Month: January 2023

January 31, 2023 – When the Hot Water Doesn’t Flow

January 31, 2023 /

OK, so I underestimated the hassle factor on this. I thought I was going to get off cheap and easy with $30 in parts and an hour of time. First problem, I couldn’t find the breaker. After a bunch of running up and down the stairs, I found out that my breaker panel is actually mislabeled on which breaker actually runs to the water heater.

I figured it was probably a 30 amp breaker, because it was 10 gauge wire coming in to the water heater. The panel was labelled a 20 amp breaker. Now, some years ago, we had some arcing in the panel and we paid an electrician who removed the top level breakers and shoved everything down in the panel. At that time, almost nothing was labeled so I never bothered.

I only label breakers as I find them. Worse case scenario, I can turn everything off with the main on the panel. But, as much a I have dinked around the house, I have never had opportunity to look at every circuit.

After testing to verify the power was finally off, it was time to drain the tank. Hook the hose up and run it to the sump. Open the valve and nothing. Come to find out that the drain valve on the tank is plugged up with mineral build up. So, now I have new problems. How to get the water out of the tank without burning myself or dumping 50 gallons of water all over the floor.

By the time I figured out how to approach this problem, I ran out of time to do what I needed to do. Plus, I needed time to obtain the parts so I spent another $30 on brass tube fittings to build something that could blow air back into the system and clear the drain. That took a couple of hours, but it worked. Finally, after three different attempts, I was able to drain the water heater.

In 2020, when I spent my entire summer remodeling the apartment, I did some water heater work there. I have known since we moved into the house in 2005 that there were a few low risk items that needed to be addressed. One of which was no catchment pan under the water heater. So I bought one. How ever, I wasn’t able to drain the water then either. So, I left it for another time. This was going to be the time.

First, I wanted to get the elements out so I could see how bad the inside of the tank was. Feeling good that I conquered the draining, soon changed to I didn’t have a socket to remove the element. It required a 1 1/2″ socket. So, another trip to the store. I also needed PVC for the drain line, although that was really optional for the initial job. Another $30 for those parts.

I removed the top element an there wasn’t much to see. These tanks are glass lined, so they are pretty impervious on the inside. But when it came to the bottom element, it was heavily corroded and my new $6 element socket quickly met it’s match. It tried penetrating oil, heat and hammering none of them worked. I needed to find a real socket, not the stamped sheet metal one for the most leverage possible.

These are tractor sized dimensions, to the tractor store for tools. Now, add another $40. I also didn’t check my PVC glue before the last trip which was also dried out. I had to get that too. But, finally, I got the bottom element out. All in all, it looked better than I was expecting. That being said, there was definitely some buildup on the elements.

Once drained, I wanted to flush the tank. Ideally, to do that I would get the pan underneath the tank so I could flush without sending water all over the floor. Fortunately, my son is strong enough that he can bear hug the tank while I slid the pan underneath it. I was able to complete the PVC work but ran out of time to actually flush the tank.

End Your Programming Routine: It is nice to have hot water again. I guess the degradation is so slow that you don’t realize what it used to be like. Hot water is continuous throughout my shower and the dishes again. After doing this job, I am convinced that this is a one hour job with the right knowledge and tools. That being said, I overpaid with time and materials. I don’t regret doing it myself because now I know but it wasn’t as cheap or as easy as had planned.

January 30, 2023 – Idaho Murders, What Do We Know Now?

January 30, 2023 /

As this ordeal is not over, this information may become dated. I suppose what prompted me to do this podcast was how impressed I was over the police work and investigation on this crime. I am still fascinated by the unknown motive and how this will all play out. As we know with OJ Simpson, a circumstantial case is not a slam dunk. But, I don’t think this suspect will have a cadre of celebrity lawyers either.

End Your Programming Routine: Every once an a while I want to do something different on something that really interests me that is not totally in-line with what I normally do. This is one of those things. At the very least, it should be an education into what tactics the police state potentially has at their disposal. Yeah, you know that cell phone that tracks your every movement and is accessible with a warrant. I doubt that this crime would have been solved 15 years ago. It was made possible by all of the privacy that we have voluntarily surrendered. But, at least in this case it was for a positive reason.

January 27, 2023 – Atlas Shrugged 3:10

January 27, 2023 /

And here we are my friends, the end. It has been seven long months of mostly Fridays analyzing this very long book. I should say, I am going to have one more and that will be my total book summary next week. I will stop looking at each chapter and themes but consider the book as a whole.

