Drop it Like its Hot

Sunday night I went downstairs to clean out Ninja’s liter and discovered what appeared to be little, wet paw prints all over the carpet. At first I was concerned that my four legged mammal had taken to pissing all over the basement carpet. This was only negated when I noticed that the giant artificial Christmas tree boxed up behind Ninja’s liter was all water stained.  I was wrong….it was much worse.

I went around the basement staircase only to find a puddle, the size of Rhode Island, underneath the hot water tank. Internet, this can’t possibly be normal behavior for a hot water tank. Luckily the water had not put the pilot light out so we still had hot water for the time being.

We called a plumber and he was able to come the next afternoon to take a look at the tank. Low and behold, the thing was shitting the brick; sorta like a three legged dog trying to limp down the stairs until it finally gives up and just tumbles head over heals down the remaining few steps.

He gave Brett an estimate of how much it would cost to replace the whole hot water tank; $640 and included my favorite portion of any contractors estimate “plus any extras that my be incurred while I’m doing the work.” Like what extras? You strike oil in my basement? You fall through my floor? I mean…..gimmie something to work with here.

I was a little rippled by the price, figuring most of the price we would be incurring would be labor. Turns out, I was wrong. The tank itself is $400 bucks. Listen Lady, it’s basically a big metal can that holds water and has a candle underneath. Nothing fancy here. I bet ya if the Amish can do this without electricity, we should be able to do it for less than $400 bucks.

For about 30 minutes Brett and I tossed around the idea of trying to install the hot water tank ourselves….how hard could it really be? Bob Villa does it. The Internet has pretty detailed instructions for everything now and most of the time you can find videos on YouTube that guide you through this type of shit. Then we found a list of crap we’d need to have available to install the tank. Let me just share the list with you lady:

• Vent Pipe Fittings
• Gate Valve
• Unions/Transition Unions
• PTFE Plumber’s Tape
• Hacksaw or Pipe Cutter
• Screwdrivers
• Garden Hose
• Soldering Torch
• 240-Volt Neon Test Light
• Hand Cleaner
• T&P Relief Valve
• Water Pipe Fittings
• Flex–Connectors: Water, Gas
• 1/2″ Flare Adapter
• Stick Pipe Dope
• Pipe Wrenches
• Adjustable Open-End Wrench
• Drill and 1/8″ Bit
• Sweat-Soldering Supplies
• Appliance Cart, Dolly or Hand Truck

My initial reaction was all “that’s a lot of shit”. I even re-read the list to verify we didn’t need to make a sacrificial lamb killing or anything of that nature first.

My guess is we could have bought all these tools for slightly less than the $240 that we would end up paying the professional plumber for the labor install, but in the end we’d probably not be saving ourselves a lot of money and surely not a lot of time. Plus there is that whole safety issue with using a soldering torch near gas lines that I just felt really unsure about.

We gave up on the do it yourself repair idea rather quickly and called the professional plumber back. He was able to come out and replace the hot water tank the next day. It took him a few hours and he ended up having to replace the flue as well (one of those additional items he ran into). However, we have hot water again, the puddle formerly known as Rhode Island has been sucked up from my basement floor, and we are hoping that this is the last of the appliances to bite the bullet for the remainder of the year.

Fridgemageddon

When we bought our house, part of the agreement was that the old residents would leave the appliances in the kitchen. All of the appliances were next to new and since we were coming from an apartment, anything would be better than the propane powered camp stove and well water we were used to functioning with.

We have been fortunate that the appliances have lasted this long without any maintenance. That was bound to end at some point. If for no other reason that pure entertainment folks.

The fridge is a 60/40 split and the freezer door has a water dispenser on it. This is great, except for the fact that you can never fit anything large into either side. Fuck you 9×13 pan, I will make you fit.  About a month ago we noticed that the middle beam that splits the fridge and freezer was extremely hot to the touch. Like burn your skin hot. Clearly not something that should be ignored. We pulled the fridge away from the wall and hoovered the shit out of the back vent, clearing away as much dust as possible. That seemed to solve the problem so we went about our merry business.

Until Tuesday night. I had made dinner and went to have a glass of milk. Except the milk wasn’t as cold as it should of been. DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER. This was my first warning sign. I thought to myself….”self, this is strange, perhaps it is because it is so hot out and the air has been on and the appliances are being so overworked with the heat”. But really lady, that’s just a crock of shit. I still turned up the fridge so that it would get a little colder and figured I’d check it in the morning before I went to work. Because avoidance seemed like the best option at that time.

Fast forward to about 6:55 am Tuesday morning when I poured out a glass of what appeared to be a combination of milk and cottage cheese and I knew that Fridgemageddon had hit on the hottest week of the year. We are currently hitting temps of 98 degrees and I’m ready for a snow storm.  We chucked out half the fridge, salvaged what we could, and I called the first appliance repair place I found in the phone book.

I scheduled a repair technician to come around 2 pm the same day and since I had time I decided to clean the whole fridge; unable to do anything solo, including pee, Cardin was attached to my side as I was cleaning. I had cleaned off the door of the fridge with some paper towel and left the roll on the kitchen floor figuring I’d go back and use it again. I was washing the shelves off as Cardin wandered into the living room and started playing; assuming she was playing with her toys.

Remember when your parents always used to tell you they had eyes in the back of their head? Listen Lady, I don’t think mine have grown in yet because I didn’t see this shit coming.  When I went to check on her she had grabbed my lone roll of paper towel and unrolled the entire thing all over the living floor and much of it was on the cat; she was prancing all over it as though it was the yellow brick road and she was off to see the wizard. I was so dumbfounded that about the only thing I could do was look around for Toto.

About 2 pm the technican showed up and 6 screw’s later he had figured out that we had a bad heater and that the whole heating element was covered in an inch of ice which was not allowing the air to be pushed into the fridge and thus cool it down. He was in my house for less than 20 minutes and charged me $185 to fix my problem.  We had to let the fridge and freezer defrost for the remainder of the day before we could plug it back in, but it seems to have resolved our problem.

Certainly better than going out and having to buy a new fridge, but still, one of the major downfalls of being a homeowner.