Dinner time

I cooked my first meal in the house last night! It's starting to feel like home. There's been no toilet or roof progress, however, my hot water tank miraculously started working! Eric swore that the elements were bad, but I think he bumped the reset button when he was poking around to make sure the switches were still good. No one really knows why, I'm just glad I don't have to go buy a new one that would be replaced in 6 months when I go tankless.



***Eric***
Here's the scoop on what really happened with the water heater. I had checked the resistance on the top element by removing both wires off of the element and connecting my ohm meter to both terminals on the element. It read infinite (aka open). I did the same thing with the bottom element, and it read 2.6ohms. On the back of the cover plate there was a wiring diagram, and on the name plate it showed the element resistance was supposed to be 12. I was showing a resistance through ground (hold your ohm meter to anywhere on the tank from one of the leads) which means there's a short in the element. So I picked up new elements from work (you can try some of the plumbing supply house for them, though many are wholesale only). I ohmed out the new elements, and they showed 12ohms. I drained the tank, just like you should be doing every 2 years, and got to pulling out the old elements. There is a particular tool called an element core removal tool for this job. Not having such a tool in my arsenal, I used a gas pipe wrench which was easier said than done. When we got the elements out, the bottom element was all bent and kinked and split open. This is what was causing my resistance on my ground. The element being split open is, what was causing the strange resistance to ground. It had fused its self to the element casing which is why we got any hot water in the first place. It was taking so long because the entire element wasn't working, the electricity will always follow the path of least resistance, and because water was our most resistant part (in this situation) the electricity was still moving around the element pathway (basically). So then the old elements got tossed, old gaskets removed, new ones put in complete with new gasket, and then you got some f'n hot water. This has now caused Leila to complain that the water is too hot. My next job that I keep putting off is to turn it down, sorry sweetheart.