I don’t want to completely ruin the ending so I am not going to talk about what exactly happened, even in summary. But, what I will say is that the ending didn’t fully fit into the flow of the rest of the book (to me). That is all I am going to say about that.

The thing that I am going to talk about today is the symbolism of the Taggert Transcontinental bridge across the Mississippi. This bridge has been mentioned in many chapters throughout the book. I want to talk about what it means and what it doesn’t.

As the story goes, the bridge was built in 1885. It was originally forbidden by the barge companies running up and down the Mississippi river. Nathaniel Taggert was even sued and lost in his ability to build it. It wasn’t until the Supreme Court ruled on the matter that he eventually won the ability to build the bridge. And so he did “with his bare hands’ as the story goes.

Apparently, there are very few crossings of the Mississippi river and this bridge is one of them. Throughout the book as things progressively got worse, there was always hope because the bridge still stood and was functional. Most of the track problems seemed to happen in the mountain west or southwest. The fact that the bridge was still available allowed the possibility of transcontinental service by rerouting around the problem areas.

It is said that Rand developed a psychological discipline called Objectivism. In a nutshell, it is the use of reason and logic as a basis for belief. I suppose that this is different than the Freudian school which are the three personalities or the Frankl school of experiential development. From a logical basis, I can understand that bridge functioning = potential hope. But I really see the error in that line of thinking is really too simple of an analysis.

Just think using a simple example. I am still alive so therefore I have a chance at becoming an millionaire. What I didn’t say is that I haver terminal cancer and that I am on life support. Yes, there is a chance that someone could hand me a lottery ticket and I could become an instant millionaire in the next drawing. It is possible. What isn’t said is the probability is almost zero. Even if that did happen, so what. I wouldn’t live long enough to cash it in. I wouldn’t live long enough to spend it or possibly write it into my will to give it away.

I don’t have a problem with Objectivism per se. It seems like a perfectly fine way to run as railroad as they say. But, it does seem to be a fatal character flaw with Dabny and it is certainly no proof that this is a valid discipline; the very idea that Ojectivism is based. Now, I don’t want to get all philosophical, this is an area that I have little education or training. But, I believe that logic only exists on facts and facts only exist on what is, not what could be.

So as in life, decisions have to be made. Facts forecast probable outcomes and those are the basis of decision, not facts themselves. Each decision is a gamble based on probability, risk and potential reward. Logic by it’s nature cannot be involved with uncertainty. That would mean that A may not result in A and because A might eventually equal B or A might equal C.

Just like I could win the lottery on my deathbed, so could a catastrophic event happen in business or government. Near certainty is not certain, it is almost likely. This is where the saying ‘barring uncertain circumstances’ comes from. On one hand, I admire the never give up mindset. But, I will say this is the attitude of running an empire, not creating one. Because I believe that you have to quit things that don’t work or won’t work.

End Your Programming Routine: As we wrap up our time here with this book, I have to say it has been an amazing journey for me. My eyes were already open, but it is so strange to read events of fiction written over seventy years ago coming alive in real or near real time. I think if you asked people fifty years ago, this was a playbook of what not to do. Now, it seems like a playbook of what is happening. That is sad. What you do about it is be informed on the issues, but live your life for yourself and not others, just like John Galt.

January 26, 2023 – Make Your Gas Cans Not Suck

January 26, 2023 /

Cleaning out my in-laws property two years ago, they had a generator that they upgraded. Consequently, I ended up with it. Unlike in Atlas Shrugged you cant make electricity from the static electricity in the air, you need fuel. So like all good preppers, I started buying gas cans when they were on sale and I was waiting for the winter price drop to fill them.

Before I did, I wanted to make some modifications for better use. It is a sad testimonial when you have to spend another $5 on a $20 gas can just so that it will work properly. The cans sold since 2012 are all but unusable due to modifications made to prevent vapors from evaporating by lazy users. Now, instead of letting vapor escape, you just spill copious amounts of fuel all over the ground since the cans are so difficult to operate.

P.S. My personal favorite is the sticker that is put on the can that says “Children under three should not be permitted to use this product”. I mean, can you imagine a four year old and a gas can? What if it was a non-smoking three year old? I am not even sure what they were actually insinuating.

