Things homeowners hate: weird noises, especially at bedtime.
So, the water heater that we always knew would die soon choose to die (rust through) on Thursday night. The valve at the water heater didn't work, so we had to turn the water off to the whole house. I'm sure these types of things ONLY happen at inconvenient times, but this seemed extra inconvenient. Devon was scheduled to spend 11 hours of his Friday taking the PE exam, and since he works closer to home and has a more flexible schedule, he's usually the one to deal with house stuff that has to happen during business hours.
Friday I scheduled a plumber and went to work for a half day. Since I hadn't showered, my coworkers probably weren't too sad that I went home early! We wanted to look into a fancy tankless water heater, but the price tag was something like $4,000 - $6,000 after the dedicated gas line and new vent. Ouch.
The plumber put a new valve in for us (ball valves all the way!) on Friday evening and scheduled a time to come Saturday morning and replace the water heater. We showered at Devon's office and went out for a fancy belated birthday dinner.
Saturday the plumber worked on the new water heater while we dug up some ugly plants (more on that later).
Before we moved in:
And now, our slightly larger, much newer and nicer water heater:
The moral of the story is that sometimes you should give up your DIY ambitions and pay the nice plumber to do it for you. Your friends and neighbors will thank you, since this is a much quicker way to get a hot shower.
