Ugh, I need a nap.
I spent yesterday fighting with our hot water heater. The thing has been really lame on the amount of hot water and it been “bumping” while it heats up. Too much mineral buildup. I ordered a new one because I haven’t been able to clean this one out at all and I just wanted the ordeal over with.
The guy came out and told me that I probably needed a new dip tube instead, and could save myself hundreds of dollars by just replacing it. My brand of heater is notorious for disintegrating dip tubes. OK. So Jon buys a new dip tube ($3.50). Then he attempts to remove the dielectric union on top of the water heater to replace the old tube. Frozen. The union will unthread from the heater, but the nut won’t unthread from the union. Hard to describe but basically, I couldn’t disconnect it from the heater without cutting the pipe. So, I tightened it back up and decided to leave it.
Then it started leaking. And no amount of tightening would stop it. Now I HAD to change it.
So I cut the pipe, put on a new union, resoldered the pipe together. Then fought with the new dielectric union to make it stop leaking. Lots of tightening and LOTS of teflon tape (I know, that’s stupid), it finally stopped leaking.
Then my soldered joint began to leak. All the twisting cracked the solder. CRAP!
Reheat the joint, take it apart, sand it off, and resolder the same joint. This NEVER works. EVER. This time it did. Five hours later, I was done and I never want to touch the thing again.
By the way, the old dip tube was in perfect condition. Never needed replacing.
I still got my hour of crosstraining in but I feel like crap today because my back hurt so bad last night, I couldn’t sleep at all. Walking around like a zombie today. I have a bottle of Vicodin that I got from when I had a corneal abrasion and I almost took one of those last night, hoping to get rid of the pain so I could sleep. The stuff makes me feel wierd in a frightening way (only ever took one of them) so I decided not to.
Today I am due for 2 miles (huh?) and strength training. I may do 2 hours of nap training instead.
December 30th, 2004 09:51
Wow - I think you deserve the nap after all of that hard work. I bet the fam is happy that they’ll have more hot water now.
December 30th, 2004 09:58
SAME THING HAPPENED TO US LAST YEAR!
December 30th, 2004 11:40
“Nap Training”…..I’ve got lots of that this week. :-)
December 30th, 2004 15:56
Please take care of that back. It sounds like you need a loooong nap and deserve every minute of it.
December 30th, 2004 16:18
I just spent $1200 on a new water heater (we needed a special kind, of course, since our house has no chimney). I feel your pain in that respect.
Corneal abrasion? Um…OUCH!
May your nap be warm, snuggly and refreshing!
December 30th, 2004 16:21
When getting ready to sell our home in Houston, we noticed the water heater looked about to rust through. Great. Last thing we wanted was for the thing to burst while folks were looking at the house. Plus, there’s no basements down there, so the water heater was in the attic above a 2 story house.
Long story short, the replacement goes swimmingly, but then we go to start lowering the thing down to take it outside, and the old heater is, I swear, like 100 pounds heavier than the new heater was.
After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, we get the thing safely out of the attic and down the stairs (did I mention the 90 degree turn halfway down the stairs?).
Outside, I take a metal spike to the heater and punch a hole. Sure enough, one of the baffles inside had rusted off and was blocking the drain. Something like 10 gallons of water comes rushing out into the yard.
No bad back, luckily.
December 30th, 2004 20:09
Sorry to hear your water heater gave you such grief. Did you check the flux capacitor? Notorious problem.
Hope you sacrificed to the nap-gods and feel better.