Disaster Averted

Colleen woke me up yesterday and told me she thought there might be something wrong with the water heater.

"Cool," I thought. "I can put some of my newly learned electrical skills to work and troubleshoot the problem." Thinking it probably wasn't an emergency, I took my time getting up, took time to eat a bowl of cereal and eventually made my way outside. I grabbed my tools and went to the backyard where the access to the crawl space is located. I opened the door to the crawl space and immediately noticed that the backside of the door was wet... not a good sign. Next, I crouched down to go through the doorway and heard the sound of water flowing and thought, "Crap... probably not electrical." I crawled up to the water heater and saw that water was spewing from the drain at the bottom of the tank. I tried to tighten the valve, and was successful in slowing the flow, but water continued to come out.

"Am I going to have to buy a new water heater?" "How much is a new water heater?" There's more about water heaters that I don't know than I know. But I know an electrician who knows a lot about water heaters. His name is Steve and he's not only my electrical instructor but he's also my friend and mentor. I called him up and he came right over and figured out what it would take to fix the leak. So we went to the plumbing supply store bought a new drain valve and replaced the broken one. Easy peasy and for about 5% of the cost of a new water heater.

Disaster averted. And a big THANK YOU to Steve for his help. I'm so glad he was available.