Funk Babblings

Tuesday I mentioned our water problems. At the time things seemed to be looking up, but starting Wednesday morning we had no hot water at all. I finally called the plumber, and he came today.

Here are the heating elements he removed from the hot water tank:


The mangled one on top (which was installed in the bottom of the tank) is just barely connected at one point, then shorts across to the other side. No wonder it was tripping breakers! Apparently the thermostats were also bad, which may explain why we recently were sometimes getting really hot water when we did get it.

We have to call a well expert to find out what the deal is with the water pressure, but it looks like the lightning a few weeks ago just knocked out a bunch of this stuff. I'm still amazed that my phone was the only casualty among my electronics (it was behind the same surge protection as the rest).

It seems like somehow last month's storm managed to cause various temporary/intermittent/recurring problems with the house water system. First it was problems with the pressure tank. That seems to be fine now, without us doing anything to really fix it.

Now it's the hot water tank. Or was. Over the weekend the breaker for the hot water heater kept tripping. We'd reset it, then a while later it'd be tripped again. Yesterday it was a bit iffy, but seemed better, and today it seems better still.

I feel like I should have somebody come look at it, but I don't even know whether to call a plumber or an electrician (are there even random-house-call electricians?). I do suspect that the water heater needs to be on a 25-amp circuit rather than a 20-amp circuit like it is, but I'm not qualified to fix that; I also don't know how that would only (and temporarily?) become a problem in the last few days.

Maybe this problem will just go away on its own like the last one.... leaving a mystery.

There was some really close lightning/thunderbolts last night.

The damage so far:
- A bunch of circuit breakers and at least one ground-fault circuit-interruptor had to be reset (despite the breakers not appearing to have tripped)
- One blown fuse, disabling the water pressure tank, leaving us with no water in the house. (I replaced the fuse with a circuit breaker that fits the socket.)
- The display on my fancy two-line desk phone is dead, so I no longer know who's calling (among other uses of that display). I'll need to check the surge protection on that.

Things are better now that the water is fixed (and will be better still after I finally get a shower), but the phone damage is a repeating low-level annoyance.

Thanks to comments on the latest xkcd.....

( Tesla Coil Music! )

Now I want one to use as an amp for my bass. Talk about nighttime fun at parties!