New hot water heater!

So for the last 6 months it's been kind of difficult to have two showers during the same 4 hour period, the second person just never gets a really good shower. Today I investigated... My original plan was to drain the tank, flush it a few times to see how much sediment came out (our well had some trouble a year or so ago and there could have been extra grit in there). Since that didn't leak oodles of grit, I decided to pull out the elements to see how much calcium buildup had happened on them (one trip to hardware store to get a 1 1/2" socket wrench to remove elements and check availability and price or replacement (3800 Watt), $14 and they only had one). So I could get the buggers out no matter how hard I tried. Another trip to a bigger hardware store to see if they had better sockets that would fit the huge mac socket wrench I found on the road a few years ago. I'd checked online and they do make them, but nowhere near here sells them. However the big box hardware store had replacement elements for $7 each so I got two and another tool to try on the elements. I also noticed a new electric water heater was under $200. Headed home, still couldn't get the elements out... Waited for authorization to return home to see what was going to be the plan, we ended up getting anew water heater. It was somewhat easy to install although I still need to work out the routing for the emergency pressure relief valve thing. We had piping hot water in under 30 minutes and I even took a full long shower within an hour of first turning it on. It's a 4500 Watt/element heater and we're very happy with it. It'll probably end up being the best $200 we've spent in a long time.