How to replace the heater in your boiler on #beautifulsunday

It was a beautiful Sunday morning and when I woke up I went straight for shower.

But there was't any hot water. I checked the boiler in my bathroom. The lamp was ON. I live in a place where we don't get any hot water from supplier, we must have these boilers for that. Luckily, I know all about these boilers and that if something goes wrong, there are three possible things that could happen:

The thermostat was broken
The heater was broken
The thermostat and the heater were broken

So I had to remove this plastic and take the thermostat out. If I want to take the heater out, I have to remove all the water from the boiler and take it off.

The biggest problem in these kind of boilers is scale deposit.

If you are about to work something around the boiler, you must turn it off and be careful about electricity. Remember exactly how all wires are connected.

I had to remove all water from the boiler while it was still attached on the wall. couldn't carry it otherwise. I did it this way:

First I closed the main vent pipe in the bathroom. Then I opened hot water on all the pipes. Butthere were still some water in it, so I had to take this hose of the shower and connect it with the boiler and spill the water in the tub.

So I removed all water from the boiler and took it off the wall. But it was still heavy. It was full of scale deposit so I had to take it in my backyard to clean it. This is a catholic country and my neighbors were looking at me as I was a devil who works on the Sunday. The I took off the thermostat (left of the photo) and heater (right on the photo and looks awful).

I found out that both, thermosts and heater are broken.

I washed the whole boiler from the inside to remove big amount of scale deposit. But I couldn't remove all because that would damage the vessel.

It is Sunday and all shops are closed so I can't buy the heater and thermostat.

But I need hot water urgently. I started to smell badly! Luckily, some of out tourist apartments are renewing and the boilers from theirs bathrooms are taken off, so I borrowed the heater and the thermostat from one of them.

When I put all together, I attached boiler to the wall again and this is very important:

Never turn your boiler ON if there is not any water in there!!!

After half of hour, I had some hot water and finally took the shower!