Time Well Spent
You know what I like doing on a dreary Wednesday afternoon? You don’t? Well, I’ll tell you. I like relaxing at home in the company of a cozy heating & cooling technician who is replacing our water heater that has conveniently picked THIS week to crap out. And if that isn’t enough, I like finding out that, upon restoring hot water to our house from our BRAND new water heater, the hibernating sediment in our 80-year old hot water pipes awakes, decides to mingle with its little sediment buddies, and subsequently clogs our entire hot water supply. Oh, that’s not enough? How about the fact that our technician is unable to get into our pipes to clean them because of the ever-so wonderfully placed asbestos insulation? So, after deciding against the hazmat-asbestos-removal route, our only alternative is to completely replace our hot water pipes with brand-spankin’ new pipes. In conclusion, it goes something like this…
Brand new 50-gallon water heater, installed: $900
Re-piping residence for hot water: $1,475
No screaming cold showers and a bathtub full of hot water without using the stove: priceless.
I’ll definitely enjoy the shiny new water heater tonight, even if I can’t have any actual hot water. I told the technician that I might paint it. Maybe black for death, or red for hot. Better yet, maybe I should get a tattoo of a water heater, to remind me of time well spent. Then again, tattoos are expensive.