Just a Public Service Announcement about avoiding the pains associated with flooding from a failed water heater. Most of you in California don't have to worry about the basement aspect, but a failed water heater could still do major damage.
Well, I learned the hard way. My home and water heater are less than 5 years old - the average water heater lasts 10 years. Mine died Sunday night and I almost had a major disaster down in the basement. Fortunately, I discovered it fairly early and was able to figure out what was going on. By 5:30am, I had moved everything and drained off all the standing water.
I keep a lot of my basses and bass gear in the basement, and I am incredibly lucky I didn't have anything that got soaked. If I hadn't noticed it before I went to sleep, it probably would have been pretty bad in the morning. So the final damage was just some soaked carpet, and I had to get a new water heater installed.
The reason I had the flooding damage is that there was not a drain pan installed under the water heater. If that had been there, the leaking water would have been redirected to go down the drain.
Everyone, please take the time to see if your water heater has a way to insure that any draining water will be going down a drain and not causing damage. If not, seriously consider getting one installed now. From all the info I've read, all water heaters will fail at some point with the average being around 10 years. I've proven that it can happen much earlier. My new water heater was installed with a drain pan and some piping to the drain.
My total costs are right around $2000 - I would much rather have spent that money on some EB basses.
Well, I learned the hard way. My home and water heater are less than 5 years old - the average water heater lasts 10 years. Mine died Sunday night and I almost had a major disaster down in the basement. Fortunately, I discovered it fairly early and was able to figure out what was going on. By 5:30am, I had moved everything and drained off all the standing water.
I keep a lot of my basses and bass gear in the basement, and I am incredibly lucky I didn't have anything that got soaked. If I hadn't noticed it before I went to sleep, it probably would have been pretty bad in the morning. So the final damage was just some soaked carpet, and I had to get a new water heater installed.
The reason I had the flooding damage is that there was not a drain pan installed under the water heater. If that had been there, the leaking water would have been redirected to go down the drain.
Everyone, please take the time to see if your water heater has a way to insure that any draining water will be going down a drain and not causing damage. If not, seriously consider getting one installed now. From all the info I've read, all water heaters will fail at some point with the average being around 10 years. I've proven that it can happen much earlier. My new water heater was installed with a drain pan and some piping to the drain.
My total costs are right around $2000 - I would much rather have spent that money on some EB basses.
