Hot water and I haven’t been getting along lately. It has apparently been causing issues for my wife for a while, but this is one of those instances when my wife doesn’t nag me enough. Nicole will tell me something one time and never again. She’ll just keep dealing with it, expecting me to get around to the problem eventually. This was one of those instances.
Nicole said to me a while back that the hot water wasn’t flowing very well in the bathroom. I looked at it, said, “Maybe the city is doing some work. It should come back.” Then I forgot about it.My father-in-law also mentioned it at one point, but I thought he had just flushed the toilet before trying to use the water. And after all, the house was built in 1952. What do you expect?
If I wash my hands, it takes place in the kitchen. I only brush my teeth in the bathroom sink and I don’t need hot water for that. So, I just didn’t realize that hot water was flowing in what could best be described as an anemic trickle.
Then, I forgot to shave on a day when I really should have. I had a meeting in the afternoon and an event to attend that night and realized that I really should take the werewolf-like mane of hair from my face before I begin to scare small children and start to attack chicken coops. So, during my lunch hour I tried to shave in the bathroom sink.
The trickle of water that came from the hot tap was so sad, so pitiful. It was a thin needle of water. It took four or five minutes to actually get hot water from the tap. It was a travesty of bathroom etiquette that my wife had been made to suffer so. I (finally) sprang into action.
I called Dad.
Hey. Don’t get too judgmental. My dad is a contractor. He’s also one of those guys who disassembled a clock and put it back together at a young age, became an auto mechanic and received awards that filled an arm of the jacket he wore to work each day, taught himself more carpentry you’ll ever know, has built houses from the ground up, has renovated houses from a point of despair to comfortable livability, solved the Rubik’s Cube in under 12 seconds, leapt tall buildings in a single bound, fought crime with one hand tied behind his….
Well, he’s really good with tools and a hell of a resource to have. So he came to the house.
We looked at the pipes.
Okay, he looked at the pipes while I held the flashlight.
The decision was made to rip the wall out of the bathroom, because the stoppage in the pipe must be shortly before the water comes into the sink. We did that. That pipe was very stopped up. Old house. Steel pipes. Lots of rusted build up. We turned the water back on and…still just a trickle. We now have plans to replace all the hot water pipes in the house.
With that job looming over our heads, (hey, if you wanna join me and Dad in the crawlspace next weekend, feel free…) another issue came to light.
Nicole and I took our daily walk this past Monday and heard a noise upon getting back to the house. There was a sound coming from the laundry room. A sound like water. A sound like water running out of a large container. A sound almost exactly like the hot water running out of your aged hot water heater because the bottom has turned to rust and finally given way so that the whole thing has really ceased to be a hot water heather and turned into a circular hunk of metal sitting in your back yard, able to function as the world’s largest paper weight if so desired, but you’ll have to come and get the damn thing yourself because I’m not hauling it around…..
I’m getting ahead of myself.
I discovered that the pan in which the hot water heater sits was full of water.
Again, I call Dad.
Me: “Hey. You’re not gonna like hearing from me right now, but the pan below the hot water heater is filling up with water.”
Dad: “That’s not good.”
Me: “What can I do” Thinking: Please be able to fix this by turning some screw that I just can’t see without your guidance. Maybe I can seal something, or replace a seal, or do something that’s really easy that no one would ever think of…
Dad: “You have to replace it. When they’re rusted out, that’s the only thing you can do.”
Me: “Damn.”
While this conversation did not go as desired, you’ve got to give the old man credit. Thee and a half hours later, my house had a new hot water heater and hot water flowing through the pipes. It’s really good to have a father whose knows his way around a house, who owns more tools than most and has a willingness to tackle plumbing (God bless him).
And we still have that looming job ahead—replace all the hot water pipes under the house. The good news is, Dad will be back to help me. The wife and I gave him his first granddaughter three months ago. I think he’d do anything we asked at this point.
And when the job is done, we’ll not only have the hot water in the bathroom my wife has always dreamed of, we’ll also have something never before seen during our tenure as the happy homeowners of this particular home – water pressure.
Oh, water pressure—that sweet massage of the scalp in the morning as you take a hot shower. I have so enjoyed that feeling in every hotel bathroom I’ve ever had the pleasure of showering in. I’ve only dreamed of having such water pressure in my own home.
But that’s what’s in store after Dad and I finish this job.
Is it worth crawling around in the dirt crawlspace and replacing each of those pipes for no benefit beyond good hot water pressure?
Hell yes.
After all, it’s the little things that make you happy.
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