Of course the cheapest modification you could do is drill a hole in the back of the gas can and cover the hole with tape (or even a cork). I warn you that just drilling the hole and not replacing the spout with a simple tube type, in a full can the gas will spill out the hole while you are trying to force the valve open to pour.

The modifications are easy to do. Once you do one, the rest are much quicker. One thing that I learned after I filmed the video is that if you drop the catchment filter inside the can, it is very difficult to remove. One other tip, if your can previously held gas, give it some time to evaporate or you will be dribbling gas all over the place and potentially on you trying to do this process.

End Your Programming Routine: I get it. The regulation to require gas can changes was an attempt to reduce greenhouse emissions. No matter where you stand on the issue, it is always laudable to try and do better. I don’t like evaporating gas either. But, this has to be one of the most in-effective changes ever made. I cant express how ridiculous it is to dump gas all over the ground because we are going to prevent it evaporating in the can.

January 25, 2023 – My New Sewing Machine

January 25, 2023 /

Maybe my time reading Self-Reliance magazine is starting to rub off on me as I have been thinking about getting a sewing machine. I was thinking that if I ran across one at Goodwill for $20 or so, I would get it. After sewing my kids Boy Scout patches on by hand for years, I am kind of tired of doing it.

My mom sews, so this is nothing new to me. Growing up, there was always a fully outfitted sewing room. Mostly, I asked mom to do this because she was much better than me, but I could do it in a pinch. In fact, as part of the sixth grade survey we had 18 weeks of Home Economics where we all sewed a basic drawstring bag. What I am trying to say is that it is not that far off that I could sew something.

Recently, we cleaned out my in-laws storage unit. It was either donate, trash or keep. I think that we ended up keeping too much and throwing out too much but it was what it was. I ran across this sewing machine and decided that this was going to be mine (if none of the heirs wanted it, which they didn’t). This means that I really need to my sofa table done so that I can put this sewing machine where my stereo is currently.

Now, I am not planning on doing anything really major but it sure is handy to have around when you have three or four patches to sew on. The truth is, my boys are of the age that I am ‘letting’ them do it. If they ask for help, then I will but I am no longer just taking initiative to sew on their patches. This is something that is really their responsibility with uniform compliance. I used to feel some degree of judgement but not anymore, they are plenty capable.

When I was in grade school, my mom would sew us one shirt. We got to pick the material and it was the shirt that we would wear for school pictures. Generally speaking, that shirt first went to the county fair before school started. So, we had to wait and visit it before we got to use it.

Going to the fabric store was really painful as a child. It seemed like we were there forever and there was definitely nothing a child was interested in, except maybe the scissors isle. There was one year, I picked a fabric for my shirt that had a silver thread running through it. I think my brother picked a fabric that had a gold thread running though it. We thought it was pretty cool.

I think that my last year, I was in fourth grade. My mom made a shirt where the Millennium Falcon was embroidered on the back. This would have been right before Return of the Jedi came out. It was the peak of Star Wars mania (for me at least). Unfortunately, it took too long to complete and so the shirt went to my brother because it didn’t fit me when it was completed. It did win a blue ribbon at the county fair.

There have been some times that I have been tempted to try and build a backpack or bag. For instance, I cant find an exact range bag with the features that I want. With both of my boys shooting trap, I just don’t have enough space for everything that we need on a weekly basis in my range bag. Wouldn’t be cool if I could just sew one up? This is probably way too ambitious but it is actually possible. This is how many technical gear companies have started, see a need and fill a need.

End Your Programming Routine: As a alluded to in the first sentence, Self-Reliance magazine has three or so projects that are pretty simple, like sewing a reusable bag out of feed sacks. You know, like the kind you can buy at the grocery store. This is not really about making dresses but a tool that can really be useful. Throughout my adult life there have been many times I threw something away because it was too difficult to mend or repair appropriately. This is a step at correcting that

January 24, 2023 – Is Bigger, Better?

January 24, 2023 /

There is a old saying that goes like this “If the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem is treated like a nail”. Today I am talking about knives and for a very good reason. I have been watching the developments of this murder investigation of four Idaho college students very closely.

In the morning of November 13, 2022 it was reported that four college students were murdered in there house. My first thought was gang or drugs but it turned out to be something much more sinister than that. On the surface, three coeds and a boyfriend were stabbed to death. Two remaining roommates were home and did not hear a thing. I think I will do a podcast so I am going to skip the further details on all of this for some other time.

