Friday, December 21, 2012

A Slightly Horrible Day


Fixing it up.  Isn't it lovely?

By now, probably everyone who reads this blog has already heard me complain about my day on Sunday.  And heard, and heard, and heard. And doesn’t want to read about it now.  But, there might be someone who hasn’t, so here I go!  As I said, it was Sunday, so, after working till midnight the evening before, I drug myself out of bed at the crack of dawn to get ready for church. (At this time of the year, that may not be much of an exaggeration.  Dawn comes pretty late.) I had my tea, got dressed in my Sunday best, gathered my choir materials and keys, and was just having a final sip cup of tea when I heard, “Drip, drip, drip.”  “One of my roof gutters must be clogged,” I thought.  “The rain is dripping onto a window sill or something.”  I pondered this for a moment or so, and then realized that it wasn’t raining.  Yikes!  I went downstairs to my basement, and found the floor covered with water.  Once again,  I attributed the drip to rain.  This was not totally unreasonable, as it had been raining ferociously for several days.  Then I saw water spewing forth from my wonderful new(ish) water heater.  Aaaargh!  I called Dan the Plumber, who had put in the water heater, and I fear that he was still in bed. He told me how to turn everything off – the water heater and the water.  Actually, the heater had already turned itself off.  I had tried to turn off the water before calling, but was trying in the wrong place.  He quickly got dressed and was there in a flash!  I had to miss choir, and feared that I was going to have to miss work as well, since Dan the Plumber worked on it for hours, leaving at one point to go to the hardware store to get a part.  I kept calling the nurse staffing office with updates, and given that they were short of nurses that day, they were as interested in getting it fixed as I was.  And I was mentally calculating the huge plumbing bill that was growing more huge by the minute.  When it was finally fixed, just in time for me to get ready for work, wonderful Dan said that there would be no charge. “Warranty work,” he said. We argued about this a bit, but he was adamant.  Am I ever lucky to have such a great fellow to do my plumbing!

Putting the water heater in three years ago. Isn't the old one horrible?
So what started as a horrible day, ended up a mixed bag of a day, but mostly a good one. 

10 comments:

Pru said...

I love plumbers! Our experience has almost always been as nice as yours (and don't worry, the manufacturer should reimburse him for the warranty work); ditto HVAC engineers. Glad your leak is fixed and your water warm.

Laura said...

I had a plumber a few years ago who looked at my non-working water heater and I overheard him say "I hate plumbers"! He did a good job installing a new one plus doing a little extra for me. He was a plumber to love also.

I. F. said...

Yay! Is that your old water heater behind the shiny new one?

joannamauselina said...

Yes! Isn't it gross? For the first time in my life, I bought a new one before the death of the old one. It was obvious it was ailing.

Marta said...

Great ending to what may have been a very sad story.

Samos said...

Yes, Dan is the best! Strangly enough, I didn't hear this story first from you, but from Dan. We were mingling at my neighbor's annual Christmas party, and he mentioned that he was tardy because of an emergency repair. I was shocked when he told me it was you! Knowing that your heater was brand new! Here's Dan's webstite:

http://spencerhomeplumbing.com

:-)

Unknown said...

Merry Christmas to you all.
love
colin xo

Lorette said...

It's good to have people like that that really stand behind their work. Is that one of those on demand water heaters? We are budgeting for one this year, our old one is ancient.

Lia Nord said...

I'm only just catching up on your blog--is that one of those wonderful water heaters that just heats up a little water at a time? I seriously thought about trying to get one after my old one died--but that was after Katrina, and it was impossible to get anything but pretty standard stuff. I'm glad it got fixed and especially that it got fixed under warranty!

Darryl Iorio said...

All’s well that ends well! Be thankful that you have the best plumber to save the day! I haven’t had any plumbing repairs done yet, but when the time comes, I hope that I can find a reliable and expert plumber like Dan.

-Darryl Iorio