The Water Heater Fiasco 2015

Looking at the bright side, at least we have our health and food to eat no one is dropping bombs on us! Problems you can fix by throwing money at them and enduring a minor period of inconvenience
is not the worst thing that can happen to you.

Sometime back in February I was looking at my gas bill and was again bothered by the $25 water heater rental charge. Direct Energy (or whatever they are called now) were certainly getting the better end of that deal because the tank had never caused me any problems and was 17 years old. Thinking that $300 a year might be better spend elsewhere I went about getting a quote on getting my own water heater installed. I researched tank-less and rejected it due to cost and was quoted $1400 (they had to add some new piping to bring stuff up to code) on a 50 gallon old fashioned kind. Since 5 years of rental was $1500 and the new tank after install was $1400 I figured in less than 5 years it will have "been paid", and everything after that was savings.

The guys came on a Sunday with a 60 gallon by mistake (no extra charge). The install did not go well though and the guys ran out of time and had to come back the next day to finish. They took away the old heater as part of the deal to return it to depot. We had no hot water for most of Sunday and Monday. I had no idea what a first world problem pain that was. Clothes washer, dish washer, showers, baths, even washing your face with hot water, not an option.

They came back on Monday, finished up, even knocked $100 off the price for the extra delay and everything was peachy! There was an issue with my Direct Energy bill afterwards though. The water heater rental has yet to come off . There is an order of operations to taking our tank back, you need a number FIRST then you bring it back, my guy brought it back and I got a number later, so,, yeah. They tell me it takes several cycles to catch up. They say the 4th bill should do it so I've paid $100 in rental charges for a tank I don't have ;-)

Fast forward to today when the clothes washer upstairs malfunctioned and decided to drop several gallons of water on the floor which ran down the nearest vent which happened to exit above the water heater in the basement and give it a bath.The water did not seem to do any damage to anything else and quickly found it's way down the drain.

Later that evening when we ran out of hot water it was apparent that the water heater was not working. Upon close inspection the thing looks FRIED! The GAS Control Valve LED's don't light up and the blower assembly took a good douse. There was a ring of water inside the tank and this started to rust the open bottom lip of the tank.

So now I'm at that place I've been too so many times before. Do I pay for trial and error repairs to get the stupid thing fixed and have it break again or just assume the whole thing is suspect and look at replacing it whole. Just like my stupid lemon of a Jandy Pool heater, my crappy Bosch dishwasher, and Fridge which have all eaten $1000 in repairs and just got chucked out soon after. Repair people stink these days and don't even try to find the issue and just replace over-priced parts at random. When's the last time you saw someone get a multi-meter out and try and trace a fault?

Bloody hell. I'm going to call Direct Energy tomorrow and get them to install a new rental tank (again). $1300 down the toilet.

To top it off, the Dishwasher is making chewing sounds, I called up the service guys today. It came off warranty a week and a half ago, end of April 2015. There's usually a third bad thing that happens at times like this, we'll wait to see.

Morale of the story, If it ain't broke, don't fix it. When you try to save money, it sometimes ends up costing more &^$%$#*^^!

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