Comments on: The Life of a Homeowner. I think.

By: Lisa

Lisa — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 02:47:09 +0000

my brother is a plumber and installs furnaces – probably hot water tanks too – wish I’d known and I could have sent him your way :)

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:37:41 +0000

Tyler Duren was wrong; it’s reliable, plentiful, hot water that is the yardstick of civilization.

By: Paul McEwan

Paul McEwan — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 10:21:01 +0000

A grass hut on a secluded tropical island with the proper amount of suction would be better.

By: donna

donna — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 06:59:12 +0000

Have you tried giving it a steel wool handjob? :)

By: mom

mom — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 06:39:13 +0000

Our hot water repair guy was out this morning to fix a problem on our 4 yr old SOTA semi-on demand hot water tank. He says in a year or two you won’t be able to buy the old fashioned hot water tanks nor will you be able to buy anything but high efficiency furnaces (that are uber expensive and apparently quite finicky).
Our repair bill was a mere $436.00. That’s the third repair we’ve had done on our $10,000 ultra modern in floor boiler system and hot water heating device (in 4 years). Repair work for things that normally don’t have problems. Warranty? One year…Bah!

By: Donna

Donna — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 00:30:37 +0000

We have a standard water heater, but a high end one. I’m looking at the receipt right now: It was more than $1200 installed.

By: Ivan

Ivan — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 00:11:30 +0000

Based on your description, not sure if you have an actual hot water tank or an on demand hot water heater, but if you do go with eventually replacing it, a good on demand heater is $2000 to $3500 installed (depending on the volume you need), whereas a water tank is usually around $800 to $1200 installed. I’ve been looking at replacing our aging tank with an on-demand hot water heater, but I need to save more.

By: Donna

Donna — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 20:31:15 +0000

I’ve got the receipt for the one that was installed just before Nick bought the place, and it’s a lot more than $600…(it’s a quite high end model) plus an extra $400 for the installation. And as I mentioned in the post, the walls were built around the heater AFTER it was installed, and the openings are not big enough to fit the heater through, so to get a new one would require rebuilding the entire closet.

NOT something I want to go through unnecessarily for a 3 year old heater, that’s for sure!

By: Helen

Helen — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 20:11:14 +0000

I used to think hot water heaters were expensive as well…till I saw them at the Home Depot for about 600 bucks (which is what you got quoted for a single part..)(and those are the ones with a 6 year warranty on them too) but maybe they’re not as expensive as thought to be?? Anyways, maybe you guys have some kind of expensive one but it’s just a heads up:)

By: Renee

Renee — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:34:30 +0000

“…and gave that little rod the best steel wool handjob it’s ever had.”

Best. Sentence. EVER.