School's out for summer, is hot water in my future?

WOOHOO!!

Wednesday was our last day of school (controlled chaos, of course), and yesterday was our teacher close-up-shop day. Today is officially the first day without classes! Naturally, I have spent most of the day in bed with a nasty cough! WOOHOO!!

Well, I've always been of a mind that I would rather be sick on a NON-school day than a school day, so I'm pretty much ok with it, and I have lots of time to recuperate now.

Speaking of recuperating, I hope to have a steady flow of hot water in my house once again sometime soon...

About 3 weeks ago, my hot water heater burst. Just sprung a leak like a bad fishing boat and shot water all over my garage. Hard to take a cold shower at 6 in the morning on a school day!

So I called up my home warranty people and got them to send out a plumber. I couldn't take the day off, so my dad house sat for me on the Friday before Memorial Day. That day, in addition to the plumber, an HVAC guy was coming to fix my air conditioning. THAT, thankfully, was fixed that day.

The plumber took a look at my water heater and said it would need to be replaced and brought up to code, and that he needed new parts. He made an appointment to come back the following Monday and take care of it. I was wondering if he knew that day was Memorial Day, but he insisted that he worked his own hours and he could do it.

When he hadn't shown up by 3 on Monday, I called and found out that he couldn't get the parts because his office was closed. SINCE IT WAS A HOLIDAY!! But at least he was going to be able to come over the next day AFTER school, so I wouldn't have to ask my dad to house sit again.

He came over with a new water heater, took a while to get it replaced, added a drip pan, an outside line, etc -- all those expensive pieces to bring it up to code. Then he brought me out to the garage to show me that it was installed and done. Flipped the power on, and it promptly fizzled.

If you're a Star Wars fan, you know that scene where Luke and his uncle have just bargained with the Jawas to buy C-3PO and that red R2 droid? The red droid starts rolling and immediately blows a circuit and starts smoking? Well, that's pretty much what happened with my heater. There was a giant pop and the smell of burnt wiring.

So another day of no hot water. But the guy was going to come back the next day with a replacement. When he came back though, he didn't have a new heater, just a new heating element for the part that had blown up. He replaced it, we walked around the house, and every faucet was giving forth miraculous heated water. SUCCESS!!

Well, not so fast. The next morning, I turned on the shower, and it was warm. About 5 minutes into my shower, it started getting cooler, cooler, colder. I was out of hot water. I called the guy that night, and he told me that I needed to open up the control panel and press the reset button.

Odd, but I did, and I had hot water the next morning. A full shower's worth! SUCCESS!!

Well, not so fast. No more hot water when I came home that night.

Called the guy the next day, but with it being Saturday, didn't really expect to hear back. I discovered that if I hit the reset button each night, then I WOULD have hot water the next morning. However, I really didn't think that playing Desmond Hume and pushing a button every 108 minutes (Lost fan? Eh? Eh?) constituted a "fixed" hot water heater situation.

Called the guy on Monday during my planning period and got ahold of him. He told me that it was his day off and he was out of town, but he would try to swing by my place that evening to check things out. Didn't see him that night.

Called the next day and left a message. Never heard from him.

Which brings us to yesterday, when I finally called the warranty people again and told them what was happening. They called the plumbing company, and come to find out -- this guy no longer works for them!! I have no idea if he quit, or was fired, or what, but he was obviously NEVER going to return my call.

So now I have a NEW guy scheduled to come out on Monday and hopefully fix things once and for all.

Cuz I'm getting a little tired of opening the heater and pushing that darn red button over and over and over.