Location: Northern California I need some advice/guidance on next steps with my land lord, a real estate management company. General Information: I live on the 2nd story of an apartment complex, the water heater is located in a room outside my apartment with no public access on the first floor. Overview: On September 10th I came home from work and when I went to take a shower I only got room temperature water. I texted my Landlord and they immediately called me and told me to call them whenever their were issues like that, but I prefer to leave a paper trail for this specific reason. They sent someone out the day of and my hot water was fine for about a week before I left town for work. I didn't come back from out of town until almost a month later on Friday October 10th in the evening. When I went to take a shower it was frigid water this time. Since it was late on a Friday I had to wait until Monday the 13th to notify my Landlord with both a call and then follow up text. A technician came out that day, diagnosed that the pilot light had gone out (same as Sep 10th) and advised I waited 2 hours to try a shower. After the wait time I tried another shower and got slightly warmer but still cold water coming out of my shower. So I once again contacted my landlord via text. Who got back to me the next day on the 14th to notify me that a technician would be out to my location the next day (October 15th). Once again the technician diagnosed the problem as a pilot light being out. He re lit it and advised I wait 2 hours again before trying hot water. Yet again after 2 hours my water was only slightly warmer but still cold. This time I called the landlord and they told me they would probably have to have a 3rd party vendor come out to fix the issue. On October 16th I reached out to them for an update on the fix and have not heard anything back from them and it is now the 25th. I am out of town for chunks of time for work so I haven't been able to re contact them, but I am getting frustrated that I have to travel to my gym if I want to take a warm shower when I'm finally back home. Additional Information I didn't know where to stick in the overview: On the last visit I helped the technician in the water heater room just to learn some things and I noticed that of the 4 water heaters in there the one for my apartment was much older. It still had an analog dial but all the others were digital. I'm not sure if it's relevant for my situation, I have also held the lease for about 8 years now so maybe there just hasn't' been an opportunity to change it? My Asks: What should my next steps legally be? At what point should I threaten/notify my landlord that I will be withholding rent? Would CC'ing a lawyer in my e mail to the company be too passive aggressive? (the lawyer is a friend and he wouldn't be doing anything officially other than allowing me to cc his professional e mail to put pressure on my landlord) If I do end up withholding all or part of my rent until is fixed would I need to then pay that rent once the issue is resolved?