I did a home inspection a couple of years ago on a property that had been completely renovated and was quite gorgeous. Even the garage could have been a nice home for the mother-in-law, even if she was Rhoda or Marie. Here's a picture of the entrance from the garage into the living area:

  Figure 1

Looks more like a front entrance with the coat closet right there.

My Client was a small lady of 83 whose children were forcing her to downsize, so she would be living there by herself although two of the sons were within five miles of her.

All three sons showed up at the inspection.

At the beginning of the inspection, I always ask if anyone has anything specific on their minds. This time, all three sons spoke up simultaneously: "We couldn't find the water heater."

I like to address those questions before I ever get started, so we all went on a search. We first checked the garage. Nope. Nothing. Then we checked the kitchen (some of our older homes here put it in a kitchen utility closet), the hallway closet (empty), exterior (nothing), and lastly, the attic (just the horizontal furnace). Something was fishy, so I took them outside to look at the roof. What I was looking for was a gas appliance flue termination cap since most of our water heaters here are gas. I saw two of them, one for the new furnace and the other right above the corner of the garage. As I looked down at that corner, I saw this:

  Figure 2

See those louvered vents? When I first saw them, I thought they were simply the vents for the garage, but now I knew that they were vents for the water heater utility closet, especially since that little white thing next to the lower vent appeared to be a TPR drain pipe termination.

So we went back into the kitchen (that's the kitchen window). Nothing. On to the garage. Hmmmm. Look at that nice coat closet there in Figure 1. Could that be the water heater utility closet?

I tried to see if the cover would come off, but I could not get it off. Still, I was certain the water heater was behind there, as were the three sons. I don't cause damage during the course of my inspection, but the sons were quite adamant that we get to the water heater. They all got screwdrivers and went to work trying to get into that spot. After a while, they did get the cover off. It took all three of them, and me, to lower it to the floor. We estimated that it weighed about 100 lbs, more than their mother.

Here's what we saw when the cover was removed:

  Figure 3

It took another few minutes to remove all that insulation, at which point here's what we found:

  Figure 4

An insulated water heater in an insulated utility closet in an insulated garage!

Now remember that this is a gas water heater. So in an emergency one would need to remove the 100-pound door (which wasn't going to be easy for this 99-pound, 5'4", 83-year-old lady), remove the fiberglass insulation, and turn off both gas and water. What was this little ol' lady to do if she had an emergency? Sons were not too pleased. The other problem here is that if the water heater needed to be replaced, it wasn't coming out through that small opening. So the beautiful utility closet would have to be virtually destroyed if the water heater needed to be replaced.

Moral: It has to be not only nice, but functional, and, in an emergency, accessible.

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