Hot water will be the death of me

It is past due to give you a little update on the life of hot water in my house.

The last we knew my landlord had decided to install a solar panel water heater thing. Well it took about 2 weeks of pounding on our heads at 7am for that damn thing to be installed. When you don't have to be to work until 10:45 and they start hammering directly above you at 7am it gets a bit agitating.

So after we endured that, The Solar “professionals” inform us that if the hot water on the solar tank goes below 47 degrees then we should switch and use the gas.*Note, Switching from Solar to Gas is no easy thing. It involves running up and down three flights of stairs numerous times, switching many switches and pressing many buttons, and you are inevitably gonna screw up at least three times until you get it right.

Ok, the day the solar thing was finally totally installed the tank was at 53 degrees. Well after three people doing laundry and three people showering the stupid thing dips down to 29 degrees. So we had to switch to gas. A few days later the solar thing got up to 50 so we switched back to it, well two days later it dropped to 40, so we switched back to gas. Ok, this little pattern happened for about two weeks until we stopped getting hot water on both the gas and the solar thing. So we contacted our landlord and said what the f#$%…in so many words.

Well it turns out we went through our gas tank in record time. We don't have gas like hooked up to a gas line we actually have a gas tank you have to replace when it’s empty. (It's really annoying.)

So our landlord said he would replace the gas tank and talk to the solar people while we were in Paris and Madrid.

Now move forward to last week. While Emely and I are enjoying lovely Madrid I get a frantic email for our third roommate (we acquired another roommate about 3 weeks ago, long story). All three of us left the house on Wednesday and known of us were coming back till Monday. When Anne (roommate #3) returns home she noticed all of the windows were open, all of our bedroom doors were open, and the floor and ceilings were soaked. That's right ladies and gentleman our house flooded!!

Here's the story...

On Friday a pipe on the solar panel above the THIRD floor cracked/broke and water gushed through the now hole in the roof. The water flowed down the third floor steps onto the second floor into our bedrooms and bathroom, then down the second floor steps and flooded the first floor. THEN it started gushing out under the front door. Our neighbors noticed the waterfall coming from our door, down our steps, through our courtyard and into the street, so they called the police. The police broke our door down and called our landlord. So our entire house literally flooded from top to bottom.

Luckily no major damage was done to our stuff. But there are some serious water stains on the ceilings and walls and all of our doors are wood so the water messed them up, and they don't really close properly.

We are now only using gas for hot water until the solar people can come back out and start pounding on our heads again at 7am.

I'll keep you updated...