One of the things on my to-do list for the past month or so was to drain the water heater. It is something that is apparently supposed to be done once or twice a year and that we've never done. Like at all. In the eight years we've lived in this house. I looked it up online and found some great instructions and thought maybe I could do it myself, but wanted to wait until my husband was home to help just in case something went wrong. Now, I have to admit that I don't think my husband was totally on board until I sent him the link to the website that said it needed to be done every 6-12 months and why. I'm pretty sure he chalked it up to one of my hair brain "chores" in his never ending honey-do list.
So, yesterday, I gave him advance warning that it was going to go down that night. He's much like the kids in that he needs "transitional warnings" for things he doesn't want to do. Once the kids were tucked in bed, we reviewed the instructions online and said it seemed pretty straight forward and then proceeded to drain the water heater.
I have to give a little background here and tell you that things of this nature nearly NEVER go according to plan. Like, about two months ago, as I was washing dishes and the kitchen sink handle broke off? Yeah, that involved a sander, a blow torch and various other saws and tools I can't even recall. Hubby had to take a day off of work to deal with it. It's not HIM, he's not Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor, honestly. It's this ancient house we own. Honestly!
Anyway - back to the tale at hand. So, the first obstacle was shutting off the water source to the water heater. It would not turn off until we found the appropriate wrench to loosen it from it's corroded state. So, it was no surprise that when it came time to open up the drain, it also took a wrench to do that. Out flows the water and we're all golden, right? Well, not exactly. You see, after HOURS of draining the water heater (which, we found out later, was because the water cut off from the house didn't shut all the way off), Lance decides to finally call it a night and goes to close the drain. Except it won't close. He tightens it all the way and water is still flowing out. This is not good.
Because he can't take another day off of work for something like this (this is a short week already, after all), we decide that he's going to get up and be at Home Depot when they open at 6am and get the parts we need. He gets up this morning and water is STILL FLOWING out of the hose coming from the water heater. He turns off all the water to the house and it finally stops. Because Home Depot didn't have the exact part we need, he had to fashion something that threaded onto the drain out that had a handle that we could turn off to get it shut off. But he finally did. We then were able to fill the hot water heater, but couldn't turn the thermostat back up to heat the water until it was full. Meanwhile, Lance needs to get ready to work. Cold shower for him (yikes) and then he turns the thermostat up and by the time he leaves for work, we have hot water again. Hallelujah!
You don't know how much you need things like a kitchen sink and hot water until you are without them.
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