R.I.P. Water Heater

It had to happen some time. My old water heater gave up the ghost...in a rather violent way.

Some back story...
There was one particularly warm day, back on May 14th, when my air conditioner was running. The A/C makes a rather distinctive, though rather quiet, hissing sound. This is the compressed refrigerant coursing through the copper piping from the compressor to the coils in the furnace. Since there is little insulation between the basement and first floor, I can pretty much hear the distinctive sounds that emanate from the basement.

When the A/C turns off, there is a louder hissing sound as the refrigerant relaxes and turns back into a gas. This hissing, louder than when the compressor is running yet still relatively quiet and undisturbing, lasts only for a few seconds.

The event...
On this hot day, the A/C was running as per usual. When sufficiently cool, the A/C kicked off I heard the usual sound as the freon in the piping relaxed. This hissing sound, however, continued for longer than normal. This caused me instant concern and I strained to listen.

Sure enough, the hissing continued for 30 seconds, then a minute. I became quite concerned. Going into "Uh-Oh!" mode, I made a beeline for the basement stairway where I listened further.

Still there was the continuous hissing.

I thought the worst, that something had happened to the piping from the heat pump to the furnace and that I was leaking freon into the basement. For a split second I was worried that this freon would add to the hole in the ozone layer since the furnace and A/C unit are over 15 years old. Then I came to my senses...who cares about that!? This may cost me billions of dollars to fix! OMG! WTF?

I crept down the stairs preparing for the worst as the hissing continued. I arrived to a scene that I will not forget. (Why did I not have a camera available?) There was a geyser of hot water shooting out from around the top vent of the water heater as the water heater continued to heat!

I quickly shut off the water to the house, cut off the gas and pulled the pressure vent lever and the geyser subsided. I was certainly semi-relieved at this point...my HVAC system was safe, but of course I now had no hot water.

That being said, I had not planned on buying a new hot water heater just now. I had hoped to eke a few more months out of the old heater before going ahead and replacing it. So much for hoping, I had to get everything in order now!

I keep my usual checking account as close to $0 as I possibly can, preferring to save most of my money (what little there is) in a high-yield money-market savings account. The unfortunate problem with this is that if I need the money, I have to transfer it (it is at a different, large multi-national banking institution) to my checking account (which is at a local credit union) to use it. This, unfortunately, takes a couple of days. And I sure as hell wasn't going to use any credit cards!

Not only did I have to wait for that, but I was certainly not going to tackle putting in a new water heater by myself. Why?

1) I have a car, not a truck. Dad has the truck, but he is gone all week.
2) Natural gas. I can do water plumbing quite well. Gas, uh, no thanks.

So my plan was thus: transfer the money, shower at mom-n-dad's until the weekend, get and install the new water heater, done.

This, thankfully, worked quite well. I went to Home Depot on the 21st with money in hand, bought a new 40 gallon gas water heater and all the requisite piecesparts to install it. All in all, the bill came to about $595, with tax, title and tires. Dad and I had it installed and working in about three hours.

While waiting for the transfer, the $600 "stimulus" check appeared in my savings account, so I'm not actually down any money. Thanks GW!

Fig. 1: The new water heater.
GE SmartWater 40 Gallon Natural Gas Water Heater (12-year Warranty)

The new heater should be significantly more efficient than the old, and I am waiting on my next few gas bills to see how it impacts my usage.

I replaced a great deal of plumbing from the mains to the water heater, too, as the existing valves were leaky inside. I had the water in and out shut off at the water heater and opened the pressure vent and drain to let the water tank drain out while waiting to get the new one...and it drained all week! The input valve was not shutting off properly (which I did not figure out until we got the old heater disconnected) which kept a small trickle running. There was also a great deal of strange sediment being drained out as well. I am sure it is fallout from the nasty city water that went through the old heater for years.

So, now I have a new water heater with all the trimmings in addition to the new water softener I installed to replace the old, decrepit one in place when I bought the house. Now I just need to replace the rest of the plumbing bits in the house and I'll be all set!

I guess the old heater had a good run...it was nearly 25 years old!

