Last weekend we were doing laundry when something smelled like burning plastic. We assumed it was the belt on our old, got-it-for-free washing machine, so we didn’t take much notice. But the smell persisted, and soon we had no hot water. We killed the power to the water heater and called the landlord, who came the next morning to discover that a water leak had caused a short and a small insulation fire inside. He removed the offending melted plastic, rewired the circuit, and left. After that we had hot water for the first minute after which it was merely warm. And it still leaked. So today the landlord returned and, in an uncharacteristic move, installed a new hot water heater. When I got home Ebba had just returned from picking up our new rooster and complained that we had no hot water, as in no water coming out. As it turns out, the landlord neglected to fill the tank before turning the power on. I filled the tank, but the heater drew no power and heated no water. So after considering calling the landlord again, I shut off the power, drained the tank, and pulled both heating elements. The bottom one was shiny and new, but the top one was corroded and cracked, a victim of being heated in an empty tank. After a trip to Home Depot and a $10, hopefully reimbursable purchase of an element, we now have hot water again.
Ebba had quite an adventure with our new rooster, who was not particularly excited about being uprooted and quickly set off across the neighbors’ land. With some help from the neighbors, she finally got him corralled and into the coop, where he is now getting along quite well with our hens. He is an Ameraucana, so now we can hatch our own purebred blue-egg-layers if we ever want to.
