Water heater goes kaput!

As if the problem of having to deal with the loss of a phone number was not enough, last week, our water heater literally decided to leave us high and dry (well, uh, not exactly dry as we live in this high humidity zone, but I suppose you get the point).

Though the need for hot water is not as crucial during the hot, hazy days of summer, we pampered souls still like the convenience of having hot water at the push of a lever. And then, there are the usual reasons when we cannot do without hot water (like bathing the children, washing clothes/dishes etc.).

Under those situations, our initial reaction would be to reach out for the phone and get in touch with a plumber/electrician that can solve our problem the fastest! Well, I too reacted along similar lines, but instead of hitting the phone book, I took to the web searching for plumbers. An online service allowed me to search for and send requests to plumbers in the area, but all it could find was one plumber who was at least a good half an hour away. To his credit, this plumber called and left a voicemail saying that he could help me get a new heater real fast. While waiting on his reply, I had been trolling the various forums trying to see if I could find suggestions to my predicament. Some went as far as recommending I replace both thermostats as well as both heating elements where as some others suggested I drain the heater tank and clean the elements. But none of them went so far as to suggest replacing the water heater itself.

Our water heater has an auto shut off feature that shuts off power to the heater if the tank temperature becomes too hot. My initial assessment told me that this was what was happening as the water from the faucets became very hot a few hours before it turned dead cold. So, I opened up the heater access panel and hit the reset button. This seemed to rectify the problem, but the next morning, I noticed that the water was hotter than normal. As anticipated, the auto shut off system jumped back in action and turned off the heater. The result? No hot water for the second time in as many days. Further searching on the net brought me to what seemed to be a knowledgeable suggestion from an experienced (plumbing?) mind. The suggestion was to replace the lower thermostat. The explanation? The lower thermostat might have gotten fried and so the lower element doesn’t know when to stop working. When the water becomes overheated, the heater’s auto shut off system kicks in and switches off power to the heater. The only way this can be overridden is by hitting the reset button behind the access panel on the heater.

A quick run to Lowes and back and about fifteen minutes to replace the fried thermostat was all it took for me to have the heater back online and in action.

Determining if two numbers are evenly divisible or not

Recently, I have had to validate a couple of entry fields to ensure that the value entered in one field is evenly divisible by the value entered in the other field. The built in function %Rem() worked perfectly for me.

If %Rem(Numerator:Denominator) > 0
// reminder exists, fields not divisible
.......raise error condition - let user know that value is not a multiple
EndIf;

This function returns the reminder from the division operation of its factors -(Numerator/Denominator).