No, No, Kill The Bugs! Not The Appliances!

Oh, this is great.

Couple of kids from the termite company came out today to treat my house. They just did the garage and crawl space because of the weather. We got home from work and discovered we had no hot water. I couldn’t get the pilot to re-light, and when I checked out the heater, it looks like they banged against the pipes and shook one of them loose. The ground around the heater was saturated with water. And the little bastids took off like bats out of hell when I pulled up at the house at lunchtime (all the note on the door said was, “finished garage and crawl space”).

I’ll lean on the termite company to pay for it, but either way, it looks like I’ll be needing a new water heater. Anybody have any suggestions for a natural gas model? With apologies to Hank Hill, we don’t have propane service, and I’d rather not rewire for electric. Any experience with these tankless jobs?