I imagine he only asked so that in court he could say that he asked only for you to become combative, that's proving that you were responsible for the issue not getting fixed.
For a small landlord: some kind of hack taught at a "get rich quick" slumlording class. Something to add friction to the exchange, so the problem either fixes itself or the tenant forgets/misses a message.
For a big corpo landlord: probably complying with some really stupid corpo policy surrounding "objective evidence" in a "not my job" kind of way.
“The how water is not working” is just bad phrasing. “There’s no hot water” describes the problem better.
Boiler issue. Burners go out. Boilers go bad every 5 years. Owning a house is becoming a burden. Shit like that.