<p>Something is wrong with the water heater. Either it is not big enough for the tub the previous owners put in when they remodeled and they did not bother to replace it, or it just plain needs to be replaced. There is not enough hot water to fill the tub even a quarter way, and only just barely enough hot water for me to get through a full shower. I don’t notice the problem doing anything else. It looks like it’s from 1994 so I am wondering if it’s just old or broken. It seems like it should be big enough. We thought the faucet just needed to be adjusted, and that did help, but the problem is not fixed. BF was convinced it was too small but it’s 50 gallons so that seems unlikely.</p>
<p>At the moment I think this is going to mean I need to cut my hair so it doesn’t take me so long to shower… lol. I can’t begin to imagine how much it must cost to replace the water heater. Anybody know anything about tankless heaters? I guess we need to start doing our research. I’m seeing gas and electric and also wondering why someone would choose one over the other.</p>
<p>I am wondering how BF and the inspector failed to notice this when they filled the tub to check if the jets work. Though, they also failed to notice one of the jets DIDN’T work…</p>
<p>Welcome to the wonderful world of home ownership.</p>
<p>Not.</p>
<p>I’ve decided that [after we renovate the kitchen and bathrooms and add the hot tub outside] I will spend $5,000 on the house every year. There will always be something I want [the next item is that the driveway should be repaved, with the Belgian block and the whole nine yards] but there will also always be something the house needs. That way, if/when the house needs something important, I won’t be surprised by the expense.</p>
<p>Did you happen to get a home warranty when ou bought the house? Thats always a good idea with an older home with appliances you dont know the history of.</p>
<p>No, we didn’t. But we plan on replacing everything in the kitchen in January/February. So that just leaves the furnace (gulp), hot water heater (gulp), washer and dryer (not so gulp-y). For better or for worse, there is no CAC, so we don’t have to worry about that breaking! (There will be CAC by the time the next 80-degree day rolls around, however. That I am sure of!!)</p>
<p>Oh, wait – your question was for Ema, wasn’t it. I’ll be quiet now.</p>
<p>50 gallons ought to be big enough. Perhaps the water isn’t getting hot enough. It may be as simple as resetting the thermostat. (Or if you have a gas waterheater/tank like we do in Vermont your husband has to know that you have to turn the thing on, not just light the pilot light!) Houses are expensive - I’m still amazed that we haven’t had to replace our antique furnace. I believe it dates from the 1950s.</p>
<p>First thing to check with the water heater is to check how hot the thermostat is set to. It’s pretty common to turn the temp way down when the house is empty, to save energy. </p>
<p>Without kids, you can crank up the temp pretty high because the burn risk is low.</p>
<p>1994 is ancient for a water heater, that thing is a time bomb waiting to go off. Your inspector should have checked the age. </p>
<p>Sometimes when they get that old, the cold water pipe inside rots off, so the cold water mixes directly with the hot water instead of being piped into the bottom.</p>
<p>A jacuzzi tub takes 50-70 gallons to fill, so a 50 gal tank should be enough to fill it once. Depending on the recovery time of the tank, you may have to wait a couple hours after a shower to have enough hot water to fill it.</p>
<p>Cost for a new one will probably be $500-700 installed. If there is anything that could get damaged when that thing lets go (like if you have a finished basement or the tank is on the first floor) I would replace it sooner rather than later.</p>
<p>I wasn’t actually there for the inspection as I had to work and BF said he could handle it, but my impression is that the inspector told us the water heater and furnace were older and would probably have to be replaced soon, but were in perfect working order right now and not an immediate concern. Maybe in 3-5 years, he said. I am not that man’s biggest fan. I don’t see a thermostat on the heater, but bf says it’s "on the highest setting. I don’t really understand that.</p>
<p>The water heater is in the main floor laundry room… there is carpet in the hallway outside it and its only about 10 feet from our wood kitchen floor and 15 feet from BF’s $XX,XXX worth of computer equipment. I don’t know whether or not we got the warranty, we were supposed to but BF dropped the ball on a few different things and that may have been one of them… long story. If it’ll cost us under $1,000 to replace it it’ll be a hit but not much more than an irritation, so we’ll just have to see. I do think we will have to look into this asap, I don’t want to even risk it bursting.</p>
<p>I want my daddy to come home from vacation! It’s amazing the way this house can make me feel so grown up and so young at the same time. haha</p>
<p>Is there any kind of auxiliary floor drain or a floor pan or whatever?</p>
<p>If not, when you replace it, look into getting something that will protect you if the tank ever lets go.</p>
<p>I have a rental with a finished basement. When the tank let go, the idiots who lived there didn’t want to get their feet wet to shut off the water. So water was flooding into the basement for close to an hour before I could get there.</p>
<p>There was a lot of damage… now I replace them every six years or so.</p>
