Our water heater is old. It showed its age yesterday when it broke. I'm still not sure how it broke, but it couldn't be a coincidence that it happened after a gas utility worker came by to investigate a strange smell.
Sunday, after Donna got home from church, she said the odor from the gas line was overpowering and made her think we had a gas leak. My nose is not as sensitive as hers, but I called the utility company, and they sent a serviceman over in about 40 minutes.
He very thoroughly checked around all our gas appliances and did not detect any gas leaks. He concluded that the fumes from the recent painting we had done in the bedroom interacted with the gas to create a strange odor. We were relieved to know that our house was not in danger of exploding.
The next morning, I noticed my shower was not staying warm. By the end of my shower, I had the faucet turned all the way to the hot side, something that normally would scald my skin. Donna said the technician had adjusted the water heater the previous day, turning it from "very hot" to "hot".
As I went to turn it back to "very hot", I noticed the pilot light was out. Now I know the pilot light was on before the technician came, because we checked it to investigate the odor. When I went to light the pilot light again, I could not get any gas to feed into the water heater at all. No combination of the two valves that were there prodcued any gas at all - no smell, no sound, no gas.
After reading the label on the 20-year-old water heater closely, I decided that the "hot water" trip had gone off. Somehow, the heater thought the water was dangerously hot, and had shut off the gas. The label also said that the only way to un-trip it was to replace the whole unit.
Since it was old anyway, we decided this was as good an excuse as any to replace the whole water heater. It's scheduled to be installed on Thursday. Until then, we've been making due without hot water. We've boiled water on the stove to get the girls' bath warm enough to get into, and I've washed my hair rather quickly.
I'm still not sure exactly how the technician broke the water heater. But I'm convinced he did somethig to accidentrally shut the gas off. I want to make sure to ask about our new water heater's automatic shutoff feature and how to restore gas if it trips. All in all, I prefer to have hot water in the house.