Appliance Woes

For perhaps the first time ever, I'm very glad about the horrendous heat here in Texas. You might wonder if I've lost my mind. I have not. What I have lost, is a water heater.

Last week we noticed we had no hot water in the master bathroom. I should probably call it the owner's bathroom, or the main bedroom bathroom, or some such, but moving on...the next morning, when it was cool enough not to actually boil your blood in the attic, DH went up and took a look. Turns out the pilot light was out.  Luckily, it has an automatic cut-off for that very purpose, so we didn't blow up or anything. Bad part about it, he couldn't get it lit again, no matter what he tried.

He came back downstairs and we resigned ourselves to cold showers, as it was a workday with no time to do anything about it that morning. And of course, being the geeks we both are, we immediately hit the 'net and started researching what could be wrong with it. Turns out it's a fairly simple do-it-yourself figure-out-what's-wrong and most likely a simple fix. And I'm very lucky that DH is very good with stuff like that (as well as lots of other things.) Me, not so much.

So it was simple, but it wasn't a workday evening type of job. We have two water heaters, one for the owner's suite and one for the rest of the house, so we could still wash dishes, clothes, etc. And we could, if we wanted to, go upstairs and use one of the guest bathrooms.  But it turns out we didn't need to do that. It's so hot here that we don't really need the hot water at the moment. Even the water in the 5000 gallon holding tank out back is pretty warm, sitting outside in the sun all day. So all we have to do is wait for the cooler water sitting in the inside pipes (shaded and somewhat air conditioned) to flow past, and we can take at least a tepid shower. Yay.

And that turns out to be really good, because in doing further research, both online and in talking to professionals, we found out that we probably shouldn't fix it. Water heaters are guaranteed for 6-9 years. This one is about 18 years old.  Why is that a bad thing? Why shouldn't I be happy it's lasted this long?  Because everyone we talked to and every site we read said that when water heaters go, it's usually spectacular. At the very least, they tend to leak and cause major water damage. At worst, they explode!

So now we're looking into replacing not only it, but maybe the other one, too. The other one's iffy, 'cause it's in the garage, so if it leaks it probably won't cause much, if any, water damage.  But the possible exploding part, that's a concern. At any rate, we're going water-heater shopping this weekend.

Meanwhile, as I write this, I'm waiting for the washing machine repair guy. It's on a totally non-related issue, and thank the Goddess it's under warranty, being as it's less than two years old. 

Still, feeling a bit appliance picked-on this week.