The suspected murder weapon is a Ka-bar knife. I say suspected because the weapon has not yet been found. But evidence at the scene suggests that it was a Ka-bar knife. The Ka-bar is known as the military knife as versions are issued to the Army, Marines and Navy and have been used since World War II.

Knives are tools and going back to my first sentence, it is one of the few tools issued to soldiers in the field. Consequently, the soldier’s knife is subject to all kinds of abuse like digging in the ground and opening cans. While I have no doubt that it has been used in combat, 99% of the things it has been used for are much more mundane.

I have a knife in my office that I primarily use for things like cutting cheese, sausage apples and the like. I took it out of my vehicle kit where I originally purchased it for things like bushcrafting. That would be things like building temporary shelter or batoning wood (to make kindling) as well as digging and opening cans. So, I would say it is pretty inappropriate for the tasks that I currently use it for.

My knife is a Buck 119. I was looking at it the other morning and the thought occurred to me that it looks a lot like a Ka-bar. So, I did an internet search for comparisons between the Buck 119 and Ka-bar knives. What I got was some good information while a lot of it fell into the ‘Mall Ninja’ category. “The Ka-bar is a fighting knife, the Buck is a hunting knife.” That is the statement that struck me as a pure point of ignorance.

The eight inch kitchen knife is the standard for chefs and cooks alike. It is good for it’s chopping and dicing capabilities, but not for all things, particularly delicate work such as peeling. Now, I use my chef’s knife for most things including tasks that would be better suited to the smaller pairing knife because I don’t want to dirty another utensil or it is already dirty or I just think I can do it.

Getting back to my point here, people that say the Buck 119 is a hunting knife have never used a knife in their lives. A hunting knife is primarily used to eviscerate and skin an animal. Just like any job, having different tools can lead to an advantage for the efficacy of the task. But, sticking your hand into the body cavity of an animal to cut the esophagus and therefore remove all of the innards is not a job for a six inch blade, way too large.

I think the optimum blade length for a ‘hunting knife’ is about three inches long. It is too large for some tasks (inside the body cavity) and too small for others (like breaking meat into primal cuts). It performs perfectly for most of the field butchering activities. Here is a place that I definitely agree with Steven Rinella on the best qualities of a hunting knife.

I fortunately can’t speak to the best qualities of a fighting knife. I think that if it comes to testing that aspect, it is a bad, bad day. But, generally speaking it is my opinion that knives with long blades are only useful in the kitchen and wildcrafting. There are too many variables in combat to makes the data only anecdotal. Just like people have been killed after being shot with a BB gun, so have people been killed with a pocket knife.

End Your Programming Routine: In my wild, circuitous route to get here I guess that my point is that internet information can be wildly misleading. There is no doubt that the Buck is marketed as a hunting knife. This particular knife is carried at many stores in the sporting goods section that only sanction hunting not tactical (or fighting). Bushcraft is a very niche and expensive category of knives usually reserved to boutique makers. As with all tools, having the right one for the purpose is always better but having the knowledge of what the right tool would be is better yet.

January 23, 2023 – Coping With the Winter Blues

January 23, 2023 /

As a person growing up in the pacific northwest, I thought that I was immune to the winter blues. Apparently, if it gets bad enough then it has a technical name called Seasonal Affective Disorder. I don’t feel as though I am mentally effected but I definitely feel sluggish. sometimes.

My solution is to power through by setting goals and achievable milestones. That keeps that ball moving with ‘wins’ so that I can keep those blues away. Today I am talking about strategies and things to consider.

End Your Programming Routine: The silver lining here is that we are on the upswing, it is already late January and Spring is right around the corner. Or at least it getting ready for spring is around the corner. So, we just have to keep vigilant of the potential problems that arise.

January 20, 2023 – Atlas Shrugged 3:9

January 20, 2023 /

This is the second to last chapter and we are heading to the big bang. Last chapter we had Galt’s refusal to cooperate, so where does that leave us? Well in true government fashion, we need to double down on failed efforts. Because more of the same will eventually work, right?

I keep saying that things are not going well but truly they are failing at this point. I think that our own experiences have proven that failing is often hard to recognize when you are in the middle of the collapse. You need a point of reference in order to establish how much change has actually occurred.

I am going to skip the chapter synopsis but to say that Dr Stadler and Cuffy Meigs blow themselves up at Project X trying to take over a portion of the country. Numerous high level government officials quit because of hopelessness and others just go straight strongman.

