replying to DerbyDad03, P@lc wrote:
Thanks for your reply. Actually, the heater was installed that way by the
main plumbing/electrical/HVAC outfit here and has the city inspection sticker
on it. It passed inspection that way when we bought the house. I think the
homes in this neighborhood -- little tract houses from the 50s and 60s -- are
full of awful hacks because nobody has enough money to pay for proper repairs.
Those of us who didn't foreclose during the last decade are barely paying the
mortgage. (The housing market and economy generally have not improved here.)
We have been hoping to move this ugly water heater out of the kitchen for
eighteen years, but it just isn't ever going to be affordable.
These homes have a lot of poor quality work that was part of the original
construction. The closet flanges are tilted and are well below the slab, and
they were too close to the wall. There are outlets that do not seem to be
connected to any breaker. The circuits seem a little whimsical, with lights
or outlets at opposite ends of the house. I finally saved enough to have an
electrician fix some lights that flickered and worked intermittently, and he
told me that this house was rare in that all of the outlets are grounded. The
other homes in this area are worse than mine.
I do not want to add another jack job to the pile. We did not use one of the
two showers in the house for five years, because it needed replacement and we
could not afford it, and I didn't feel qualified to DIY it. We went without
AC for five years (and temperatures here are above 100 in the summer at least
2/3 of the time) until we could afford to take out a seven-year loan to pay
for a new system. It was installed by the most reputable outfit in town. But
there is only one duct feeding the hotter end of the house and the only
returns are next to the unit, so the kitchen is always at least 20 degrees
hotter than the bedrooms. It was just badly designed in the first place. But
that would be another seven-year loan, which I could not pay off, so we just
live with it.
I think that home ownership is not a realistic goal for people who make less
than the average upper middle class household. You can come up with the
mortgage and barely with the insurance and taxes, but you can't pay for the
maintenance. I grew up in a nicer home, just a little more affluent, just
affluent enough to pay for proper repairs. It makes all the difference, The
homes in this neighborhood.
I am just going to leave the heater where it is.

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