Thursday, January 13, 2011

The Dangers of Water Heaters: The Most Troublesome Thing in your Home

Water heaters are used to take cold water, heat it, and then distribute it throughout your home. They provide us with a more comfortable approach to bathing, and a practical method for washing our cloths and dishes that doesn't involve a wood-burning fire and a metal tub full of water hovering above it. We take water heaters for granted, but have you ever stopped to consider just how dangerous these pieces of equipment really are?

Water heaters are essentially giant containers filled with water. Some of them have over 120 gallons of water just stuck inside them, waiting to be released. Some people have their water heaters installed in the garage, which is good. Some don't. Some people have them upstairs in their attics. This is where water heaters become very dangerous. A man can drown in only 3 inches of water. If a 120 gallon water heater were to release its water onto an unsuspecting individual below, that's a lot more than 3 inches. If a man can die in only 3 inches of water, a man will almost certainly die in 120 gallons of water. That's called logical reasoning, and it makes sense.

Water heaters usually heat water through electricity heating or gas heating. Either way, you are in an extremely dangerous situation. If a water heater using gas decides to release some of its gas into your home, and you flick a light switch because you don't know, BOOM! You just exploded. If an electric water heater sparks in an attic, it can immediately ignite all the combustible material up there. By the time you even know you have a fire, your attic is burned to nothing, and the smoke inhalation alone will result in your immediate death.

Going back to the 120 gallons of water thing. A single gallon of water weighs about 8.35lbs. That means that a 120 gallon tank of water weighs 1002lbs. Not to mention the weight of the tank, we'll estimate about 300lbs. That's 1302lbs, sitting above your head, waiting for you to be off your guard. Then, one day, the water heater could just decide it didn't want to be supported in your attic anymore, and boom, down it will fall, straight onto your body, crushing you easier than an elephant can crush a stick insect.

The truth of the situation is that water heaters, though practical, are the most deadly man-made devices in the world. Water heaters kill an average of 18 million people a year. That's more than anything else.

1 comment:

J.Kingston Reed said...

So 120 gallons of water is streaming through a house the size of, let's say, your parent's or my parent's. Once the carpet sucked in the water and spread through the rest of the house, you'd be left with the equivalent of a spilled mop bucket in the cafeteria at Taylor. I did the math, but I'm not sure how to convert from sq. meters to meters cubed. When not manipulating words, I moonlight as an amateur elementary-science-fair-project-helper guy. Though, if anyone has ever drown in the mess of a spilled cafeteria mop bucket, I'll live without a water heater.