where the cold wind cuts through you

[jazzfish]

I woke up on Friday morning and got a blast of cold water in the shower. Running it for longer only made the water colder, cold enough that I could feel the chill when I held my hand several inches away from the spray. The water heater had gone out again.

This is the fourth or fifth time in the last year and a half that this water heater has chosen to stop performing its primary function.

The advantage of renting, rather than owning, is that I (or, in this case, uilos, can call the management company and say "fix it," and they send someone to fix it, and no one has to stay at home and wait for a repairperson to show up between the hours of eight AM and six PM, or pay said repairperson. The hassle consists solely of bugging management.

Of course, if I owned my own place, after the water heater went out once there'd be the one wasted day and wasted paycheck replacing the bloody thing, and then it'd be good to go for another decade or so. Kind of like how if I owned my own place it would have a much larger bathtub, and a better designed kitchen, and and and.

One chooses one's battles, I suppose. I expect I'll buy something eventually. For now I prefer the mounting inconvenience to the money pit.

Comments

[rbandrews]

You could probably rent from a place where the water heaters worked, and maintenance wasn't useless. They do exist, although they're usually more expensive.

[jazzfish]

The difficulty there is in finding such a place. Installing a good water heater would cut into their profits, with no benefit to them. You can get around this to an extent by living in new places, because a cheap three-year-old water heater is going to inherently suck less than a thirty-year-old one, but there's a limit to that. At a certain point, it's still a cheap water heater.

To paraphrase Jon Slenk, "All landlords suck. ALL landlords suck." I'd really like to think I'm just bitter from dealing with Blacksburg landlords (including "sue us or you'll never see a dime of your security deposit" Raines) and from living in a forty-year-old complex, but I'm skeptical.

[merseine0613.livejournal.com]

this water heater has chosen to stop performing its primary function.

Do you happen to know its secondary function? Perhaps if you got the management to fix the machine doing that, then the water heater could settle back down to its primary function, secure in the knowing that the secondary function is taken care of?

[jazzfish]

*snrk*

At this point I suspect its secondary function is Irritating Me. *sigh*

[rbandrews]

I would guess its secondary function is "keep forty gallons of water, regardless of temperature, from leaking all over the floor".

So you've got that at least.