Tuesday I mentioned our water problems. At the time things seemed to be looking up, but starting Wednesday morning we had no hot water at all. I finally called the plumber, and he came today.
Here are the heating elements he removed from the hot water tank:
The mangled one on top (which was installed in the bottom of the tank) is just barely connected at one point, then shorts across to the other side. No wonder it was tripping breakers! Apparently the thermostats were also bad, which may explain why we recently were sometimes getting really hot water when we did get it.
We have to call a well expert to find out what the deal is with the water pressure, but it looks like
the lightning a few weeks ago just knocked out a bunch of this stuff. I'm still amazed that my phone was the only casualty among my electronics (it was behind the same surge protection as the rest).