Daily Archives: September 5, 2021
Hot-Wired and Hot Water . . .
I was outside about 10:30 this morning to start pulling the old water heater out of its cubbyhole.
I had already disconnected the water lines and the power wires inside, so after I loosened the gas line outside and removed the 16 screws holding the unit to the rig, I started trying to pull it out.
And it would not budge. Not even a wiggle.
And when I tried to stick a screwdriver in between the heater and the wall, I found the problem. Besides the 16 screws, they decided to actually GLUE the unit into the opening. With a very strong glue, too.
So I started prying the sides in so I could cut through the adhesive.
Finally then I was able to wiggle and pry, and eventually got the unit out of the hole.
The plywood platform came right out and then I did my best to clean and dry the area out. But before I could go any further I needed to move the inside water connections over to the new unit.
No problem removing the elbow on the cold inlet, but when I tried to remove the piping on the hot outlet, the 1/2” plastic coupling just came apart.
So since it was about lunch time, it was off to Home Depot by way of Gator’s for lunch. Turns out Home Deport didn’t stock the plastic couplings and was out of the brass ones, so I bought a valve coupling instead, which will also let me isolate the water heater from the system if needed in the future. It was a little longer, but there was enough flex in the piping to handle it.
My next problem was that it seems that the new Styrofoam-covered heater is slightly larger and less squishable than the old fiber-insulated and covered-in-cardboard unit. In fact when I gave up for today (I was just tired of fooling with it) there was still about 2” of the unit sticking outside the rig. But I wanted to be sure it actually worked before I went any further with it.
So I hooked up the water and power, filled the heater with water, and then turned it on. And 30 minutes later, NO hot water.
No power was getting to the heating element. Then a lot more search told that this unit requires 12VDC through a remote switch to get it work on 120VAC. So to get us hot water I pretty much hot-wired it directly while I figure out hot to get 12VDC in the water heater area, since it’s only got 120VAC there. But that’s for tomorrow.
Tonight we have hot water.
Thought For The Day:
One good thing about having a bad memory is that jokes can be funny more than once.
. . . .
One good thing about having a bad memory is that jokes can be funny more than once.
