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| - Forever Grateful! Saved Me Over $2,000. I bought a water heater from Sears (model 153338003) just 6 years ago. We began to smell a strong rotten egg smell which the gas company adds to the gas. Not knowing where it was coming from, we called the gas company. The young man was there for almost 3 hours and said all his tests come up negative. Just when he was leaving, he blamed the furnace in the closet next to the water heater. He said the fan was blowing out the flame. It wasn't. The gas smell remained.
That narrowed down to the water heater. Not a big deal we thought. Just call Sears. The young man that came out didn't seem confident he could fix it. He disappeared to his truck for about 45 minutes. When he came back, he said that they don't carry parts for that model any more. How was that possible? The unit cost $1,000 and about $500 to install six years ago. if it was a one-of-a-kind, they should have told me and i might have passed.
So, faced with the possibility of having to spend at least $1500, we thought we'd look into a tankless system. We called, Number One (of course), Lowes, and a company who only does water heaters whose initials are WHM.
Lowes wanted a $40.00 fee just to give an estimate. Scratch. They are out.
WHM told me up front, it could be $5,200. But since it was just an estimate, I had them come out. The gentlemen (i use that term loosely) seemed to do a thorough job looking over my gas line, venting, and such. I asked what brand name of tankless they'd be installing, but he stumbled with that question which made me suspicious. He then he wrote down all the things involved in installing the tankless and told me to SIGN it saying it was just an estimate. I looked it over and it clearly was not an estimate, it was a contract. As he left, i asked for an estimate just to replace the current tank and I haven't heard from them since.
Now that we were seeing tankless prices so high, we cancelled an estimate from Number One. But, we had the nagging feeling that parts for the broken water heater have to be somewhere. We called Number One and the woman gave us the number of the local supply house (PPC, i think). Called PPC and they don't carry Sears parts. They advised me to call Sears - which the original repairman already had to no avail.
I decided to call Sears myself, and indeed they don't carry parts for that unit. At least she was sorry, but i was about to be out of thousands of dollars.
I then went to Sears to buy a new unit. Somehow, i forgot that we had a 98-gallon and i bought a 75-gallon. With install, piping, permits, taxes, etc. it was over $1,200 dollars. The cashier forewarned me that the install price was an estimate and there might be ancillary charges in order to meet code.
On the day when the Sears-selected plumbers came out, the plumber looked over the existing installation and calculated the "ancillary" charges to be over $1,100 for things like new recirculation pump, longer vent pipe, etc. I told him to forget it and there was no way i'd be paying that much unless i could buy some of the parts myself.
My wife then reminds me that i never talked to Number One about repairing the existing water heater. They had repaired a previous issue and were familiar with the unit. She calls them (I'm done by now) and explained the situation of parts not being available. The receptionist takes the message and we wait.
An hour or so later, we get the call from Roy (I always ask for him now) - they found the parts. Couldn't believe it. I'm saving over $2,300 (and remember i bought the 75-gallon instead of the 98-gallon by mistake)
All the time the water heater was broken, we are manually turning on and off the water heater for 45 minutes each morning and night. The good news is that during the process of lighting the pilot light, we find that the smell is coming from a leak in the pilot light tube. This saved us something additional otherwise we'd be replacing the thermostat, burner, pilot tube, etc.
Thank you once again Number One. Job well done!!!
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