Hot Water

Our water heater is finally fixed.  We have a solar water heater on top of our house that really hasn't work very well since we got here.  Occasionally, I would get a warm shower and even less frequently it would be hot.  It wasn't really a big deal until the cold season arrived.  With temperatures getting down into the fifties at night and heater not really working that well, the showers were mildly jarring.  The typical shower resulted in convulsions that lasted for most of the duration of the shower.  But as the weather warmed up, the showers become a little more tolerable.  Then one night, just before bed, a stream of water started rolling off of our roof.  Apparently, a hose or pipe in the heater had broken and was emptying the tank so we climbed to the roof and turned off the valve.  Now when we said we didn't have any hot water it wasn't that the water coming out of the hot tap was cold, there wasn't any water coming out at all.  The showers returned to their previous frigid temperatures.  We eventually got a plumber to come check it out.  He was an older man with a bag of tools, a very old looking pair of cover-alls, and a Mickey Mouse hat.  He climbed up on the roof with a ladder that would have easily gotten someone expelled from shop class.  He then walked around our tin roof wearing socks.  To make it situation even more interesting, he later asked us for a chair on which he stood on the roof while working on the heater.  Safety precautions weren't much of a priority for this guy.  Anyways, he fixed the heater and later that night it broke so he came back the next day and fixed the heater and that night it broke so he came back and fixed the heater.  The heater broke again this time before he left so he went up and fixed it again only to have it break again that night.  We gave up for awhile.  Then another plumber came out to take a crack at it and our water heater is finally fixed.

 

Update:  Before I had a chance to send this post our water heater broke.