I’m in Hot Water Now!

I know what you are thinking, “What did Dave do now?”   Well, it isn’t that type of “Hot Water”, which, honestly, would be a little cheaper than this….

   

Yep, that’s the type of “Hot Water”…we needed a new Hot Water Heater in the Condo.  As one of the storms passed the other day, our lights flickered, and then our Hot Water became Luke Warm water.  Now our water heater was “ONLY” 14 1/2 years old, so age couldn’t be the problem, right?   Well, if you look at the pictures above, taken with my cell phone so I could show them over at Home Depot what I was dealing with, you can see signs of leaking.  We could have waited until it totally stopped working, since when I reset the breaker it all started to work again, but we decided that it was worth $335 to buy another one…like the one below.

So I go over to Home Depot, and they ask if I was going to install it, or did I want an installer.  Well, I am not much with dealing with those copper pipes, the electricity part would not be that hard, and the new one was a bit higher, wider, and well…how much could it cost to have it installed anyway?  Another $200 perhaps???

Well, there it is…our $1,059.94 water heater!!!!  Yep, $700+ to deliver it, install it, and get rid of the old one…includes required County Permit, which means required certified plumber.  And after the 'plumber' arrived this morning at 11:05 am, he was gone by 12:30.  His first comment was, “This is a restrictive area, which cost more.”  My reply was, “I told them were it was located, they quoted me a price.”  Well, we only paid the price quoted.  He barely talked to us after that until I mentioned that Marcia was Greek, since earlier he mentioned he was from Bulgaria.  He then took a minute to say that his daughter attends a Greek school down in Clearwater.  Just a quiet guy doing his job I guess.  Price included the new plastic drain pan, the new copper water lines and connections.  I guess I should have been a plumber instead of a librarian….they have a warehouse they pull the hot water heater out of, along with needed parts.  Heck, $200+ per hour or so???  Ridiculous...but I searched the Internet and this is the low end of the going price right now.

Some of you might have seen this picture in Facebook of Marcia and her friend of fifty years, Gerry.  We met with Gerry and her daughter Ruth last year at Cracker Barrel, and since Gerry was down from Chicago area again this year, we drove over to Gainesville to meet with them again.  Ruth (not pictured) lives in the Amelia Island area, and this Cracker Barrel is about half way…135 miles for us, 110 miles for them.  This time we took the motorhome for “comfort” reasons, and since Gerry has a hard time hearing, I am glad we did because it gave these two a chance to catch up.

Ruth took the picture from Facebook, and this was my picture as I sat in the driver’s seat…they did not even know that I took it, but as you can see, Skruffy sure knew.  After a 3 1/2 hour visit, we headed back home, and got the motorhome tucked back into storage while there was still a bit of daylight still.  I figure it cost $45 in gas, since that is how much I put in on the way, and the needle was back where it was when we started, but well worth it for the comfort level, that’s for sure.  (In other words, no rest area toilets needed…and Skruffy felt more at home staying in the motorhome than she would have staying in a car for that long.)