This weekend was a roller coaster.
It rained a lot last week, and sometimes when it rains the water comes in under the garage door. So I don’t think too much about a little water on my side of the garage when it’s raining.
But it was dry all day Friday.
I went to go get pizza for dinner. I came home and parked in the garage. There was water. I followed the water path to the hot water heater and the wooden boards it was on (it was rested on 4 cinder blocks with a board on top) was soaked.
Oooooooh. Shit.
We’ve known since we bought the house that the water heater is old. Like 15 years or more (there isn’t a date on the thing). So we knew it was going to go at some point. Our plan was to finish the kitchen and bathroom renovation, see what our water consumption was for a few months and replace it (especially with a new baby on the way, we thought this actually would be a good plan).
Well at some point when the renovation guys were messing with gas, the pilot light had gone out. The plumber came back out and re-lit it. He told us then that there was a lot of rust in the bottom, so if it didn’t have a “real” leak, it was set to blow at any time.
Ok, so the plumber was going to have to come out sometime in Feb to put in the kitchen sink, finish the bathroom fixtures, and polish off a few other things around the renovation. We talked to the contractor and added on a water heater to be replaced at the same time.
Except Friday night happened.
I can’t turn off (or on for that matter) the valve to the hot water heater. My father came over and helped out. It was off, the leak stopped. We emailed the contractor in a minor panic of “oh god oh god we want hot showers before Feb.”
Contractor showed up at 7:30am Monday morning with our new hot water heater. The plumber arrived a little before 9am. We had hot water by mid-afternoon (and that was only because I waited awhile before testing it out to allow it to heat some water). Granted, my dad had to come and glare at it – when I turned on the faucet all I got was air. Dad came over and it immediately gushed beautiful hot water…
Dream by Day 