I want to go back to the idea of collapse. I have heard it describe as slow collapse because it doesn’t happen overnight. I suppose that there are those immediate changes like in the case of a coup. But, I actually think that this is normal. If we think about near history collapses like the Soviet Union it was fairly quick as over the course of a couple months. It probably seems fast because we condense history but I am pretty sure that three months of hell doesn’t seem fast at the time, especially if you are in it.

The course of Atlas Shrugged seems to run over multiple years. If there were concrete date references, I missed them. But I do distinctly recall descriptions of different seasons and we went through multiple winters and falls in the book. My point with this is that this would be termed a slow collapse.

There are so many things that we are born into that we never knew any different. Recently, I have heard many comparisons to the speculation of 2023 and 2008. For those that don’t study or remember history, 2008 was when the US government had a policy of “Too Big to Fail”. Different pundits are predicting that 2023 is going to be worse than 2008. Let’s take a look.

Yesterday, I was reading a headline “223,000 non-farming jobs added in December 2022”. The subtext of the headline was that this number blew expectations out of the water. And the implications from that is that things are so much better than expected and you should feel good about this too. I say this in context that also released in the Twitter files the FBI paid Twitter $3.5million for the ability to influence who and what was allowed to be posted on twitter.

Now I ask you, even if the numbers are truly accurate can we even trust any source at this point? Even if we believe that to be true, how many jobs were lost. I saw a lot of sizable numbers between Meta, ABC, Twitter and Amazon. You see, when you add 200 but lose 500 there is a lot to be desired. The headlines I was reading to support this writing was saying the ‘hot economy is starting to cool’. I am thinking to myself ‘what hot economy’? It’s hard to say that seven interest rate increases and 50% inflation equals a hot economy,

Anyway, I am probably going to get out of my lane if I keep going because I am not going to provide proper source citing for this. My point here is that we are in collapse and we have people telling us how lucky we are going to get. At the risk of mixing politics and economics, I ask are we more free today than we were in 1980 or less? Since there is no evidence that anyone can provide that we are more free, we have failed liberty. And that is a collapse in my book.

End Your Programming Routine: This topic could warrant an entire series. I also think that there is very little that be done about all of this, especially as an individual. I suppose the good news is that it is not a violent collapse. Smart money recognizes the situation and takes advantage of it. Don’t be afraid to study the rules and find the loopholes, there is still profits to be made in my lifetime. And that is all we need to be successful and by proxy happy.

January 19, 2023 – Humor, a Deep Cut

January 19, 2023 /

Today is one of those days I am just writing and we will see where we end. If you are like me, then you probably remember the campy 1980s movies with titles like Caddyshack, Airplane, Police Academy, Vacation and the list goes on. Given my age, this was a very impressionable time in my life (5-15). I don’t know what the specific trigger was, but I have been very influenced by comedy.

It wasn’t just movies but also TV and print. We weren’t generally not allowed to stay up and watch Saturday Night Live or the late shows but for when we might be over at a friend’s house. I remember checking out Garfield compilations in grade school at the library. A daily read was the comic section in the newspaper.

It was a great day when I could get my hands on a Mad magazine. My mom was really kind of against them because they were crass but we had a handful of them anyway, usually purchased at the used book store. Funny story, one of them had a parody lyrics of Bruce Springsteen’s song called ‘Porn in the USA’. My brother and I would yell it out at the top of our lungs when we heard the actual song. It was only about ten years ago when I was thinking about that moment that I actually realized what I was saying. I am kind of shocked that my mom never said anything when we were doing it.

Later as I went into my middle school years, my interest in humor got more dark following the Mad magazine vein. I started to make sure that daily newspaper reading got political cartoons as well. In fact, the used book store we occasionally frequented had a free monthly that compiled political cartoons throughout the country that I liked to read. I started skipping all the strips that never made me laugh. But there were a handful that I liked such as BC, Calvin and Hobbes and and especially The Far Side.

This is actually what triggered me to write about humor. I was a huge fan of The Far Side. I still have the Best Of’s volume 1-3. Unfortunately for me, Larson decided that he had reached his pinnacle in 1994 and it was over. Incidentally, 1995 was also the last year of Calvin and Hobbes syndication so it was kind of a difficult time in my humor journey. That’s OK because I was in college, so TV took over.

