My neighbour's renovations include putting the hot water tank outside.

It looks like a normal tank you'd see in a bathroom, I wonder if it's rated for outside use, or even if it's legal.

We have a tank similar to this, although a lot bigger, sitting above our back balcony. It's definitely designed for outdoors, and is pretty efficient in summer, although less impressive this week! It means you don't have to have gas delivered and store those huge bottles somewhere.

Well, it doesn't look very weatherproof to me. I guess I'll see if it explodes one day.
Just as long as I'm not walking past at the time.

It's electric, not gas by the way.

Yes, ours is electric. We have no gas appliances in the house, hence no deliveries or storage of gas bottles. But ours is definitely designed for outside. We've had two new ones in the last 18 years or so. Fortress has a selection, but you can also get them in the village. You have me worried now, about explosions!

In my old house the thermostat must have been faulty. So it kept heating up without limit. All the pipes were burning hot, the plastic cladding on them melted and tap valves too. They do have a pressure release valve that should release steam should it actually boil, but if that's jammed too, then you could get an extremely dangerous steam explosion. Same thing happened at a hostel I was at in Nathan Toad. Steam was actually shooting out of the valve in that case, it felt like were next to a bomb.

Anyway, I have seen what the humidity and salty air does to anything metallic here, and this heater does look a bit flimsy to me. On the bottom there is a sheet metal box, around presumably the electronics, but it has large gaps.

I know there are safety cutouts, and probably the pressure release valve is pretty foolproof, so it's more likely to decay gracefully and short out rather than explode.

Even more worried!