We woke up in the middle of the night to what we thought was our daughter running the bathroom faucets at full blast. When I went around the corner to tell her to turn them down, I noticed two things. First, she was not in the bathroom, and even more worrisome, the water was coming from below the sink, not above it! It was spraying gushers out of one of the supply valves. After turning off the valve and mopping up the mess, I was left wondering how this could have happened. Any time I’ve seen a washer or seal give way, it always starts with a few drops or a trickle. This one went from perfectly normal to fire hose in a single step. Because our daughter had a bad cold and had woken us up about a dozen times during the night, I was tired enough to put it out of my mind and just go back to sleep. While I recognized and appreciated the fact that we had narrowly avoided a disaster (what if it had been during the day or while we were on vacation?), that wasn’t enough to keep me awake. Continue Reading »

This is a follow-up to my original post about our Bosch 635ES (250SX) water heater, which you can find here.

My first post was a recap of all the problems that we’ve had with this heater over the last two years. Tonight’s post is a very happy one. About 10 days after I sent my long email to Bosch detailing all the steps I’ve taken to remedy the startup noise issue, I finally received a reply. I had given up hope, since they promise responses within 24 hours and an earlier one I had sent months ago went unanswered. Imagine my shock when I read these words:

Hello Julio,

I am sorry to hear that you are having so much trouble with your water heater. I would like to offer a possible solution. Since you have tried to dial in the air/gas mixture to no avail, I think that we should swap your heater for a new one. Please call our toll free tech support line at (866)330-2730 and we can set this procedure up. I have updated your record to reflect this so any tech you talk to should get it going quickly.Thanks for buying Bosch.

Continue Reading »

We have had a love/hate relationship with our water heater for 2 years now. It’s a Bosch 635ES (aka 250SX) tankless, which for the most part, we love. It’s energy efficient and is great when we have guests and need to do 4 or 5 showers in a row (or even run 2 showers at once). So what’s the problem?

Noise. Since day one, this heater has made one of two different noises:

• A loud, combustion-engine-sounding, house-shaking groan/grunt upon startup, and/or
• A loud whistle during operation that can be heard a block away

Continue Reading »

We had a couple of areas upstairs that were completely sealed off. I don’t think that’s ever a good idea, since you can’t get in to check on things.  Like the piles of raccoon poop that we found in this area.  After screening off the entry points, we started framing out walls for a closet.  Why close the space off and waste it?

This was one of the worst "surprises" along the way.  Much of the crawlspace area had been sealed off and had been inaccessible since the house was built in 1911.  We found that someone had gotten lazy and left dirt piled up under and against the main beam.  Definitely not what you want to find…

The good news was that the the old growth douglas fir that our house was framed with is an incredible wood.  It had been sitting against the dirt for 93 years, and it had rotted only about 1.5" on the bottom edge.  And there was no insect damage.  If this had been modern wood, it would have disintegrated long ago.  When we opened up the back wall of the house, we found a piece of wood from the 60’s that had been chewed to pieces by insects.  The adjacent, original stud that it had been nailed to didn’t have a single bite in it.  The bugs just aren’t interested  in this wood.  If they were, the back end of the house would’ve sunk down years ago!

Rather than run a few extra feet of wire, they had sealed up this splice in the wall. While it’s doubtful that it actually would’ve caused any problems, it’s not a good practice (nor does it meet code) to seal up a splice in a wall cavity.

Although this wasn’t as bad as the wire that was routed into the bathroom plaster (and skim coated over), it was one of many finds that led us to the decision to rewire the entire house. Since wiring is one of Julio’s strong suits, it was much more of a time issue than a money one. And in the early stages of the project, time seemed infinite. Months later, that sentiment would change..