Water Heater Blues

Last week we had a bit of an emergency at the house.

Our water heater broke and we couldn’t take any showers. Ahh!

It turned out that there was water sitting in the pilot light compartment, and therefore the pilot light was out. And it wouldn’t re-light since things were so soggy.

Since the access to the pilot light was small, Brentan and I came up with some brilliant (and creative) ways to get the water out: a spray bottle nozzle and a lemon juice bottle used as a siphon.  You can see the lemon juice container in the photo below.

Soggy bottom of the heater

After draining all the water (creatively) and letting the pilot light dry out, we looked for the source of the leak. It turns out the water heater wasn’t leaking (thank goodness, no need for a whole new machine!), but one of the valves above the water heater was leaking.

Brentan fiddling with the pilot light

So why would it just start leaking like that?
Well, the hypothesis is that when we had the uverse guy come and install cable (right above the water heater on the outside of the house) he hit the valve and that made it leak. For two weeks the  slow leak flooded the pilot light area and eventually extinguished the light.

With three trips to Home Depot, and 5-6 hours of work, 24 hours later the light was finally re-lit and water was heating.

And there is pending litigation with AT&T. (j/k, but hopefully they’ll reimburse us for the supplies to fix it)

It threw me off my blog schedule, so I didn’t get a post up about the guest room,  but that is still coming!

Ever had to deal with a broken appliance? I learned all about how water heaters work last week.

-Liz