There is still some worth to the old heater. A friend of mine from the amateur radio club I belong to had the bright idea of having members collect recyclables to cash in to build up our coffers so we can be more self-sufficient. In the past a select few of us (myself and three others) would band together to pay the club bills...phone line to control the repeaters and yearly insurance premiums...which was getting expensive and tiresome.

He came by and got the old water heater and the old, decrepit washing machine that was in the house when I bought it to take away for recycling. I am not sure of how much he got for it, but if it helps the club and declutters my basement, I'm all for it!

From what I have gathered, the plan has been so successful that our next insurance premium is paid, as well as the next six months of phone bills. Hurrah!

Random Stuff...

Snow
The snow from my last post is almost completely gone. There are a few piles of filthy, black snow lying around in the shadows of buildings. However, with the warmer temps...it was 63° yesterday...they won't last long. It is supposed to be in the 50's today with rain, which will further beat down the remaining slush.

Time
What is the deal with this daylight savings crap? Now when I get up in the morning, it is dark! At 7 am! I don't know why we even bother changing the clocks. It seems to me that it would be better just to shift all our zones forward from standard time by 30 minutes and be done with it for good. You know, split the difference. But, who am I?

Car
On two of the coldest days last week I awoke to my car not able to start. You want to talk about being ticked off! I've never had a problem with my car ever, so I thought this quite unusual. I got new tires weekend before last and it figures that would be the first day this all started. They checked out the alternator and battery and said both were good, but that there could be a flaw in the battery that only showed up when cold. After the last time I had to jump it...by driving my mother's car around my house through my backyard to get to the front of my car...I went and bought a new battery. Haven't had any problems since...knock on wood.

Water Heater
OK, I spent some of my tax refund on a new water heater. The happiness was short lived as I discovered in my research that I have to have a special flue dedicated just to the tankless heater! I was intending to vent it up through the existing chimney with some of the special stainless-steel "type III" vent tubing, but you can't do that. The county would not approve a permit for a new heater installed in that manner. So much for lower gas bills.

I sent it back and should get the refund soon. Then I will go out and buy a regular gas water heater. They are quite a bit more efficient these days than my existing 25 year old heater, so the gas bills should still be lower. And I intend on getting a fitted insulating blanket to make it even more energy efficient. I tell you, it is always something!

Cancer Update
I am holding steady around 200 lbs., which is very nice. I actually had to move my seat in my car up a little bit because I was so far away from the wheel. I have long legs anyhow, so I can't be too close to begin with, but I feel so small in such a large car. That's OK by me!

I am now on passive monitoring, which means I will have a CAT scan and checkups every three months for about a year. Then I will be looked at every six months for about five years. And I will have a PET scan about once every year, too. So, things are looking up!

Films
I don't usually recommend films to people because I have such an eclectic taste, but my friend Chris turned me on to one lately that is one of the best I've ever seen. It is called Hot Fuzz. I initially thought it was a porno, but it isn't. It is about a British cop in London that is so good at his job his colleagues decide to have rid of him an promote him to sergeant and ship him out into the countryside. It gets better from there, with lots of twists and turns, conspiracies and a good bit of comedy. It is pretty gory on occasion, but I have to say it is one of the best cop movies of all time. You must see it!

British entertainment is so much better than our American crap.

House Numbers & Water Softeners

House Numbers

I bought these cool little neon letters at ThinkGeek and I am using them as my house numbers. Pretty cool, huh?


They are bright enough to see over the street lamp and porch lights. I sent the picture along to ThinkGeek's "Customer Action Shots", with the caption: "The geekiest house in the neighborhood gets geekier!" LOL!

They are little, low-voltage (relatively) cold-cathode fluorescent tubes like what is used in a scanner or laptop LCD panel. I put them on a timer so that they are off during the day. I didn't want them to wear out prematurely.

Water Softener

I found an image on my water softener that I took after I completed it on my digital camera when I downloaded the house numbers picture.



The round container is the salt reservoir, the tall device is the resin chamber and the blue items are the pre-filters. The copper network behind it is the wacky setup of bypass valves. With this setup, I can divert water away from the filters for changing, divert water from the softener in case of a problem, or both. Very exciting...LOL!

