed three of them but the fourth wasn’t a priority, so it sat unopened in the unused bathroom for a few months. The electricians took all of five minutes to install it and now all four bathroom fans are sorted.
I cannot rave about this little improvement enough. Now instead of switching on the exhaust fans before a shower and then often forgetting until walking into the bathroom hours later to find the fan still on, the fans automagically turn off after set times.