Just had a nice hot shower and it was great, no more sponge bath. We got our hot water unit fixed early this morning. The gas fitter/plumber came at 7 am this morning and he was done an hour later. All up we paid $1400, the labour was $270.

DH and I spent about 5 hours yesterday shopping for the unit and before that DH spent the day and night before researching and calculating (lol) about it. In the end we decided to go for the same the hot water storage and the same brand (Aquamax) as the old one but a newer model (the old one doesn’t exist anymore, according to the plumber they got rid of them 10 years ago). We also opted for the stainless steel panel instead of the vitreous enamel. The stainless steel has double the warranty for 10 years, although the rest of the parts have only got 1 year warranty but that is standard. Price wise there wasn’t that much about $150. Everyone we talked to says they are better. It was easier to transport it, with the vitreous enamel it had to standing up so the anode thingy wouldn’t get damage.

Initially we were leaning towards the getting the continuous flow system because they are more energy efficient than the storage ones. The first sales lady we talked to said she has one at her new home and its heaven she just punch in the temperature on the controller and can have different temp in the shower to that in the kitchen. The one that we were looking at would have cost $1500. Then we found out that labour would cost at least $900, maybe more. It would not have been just an easy swap because we have an old house the pipes would need to be replace because they require different size and in some cases the gas meter will need to be replace too. Also we would have had to get an electrician to get an outlet for the electric ignitor, so if there is no power you won’t get any hot water. There were other also other issues that other people have told us about. DH calculated that it would only save us $70 per year, not enough really.

We managed to find a plumber through a sales person in one of the hardware store that we went to. He was highly recommended by him. After DH spoke to him we knew we didn’t need to bother ringing around. He was very helpful and helped us decide to just get the same storage system. We knew his price was reasonable since another sales person that we spoke to (from a different whitegoods store) told us that his mother got one replaced recently and got quotes from plumbers ranging from $230 (could not do it for a while) to $500 and that we should expect around $300 for labour.

So after driving around for 5 hours we decided to get the unit late yesterday so that the plumber can install it early this morning. The darn thing ruined our weekend but at least it is now fix and hopefully we would not have to deal with it for many years to come.