Resolution

I realized that I never gave a final chapter to the water heater saga! I bet you are all thrilled to finally have conclusion to this riveting tale. The water heater continued to deteriorate to the point where I was turning the thermostat up nearly every day and the water was getting cooler and cooler every day. It was also spurting water each time we would take a shower! I think it was really close to completely failing. So as I began to plan a replacement, I received two pieces of GREAT news. The first piece of good news was that Bridget's parents and sister were coming to SLC for a ski vacation, and Tom offered to help install a new heater on his vacation. What a huge help he was, he even let me do a lot of the work (which I wanted) and now I think I could install one on my own in a pinch. The second piece of good news was that Bridget's Grandma Tine read about our saga on the old blog and offered to buy us the water heater! What a gift! That part was truly amazing!!

So a few days before my help arrived I went shopping. I found an energy efficient model at Sears that was a little more than the less efficient ones at Lowes and Home Depot, but it also came with a 12 year warranty which is pretty good in the water heater world. So I bought it and managed to cram it into the back of Bridget's VW Jetta (with the back seats folded down) and got it down in the basement with out killing myself or breaking the heater! When it came to the install it was pretty simple actually, take out the old one and plug in the new one. We did replace an older copper line with a new braided steel hose, and I got to do a little soldiering on that one! Fun with tools, yeah! And there was some drama on if we were actually going to be able to get it past this big support beam, we talked about lifting it up and over some pipes...one of us even contemplated knocking a hole in the drywall to get the new one in. But it didn't come to that, it was a tight squeeze...but we got it in there no deconstruction or disassembly required.

And now we have plenty of hot water, no leaks, energy efficiency, and some much needed experience! Thanks to Tom and Melissa for all of their hard work, and a special big thanks to Grandma Tine!