# My hot water heater just burned up **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [June 4, 2008, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-hot-water-heater-just-burned-up/451750 "2008-06-04T13:33:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2008, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-hot-water-heater-just-burned-up/451750/1 "2008-06-04T13:33:07Z")
I don’t think they’ve done any maintenance or replaced any appliances in this complex since it was built some 25 years ago. In only two months since I moved in, I’ve had to have replaced the clothes dryer, dishwasher, and stove. Now the electrical system in the hot water heater has caught fire. Fortunately, two minutes _before_ I left for work instead of two minutes _after_. It’s finished burning, so there’s no danger of a fire spreading, but I’m going nowhere until it’s out of here. I don’t know why landlords don’t realize that stuff wears out, and needs to be replaced once in a while. This is not a cheap apartment, and I would have expected it to be better maintained. I can’t believe the last tenant didn’t complain about all the appliances not working properly. They looked OK, if old, but didn’t work for shit. And oh yeah: label the fucking circuit breakers!!! ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2008, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-hot-water-heater-just-burned-up/451750/2 "2008-06-04T13:51:03Z")
What do you need to heat hot water for? ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2008, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-hot-water-heater-just-burned-up/451750/3 "2008-06-04T13:52:51Z")
[QUOTE=Q.E.D.] What do you need to heat hot water for? [/QUOTE] To make it scalding, of course. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2008, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-hot-water-heater-just-burned-up/451750/4 "2008-06-04T14:25:52Z")
Landlords creed…spend as little as possible. It increases profits. Perhaps it has long term consequences ,but landlords are capitalists. Short term profits are easy to see. Future problems, ignore them ,they may not happen. ---
**Author:** ![BubbaDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bubbadog/32/333_2.png) [@BubbaDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BubbaDog)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2008, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-hot-water-heater-just-burned-up/451750/5 "2008-06-04T14:41:21Z")
In defense of your landlord, I’ve never replaced a water heater that wasn’t broke first. If your heater worked up to the moment it malfunctioned, I can’t see why the landlord would even consider replacing it. ---
**Author:** ![emmaliminal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7bcc69/32.png) [@emmaliminal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emmaliminal)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2008, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-hot-water-heater-just-burned-up/451750/6 "2008-06-04T14:47:15Z")
[QUOTE=BubbaDog] In defense of your landlord, I’ve never replaced a water heater that wasn’t broke first. If your heater worked up to the moment it malfunctioned, I can’t see why the landlord would even consider replacing it. [/QUOTE] I don’t think of “catching fire” as being symptomatic of ordinary wear and tear on a water heater, though. Something had to have been wrong, as in stupid-wrong, as in wired incorrectly or allowed to leak, or something. At the very least the landlord should be getting things like this inspected more often. It’s not exactly cost-effective to allow conditions resulting in the cremation of your rental property. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2008, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-hot-water-heater-just-burned-up/451750/7 "2008-06-04T16:27:12Z")
[QUOTE=emilyforce] I don’t think of “catching fire” as being symptomatic of ordinary wear and tear on a water heater, though. [/QUOTE] Electrical faults like that can, and often do, occur suddenly and with no warning. Oftentimes the potential for such a fault is evident upon inspection, sometimes it is not. ---
**Author:** ![bannerrefugee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c68b51/32.png) [@bannerrefugee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bannerrefugee)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2008, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-hot-water-heater-just-burned-up/451750/8 "2008-06-04T16:38:48Z")
My hot water heater broke about 2 months ago. I believe the replacement came to about 1200$. Since purchasing our house we have replaced the dishwasher, the kitchen sink, a toilet, repaired a gas leak, and the garage door. At least the place was cheap. My grandmother owned numerous rental properties, all of which she got rid of after Hurricane Hugo. She bitched and moaned about any kind of repairs. I think being cheap about maintaining your property is universal among landlords. I have only had one which I liked and even she was cheap with stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2008, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-hot-water-heater-just-burned-up/451750/9 "2008-06-04T19:14:19Z")
Looks like **Q.E.D.** nailed it. It was a failure of a relay, and that’s all they replaced. 'Course, when I got home, a drainpipe is leaking and the heater is sitting in a pool of water, but that’s a different story. ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2008, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-hot-water-heater-just-burned-up/451750/10 "2008-06-04T19:32:07Z")
[QUOTE=Frank] Looks like **Q.E.D.** nailed it. It was a failure of a relay, and that’s all they replaced. 'Course, when I got home, a drainpipe is leaking and the heater is sitting in a pool of water, but that’s a different story. [/QUOTE] It’s a 25 year old water heater and they repaired it? Man, that’s penny wise and pound foolish! ---
