Happy Thursday March 19TH 2020 – the first day of Spring here in the U.S.A. Spring starts at 11:49 PM EDT / 8:49 PM PDT tonight. It’s our earliest Vernal Equinox since 1896. You can read all about why that’s the case at one of my favorite web sites – SPACE.COM.

So on to the weird headline for this blog post. This past Sunday morning I noticed something quite peculiar with the water coming out of my shower with the dial set at its usual position. The water was scalding hot !  I simply turned the dial clockwise a bit to allow more cold weather to breakdown the hot weather, and then I didn’t think much of it after that. Later in the day I turned on my kitchen faucet, and the water was scalding hot with the handle set at its usual position. The same was true for both of my bathroom faucets. It was then when I figured it all out.

My longtime hot water heater was dying. It’s common knowledge (apparently) that some hot water heaters gradually lose their effectiveness to produce hot water over an extended period of time. And then there are others that suddenly start to malfunction by near-boiling the water inside the tank just before they completely die. Mine was obviously the latter type. It was going on one final super binge before eventually burning out.

The next morning (Monday) – after a mostly sleepless night and actually dreaming vividly about my dying hot water heater – I took one final quick shower with great care. After that I called my favorite local plumbing company to schedule a service call to remove and replace my old hot water heater – which incidentally was manufactured in 1993 !  It was 27 years old !

A standard 40-gallon electric hot water heater isn’t supposed to last that long. You’re lucky if you get 10 to 15 years out of one. Mine somehow lasted twice that long. It was the hot water heater that was already in-place when I moved in to my current home back in 1995. I estimate that it provided me at least 8,500 hot showers over the past 25 years.

So it’s out with the old – and in with the new.

My favorite local plumbing company came through for me in my time of need, and they were in and out in almost exactly 2 hours. Normal hot water began flowing again within an hour after that. No more worries for awhile in the hot water department of my home.

My weekend of blogging is just getting started. I’ll be back tomorrow (Friday) with an all-new RETRO from March 2000.

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