When It Rains, It Pours Freezing Rain

I recently blogged about how When It Rains It Pours, but now I need to add some more. (To recap, the dishwasher failed, but needs a new shut-off valve before it can be installed. The hot water heater started to leak just a little and we've been treating it tenderly until we can get a new one installed. Steve's away this week, until tonight, and the plumber came Monday to see if he can install the one Steve wants.) Ok, so it turns out, even though the plumber can install the heater we want, we'd have to wait 3 weeks to get it.

On Monday the heater started making a slightly bigger puddle. So I turned it off for the day and turned it back on before bed so I could take a shower. After my shower, the puddle was actively getting bigger. That scared me, so I decided to turn off the heater and try to drain it. Easier said than done. This, of course, was at 2:00 in the morning and I called Steve in DC and woke him up to help me figure out the best plan. I think I drained some of it and the water seems to have stopped flowing. Steve, in the meantime was working on getting an appointment with the plumber. The plumber is coming tomorrow (when Steve's home) to install the not-really-as-good-as-the-one-Steve-wants water heater. So now we're figuring out how to live without a hot water tank. Other than not being able to take a shower or give the kids a bath, it's not too bad. I boil a pot of water on the Stove and use it to help the kids wash their hands and wash dishes that can't wait.

At least we have electricity and heat. Well... that is... until I came home yesterday evening and discovered we had no heat! I was starting to contemplate putting the kids on air mattresses in the family room where we have a gas fireplace, but Steve helped me troubleshoot over the phone and we discovered that the thermostat wasn't working, probably due to a dead battery. After fiddling with it for a while, the heat kicked on. Phew!

And today the kids are home because of this awful "wintery mix!" I did shovel just enough to get out of the driveway for a neighborhood playgroup, but I almost didn't make it back up. We were supposed to do a gymnastics make-up today, but I don't want to venture out again....

I am so looking forward to having a new hot water heater and dishwasher tomorrow!

When It Rains, It Pours

Recently, we discovered that our 15 year old dishwasher is beginning to leak. We put a towel under it, continue to run it once a day, and purchased a new dishwasher that is sitting in the dining room in the box waiting to be installed. Why is it waiting to be installed? Because the shut-off valve to the dishwasher hasn't been used in 15 years and is frozen shut and needs to be replaced first. Of course, Steve wants to do this himself -- it's not that hard a job and a plumber will charge a fortune. He needs a new tool for the job, though....

In the meantime... I was out to dinner with some friends a couple of weeks ago and mentioned how we were thinking about a new type of water heater because ours is 15 years old and it's rated for about 10 years. I was promptly chastised by my friends for living with the old water heater on borrowed time. This is a disaster waiting to happen! Well, a couple of days before Christmas we discovered that there's a small leak in our water heater. So now Steve is scrambling to figure out what new water heater we will and can get before this one completely blows. (We'd like to get a super-efficient one -- even if the cost doesn't justify the payback, we feel that someone needs to start creating demand for environmentally friendly products or they'll never become commonplace!) But getting plumbers to call back, give quotes, and find non-standard water heaters during the holidays is frustrating, to say the least.

So, every night before we go to bed and any time we go out of the house for an extended period of time, we shut off the water supply to the water heater. (If it does fail, the most that would get on the floor is what's in the tank.) Oh, and we used to run the dishwasher every night when we went to bed because the old one is so noisy. But I don't want to run it without hot water... so I'm constantly looking for a time when I can run it and it's thrown off our dish usage habits!

I sure hope that the water heater doesn't fail next week when Steve's away! There's a plumber coming Monday, just to see if it's possible to install a direct-vent water heater. Then it could be 3 more weeks before we could get our hands on one of these models. Cross your fingers, everyone!