Colorado has seasons, which means it occasionally gets colder and cloudier than “72 and sunny” – which also means that things designed for California fail here. Which is unfortunate as many home builders are based in sunny California.
For example, it’s -17F outside right now, which means I need to go out once an hour and de-ice the intake for my water heater…
See, my house was built by a company based in California and to keep costs down they vent the water heater and furnace on the side of the house instead of the roof – so the exhaust and intake are about a foot off the ground and ten inches apart, which is fine when it’s mid 70’s year ’round.
It looks a bit like this:
The problem is when you burn natural gas you get water vapor, which condenses into a huge cloud when it’s below freezing – and when it’s below freezing that water vapor collects on the critter screen in the intake ten inches away and freezes into a sheet of ice. Which ultimately means no more hot water.
This isn’t the first time this has happened either… The apartment I had in Parker many years ago was built by a California contractor and had the hot water heater in a closet on the patio – and they would freeze, rupture, and flood the apartments on the first floor.
The solution there was to put electric space heaters and powered pipe tape in the closets – which completely negated any savings from the super efficient mechanical stuff they installed.
Not that I’m complaining really; at least I have hot water with a little manual intervention – which these days isn’t guaranteed what so ever.
Listening to "Chemistry" by LeBrock