My Ode to Hot Water

I have never thought about hot water much until the last few months. One night last Oct. we had no hot water. Panic...what do we do. So we call a couple friends who might know what to do and they don't. We decide to wait until the next day to call a plumber because we don't want to pay extra for the night call. We go up to the hot water heater and read the directions. (It was just put in a year ago). Mark starts messing with it, while I am sure he is going to blow the thing up and that would be the end of us all. Amazingly he gets it started so all is good with the world again!!

About 10 days later no hot water again. Oh no, this wasn't a one time occurrence, luckily Mark is able to get it started again. We go a week without problems and then Mark goes out of town. Well you can guess what happened the second he left. It blows up, just kidding but no hot water. Now I have to go and figure out how to restart it without killing us all up. Now during this time I was working 12+ hours a day and was very stressed out so the hot water heater going out was a big deal that I just didn't have time to take care of. When it went out this time I about cried, but figured Mark hadn't blown us up yet, so maybe I wouldn't either. I got it running...yea!!!

So over the next month or so it's always a game before you get in the shower. You have to remember to check the water before you get undressed or you may get a not so nice surprise of no hot water. It goes out every few days and so we get very adept at relighting it. The kids learn to take showers at night because there might not be hot water in the morning. Mark is always up early on Sundays so he might not get a shower, but he is always kind enough to relight it so that I can have one before church.

During all this we have contacted the company and they do send us a part. But we take one look at the instructions and set the part down. There is only one page of instructions and 7 easy steps. Step one empty the hot water heater. Okay I'm already out of my league. But hey if we figure out how to do that step what would be next. Step 2 turn off the gas. Okay way way out of my league. Step 3 unhook the gas from the hot water heater. Okay, I would rather just restart the thing every day.

So this goes on for about a month until work slows down a bit. Every time we get ready to call someone for help the thing stays on for 3 or 4 days in a row, so we think it magically fixed itself and then it will go out 5 times in 3 days. So we finally break down and have a friend of ours who can fix anything come over. It takes him 3 hours and one run to Home Depot (that would have translated into 3 days and 10 trips to Home Depot for us). Finally we have hot water every day. It is so amazing to be able to take a shower without planning it first. I am very grateful that we have hot water that magically comes out of our faucet every time we want it to.