...For Something Completely Different

Call your uncle and wake the kids-they'll want to see this!

My water is well water. By most accounts, it is good tasting, better than expensive mineral water bought in bottles. We knew it was hard and mineral rich, but you really need to actually SEE what that means. The orange-white stuff in the cut-open water heater is silt and sediment covered calcium and magnesium salts which accumulated over 15 years of use. No wonder the water heater had lost efficiency! Duh! The water heater was supplied from our old well for 14 years, and that well had no sediment filters or treatment of any kind. We got a new well in December of 2007, and now we have filters that should be eliminating such build up. Most people say that water heaters last only 5-7 years, so we must have had a good one to have survived that kind of mineral abuse for 15 years.(It was a Kenmore lowboy). Even though the second well is only 100 feet or so from the original well, it is almost twice as deep and a bit softer than the water from the old well.

These are the types of problems with old houses in rural areas. They often have minimal utilities which may or may not meet code. Of course, as we remodel and renovate, we can add things like water filters or GFI outlets.