The luxuries that are necessities

Our ability to heat water, as a list:

1. Last week: Blaine walks downstairs into furnace room, and goes splish-splash. The water heater was leaking. It's a relatively new thing, the last time we went down all was dry, but it had been going on long enough to soak some things at floor level and do a little damage to the wood crib we were fixing to give away.
2. Time to shop for a new water heater. We've always wanted tankless! We both used them in Japan and they rocked. *research research*
3. Despite good experiences in Japan, installing tankless water heaters in a house like this, with hot water needs sprawled all over (two baths, kitchen in opposite corner, laundry room sort of in the middle, future plans for another far-flung bathroom) would not be economical, nor would it be able to give us the "endless" hot water supply the promotional literature claims.
4. Friday night: We decide on tanks. Two of them, 40 gallons each, connected in series. Which means that the cold water goes in first, and then the hot water output of the first goes into the cold water intake of the second. So in the best of circumstances, like first thing in the morning, we have 80 gallons of hot water. (Our old heater is 30 gallons, so 80 feels like an ocean.) In the worst of circumstances—after a long day of laundry and dishes etc.—we should still have 40 gallons because the one heater will preheat the water for the second heater, cutting down heat time.
5. We find a willing neighbor. God bless Brandon Hendricks, seriously. He grew up doing HVAC and has installed, in his words, "hundreds of water heaters." Including his own in the house he built for his family last summer. He said, and I'm not joking, "I'm tired of working on my house. It will be a nice break on my day off to work on your house instead." Is this man not a candidate for sainthood?
6. Today, 8:30 a.m. Blaine runs to hardware store to buy one thing Home Depot didn't have Friday night.
7. 11:00 a.m.: We take out crappy old 30-gallon water heater. Good riddance! Emma and Christian drain it bucketful by bucketful.
8. Blaine and Brandon make two more trips to the hardware store.
   
9. 2:30 p.m., the serious work begins with the vent, which needs a little upgrading since it will now be venting two water heaters in place of one. Here's where it gets really interesting. :D
10. The vent is in pieces in an old chimney, not even connected to each other. (Thank heavens we didn't all die of carbon monoxide poisoning, since it wasn't being properly vented!) It takes them the better part of a day, like six hours, to pull that vent apart in pieces and drag it out.
11. And then the new venting won't go in.
12. Several hours of panic ensue, in which we try to divine why the brick chimney winds and turns this way and that, and give up hope of ever getting the venting installed. There is serious talk of breaking through the walls on two floors to feed the vent up, and serious talk that that's the only way the original venting was installed.
13. After a few hours of hand-wringing (my hands more than anyone's) B makes a little two-brick size hole in Christian's bedroom, and miraculously finds The Blockage that is preventing the venting from fulfilling its duties. He clears out a brick and some thisnthat and with a hefty shove of a PVC pipe (venting what?) and some tugging and shouting, the water heater vent goes up!
14. Just as it is getting almost too dark to work, the men are on the roof doing the bird-proof cap on top. Voila! A regulation, code-compliant vent from basement to roof, and almost no crumbling interior walls I can't afford to fix!
15. Moments ago: Blaine and Christian have just finished carrying down the two massive water heaters.

I suspect running the pipe and getting it all functional will still take hours yet, and it's 10:18 p.m. But there's no more talk at least of ripping the house apart to install vent, and about this I am grateful and relieved. I've got my fingers crossed that I can take a hot shower tomorrow, and perhaps run a load of dishes in the dishwasher tonight. Though I'm not holding my breath about that last one.

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Now playing: Marty Robbins - Cool Water
via FoxyTunes