Only checked its age when the hot water stopped

A Rheem electric water heater, much newer than the one in the story. Photo: Steven Pavlov, CC BY-SA 4.0. The real one is in the original post.

Two days after an electrician swapped the house's 60-amp fuses for 100-amp service, the hot water ran out. He had probably forgotten to reconnect the heater. While they were checking, they finally read the serial number on the Rheem and worked out that it was 36 years old. The house was built in the 60s and used to belong to the grandparents on one side of the family, the kind of people who bought things once. It's on well water, and the copper in the house still looks new. Plumbers haul out plenty of tanks that never see 15. They rust through from the inside once the anode rod is used up, and nobody in this house knows if that rod has ever been changed. The heater covers the kids' baths and the rest of the house besides.

The serial starts with 0480: April 1980.

Retold from a post on r/BuyItForLife. Read the original

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