Scraggley

I'm seriously overwhelmed. Not a single room of my home is clean right now. I have a broken closet door. (Possibly two - unless the other one just came partially off the track again.) If the previous owners of this house ever show up again to try to paw through the mailbox I may have to take aim and shoot. It may not be so sweet of me to say so, but they were/are animals. I have not met a single neighbor on the entire street that cared for them one bit. I believe every single one complained directly to them or to the city at one time or another, at least once. The best story of all was when I finally me the legal owner of the house behind us. (She had two renters in there, whom we knew and absolutely loved, but they moved out, so she was cleaning up the yard and I went to say hello.) She said that these people NEVER ONCE cut their lawn, and what grass they did have was taller than a six foot man's kneecaps. They used to gather in the backyard, blare Arabic music, and dance together in the tall grass. Of course this story didn't surprise me after hearing so many others and seeing the condition of the neglected and abused house. But it was at least funny. Most of the stories were NOT funny. Like the youngest girl sneaking in and out of the windows and breaking piece of the window frames, because she weighed 400 lbs. The stories the inside of the house told were worse. Holes in every door and every doorframe from huge brackets for padlocks. Holes in every single wall standing. A kitchen cupboard charred from an oven fire. Urine infested carpeting. (Which was torn out immediately, before we even started working on the house, much less moved into it.) The most famous neighborhood story was a time an abmulance had to come to the house. Many believed the elderly mother had fallen very ill, as she was known to not be well anyway. What actually happened was her daughter got angry and pushed her down the basement stairs. Can you even believe it?

Anyhow. They were evicted and the house was foreclosed upon. They were not left homeless. It was a scheme from the beginning. The eldest son of the family got his name on the title, refinanced this house to the hilt, used cash from this house to build a much larger house in Macomb Township, and then they just stopped paying on this house until they had to move out. Then they all moved into the Macomb house and presumably live happily ever after. Many of them are on Social Security. It's a sad and irritating reality. We bought the place about a year or so after they left. The water lines had been blown out and winterized, and the utilities shut off. We could not be sure if things like the hot water tank or the dishwasher worked. As the luck with this house would have it, they did not. My parents bought us a dishwasher for our Christmas gift in 2007, and after washing dishes by hand for almost a year, I was as grateful as a human can be for anything. The hot water tank we struggled along with for awhile during the initial work on the house. (It was broken, but would heat a small amount of water. You'd get half a bathtub full before it came out ice cold, and it never got hot. Lukewarm at best.) Aaron was working down in Ohio so I made do with what I had.

We finally installed the new tank in August 2008, and had piping hot water for the first time. I could take a real bubble bath. It was blissful. Four days ago, there was suddenly no hot water. Oddly, the pilot was out. We relit it. It was reluctant to get going again. We got one more tank of water, and it was out again. Same deal repeated - relit, got one more tank, and it went out. Only then, it wouldn't even relight.

A bit of research showed that this is a common problem with this model. A short bit of reading and a call to Whirlpool revealed that Whirlpool has a "workaround fix" for this known design flaw rendering this particular model tank useless after 7 - 12 months on average. We paid $20 in overnight shipping for the "free" parts. Aaron spent almost four hours working on it the day the parts came. The parts did not help anything. Further research on the Internet revealed that these workaround parts have not worked for most people, and when they do, it's only for a short time, then the tank is useless again.

Whirlpool and Lowes have both known about this problem for FOUR YEARS. And they still sell them. One site on this problem had 40,000 hits.

We got a hold of Whirlpool once more and told them we were just taking the tank back to Lowes for a refund. They suddenly sounded interested after not being very helpful for several days while we bathed in water boiled on the stove and swore we'd never, ever, ever, buy anything made by them again. To know a product is bad and not recall it might have some sort of legitimate explanation. To continue manufacturing and selling a product for four years knowing it's defective is nothing short of criminal. And that's clearly what they've done. Lowes has offered full refund of purchase price for those willing and able to drain the tank and transport it back to the store. But why they are still purchasing this model to sell is beyond my understanding.

Whirlpool offered to send a plumber to our home. What this will achieve, I have no idea. There is a ventilation problem in these tanks. I am unclear as to whether they think this plumber is capable of magic, or plans to rebuild the entire tank, or plans to replace it (which I doubt.)

Now the worst case scenario, we welcome the plumber, who is receiving a paycheck for coming here, which supports him, his family, and the economy. This problem is certainly not his fault. He confirms he can't fix it. We drain the tank, take it back to Lowes, get a refund, run to Home Depot, buy a GE tank, come home, and install it. We'll have water by noon tomorrow either way.

However, I've not washed my hair since Tuesday. I'm looking scraggley, and I am seriously low on patience and grace. 20 people are coming for Easter dinner on Sunday. I haven't even grocery shopped. I'll be back here Monday if I survive.