Every so often life throws me a little curve ball, and it tends to like to do this on the weekends.
I’m more then convinced that the universe some how knows there are two days where I really try to do as very
little as possible. As a matter of fact, if I could just lie as a big lump on those days life would be perfect
for me. Sadly this isn’t healthy, the universe knows it, and will always give me something to do on these days.
Over last weekend, when my lovely bride and I awoke, everything was normal. The sun was shining, the birds were
chirping, and all was good. Shortly after we woke up, however, there was this bizarre sound coming from seemingly our
neighbors yard. I went into the backyard to investigate, heard the sound, and was convinced from the small bit of
evidence I had they were in fact doing something next door that was making this strange noise. A few hours later, however,
my lovely wife asked me what the noise was and I went out to investigate further. As I got closer to the side of the house
next to our added on master bathroom, I noticed that the ground was very wet. Yes, that’s right, the water heater for our
bathroom had died and was spraying out of the top much in the same way a whale blows water out it’s blowhole with the
exception that the water heater wouldn’t stop.
Now, I’ve never had to replace a water heater in my life. I have, however, broken a water line or two in my day so the
basic concept of having to switch out a water heater didn’t seem to intimidating. I’ve also hooked up a gas range so the gas
aspect of this little situation also didn’t seem so bad. With my basic plumbing knowledge I decided I’d be damned if any
plumber was going to get a single bit of my money when I knew I could do this myself. The quest was now on to see if I could find
any information on line that would help me (because everything there is to know seems to be on the Internet).
Lowe’s web site is probably one of the best resources on line for finding
information about projects around the house involving hardware. They’ve built this entire on line library of information for you
to use as a service to their customers. This is certainly a gigantic step above anything I found at the
Home Depot web site. I was very quickly able to ascertain that everything I suspected I’d have to do was true and that
I could very easily handle this project. I also had the benefit for looking on line at the different water heaters that they
had available.
Let me take this moment to tell you a little bit about water heaters. There are two different kinds: electric and gas. Electric
costs more money, gas is what I had. Both usually use tanks that store a certain number of gallons. The dead water heater was a 40 gallon one, for example.
There is also a new type of tankless water heater that uses gas that seems to flash heat the water as it passes through the unit. These things are amazing and save you even more money then just using a gas heater, but their minimum cost seems to be in the $500 if you are lucky and I wasn’t interested in a new installation. Gas 40 gallon water heater is what I got.
You will notice, dear reader, that in the beginning of this little story I mentioned that the master bathroom was an add on. I didn’t add it on. It was done by one of the previous owners. This really doesn’t have much bearing on the story yet, but I wanted to mention it to get it out of the way.
So, there I found myself in my backyard draining the old water heater, turning off the gas, disconnecting the water feeds and hauling it out of the way. I went to Lowe’s, bought another 40 gallon gas heater, and whistled all the way on the drive home. This would be the last time I’d whistle for about three days.
I won’t bother you with the finer details, let me just break it down for you. Day 1 was pretty much taking out the old water heater and putting the new one in to place. Day two was looking at the connections on the water pipes, realizing that they weren’t the standard type, coming up with a plan to work around this, trying that plan, having it fail, trying another plan, having that fail, then giving up. There was no way around it, I was going to have to cut the original pipes and solder on new connections.
This all brings us to day three and also brings us to the moral of todays little tale: always do things the right way because it will also be the easy way and save you lots of time. I stopped by the hardware store on the way home, bought the male 3/4″ threaded ends that I needed as well as a pipe cutter. In the course of 1 hour I was able to cut the pipes, solder on the new ends, connect the water heater, connect the gas, hit the pilot light and was able to pat myself on the back for (finally) a job well done. Had I just bit the bullet and conceded to having to cut and colder some copper pipe I could have sat on my duff after work on Monday.
Lesson learned… have a nice day.
-WW