Ask Around

It is coincidence, not design, that makes my small contributions so far this year into what seem like an endless reminiscence. Even so, I am forced by circumstance to write about water heaters then and now.

As I mentioned last week, 20 years ago I had just moved into this house that at the time had “free gas” from the well across the street. I wouldn’t get to keep that luxury for long, so among my early activities was getting a huge propane tank and arranging for my appliances to use propane instead of out-of-the-ground natural gas. I’ll not go into the difference between the two except to say that getting one’s heat out of a nearby hole in the ground is a little bit steampunk, while having a truck deliver it is a little bit (lately a lot) expensive.

Converting a furnace or a cooking stove from one to the other is fairly trivial, but for tank-type water heaters it’s not, so the one here would have to be replaced.

Tankless or “on demand” water heaters were all the rage 20 years ago. They didn’t waste gas by keeping a big tank full of water hot all the time. Instead, they have a heat exchanger that goes from cold to blistering hot almost instantly. They’re expensive to purchase but cheap to operate. They’re also much smaller than water heaters wrapped around 50 gallons of water. I looked around back then and found a good price on an open-box Bosch AquaStar 250sx LP. So I saved a few hundred dollars there.

Then I called plumbers in town, who said they would come round and install it for a mere $2000! Thus I learned the first rule of living around here: ask around.

Which I did. The previous owners of the house knew a guy down the road, Mike Gabriel, who “does that kind of work.” Actually, he was a skilled plumber. He dropped by a few days later, took a few hours, and installed it for $300.

Unfortunately, soon thereafter Mike was killed in a motorcycle accident. He was roundly missed, and not just because he was a good plumber.

I was happy with the water heater. It worked, and when I was using the woodstove exclusively to heat the house, I got more than five years from a single tank of propane, so I’d say it was efficient.

All was well until one November day in 2023 when, mid-shower, hot water became cold water. Having no choice at the time, I called the plumbers in town who took only $750 of exploration and modification to find that the culprit was a $50 switch. That took $300 more to get and install in my 18-year-old water heater.

Well, at least I wouldn’t have to do that again.

It was very cold here a couple of weeks ago. Far below zero, colder than it had been in years. I was surprisingly warm inside, though, and the hot water worked perfectly until, an hour after having used some, I had only cold water. So it didn’t seem to have frozen overnight. (The water heater was mounted to an outside wall.) I looked, and there was a slight drip from the thing, and a relay switching on and off, probably shorted by the leak.

We have gotten soft in modern times and have grown accustomed to an ability to turn a spigot and get hot water. I am as guilty of this as anyone. I quickly learned that the romantic stories of the early days of our country often fail to include that the water was cold unless heated on a fire, all year round but especially noticeable when you have to break ice to get the water in the first place. There was a reason that cattle drovers off the trail usually didn’t first stop for a drink or to purchase the services of a painted lady. They went for a bath. Those glorious old westerns did not come with accompanying odor or we would not have been inclined to endure them.

Bathing with a washcloth using water heated on the stove here for the last two weeks was adequate though not overflowing with rustic joy. For lack of a reason not to, I had let my hair get long. For years. It was now not something that lent itself to being untangled and washed in the sink with water heated on the stove. So I drove to town for a reminder that the barber always asks how you want your hair cut and, unless you are a regular, ignores your answer. I now have very short hair. But it is easy to wash and dries quickly.

I called a big plumbing outfit in town in hope of getting the water heater fixed. Someone could come by, they said, a mere four frozen days later. On that day, the fellow phoned twice for directions, the second time to tell me that my route disagreed with that of his GPS device. (I explained that after 20 years I had a better than average knowledge of how to get to my house.) He showed up, borrowed a flashlight from me, looked at the water heater, and said I needed a new one. He was here less than 10 minutes. The bill was $125. He said they would get back to me with an estimate for a replacement. The bill was quick to arrive, but the estimate never did.

I do not know if you experience this, but when there’s a disruption — power, internet, hot water — something inside spawns the fear that this is how it’s going to be forever. It is never coming back and I’m stuck with fond memories of how it used to be. (And if you rely on the plumbers from town, that ominous feeling is accurate.)

I started shopping for a replacement water heater. It was my hope that I could get one just like the one I had. It has been discontinued. As has its replacement, and the replacement for the replacement. In retrospection, I was unreasonably glued to the idea of getting a Bosch, even though the reviews from reliable sources suggest that I could have done better for less.

