Scruffy Swallows a Water Heater

A few weeks back, I was doing some dishes one evening. Towards the end, I start running out of hot water. Hmmmm.... that usually doesn't happen!!! A run down to the basement confirmed my worst fears: the water heater had sprung a big leak!!! The good news is that apparently it happened right then, and it hadn't fully flooded the basement!!!

This was on a Wednesday, so I had my wife call Home Depot about installation, which they have on their page same day if you order before noon, or something. The units I was looking at were around $500-$700, or alternatively there was a tankless for $1,000. She checked, and the price for the former jumps up to around $1,300, and around $4,000 for the latter!!! Nope, nope nope!!! Guess I know what I'm doing on my day off!!! Oh yeah, online all of them were shown as "ship to store". Come on, I KNOW you got 'em there!!!

So, we load up Scruffy with some rope (and empty out all the various other stuff that accumulates back there) and head off on Friday. Sure enough, there's a row of 'em there, so we load up and off we go!!! In the second shot, you can see the hatch just ALMOST making it closed!!! Ran the rope around the hatch, and we were on our way!!!

It took a little doing, but between the younger boy and the one armed wife and me, we got it moved up the steps from the street and into place. Not nearly as difficult was disconnecting the old unit, but for a leaky old thing, it still had a lot of water in it!!! I had it draining through a hose for quite a while, and there was still more!!! You can see it still flowing out in the third pic, as well as the way it stood, looking all like that tower in Pisa!!!

All in all, it came together without any major hassles. Don't remember exactly, but I know my dad helped me with the last time I'd had it go out, and it had to have been at least ten, maybe twelve to fifteen years ago, so we got our money's worth out of it!!! Also seems like it was under $200!!! I didn't opt to get the WiFi enabled one so my water heater could take part in the next DDoS attack. It does, however, have a little blinky LED on the control panel, I'm going to have to look at the manual to see if the battery is replaceable!!! After I got it all installed, I went up and took a much needed and well earned warm shower!!!