Cooked Water….Heater

Regular readers of the blog will know that last year one of our hot water heaters was on its way out so we replaced it.   Things seemed fine and then one morning back in March I went to take a shower and there was no hot water.  I checked the electrical panel and the break had tripped so we reset it and there was a popping noise a slight burny smell.

So I called our electrical type people–the ones who did the panel to have them come out to investigate and after a bit of poking about they discovered that the heater had failed in a rather spectacular fashion.  It had literally somehow melted it’s wiring.

So I made a call to the people who had done the install (all they do is hot 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 the discussions 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 (which was pretty easy work since his co-worker who had done the install had corrected faults left by the POs lack of diligence–like the simple fact that he put in a proper drain pan so risk of damage to the floor was minimized.)  He didn’t complete job though as he was a bit green to the whole which wire goes where 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 in the bathroom we never use in its packaging 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 only to remember when we walk into the bathroom a few hours later to find the fan still on, the fans automagically turn off after set times.