Learning the Hard Way

One of my roommates posted on her blog about an issue we have had in our house and I thought I would share this issue here also.

When we found our house here in Baza, our landlord told us about all of the things we would have to do, pay for, etc...  She mentioned that our heat and hot water are powered by gas, not electricity.  We thought that made sense because this is an old house, so it has an older system.  No big deal.  She told us not to let the tank run out and that we would have to fill it up one or two times while we were here and that was it.

Well, the first time we filled it up, we procrastinated too long and the tank ran out.  We called the next day once we had all of our money together and the man came to fill it up.  Turns out that when you let the tank run out though, it stops working even after you fill it up again.  We called our landlord to tell her we had a problem with it, but it was the weekend and she was away, so she couldn't do anything to help us.  Finally, after almost a week with no heat or hot water, someone came to fix the pipe and it took him about five minutes to figure it out.

Our gas tank

Flash forward two more months.  You would think that we had learned our lesson, and we thought we did.  But it is actually really difficult to judge the level of the oil in the tank because the tank is stained from many years of use.  So, we had called the guy to fill the tank up and he told us he would come the next day.  That evening, our water went cold.  We thought we had done the right thing because we called as soon as we noticed it was low, but unfortunately it was not soon enough.

When we told our landlord about our problem, she was not very pleased with us and she was out of the country at the time, so had a difficult time getting a hold of her.  Needless to say, again, we went a few days without heat and hot water.  This time it was a lot colder outside.

I think now we have learned our lesson.  The last time we filled up the tank, we did it early so that there was absolutely no way that the tank would run out.

I was warned about this when I first told people about renting this house.  I had people tell me to write down numbers for apartments just in case.  I guess this was something I had to learn the hard way though...