water heater

The landlord, Scotty, called us back and offered to send somebody out tonight (he's on the night shift this week and couldn't come himself). I demurred, since I'd rather fix things myself whenever possible, so he told me a few things to check.

The first thing I did was shut off the breaker upstairs. Then I headed for the cellar with my tool bag.

There are a couple of big fuses in a connection box that feeds power to the water heater. I pulled out my trusty multimeter and checked the fuses: they were both fine, 0 ohms across the terminals.

Then I opened the access panels on the water heater itself. Scotty said that there should be a reset button in there. Sure enough, the button had popped. I pushed it in with a satisfying "click".

While I had the panels off, I turned the water temperature down a little bit. The water at the tap has been too hot.

After I went back upstairs and turned the breaker on, I headed back to the cellar and put my ear near the water heater. It was humming softly, heating the water.

I love fixing things like that, especially when it's something so simple.