The frugal and energy efficient water heater turned out to be not so frugal after all.. [View all]

Since I'm extremely limited on funds and I'm good at fixing the unfixable I barter my services for a lot of things I need, today's chore was an inoperative electric water heater in a neighbor's home..

This particular unit was Whirlpool energy efficient electric water heater that has a fancy electronic control unit with electronic heat sensors in it to help it conserve power.. At first view I suspected the control unit because the green LED on it that's supposed to be on when it's operating and blinking a code when it senses a problem was not lit. It took about five minutes with my multimeter to determine that the fancy electronic control unit was indeed pining for the fjords while the heating elements were still fine..

So I got on the intertrons to try and find a replacement electronic control unit for this circa ten year old water heater.. I figured it was probably futile and my suspicions turned out to be correct, the control unit is made from triply distilled unobtainum..

Now changing out a water heater is a fairly difficult process and when we started checking out the prices of replacement heaters my neighbor was in severe sticker shock.. $500 for one of this large size (big family needs lots of hot water).

After a little discussion my neighbor who has seen me bring broken items of his back to life before decided to go with my plan, buy the old style mechanical thermostats and shade tree engineer them into the water heater.. Twenty five dollars at the hardware store and a couple of hours cutting the sheet metal outside shroud on the heater to enlarge the two small element holes to fit the new thermostats and then splicing the original wiring into the new thermostats and hot water once again was flowing from the faucets..

I also fabricated new covers for the enlarged thermostat holes from scrap sheet metal and screwed them in place..

The great majority of people would have just given up and bought the new water heater but with a little ingenuity, a few basic tools and a little skill I saved my neighbor at least $450.. For my work I'll get a year of Wifi internet connection which basically will cost him nothing since he already pays for internet and doesn't begin to use the bandwidth he pays for since he mainly uses it for email, facebook and that sort of thing. I've done this particular trade with some of my neighbors before so I already have a high gain directional antenna I built that will let me pick up Wifi from a couple of blocks away so I'm golden there..

Just thought I'd put this out there as an example to my fellow frugalists of what can be done to save money on a major household appliance.

A win-win situation, both my neighbor and myself came out a long way ahead on the deal. I spent about four hours of my time to get what would cost me $400 or more through normal channels and my neighbor saved $450 or so that he couldn't really afford either.