Water Heaters Schmotter Heaters

The gas company guy came out to change out our meter (who knows why), and then had to re-light all gas appliances in the house. He took one look at the upstairs water heater, and shut it off... condemned it, actually, and said we had to replace it.

Okay, it's 17 years old. I'll just go grab another one from Sears.
(They're probably $100--that's OK.)

Huh.

Did you know that the price of water heaters has gone up in 17 years...?

Did you know that they no longer allow water heaters to reside in closets inside houses? (The closet was actually built for the water heater when we added on to the house. It was fine then...)

Did you know that by the time the Sears' plumber-guy was done looking at the closet the whole thing was going to cost over 2,000 dollars...?

I decided to march right over to Home Depot and look into the wonderful world of 'tankless' water heaters--they're pretty cool, save tons of energy, and they're small.

My jaw dropped right open. $4,500 by the time they're done with installation!

My, my, my!

I miss my hot showers already.

When I was a kid, I remember quite distinctly the ritual of the Saturday Night Bath. Back in those days, we only washed our hair once a week--on Saturday night (And it was good all week! Why can't my hair go for a whole week now??)

Well, it's Saturday night.
I'm going to go boil some water.