<p>How do the pan and drain work? We have a drain in the floor for the furnace, but I’m not sure how much help it would be if our water heater quit-- it’s a couple feet away and not very big or anything. I am pretty sure the crawl space under the laundry room is inaccessible, so I am wondering about the logistics of adding anything. When we get the floors redone I want to see if we can add any trapdoors or anything to make that part of the crawl space accessible, but I think we will be dealing with the water heater before we even consider doing anything with the floors.</p>
<p>Apparently my dad has installed water heaters before, so he can possibly do ours depending on if we want/need anything fancy. He’ll be here on Tuesday to see what all needs to be done to get my recessed lighting set up and to see what can be done about the yucky textured ceiling… the way they did it it just makes the ceiling look dirty, I’ve never seen anything like it. I hope he can teach BF a thing or two, I’ve been spoiled growing up with someone so handy around. I forget that men aren’t born with an innate knowledge of how to fix <em>everything</em> sometimes. BF does, too! ;)</p>
<p>When a water heater bursts, it is because the tank has rusted out. So the water will pour out the bottom and then goes wherever it wants.</p>
<p>So the pan contains the water that is pouring out. To get rid of the water in the pan you have to drain it somewhere. You might be able to run a pipe to the floor drain for the furnace, but it depends on where that drain goes. Is it an actual drain or does it just go into the crawlspace?</p>
<p>I’ve also seen pumps that are triggered by the water level in the pan, if you can’t have a floor drain. But the water has to be pumped somewhere, usually you tie in to an existing drain somewhere. This can get expensive depending on what has to be done.</p>
<p>Ema, you are very lucky to have a dad who knows how to do stuff. Neither my dad, when he was alive, nor my DH know how to do anything. Since we’ve been in this house, whenever I’ll notice a small problem, DH will announce he can fix it. NO, I shout; we’ll ask Richard! (He’s our magic handyman. Except that he’s really real, not magic.) Maybe I should just keep my noticing to myself, and get Richard to address these things when he comes. ;)</p>
<p>It didn’t occur to me that the grate for the furnace might not be attached to a real drain… that will be something to investigate. I certainly hope we aren’t just letting water run into the crawl space! I don’t know much about what’s down there because most of it was inaccessible for our inspector, there is a beam separating the area under the addition and the area under the rest of the house and there’s only 6 inches or so of clearance. I know there are plastic tarps down there and supposedly a sump pump and that’s the extent of my knowledge.</p>
<p>My dad is an odd bird… he’s a software developer but he can do a little bit of everything. He had a gigantic set of “how-to” books when I was growing up and I swear he never hired out for anything except non-basic car repairs, if he needs something done he learns to do it himself and is luckily handy enough that he does a good job. My grandpa has always been the same way, he was an engineer and is a mechanical genius. Dad built my mother’s kitchen cabinets, laid tile throughout the ground floor, installed carpets, remodeled the whole bathroom, built a deck out back, installed the recessed lighting, painted, etc… and if something breaks, he fixes it. </p>
<p>I am still holding out hope that he and BF will learn how to install vinyl fences. That is outside of dad’s usual repertoire but I really don’t want to pay anybody $11,000 for a fence, that’s almost year’s tuition at my alma mater. O_O</p>
<p>Ema, just so you know. A water heater needs to be installed by a professional and needs to be certified if you will be inspected. It would be a problem if you plan on selling this house. If your dad has installed water heaters and is comfortable doing so then let him. But it can be dangerous and is usually not a DIY.</p>
<p>They are not that expensive to replace and hot water is not one of those things I would do without. It sounds like you have money for repairs. Houses have things go wrong with them that you don’t anticipate.</p>
<p>As I am sitting here with my furnace not working. :)</p>
<p>Also, ema, sometimes if you have the work done by someone who is not licensed, it voids any warranty for the hot water heater. </p>
<p>In our old house, we replaced the hot water heater twice (once when we moved in and again about 6 years later). We picked it out, and paid for the installation. This included removing of and disposing of the old hot water heater, and all of the connections (in our case natural gas and plumbing, and electrical). It was well worth the installation cost just to have the old one hauled out and away!</p>
<p>ema, have you flush the water heater? I have a 14 year old water heater, it is not leaking, but I have to flush the water heater every 6 mo. to keep the water hot. Youtube has many videos for flushing the water heater, it is an easy task.</p>
<p>We’ll just have to gather all the information and see what we want to do. I have grandparents in the area who are constantly working on their house so I am going to see if they can recommend anybody. As for flushing it, we haven’t tried that since we don’t know how and I am not sure when/if it was done last… I know they were WAY overdue on changing their air filter so they may not have done it. We’ll figure that out and check.</p>
<p>Naturally my car broke down the day we moved in, too. If everything else could keep it together for a few months it would be great. :)</p>
It’s amazing the way this house can make me feel so grown up and so young at the same time. haha</p>
That is outside of dad’s usual repertoire but I really don’t want to pay anybody $11,000 for a fence, that’s almost year’s tuition at my alma mater. O_O</p>