(#11) Cabin Chronicles: The $6,000 Shower Debacle
If you’ve been here since the beginning, you might remember that we kicked off our first rental season with guests who messaged us around midnight on the first day of their stay because they didn’t have any hot water. Well, Season Two said, “Hold my wrench.”
This time, it wasn’t as simple as a flipped breaker.
The Final Check Before Our Second Rental Season
It’s been a looong few months, but we’ve finally made it through another renovation season, and it’s our last trip to the property before the start of our second rental season. (Our cabins are located less than one mile from Yellowstone’s North Entrance. The main rental season for our town is May through October. Everything outside of that is what we’re considering our renovation season. At the time of this trip, it’s mid-April.)
We’re putting the finishing touches on ‘The Wolf Den,’ which was formerly the Dry Cabin and now has a full bathroom, with laundry, a shower, and even a linen closet. This bathroom addition took much longer than we anticipated, so it’s been a sprint to get the cabin staged and ready for guests. We had only a week in town, and construction continued throughout our visit, so I was making final checks late into the night on our last day.
I turn on the shower, but the water isn’t getting hot. It’s not even getting warm. It seems to be the same issue I encountered while testing the unit in January: the water temperature is lukewarm at best, cold in reality. In January, we were told the issue was the unit itself. Something about a fuse blowing and debris breaking loose, clogging the lines. No big deal, we were told. Install a new unit, and it’ll be fine.
Well, it’s about 2 a.m. on our last night in town, and it’s definitely not fine.
Hot Showers Are Non-Negotiable
This is a big deal to us. The hot water heater was one of the first upgrades we made in the Main House. We know how important it is… especially in Montana… especially after a long day exploring Yellowstone. When you're cold and tired or sun-worn and trail-dusted, all you want is a long, hot shower. And not just you, the whole group.
People remember being the third person to get cleaned up and getting hit with icy water halfway through. (And not in a good way.)
We tried what we could before leaving town—flushing lines, checking flow restrictors—and over the next few days, we tried everything else we could think of, from new shower heads to replacing parts. Nothing made a difference. The water stayed cold.
The cabin’s hot water was supplied by an electric on-demand water heater. Eventually, after Plans A through Z failed, it was discovered that the tankless water heater was too small to power multiple water sources. It was a point-of-service heater, best suited for a single sink.
It was never going to be strong enough to power a shower.
What Comes After Plan Z?
We had a lot of feelings about this discovery, especially considering this error could have been identified in January or, better yet, immediately after installation if the unit had been tested properly.
Our feelings would have to wait, though, because the countdown was on. We’re now just a couple of days from the start of our second rental season. We can’t simply install a larger tankless water heater because of another surprise discovery: the available voltage is maxed out. Rewiring would mean serious compromises to the rest of the setup, which included laundry and a small kitchenette.
After too many Google searches and plumbing conversations to count, we decided to switch from a tankless water heater to a standard tank, but the question was: Where would it go?
The tankless water heater is mounted on the wall to the left of the stackable laundry unit, on the inside of the laundry nook. There was not room in the bathroom for a tank.
Switching from a Tankless to a Tank Water Heater
We had to reconfigure the laundry nook (which doubled as our utility closet, where the tankless water heater was located) and essentially rebuild the space from scratch.
The solution required removing the stackable laundry unit to make space for a 38-gallon electric tank. The tank itself had to get mounted where the stackable dryer used to be, leaving room for an all-in-one washer/dryer to sit underneath.
This was a cha-llen-ge to solve and install, and we’re so grateful for the people who showed up beside us, problem-solving late into the night, bouncing ideas, and troubleshooting every option.
Eventually, the night before our first guests were set to arrive, we got the call: “You have hot water!”
More work was required to finalize the new utility closet/laundry nook, meaning we had hot water to start the season, but would have to wait a few more weeks for the all-in-one laundry unit to get installed.
This wasn’t a huge deal, since the cabins rent together and a full-size laundry unit is still available in the Main House. We apologized to our early-season guests, made some concessions to make it right, and committed to revisiting the laundry at the next guest break.
Hard Conversations No One Wants to Have
The recap of these few weeks might make it seem like it wasn’t that big of a deal. In the end, we just had to rework the setup by installing a tank in a layout that was never intended for one. Swap out laundry units. Build a platform to hold a short water tank. All good.
However, getting to this solution required a lot of creative problem-solving, time, labor, and money. It cost us nearly $6,000 out of pocket—on top of the payments we had already made for the bathroom addition.
But aside from that, there was another thing that made these few weeks incredibly challenging. Every bit of emergency rework, research, and last-minute scrambling had to happen without the person who had built the bathroom and installed the tankless water heater.
The morning after we discovered there was no hot water, we were up early, trying to knock out a few final items on our to-do list before catching a flight back to Texas. Before we could call our team to discuss next steps, the phone rang.
The person we were counting on to help fix this, since they'd purchased and installed the tankless heater, called to let us know they were facing a serious medical issue and wouldn’t be returning to the property anytime soon.
It was a gut punch for many reasons. Above all, we care about the people in our lives. At the same time, we were two weeks out from opening day, and there were still a number of projects hanging in the air… and now, hanging solely on us.
In the weeks and months that followed, communication was sparse. We didn't know if they were okay, if the projects we'd already paid for would be completed, or what was fair to expect. This is the part you don’t always see on HGTV. You’ve got compassion in one hand and responsibility in the other, trying to juggle both without dropping your own integrity. All the while, everything behind the scenes feels like a barely contained fire.
It felt like walking a delicate tightrope between being a good person and being a good business owner, between hoping someone is okay and needing to fix the situation. It was even harder having people around us weigh in on what we should’ve done or whether we’re handling it well enough.
Drawing a Line in the Sand
This situation was arguably the most challenging few weeks we’ve had since buying our Yellowstone Fixer Upper. Would we do it again? Yes, in a heartbeat.
Because when guests arrive, they don’t care how hard it was to make it work; they just expect it to work. But are we also incredibly frustrated that we got this far into a bathroom addition without knowing the tankless water heater was never going to cut it? Yes, absolutely.
Was it just a simple error? Was it a number of errors? Was it miscommunication? Was it total failure all the way around? We don’t know. Almost a year later, we still haven’t gotten answers. (That’s a story for another time…) What we do know is that no one ever flagged that the outcome we expected in our new bathroom (hot water in the sink and shower) wasn’t guaranteed under the plan in place.
For us, the takeaway going into our second rental season is 1) slow down, and 2) be proud of how we show up for our guests. (Spoiler: Solving this hot water debacle will be the thing I’m most proud of at the end of the season! I cannot stress how hard we fought for this solution!)
We’ve been operating full steam ahead since stumbling upon this property a year and a half ago, and it’s time to recalibrate and change pace. It’s been a nonstop race to get this property into shape, but while it’s not finished, it is functional, beautiful, and working.
So, here’s to drawing a line in the sand.
No more pressure-cooker timelines. (The third unit won’t be listed until I’ve personally confirmed the hot water 😉) Welcome to Season ✌️ of the Cabin Chronicles: more guests, more renovations, apparently more hot water issues, but also? Way more fun!
We’re in this for the long haul, so let’s fix what breaks, celebrate what works, and keep moving forward.
Keep Reading: (#12) Cabin Chronicles: Before & After: From Dry Cabin to Cozy Studio