**Author:** ![BubbaDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bubbadog/32/333_2.png) [@BubbaDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BubbaDog)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2008, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-hot-water-heater-just-burned-up/451750/11 "2008-06-04T19:42:47Z")
Never had a relay catch fire but I had to fix my elderly aunt’s heater after the relay stuck “on” and caused the water to boil in the tank. She had turned on the hot water in the sink and the pressure shot scalding water everywhere. She was luckily wearing a thick sweater which saved her arms and chest from severe scalding. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2008, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-hot-water-heater-just-burned-up/451750/12 "2008-06-04T21:52:12Z")
A coworker of mine had his water heater literally explode. As in, shrapnel everywhere, that kind of explosion. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Cid\_Viscoso](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/41988e/32.png) [@El\_Cid\_Viscoso](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Cid_Viscoso)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2008, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-hot-water-heater-just-burned-up/451750/13 "2008-06-04T21:52:38Z")
Quit takin so many dang bubblebaths. ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Tiger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@Mama\_Tiger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Tiger)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2008, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-hot-water-heater-just-burned-up/451750/14 "2008-06-05T01:18:11Z")
Just by contrast, our landlord not only will do any repair we need, promptly, but the latest – when our AC went out over a very hot, sticky weekend – even though he’s currently in Iraq and, frankly, worrying about _us_ being hot is kind of ridiculous under the circumstances, he conveyed through his roommate that if we couldn’t get it fixed promptly, he’d put us up in a hotel till it was! There really are good landlords out there. They’re just hard to find. ---
**Author:** ![Greta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a698b9/32.png) [@Greta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greta)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2008, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-hot-water-heater-just-burned-up/451750/15 "2008-06-05T05:48:57Z")
Quick question. Ours has some black lines going down the side of it and theres a line of darkness going down to the drain in the cellar. I called our old plumber (now apparently out of business) and he said if it wasn’t leaking water it was fine. We cannot afford to ever fix it, so just querying. ---
**Author:** ![Plynck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Plynck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Plynck)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2008, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-hot-water-heater-just-burned-up/451750/16 "2008-06-05T14:22:03Z")
My landlord was just the opposite. When I lived in Somerville, we rented an apartment in a three-family that had a refrigerator that our landlord (then in his forties) had had in his apartment when he was a boy. The thing was like a grungy white 2001 monolith. Whenever he came to visit, he’d look over at the fridge and tell us he wanted to get rid of it and get us a new one. We wanted no part of that; we loved the old one. It was huge and it was the first bottom freezer that we had seen (and that now I can’t live without). There was a crack in the freezer liner, so defrosting involved surrounding the base of the fridge with towels. After a few drinks at the kitchen table, he’d stare at the fridge and tell us that when we moved out he was going to put a bullet through it. We were there almost ten years and it was still going when we left. Perhaps it isn’t landlords being cheap, but rather planned obsolescence in consumer goods. ---
**Author:** ![adhemar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@adhemar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhemar)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2008, 9:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-hot-water-heater-just-burned-up/451750/17 "2008-06-06T09:11:55Z")
Yeah, my landlord (when I had one) complained to me because of the cost of repairing several things that went wrong all at once. Wiring to a light switch caught on fire, the furnace when it lit went WHOMP!, and the new hot water heater had something installed upside down so the hot water started smelling funny. None of this was my fault and I often paid for small repairs on my own. Or did without because it wasn’t critical ie several of the windows wouldn’t raise or if they did you couldn’t get them down, the attic fan motor burned up and wasn’t replaced. [QUOTE=Frank] I don’t think they’ve done any maintenance or replaced any appliances in this complex since it was built some 25 years ago. In only two months since I moved in, I’ve had to have replaced the clothes dryer, dishwasher, and stove. Now the electrical system in the hot water heater has caught fire. Fortunately, two minutes _before_ I left for work instead of two minutes _after_. It’s finished burning, so there’s no danger of a fire spreading, but I’m going nowhere until it’s out of here. I don’t know why landlords don’t realize that stuff wears out, and needs to be replaced once in a while. This is not a cheap apartment, and I would have expected it to be better maintained. I can’t believe the last tenant didn’t complain about all the appliances not working properly. They looked OK, if old, but didn’t work for shit. And oh yeah: label the fucking circuit breakers!!! [/QUOTE]