Ness' Outpost

The hot water tank that came with the house was a rental. It’s > 15 years old so we had it replaced today.

Scale and other nasty stuff can build up in those tanks depending on the hardness of your water. After 15 years it was time to swap it out. By keeping the rental contract Direct Energy replaced it for “free”. That’s part of what the rental cost pays for over time.

We looked at the on demand instant water tanks but the venting would have cost a fortune. The location the tank is plumbed in for gas and water access is on our shared wall of the semi-attached. There wasn’t a good place to punch through for venting on one of our outside walls.

The new tank was moved slightly to allow better access to the furnace burners which meant a change in the venting. Now we have a better slope of the horizontal pipe to help make sure we don’t have a carbon monoxide event. The old vent had the horizontal run to the chimney almost parallel to the floor which came up in the home inspection.

Now I need to insulate the hot water pipes in the house. The run to the bathroom isn’t too bad, but the run to the kitchen is easily 30 or 40 feet and it takes a while to vacate all that pipe to get some fresh hot water flowing.

Hot showers for all!

Tonight when Lauren got home and tried to shovel the drive the shovel that was stored on our porch was gone. They could have at least shoveled our drive for us!

It wasn’t anything fancy, just a regular Canadian Tire special with an metal ice blade, a plastic scoop and a metal ergonomic shaft. You know the ones with the funny ‘S’ shaped shaft.

Mississauga is very different then where I grew up. You could leave a shovel on your porch in Niagara Falls and not worry about it walking away.