We had a heater repairman come out this morning because our water heater has slowly been getting colder and colder. When we bought the house almost a year ago, the water from the tap was warm enough t make a cup of instant cappuccino. We could easily shower for 30 minutes and not have to turn the faucet to a warmer setting…now we’re lucky to have showers that last 10 minutes with lukewarm water. Not really all that pleasant.
We thought it might be the temperature regulator and hoped it would be something simple and cheap….and it turns out that there was just air in the kettle which prevented any water from entering into the system to be heated. It works on a similar principle to radiators that need to be drained of air periodically.
On the top of our heater is actually a little valve which can be twisted to open and close it. Normally the valve can stay open and it automatically closes itself off when all the air is out of the system. But I guess since our heater is older, the valve no longer shuts itself off and a drop of water continue to seep from the system. So this essentially means that when we start to notice any drop in the temperature of our water, it is probably a build up of air in the system. Color us happy! We are going to have several friends staying with us over the weekend because of our housewarming party so having hot water to bathe is not an option but a definite requirement.
The bill will be coming in the mail…guess it will be interesting to see how much this ends up costing but I would imagine it can’t really be too much. The guy didn’t need any tools and spent a half-hour here max…which is thankfully all he documented for the bill. But he did make sure to actually show me where the problem was and seemed to genuinely want us to be able to fix this problem ourselves next time around – which we certainly should be able to do since it’s so simple. He also showed me how to properly fill the water into the system which is never bad to know although I did help Stefan do it once before…but heating systems here are just so massive with so many components I’m always thinking I’ll end up breaking something! At this is one process I won’t have to worry so much about now 🙂
