We had a wonderful visit tonight with my oldest brother and his wife, whom we have not seen yet since our arrival.  They were the ones who had managed to do so much before we arrived.  Looking at what the state of things are now, we readily acknowledge how much worse it was before, and really appreciate their hard work.

This brother is a real meister fixer, just like our dad was.  He can put his hand to just about anything and be able to do it, build it or fix it.

Well.

During the visit, the problem of our hot water came up. It’s a perplexing one, since the tank is obviously working enough for us to have hot water in the morning, but once it was gone, it was gone for the rest of the day.

So he and I checked it out

Our old tank is heated with bands around the glass holding the water; nothing goes into the water itself, as modern tanks do. The bands don’t run at the same time, but switch between them. The thought was that one of them was no longer working.

So we opened up the panels to test them with his meter, which he just happened to have. Because, of course he did.  And one if the first things he notices is that the thermostat for the top band was turned down as low as it can go. It was essentially off.

After checking both in various ways, and seeing that yes, both seemed to be getting power (though it was hard to tell with one of them, for various reasons), the thermostat was turned up to match the other.  There was no way to test if anything was wrong with one of the bands, themselves.  All we could do was turn up the one thermostat and wait.

We even remembered to turn the breaker back on when we were done.

And then we let it be and continued our visit.

Before they left, my brother turned on a tap to see, and sure enough, we had hot water.

To think that, just this afternoon, I was heating water on the stove so I could do dishes.

This then left us with another mystery.

Who turned it down in the first place?

The only people we could think of are our late brother and our late father. Which means there is no way to find out for sure, or know why it was done at all. One possibility is to save energy.

I am curious, but not that curious.  I’m just happy to have hot water in the evening.  I can see a nice long soak in the tub in my near future.  Maybe that will help my aching body that painkillers aren’t helping.

So that was awesome.

What was also awesome was their housewarming gift.

They really know how to make my heart go pitter patter!  All our tools are in storage somewhere with the rest of our stuff.  In fact, the tool set I’ve been enjoying for years was also a gift from them.
This is going to see so much use!!  I love it!

The Re-farmer