Smoke in the House

Water heater burn-out.

It happened once before, an unusually acrid smell and smoke wafting out the door that leads to our small, centrally located utility room; the one that holds the heat exchange system, water heater, alarm system, door bell, vacuum cleaner, and IKEA shelves holding boxes and piles of shoes, boots, winter hats, sewing machine and notions, light bulbs, extension cords, spare cushions, fabric ….

Just outside the door to the utility room is the security system smoke alarm. It makes a phone call to a light bulb in Central Alarm headquarters and someone there calls the house (Are you okay? What is your security code?), or the person calls the fire department and they also call us, or all of them call us.

The alarm went off. We ran towards the noise and immediately noticed the smoke coming out from the utility room. We ventured inside fearful of flames. There was just acrid smoke coming from an electronic control box of the heat exchange system. The unit was fried.

A heat exchange system has two parts. A large unit inside and another large unit outside and plumbing in between that circulates a heat-cold retaining fluid. If it runs one way, it takes heat out of the house. If it runs the other way, it brings heat into the house. It was an old system that probably dated back to when the house was built, 1978.

We replaced the entire system. We even paid for the rental of a crane to hoist the outdoor unit over the concrete block wall that serves as its enclosure. The gate was too narrow.

In the nine some years since, we have enjoyed our new system. It is much quieter than the old. It's still pretty noisy, but that old system, each time it turned on, made an exploding noise like someone hit the metal ducts with a sledge hammer.

Friday a week ago: déjà vu. Acrid smoke smelling like burnt rubber poured out from the utility room. Disturbingly enough it did not trigger any smoke alarm. Fortunately, it was early morning when Shari and I are most active. Shari noticed it and grabbed me as I returned from walking Nazar the Wonder Dog. We were frantic. The water heater was smoking.

I rushed outside to the circuit breaker box, realized I needed reading glasses to decipher the electrician's handwritten labels, rushed back, couldn't identify the water heater circuit, and started guessing. I never did find it, but the smoke did stop. The stench lingered for days, but it stopped smoking.

I unscrewed the panels that cover the two heating elements, the one above with sensors and controls and the one below. It was the one above. It fried. The tank itself had failed. Probably the slight alkalinity of our Tucson water had eaten through the sheet metal and water had leaked into the surrounding insulating layer and filled it up all the way to the control box electronics which shorted and smoked and fizzled until it fried itself out. (And, thank God, tripped the circuit breaker. I just hadn't noticed.)

The good news was that July means summer in the Old Pueblo. This time of year, cold tap water isn't. It's quite tepid. So cold water showers are actually quite pleasant and refreshing.

The water heater replacement took place four days later. It took Jeff and Tracy six hours.

See, we have a solar panel on the roof that heats another circulating, heat absorbing fluid that is piped down into the utility room through a heat-exchange manifold that heats water circulating out from the water heater tank. When the sun is out, the water heater doesn't need to fire its electric heating elements. The solar system takes over.

A Borg. "Resistance is futile."

New water heater. "Vacation mode is futile."

What the solar-assist system means from an installation perspective is a lot of copper tubing. Our water heater doesn't look just like a water heater. It looks like a water heater that has been absorbed into the Borg collective. It has copper pipes all over the top — water out and back into the tank, gel from and back to the solar panel on the roof — the copper-clad heat exchange manifold itself, and the small pump and control panel that governs the solar gel circulation.

We kept the front door open so Jeff and Tracy could do their work and gather tools more easily. The indoor thermometer read ninety degrees.

They fabricated new copper piping to replace the old. The soldering produced enough smoke to trigger the smoke alarm. We got calls from both the fire department and Central Alarm. Well, at least we knew the alarm system worked.

After six hours of installation, Jeff showed us how the touch screen worked on the solar control box. To put it in vacation mode, tap up here, see the icon appear there, then tap down there three times (I kid you not) and the vacation mode icon appears here and you touch there to confirm. To turn off vacation mode, you do the same in reverse. His fingers seemingly raced over the panel like a teenager's two thumbs texting on a smart phone. After six hours of increasing owners' heat exhaustion, we didn't really need to know vacation mode.

We were more interested at looking at Tracy's and Jeff's smart phones. While Jeff was writing up the bill, Shari showed Tracy her paintings in the living room.  Turned out Tracy was an artist by training and avocation and a plumber only by necessity. He pulled out his smart phone. Turned out Jeff also painted. He pulled out his smart phone. Both showed us photos of their paintings. They were not only good, their styles were very original.