I woke this morning…and laid in bed watching my SG1 DVD for a while since it was Saturday. Then I got up, made some coffee, grabbed the newspaper and relaxed for a while. At 9:00 I called my friend Adele to see when she wanted to bleed the brakes on her MGB, and then started to get ready to go out and look at a car I wanted (more about that in another post, leave it at “10 MPG was killing me” for now).
I brushed my teeth and turned on the water to wait for it to be warm enough to rinse with. And waited. and waited. And turned the cold water off completely and waited. And waited. And thought “Oh, suminabeech, I just bought that water heater 3 or 4 years ago” and headed down to the basement with a mouth full of toothpaste to see what was wrong.
That’s what was wrong. No the water heater hadn’t sprung a leak, fortunately. The flex pipe coming out of it had, shooting water up in a arc, drenching the underside of the kitchen floorboards. And it had been spewing water out into the basement for who knows how long.
Fortunately, it’s a dug out basement, and not completely dug out, so the water pretty rapidly soaks right into the ground, even though the dugout part does have a concrete floor. By 5:00 PM the floor was pretty dry. And since this has happened before, as you can see in the picture below everything is either on the shelf or in a waterproof container.
So I head out to Home Depot to get a new flex hose. Come home, take off the old one and put on the new one. Great, the water problem is fixed, but at this point it’s only around 11:00 and there is too much water on the floor to restart the hot water heater. So, I go help my friend with her car, which went quite smoothly. We have some dinner and I head back to my house to see if I can get the water heater going again. (Keep in mind, by this point I’ve worked on a water heater and a car, and have no hot water to take a shower. Anybody want to come over and cuddle tonight?)
Well (hopefully it’s as simple as) things are still too soggy for me to get the pilot light going. I’m going to have to let it dry out overnight and hope that it starts up tomorrow. Even if it does, I’m not going to have hot enough water to take a shower until sometime in the afternoon.
Wish me luck, and if nobody comes by for the next couple days, I won’t blame ya.
4 comments:
I can only hope that with all this work you're doing that it's not as hot there as it has been here. If it is your biggest problem is going to be standing yourself.
Sorry to hear about your water demon. Hopefully you'll get it fixed tomorrow (ok, technically later today) and all will be well.
Good luck to you.
It was pretty hot today, probably not quite 100, but at least the mid 90's. And that's the other good thing about cooling the house with a swamp cooler - when on they're always blowing fresh air through the house so I don't have to smell myself.
And thanks for the good luck wish, I'm hoping I'll get it going tomorrow without any problem.
Whoa! What a mess! I'm SO sorry that happened. Yeah, it's good that you didn't have to rent a sump-pump and get all that out of the basement and that you didn't have carpet or furniture to get ruined, but still! Ugh.
However, the no hot water thing is silly. Really, it was over 90 degrees. A cold shower wouldn't have killed you.
My hot water heater has been tempermental for years. It heats on its own *&%$ schedule unless I do a load of laundry (whites, with hot water) first, which uses up all the "hot" (actually luke warm) water, and then give it an hour to re-heat. In the summer I ignore this and take luke warm baths. In the winter, I schedule my laundry days around when I want to wash my hair (not necessary every single day with my hair) and take quick, luke warm baths the other days.
Knock on wood, but mine's never sprung a leak. Of course, it is right by the main floor drain, so I guess it wouldn't be too bad, but I don't envy you this experience -- or the damp, musty smell you're going to have in the basement for a while. Space heater to prevent mold, maybe??
You gotta remember, I have a real low tolerance for cold, and although a cold shower wouldn't have killed me, it sure would have been unpleasant. If I'd had to go to work, or anywhere other than Home Depot or working on cars, I would have suffered through it. Like you said, it's been 90+ out there, It wouldn't have been too bad.
I've got the (1 and only) basement window open so the swamp cooler is airing it out as we speak (type). I've been through this before, years ago when the water heater itself sprung the leak, and it worked quite well.
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