This is the latest thing to happen to us this week. I think ours is natural gas and at least 10 years old now so it either needs a part or to be replaced entirely.
However, you still need to take a shower or something to keep clean too while living in your home without a water heater until it is replaced. Also, if you have an automatic Dishwasher that is going to heat up the water to wash your dishes anyway. It's just something most modern Automatic Dishwashers do now.
But then you want to keep clean too.
So, we took a big soup pan from our cooking pans (the biggest one with a good carrying handle where we could safely transport hot water to the bathroom we wanted to use.
This all went fine and I didn't spill any hot water on myself and burn myself which is what I was most worrying about transporting this to the bathroom. If you are a younger person you might just make the water the temperature you want it to use and then carry the heavier load all the way to the bathroom and thereby avoid burning yourself on spilled boiling water. However, I couldn't do that from a hernia caused by a laproscopic burst appendix operation. So, I took a large soup pan then filled it 1/2 full (or rather my wife did this before I realized she was doing this) and then brought it to a boil over our natural Gas Burners on the stove. Then I put the metal lid which seals it quite well and grabbed the handle which is very handy to carry this pan further than the other side of our kitchen.
However, then I went into the bathroom and realized that I couldn't just steam up the bathroom to warm up the bathroom with hot water from the tap and instead had to heat the shower area up some other way. So, I turned on a Thermador heater in the bathroom area and then left the shower door open so the heat from the Thermador heater could get into the shower area. However, if you have children involved in all of this because they might splash you might not want to do this because the splashing could electrocute them on the Thermador electric heater. So, with children involved in all this be sure to close the shower door to avoid this problem of electrocution from an electric heater.
Then I sat down on a shower chair and set the hot water soup cooker 1/2 full with boiling water and realized this wasn't going to be easy.
At first I realized that the plastic Cup with a handle metal lined would work but not in the way I had intended because if you go with boiling water you then have to bring the temperature down to a temperature that isn't going to scald your body first before you can use it.
First I tried a cup 1/2 full of boiling water and then watering it down but that didn't bring the temperature down enough so they I had to pour the water back into the soup pan and start with maybe 1/4 to 1/8 full cup and then put cold water on top of that. However, this was so completely time consuming it became ridiculous. So, then I thought this through further and realized I needed to (since the soup pan was ONLY 1/2 full) to fill it completely now with Cold Water so I didn't have to waste so much time trying to bring the temperature down on every cup. So, this is what I did. However, even full of 1/2 cold water this water was too hot to put on my body safely to clean. So, then I realized I needed to overflow the pan with water until it got to a temperature useful to me. (I have found women always like much hotter water than men but I really don't know why this is). So, this becomes a problem often if you take a shower for two between husbands and wives for example where the woman is either too cold or the man is too hot from the water to even stay in the shower at all any longer without getting burned (to a man's way of thinking).
So, finally with the water by overflowing it some I got it to a temperature I could stand using without scalding myself and then the cup was useful finally. However, for me personally as an adult male having the shower door open so the heat from the Thermador heater was heating the area I was in was likely the best part of the literal Sponge bath in our shower area.
It's interesting all the things you can do when you have to. It's sort of like Camping or Glamping in your own home somewhere on earth.
Later: This was written on May 23rd Which was a Thursday. By the end of Friday the 24th we had a new water heater installed. It's amazing how nice it is to have hot water.
I can remember when I was much younger and I bought 2 1/2 acres the summer of 1980 and built a house on 2 1/2 acres of land at 4000 feet with my father and friends and my wife and family then the summer of 1980 I believe and into the fall. We had it finished by the time of the first snows. We didn't have electric power then because solar units were too expensive then but now where we built our home everyone has solar power now. However, we did have a spring running on the land so I could go gather water and put it in a Tin Wash Tub and place it on a bonfire outside to heat up water for the kids to take a bath in an old Clawfoot antique tub which was the biggest one they made way back when. We also had a Wood Cook Stove for baking bread and casaroles and other things we baked in the oven. And in addition we had a converted Water pressure Tank that my father welded up into a really great wood stove. However, the water heating up on the bonfire outside was just in the summers then. I think in the winter we heated water up on the wood stove then to take a bath. However, it was an amazing time in our lives living at 4000 feet in the wilderness with 7 feet of snow we all cross country skied on the winter. We even brought our food to the house in the winter by pulling our food on a bobsled often skiing over 4 to 7 feet of snow to get there from a mile away where we could park our 4 wheel drive international Harvester Scout II 1974.
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