My idea was that I could get one that would be what amounted to a drop-in replacement. I found a company that had the current equivalent of the old one that they said was close to an easy replacement. They had a scratch-and-dent unit that only had a little dent in the cover, for less than the regular price. The deal was done. It would arrive the next day, which was last Friday.

I sent email messages to local friends and within a couple of hours got a note from my friend Robin whose brother Bob, also a friend, recommended a fellow named Travis Murrey whom he had known for years. I called and sure enough, he was the right guy. And he could come round Monday, two days ago, to install the new water heater. Washing my body with water heated on the stove no longer was something I was condemned to do forever.

Travis and his assistant showed up bright and early Monday morning and went right to work. They began by sizing up the situation and the new water heater.

The new Bosch tankless water heater, a Therm 830ES LP, is bigger than the old one. Much plumbing work would be necessary. The dentedness extended beyond the cover — this thing had been dropped. But it seemed sound, so I decided to go ahead.

They knew what they were doing. This cannot always be assumed (see: plumbers from town). They were smart and knowledgeable and honest, as craftsmen worth the name tend to be.

When Mike Gabriel installed the original water heater he wisely put in a cutoff valve on incoming cold water, in case the thing began squirting water all over the place. When 15 months ago I was advised to do a descaling of the water heater — pumping a few gallons of vinegar through it, over and over, every year or so, to get rid of lime buildup — I spent a hunk of money getting a faucet installed on the hot-water side, as well as a faucet and below it a valve on the cold-water side. The plumber (from town) installed the faucet below the emergency valve, which required him then to install a second valve, below the faucet, so I could isolate the water heater for descaling.

This didn’t matter until now, when there was an effort to keep as much of the existing plumbing as as possible. If I had remembered and therefore said that the extra, top valve didn’t need to be kept, it would saved Travis and his assistant a lot of time and me some money, and would have made the result a little less Rube-Goldberg looking.

But I didn’t, so I am now well equipped to isolate it if the few inches of pipe and the faucet were suddenly to explode. There is no imaginable circumstance under which this would happen.

When, later, I mentioned it, Travis said, “I figured you must have put it there for a reason.” (I think he was too polite to ask me, “Are you an idiot?” to which I would have had to reply, “Evidently.”)

After eight hours it was time to give it a try. There was no leak anywhere, which is always a good sign.

As is true of everything nowadays, the Bosch Therm 830ES LP has an unnecessary computer built into it, as well as a thick, confusing instruction manual. The instruction manual should say only this: “For hot water, turn on the hot water tap. When you don’t want hot water, turn off the hot water tap.” But no. This thing is all kinds of programmable. There is even an optional remote control! (I did not get one and, if one had come with it I would have smashed it. Nothing good can come from a remote-controlled water heater.)

The manual said that to turn it on initially, you should press and hold the on-off switch until a number of things happened on — of course — the (dim) LCD panel. Travis held the button. I turned on the hot water. Hot water came out. I turned off the hot water. The LED that shows the water heater is on turned off. We all scratched our heads. Did this water heater work only while the button was pressed?

“Reckon you could hold it long enough for me to go upstairs and take a shower?” They laughed, so I pretended that yes, it was a joke. Yeah, that’s it. A joke.

In due course it came to pass that if the hot water were running while he took his finger off the switch, the thing would stay on. The manual offered no help in our making this discovery.

Anyway, now I had hot water.

[This afternoon, long after this column was filed, I received the estimate: $3861.50. This was for a water heater equivalent to the one I bought, and its installation with associated parts, or about $1500 more than I paid for the one I got and its installation. I replied, somewhat curtly I confess, that I had taken my custom elsewhere and that I was not pleased with the little dab of “service” I had received for my $125. The plumbing company replied that they had been busy with fixing heating systems, and canceled my $125 bill for the brief visit. That was a nice gesture; as to the tardy estimate — it’s winter, and if they didn’t have time they should have said so rather than let me wait for eight days.]

Two skilled guys, a full day’s work, the purchase of some pipe and fittings and other necessary supplies and the trip to town to get them: $870 total. They set aside other work to respond to my somewhat urgent need and were here quickly. And Travis guarantees his work. You can figure out who I’ll call next emergency.

Nothing makes a person appreciate a shower like doing without one for close to two weeks. Nothing makes the satisfaction of a shower complete like having the air well-humidified so that the sense of having clean, dry clothes on after a shower lasts all day.

I learned to appreciate the happy effects on body and soul of a good shower and I will remember it. (Hot water is good for other things, too.)

And I relearned the value of asking around, instead of making the obvious choice from an online advertisement. My water heater history has proved that point, now twice.