As much traveling as I do, it sometimes feels as if I live in hotels. Now I actually am! I got home late Monday night from Buffalo (was working a drag race in Cayuga, Ontario, Canada), and went straight to bed. I got up yesterday morning, and when I went to take a shower, I discovered I didn't have any hot water. I went to investigate the reason why, and I really didn't like what I found. My water heater is in a crawl space under the living room (my home is a tri-level structure). The bottom seam on the water heater suffered a massive failure sometime after I left for the races last week. The resulting flood was contained to the crawl space (thank God), but the crawl space itself is a mud bog of major proportions. I have the water shut off, but will have to give that area some time to dry out before any work can be done to replace the water heater.

There's a Super 8 about three miles from château d'Orme, and that's where I was last night and will be tonight. I'm flying to Kansas City tomorrow to work this weekend in Topeka, and hopefully by the time I get back on Monday, the crawl space will have dried out enough to start fixing the problem.

I thought water heaters were a lifetime appliance. My home was built in 1984, I bought it in 1988, and figured there were a few things that I'd never have to replace. WRONG!

I'm looking at on-demand tankless water heaters as an option for a replacement unit, but not only are they considerably more expensive than the tank type, the in-going electricity requirements of most of those units are significantly higher than they are for the tank types (my current heater requires 220 with 2 30 amp breakers, and what looks good for my place would require 3 40 amp breakers), so I would have to involve an electrician in the installation process. Does anyone here have any experience with the tankless heaters? I know one would save me money on both utilities involved (electricity and water, gas is not an option), but how soon would the savings be worth the extra investment?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Bob