Water Softener

Note: I am usually loathe to recommend a product or brand, but this is a big exception.

One of the things that I liked about "This Old Crack House" was that Mr. & Mrs. C had a water softener installed, and that it was still there when I took possession of the house.

You see, the water in Fairborn is crap. Sure, it is chlorinated and filtered and all that, but it is still nasty. The smell of chlorine is overwhelming at times. There is so much lime in the water it is literally hard as a rock...any wonder one of the biggest industries in town is a cement plant?

Years ago, my father installed a whole-house water filter. This is a polyester wound cartridge held in a clear container and all the water for the house runs through it. The cartridge is supposed to be good for six months of filtration. Uh...yeah, right. In a month the cartridge is completely black.

Anyhow, I was happy that I now had a water softener! Showers were so much better, laundry so much cleaner. My water did not smell of chlorine anymore. Yippee!

Then one day I awoke like normal and went and turned on the shower. Nothing came out of the tap. I tried the sink, and again, nothing. I thought that I might have forgotten the water bill and they shut me off! Crap! I rushed to the basement stairs and stopped dead...I heard water running. I went down in to the basement and was treated to a flood of biblical proportion. Part of my basement was about two inches deep in water.

Thanks to the uneven floor in my basement, not everything was flooded. The furnace and water heater are situated on concrete pads, so they were high and dry. But, the water softener was definitely the culprit as water was gushing out from the salt chamber. I bypassed the softener to return water to the house and checked it out more carefully. I could not see any obvious reason as to why the softener would suddenly leak the hell over my basement.

The water drained away slowly, the ancient floor drain needing a good roto-rooting. I was late for work, so I left it to drain away all day and went to work.

Now I was disappointed. I had no water softener. Now I was subject to the crap water that everyone else has to deal with. This led me to wonder about how long my water heater would last...every time it heated or filled, you can hear large chunks of limescale hitting the sides of the tank. (Yes, a new water heater is in my future...)

The next weekend I dismantled the poor water softener. Then I discovered the reason: the side of the resin tank, the fiberglass reinforced tank, had ruptured. I was able to guess that the reason this happened is that the realtor, when the house was first put on the market, had hired a firm to winterize the house...and they did not drain the water softener. There was a big gash in the fiberglass where the water had frozen and weakend the tank, and the standard water pressure had finally gotten to it and split it the rest of the way. Needless to say, I was not happy, but there was nothing I could do. It was a Kenmore softener, so I got online and priced out a new tank, which was still available, and the resin to go in it. The price was about 3/4 that of a new, fancier softener. I decided to wait and suffer.

When tax time rolled around, I got my refund and set about looking for a new softener. I wasn't convinced that a new Kenmore or GE or other brand from a big box store was for me. The reviews were mediocre for most of them. Then I stumbled across a number of online stores that allowed you to "roll your own" water softener.

The place I chose to buy from was Ohio Pure Water Co. They had the most comprehensive website and I was duly impressed. They also had great prices. I ordered a 32,000 grain kit, along with several upgrades and a fancy-schmancy Fleck valve (the Cadillac of softener valves, I soon discovered) that meters the water usage so it doesn't recharge the resin prematurely.

It arrived in pieces...lots of pieces. However, the instuctions were very clear. Upon reflection, it was actually pretty easy to assemble and could be done without the directions. I had it installed and running in about two hours. Since I was working on the plumbing at that point, I also replaced the incoming plumbing after the water meter, and added several valves and a set of super filters that absorb chlorine and viruses and other garbage.

I have never been happier with a major purchase like this. The people at Ohio Pure Water were very friendly and will help in any way they can. If you need a softener, skip the big box stores and go to them, you won't be disappointed.

All told, I spent about $800 to make sure my water is a clean as possible. It was very much worth it. After seeing the filter at my parent's house turn black in short order, and a major Air Force base being extremely close to the well fields for our town, I wasn't willing to take any chances.

I still drink bottled water.

Please visit http://www.ohiopurewaterco.com/