water heater

Let me tell you the sad tale about my apartment's water heater. It has never worked all that well, usually we barely have enough hot water for just one shower. Our pilot light kept on going out and we had maintenance people come in and try to fix it. A few months ago a worker came in and told us it was, and I quote, "mostly fixed". This was after it had started leaking liquids into our kitchen and living room. Then, for the past month or so my apartment has had this wierd odor about it. It smelled of gas but only for the first few minutes of being home and then it would go away, meaning that we would simply get used to the smell. We were all getting very drowsy as well. At first we thought we were being silly but my roommate still reported it. A few weeks later we were concerned but again thought we were just being obsessive and it really wasn't anything. A few nights ago, however, our upstairs neighbors came down to report that the smell has leaked into their apartment causing them to become sick. They had taken action and called our apartment's maintenance. An hour or so later a guy came in with this CO monitoring device. When he first opened the closet door, that's where the water heater is, the device went off becoming a constant beep. He then waved it around a little more and the beeping become more regular. In the end he indicated that everything was fine. A few hours after that, yes this is one o'clock in the morning, a Quest Star employee looked at our water heater. He informed me that there were quite a few things wrong with it. The exhaust had built up so badly that it wasn't coming out anymore. So we do indeed have a gas leak. However, he said that it was okay to still run and after having cleaned it up a bit he took off. He did inform us that maintenance would want to clean and tune it and then it should be fine. However, a day later, yesterday, it decided to start leaking water into the kitchen again. Also, to make the situation worse, we have absolutely no hot water. I got a headache because my shower was so cold and we even had to boil water in order to clean our dishes. So, needless to say, COLLEGE LIFE is beating up on my apartment. With gas in the air, yellow liquid on the ground, cold water in the pipes, and annoyance at maintenance floating about it has been quite a fight.