The gas heater is in a little aluminium closet deelie, with all of the water hookups, outside on a covered porch. If I don't need permits, I'll do a happy happy dance.

I need an electrician's dictionary to figure out the last bit there, Cliff. :-) I've never even installed a light switch, so I'm not sure that I want to start too big. I'm going to hit up the exhibits department where I work(science museum) and see if they have any advice, or even specific instructions for wiring the thing in.
Failing that, I have a friend that does all of his own home improvements and might be able to walk me through it.

First things first though, I'm fixing her leaky bathtub faucet.

with a 220 circuit, doesn't the white wire go to the breaker along with the black wire (one wire on each post)?

She said that the gas water heater was the only gas appliance. Shouldn't there be a cutoff at the street or something? ( never lived in a city, mycellf so unsure about these things).

Continuing to take this discussion sideways, here's a useful publication I cam across while trying to find relative cost comparisons between electric and gas. It really doesn' t address the electric vs. gas question but has a number of useful tips on installation, maintenance, and to a lesser degree cost modelling (the cost model it uses is interesting, but poorly documented, over-simplified and inflexible).

egov.oregon.gov/ENERGY/CON...ppntwht.pdf

The gas leak is in the line, not in the house or in the houses appliances. With everything already electric, it is just easier to go fully electric than to dig up the yard, etc. at considerable expense, which may or may not be reimbursed by the city at some future point that may or may not exist. We've shut off the gas to the house at the street, so there are no problems there.

It wasn't my intent to offend with the "hire a pro" comment.

What went throught my mind but never made it out was "electricity can be deadly and if the house isn't up to electrical codes and standards the risk factor is greatly heightened." You can burn the place down, you can kill someone (maybe the person who comes in to fix things later).

I guess I would add that I like to see black tape wrapped around the last couple of inches of the white wire in a 2-wire 220 setup. It just reinforces that both legs are "hot".

Of course, I do dumb stuff like work on circuits without shutting of breakers (something I learned from certain so-called pros) so maybe I should be more careful about what I tell folks to avoid!

"Always wear leather gloves when working near live circuits."

ehhhhhhhhh....... suspect advice.

They only decrease dexterity, don't have a gauntlet, enlarge the profile of your hand in tight spaces and don't do shit for any real current looking for that painful path to ground.
There are specific rubber, gauntleted gloves made for handling live service lines, rated for voltage. They are also well defined inspection practices for the usage of such gloves : testing for airtightness, inspecting for cracked or worn sheen on the exterior finish, checking that there is stamping and rating visible on the exterior, resistance testing with high ranged ohmmeter etc.


>>>"The white wire is never supposed to be hot. If it must be (e.g. 220V using 10-2 romex), tape it. I prefer red, since there is usually already a black wire. The white neutral wire is never supposed to be switched; do not run the neutral wire to a breaker or a switch. If it's actually a hot wire, again, phase it red to mark it as such.">>>

To second and add to Sam:
Ever come upon 3 way or 4 way switches with a white in the loops hot? All the time.
Working on a remodel and coming upon previously done, backwords, crossfed or sloppy work? All the time.
Commercial conduits with tons of single thhn lines in a rainbow of colors? all the time.
Imported fixtures / appliances with weird colors? all the time.
Or ancient cotton insulated or exterior landscape or hippy dippy recycled wire job where everything is black? all the time.

I think this is essence of what you were warning about, Sam.

But better yet,
- as I was taught, in the biz of constantly dealing with somebody else's work -

Forget the colors completely - Don't get hung up on them when diagnosing something - Assume nothing. - And don't let anybody's previous mistakes go unrectified - when you let them go they become YOUR mistakes.

This goes way, way beyond what the OP is getting into but I couldn't let some dangerous advice go unanswered, namely the glove thing.