Adventures in Water Heating

Aside from days spent as a marketing/comms guys, and evenings at school, I spend a fair amount of time doing/fixing things around the house.

I learned a lot from my Dad, who made me help him out around the many houses we lived in growing up. We did a lot of large projects together (several sprinkler systems, roofing, etc.), but I learned the most when we built our house in Charlotte, and I was at a ripe learning age of 15 or so.

But as any good Walker man, we learn a lot from trial and error. So it should come as no surprise when I took it upon myself this weekend to fix our water heater that general mayhem would ensue.

Element in question

For the past two weeks (ever since the weather has gone crazy) it's been shutting off, prompting me to get under the house and hitting the reset button. Well my better half suggested I try and follow my best friend's advice, and replace the heating elements. 

My immediate thoughts on heating elements for water heaters:

• They actually keep the water in the tank. DO NOT REMOVE as a first step
• DO NOT have your wife underneath the house when you remove the heating element, she will voice immediate concerns about having to reshampoo her hair
• Shut off the water to the tank before removing the element
• Drain the tank before removing the element

I'm sure if I took the time to read the manual, I would've known to follow these steps in the appropriate order - but hey, Walker men right???

After all of this, we still don't have hot water to the house, so a repairman has been called. But I did learn a ton from the process! 

Also another key lesson - do not have your wife pour hot water on your head to rinse out the shampoo. I had to watch the Superbowl with a bag of ice to my head because of the burn!!

Regardless, we looked back at the experience as kind of a funny one, and I'm sure when we have hot showers again, we'll laugh even harder. Cheers to being a homeowner!