This afternoon our new water heater is being installed. Our existing one has been making continually more noise for the last several months and we have put off replacing it as long as possible. It has gotten so loud that you can hear it while you are in the shower 2 floors away. You can even feel the vibrations through the floor if you are standing right above it (in the kitchen). Just crazy loud. Also, the current one was the piece of junk model that our builder stuck us with. It only had a 2-year warranty but now at only 5 years old is falling apart.

Since both DH and I are engineers we have been very anal about examining all our options from every angle. We looked at a tankless model, standard models and high efficiency models. The problem is that we have a gas heater that has to be power vented through the wall. Pretty much the most expensive standard type you can get. We decided on a middle of the road option that is priced reasonably but is energy efficient at the same time. And oh yeah, has a 6 year warranty.

The bad news is that it is setting us back about $1000. The good news is that we are using money we had in our emergency fund to pay cash for it. That is definitely a step in the right direction.