[Mikendebbie]

Update: DW and I decided to bite the bullet and get a new unit rather than go without hot water for QUITE a while. I will do the install...never done anything like this, but I am a proud graduate of Texas A&M University...what could go wrong? Ordered it on Amazon Thursday morning and it arrived Friday. I started this morning at 7:30 and was done by 11:30. For a tech that knows what he is doing it might be a 2-3 hour job. Unfortunately I spent some unproductive time looking for a tool here and a tool there...still don't know where my wire stripper is. It was a bit intimidating at first looking at the mess of wires and pipes behind the basement wall. I spent some time tying wires and pipes up and out of the way as best I could. Unhooked the battery and shore power.

There are two brackets on the back side (the instructions refer to as the front side) that were screwed to the floor. I took pictures and started removing the water supply and drain connections, then slid the unit outside onto a table. There were only 4 wires to hook up - two wires provided in the harness do not apply to units in a Montana, so they lay loose. There were some brass fittings on the old unit that I needed to move over to the new unit and I had to use my impact gun to get them off. The water lines simply hand tighten back on. Ran the leak test...did the propane leak test - all good. Hooked the battery back up...turned the unit on...turned on the hot water at the sink so it would sense flow...and it fired right up. Hoo-ah...hot water!

I figure if and when I took it to the shop to get it fixed - there would be an hour of diagnostic time...then the long wait for parts...then 2 hours to replace the parts. The tech would have to remove the unit to open up the box to get to the parts...so maybe 2-3 hours of shop labor @ $100 + parts $100 to $200 for a total estimate of $400 to $500. The new unit on Amazon was $630 including tax. There were some places on line available to order from that were $30-$40 cheaper with a two week delivery time. We are happy with our choice. Our original unit had not been used since Dec 31, 2019. I had drained the water system long ago, but February 2021 Texas freeze-pocalypes could have damaged it somehow…don’t know. I put the old unit in the box - I will keep it in the garage for a while.