Repairing a water heater

A functioning water heater

This post took a while to compile. I thought it would be fun to document how to go about getting a water heater repaired in my guesthouse room in Phnom Penh. This is how it went:

Day 1

My roommate and I didn’t even notice that the water heater wasn’t working. It’s so hot and humid all the time that we shower with cold water in the evenings anyway. We did notice wires sticking out of the heater and were careful not to run water over them.

Day 2

I wanted to wash my hair in the morning and I would have liked the water to be a little warmer. That’s when I noticed that the water heater wasn’t working. I reported the problem to the maintenance guy at our guesthouse. He said that he doesn’t know how to repair water heaters and that he would call his boss if he may purchase and install a new one for us.

Day 3

I reminded the maintenance guy about the water heater problem and he explained that his boss is out of town and he would call him and he would take care of the problem tomorrow.

Day 4

I reminded the maintenance guy about the water heater problem and he mentioned something that contained the word “tomorrow”.

I rolled my eyes at him and he offered that my roommate and I could change rooms. Ha! That’s funny. We already changed rooms once in this guesthouse and I knew perfectly well that if we take another room, chances are that something would be broken. Since we stayed at the guesthouse we had dealt with fixing light switches, door handles, buying electrical extension cords, and unclogging clogged drains in the bathroom. Also, if we changed rooms, we would have to go through the ordeal of begging for fresh bedsheets again. No thanks, we don’t want to change rooms, we’ll shower with cold water until tomorrow.

Day 5

I didn’t have to remind the maintenance guy about the water heater problem. When I returned home from work in the afternoon he remembered on his own as soon as he saw me. Apparently he had called his boss who didn’t authorize the purchase of a new water heater until an attempt was made to repair the broken one (or perhaps he hadn’t called his boss at all opting to just repair it).

He went to our room and asked to borrow my flip-flops explaining that it would be safer to wear rubber on his feet while he was working with electrical wires in the wet bathroom. I shrugged OK, it’s his decision and I left him there, not wanting to bear witness to his potential electrocution. About an hour later, he notified me that he was unable to repair the water heater. He left it disemboweled until tomorrow, when “his friend is coming” to have a look. Even more wires were now sticking out and we had to be extra careful not to run water over them.

Day 6

I reminded the maintenance guy about the water heater problem and he explained that his friend, who was supposed to be coming, was busy. The magic word, once again, was “tomorrow”.

Day 7

THE BOSS came to the guesthouse to check up on his staff. I was eying him, contemplating whether I should report the water heater problem to him as I wasn’t sure that he was even aware that there was a water heater problem. But the maintenance guy was on to me and he pulled me aside before I had a chance to rat on him and promised me that he would repair the water heater today. Aha, he didn’t want THE BOSS to know that the problem hasn’t been taken care of yet.

His backup strategy now was to exchange the water heater in our room with one from another room where people were checking out that day. He really did come to exchange the water heaters and finally discovered that it wasn’t the water heater that wasn’t working but that the electrical wires that came out of the wall in the bathroom were dead. Another person is “coming tomorrow” to run new electrical wires to the water heater.

And we had been so careful not to run water over the wires, believing they carried electricity.

Day 8

THE BOSS took care of it. He sent two repairmen who looked like they knew what they were doing to run new electrical wires and connect the water heater. Success!