Help Katrina & Kevin Get Hot Water Back!

My name is Katrina. My husband, Kevin and I are first time parents to a beautiful two year old daughter. My parents are planning to move into our current home within a few weeks and we’ll all purchase and move to a new, larger home within the next several months.

We’re going on 5 days with no hot water in our house due to our water heater breaking down and affording the replacement is becoming a large financial hurdle we can’t really manage without help. Any funds received from this gofundme will immediately go towards paying off loans we’ve taken to afford the repairs and bills that went unpaid while we prioritized getting hot water back.

Saturday afternoon (3/1/25), we went downstairs to finish a load of laundry and found the basement flooded and carpet completely soaked (you could see water squeeze out with each footstep). After about an hour of work we had saved our computers and other electronics, realized the water was coming from our hot water heater, called our home insurance company and were told they’d contracted a plumber who would call us soon. Our daughter had a blast helping to lay towels over the carpet to soak it and then making a “race track” on them running in circles.

In the meantime, we spent about $80 renting a shop vac for a few days to get the majority of the water up and then a $60 dehumidifier to help with the rest of it. The carpet is mostly dry now but the entire basement smells like laundry forgotten in the washing machine. We have to boil water to do dishes and sponge baths.

They called me Monday and said they’d be there Tuesday. Tuesday, they come by to inspect it, tell us the bottom has rusted out of the tank, and turn the hot water off (which we assumed would stop the leaking). They quoted us $1,075 for a new water heater (and that’s with our home insurance paying part of it!). Several hours after the tech leaves, we find that the hot water heater is still leaking.

Wednesday afternoon they called again, not to set up the install date as we’d expected but to tell us that we need to pay ANOTHER company to get our flue vent inspected and get written confirmation that it’s up to code before they’ll even schedule the installation. I called the insurance to confirm and yeah, we’re on the hook for that too. I called half a dozen companies to find one that charged less than $100 and made an appointment for them to do the inspection Thursday morning. Called the plumber back to let them know it’s still leaking only to learn that our insurance does not cover them draining it so we have to figure out how to do it ourselves or pay them or someone else to do it or just let it keep leaking into the carpet every few days. As a stop gap, I’ve got towels piled up around where the water pools before reaching the carpet.

Thursday morning, the chimney company comes out for the inspection and tells us there are some repairs they’d need to do before it would be up to code. Repairing the flue vent will cost $1,400.

We’re going on close to day 5 with no hot water so hand washing, bathing, and doing dishes is either really time consuming or really unpleasant. We can’t really afford this on top of our mortgage and tuition payments and other bills. We’ve done plenty of research and believe this is the cheapest and fastest option available to us.