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# Nothing is due today
- URL: https://inside-systems.ghost.io/nothing-is-due-today/
- Published: 2026-09-13T12:55:15.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-13T12:55:14.000Z
- Author: Wendell Hollifield

No deadline in this one. A short one for a Sunday, and then I'll leave you alone.  
  
Wendell here. Not a usual day for this, but it's a Sunday and there's nothing in it that needs doing.

Nothing is due, nothing closes, and there's no form anybody has to find. All of that will still be there tomorrow.

What came back

A fair number of you went and looked at the top of your water heater, and I'm glad, because I half expected nobody would.

Several found the cap and stopped there, which is the right place to stop. A few found the tank was older than they'd thought. One man wrote that his was installed the year his daughter was born, and he worked out from that it had been in the basement twenty-two years. He seemed more startled by the daughter's age than the tank's.

Two of you told me the plug wouldn't move. Leave it. A seized fitting on a tank that old is a job for somebody with the right bar and a reason to care if it snaps off.

Nobody has told me they found their MAGI in under five minutes. I'm choosing to read that as a busy week.

![Engraved drawing of a small round battery leak alarm lying on a bare concrete floor beside the foot of a steel tank.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d6/f3/d6f3e6cb-1577-4ad4-879e-a14dacf1b87a/content/images/2026/09/WEndellinline1309.jpg) 

Runs less than a tank of gas. Goes off at three in the morning.

One small thing

If you did find the cap and you feel like doing anything at all before winter, put something under the tank. A drain pan if you can get to the hardware store. A battery leak alarm on the floor next to it if you can't, which runs less than a tank of gas and goes off at three in the morning when it matters.

The reason I keep coming back to this one is [the report I pulled it all from](https://www.pnnl.gov/publications/impacts-water-quality-residential-water-heating-equipment?ref=inside-systems.ghost.io), written for the Department of Energy. The insurance claims it cites aren't about tanks that stopped heating. They're about tanks that opened up on a floor.

That's the whole of it. Back tomorrow.

Wendell