We had very strict TV limits when we were kids. It was a handful of approved shows until we got into middle school. That means that we watched the most popular shows but that was it. I remember some of my parents friends persuaded them to allow us to watch The Cosby Show. What stuck out for me was actually a show called Night Court. Sure, Cosby was cutesy but Night Court made me laugh. I found myself re-watching episodes when I was not working in 2019. I wrote about this show in 2020. Ironically, there is a reboot of Night Court coming to NBC very soon.

There were three other sitcoms that I consider brilliant. That was Seinfeld, That 70’s Show and The Office (the Steve Carrell years although I have given the later years a chance recently and found them better than I remember). There were other shows that I found entertaining but never planned my evening around like The Simpsons (and all of their spin-offs), Southpark and the ‘adult cartoons’.

I would say that we are in the post TV era at this point. I don’t really watch TV anymore and my wife watches them via streaming platforms. My kids don’t watch TV at all. I am talking like the over the air, nightly line-up like we did growing up. But there was a couple of years that I had an XM Serious subscription. Most of the time, the station was tuned to Raw Dog Comedy.

I would say that my early 30s were the genre of stand up comedy. Raw Dog is the unfiltered station and pretty much anything goes. You know that I love Norm MacDonald and of course, I loved the big acts. But I found some others that really clicked with me like Todd Berry and David Cross. It takes me back to those days of listening to Eddy Murphy on cassette. That was some good stuff.

From the mid thirties onward, it was podcasts over everything else. I do like the ones that make me laugh as much as the serious ones, like Adam Carolla shows. I would say today, I spend my time primarily serious entertainment like reading books. But, my wife bought me this Far Side Calendar for Christmas. So, I have a daily dose of an old friend when I turn on the lights in the middle of the night. It brings me back to a simpler time.

End Your Programming Routine: I guess where we ended up was me rambling about all the content that I liked. I suppose this a window into my soul. I believe that humor is important in health and happiness, not just for entertainment. I have just been letting Todd Berry autoplay while I write this, I am having a hard time finishing because I am laughing so hard. I am going to sign off so I can keep listening.

January 18, 2023 – How Hot is Hot Enough?

January 18, 2023 /

Recently, I noticed a problem. It seemed like the first five minutes of the shower was hot and then it went lukewarm. I didn’t think that I was imagining things so I started to ask some questions. Did my wife take a shower before me? Are the kids here? And the answer was no. Hmm, seems like we might have a problem with the hot water heater.

I looked at the date on the water heater, it was dated 1994. So, that is 29 years old folks. The common stated lifecycle is 10-15 years. That means that when we bought the house, we were at the end of the expected duration. But, that is crazy, as long as the tank is not leaking (meaning rusted throughout), then there should be some serviceable parts and some way to check it.

Electric water heaters have two elements at top and a bottom. I surmised that there was a problem with the bottom element because there was some hot water. A quick aside on how water heaters work. Because of the temperature gradient, hot water is on top and cooler water is on the bottom. As you draw from the tank, hot water comes off the top while cooler water is added to the bottom. This actually pushes the hot water out. Time to test things out.

First, take the covers off of the tank. This exposes the elements and thermostats (one per element). Then, with a multi-meter set to resistance (that is the ohm’s symbol omega, sorry I cant add special characters) put the lead on each wire terminal and measure. The expected result depends on your particular element but I was expecting around12 and 13 ohms. From the picture, you can see that the top element measured 13.4 and the bottom measured 0.7 ohms.

If you remember you basic physics and circuits, 1 ohm is a broken circuit. What is likely happened that the element is all gunked up with mineral build-up. But, the element could be burned out and the circuit is completed with the mineral build up, at least that is my speculation.

Had I gotten two good resistance measurements of the top and bottom elements, I might have turned my attention to the thermostat. In theory, those could be tested too, but it is more complicated and I didn’t do it so I am not going to talk any further about it. I am going to attempt to replace the elements.

I say attempt because I hope that I can get the bottom element out. There is a lot of corrosion around the element and who knows what the inside is looking like. I will probably look at the top element and will make a decision as I get there. The replacement I ordered comes with two elements and is billed as a ‘tune-up’.

End Your Programming Routine: If you are interested, stay tuned to follow up on this project. What I am trying to get across today is that things like this are not out of reach of the average homeowner. A little knowledge of how a hot water heater works and what is possible can lead to saving a lot of money. I don’t know this for a fact, but my guess is that a plumber would replace the whole thing because after all, it is three times older than it’s expected life.