The Bard's Fire

Frankly, I thought it would be the clothes dryer, the refrigerator or, most likely, the dishwasher that would go to Valhalla next. But it was our 12-year-warrantied, 11-year-old water heater that turned up its toes sometime in the night. It started leaking, bigtime, as evidenced by the amount of water Himself cleaned up with the wet-dry vacuum first thing this morning. Fortunately, aside from some leakage into the laundry room, most of the escaping H20 went into the garage and out under the garage door.

We've spent the majority of the day looking at possible replacements and dealing with the manufacturer's warranty division, the vendor, and the vendor's installation department. It would have taken considerably less time if the three parties communicated with each other, at least to the extent what one told us about what the others did bore passing acquaintance to what the others told us they did. It took many phone calls to each, but we finally have all three agreeing on the process, a ballpark figure on what the monetary outlay will be, and a game plan and time window for the installation tomorrow morning.

Himself was able to shut off the gas to the thing, but the cut-off valve for the water intake wasn't as cooperative. So, for now and until the installation is complete, we've turned off the water at the street. Toilet tanks are being filled with buckets of water from the rain barrels out back, and we're washing our hands with bottled water.

I'm really hoping things go as planned. We have an out-of-town guest due on Thursday evening.