The Good and Bad of Chinese New Year at Our House

Chinese New Year as I mentioned, had been building up momentum in our Seremban neighborhood (which has a large Chinese population) for days before February 3rd.

The Good: We can enjoy big non-stop fireworks from all directions surrounding our house for days and days....

See video of fireworks seen from our office window

The Bad: On the eve of February 3^rd (Chinese New Year) our water heater electric switch suddenly turned off causing the power on the second story to go out. We figured out it was the power source to the Joven Water Heater that was tripping our safety switch, so we turned it off and regained power. With the Water Heater power off, we quickly used up our hot water in the storage tank. The next morning I called Joven to get a repair person out to the house as the water heater is still under warranty. He told me that Joven wouldn’t be reopening until Thurday, Feb 10 (which would be 8 days past when the water went out). I told him that would be too long for us to be without hot water and he laughed at me, I mean really laughed at me. He told me that his office has been closed since January 31 and no one was getting serviced. This really upset us, how can a big company (I think the largest in Malaysia for electric water heaters and instant water heaters) just close down for 11 days without any back up service help? It really turned us off on Joven and I wouldn’t buy a Joven product again for this reason.

After calling all the plumbers and electricians we worked with on the house, none of them were available to come out to look at the situation, even non-chinese were on holiday! Apparently, Malaysia has not grasped the idea of holiday over-time pay. On Monday, Feb 7 we were able to get an electrician to the house, where he confirmed that the electric switch and wiring to the hot water heater were not faulty, so it had to be the Joven Water heater that was faulty. But he wouldn’t go up to the attic to even look at it claiming it would nullify the Joven warranty if he did.

At this point we were pretty desperate for some hot water as we had already gone 6 days without hot showers. We were lucky to get our plumber C who helped B with the kitchen to come out to the on Tuesday, Feb 7 (the day he was back from his vacation!) to install an instant water heater that we had already bought for the second Guest Bedroom’s Bathroom (formerly the Maid’s Room where there was no hot water installed or A/C hook-up). We had planned to work on the electric wiring for the bathroom and the electric sources for the ceiling lights before painting the room in about a month and planned to install the instant water heater. But, now we were desperate and decided to get the instant water heater installed. The worse part about this is that we had already purchased a JOVEN INSTANT WATER HEATER as we had had no problems with Joven in the past. It pained us to install another product by Joven, with its crappy service, knowing we could very well have a problem with it as well. But Shong Heng Hardware was closed for Chinese New Year and other appliance stores were as well. We had no choice but to use it to get the hot water rolling. I will post more on the Instant Water Heater installation soon.

Oh, Joven did finally show up on Wednesday, February 9 (7 days after our Joven Water Heater broke) to fix it as an emergency repair. The service person was from KL. The ‘element’ in the system had blown, although Joven has no idea why. We are still waiting to hear if they are going to charge us for the repair or if it is included in the warranty. Maybe we should have gone with solar heat after all...

Hot Water

We finally have hot water in the house! The house has never been occupied before, but is a few years old. When we were initially looking at the house we were told there were hot and cold pipes already in the walls (so we didn’t have to use portable electric heaters on each shower which look like this http://www.joven-electric.com/product_instant/930.asp and are attached to the tiles in bathrooms. Most older homes in Malaysia do not have hot water pipes in the walls. I was told that only in the last few years in KL and larger cities has it become common to install in new homes). After buying the house, it was confirmed that there was already a water pump installed above the second floor in the space below the tile roof as well as a water tank. However, the plumbers and electricians who ventured up the small hole located in one of the bathrooms told us that there was no hot water heater in this ‘attic’ space. They did reconfirm that there appeared to be hot water pipes for 3 of the bathrooms (but not for the maid’s room’s bathroom) and for the dry kitchen.

So R and I had to decide if we wanted to get an electric storage water heater tank to put up in the attic or a solar heating panel that would be installed on the exterior of the tile roof. I really like the idea of solar heat and it is quite popular in Malaysia because homes usually get a steady source of sun every day making solar panels viable. There are a number of solar panel companies to choose from (see the following list I pulled from a forum):

http://www.solartech.com.my/
http://www.megaseven.com.my/solar.php
http://www.solarmate.com.my/
http://www.solahart.com/
http://www.mysolar.com.au/
http://lexsun.com.my/index.php
http://www.ktstrade.com.my/edwards/index.php
http://www.matahari.com.my/pro1.html
http://www.rinnai.com.my/download/solar_hot_water.pdf

But Solar Panels are running 4,000-5,000myr where as electric storage water heater tanks cost less. So we finally opted for the electric heating tank because we are on a budget. We went with Joven and chose the JH68 68 Litres (15.0 Imp. Gals) model .

I would have gone for the largest 91 litre unit, but they couldn’t fit it up in the attic. The price of the tank itself was 700myr. But there were extra costs of 1,500myr to adjust pipes to the tank, create a water source outside the attic for excess water, a shut off valve and other sorts of modifications. Oh and the pump already in the house needed an electrical switch and the automatic-off switch needed to be repaired as the pump just continued to run when it was on. During the installation, they weren’t sure if the pipes in the wall might burst as they tested it. Fortunately, the pipes were ok, but the installers forgot to turn off (or on?) a value on the Joven unit so it was leaking. They didn’t know why so a technician from Joven had to come two days later from Melaka to fix it. He adjusted the valve and confirmed that all of the pipes were connected and the unit was ready to use. Did we make the right choice picking an electric water heater over a solar panel... only time will tell.