Last night around 1:30am I got an alarm from my home security system. It was a water detector I’d placed next to the hot water tank. Given that unit was close to twenty years old, I pretty much knew what happened, I just hoped it wasn’t flooding the back of my basement.

I ran naked down two flights of stairs to the basement, and was relieved to see it was just a small stream of water coming from under the tank, not a torrent. I turned off the water to the tank, turned off the tank heater, mopped up the water on the floor with some bath towels I’d staged next to the washing machine for cleaning, went back upstairs, got dressed, then went back down for a closer look and ponder. I am about to retire (again) and I was hoping to save a few grand to help me bridge the gap between paychecks and 401k withdrawals. Now it was looking like I’d be spending a few grand on a new hot water tank instead.

I put a bucket under the draincock and opened it, figuring I should start draining the tank before the leak gets any worse. Hardly anything came out, probably because sediment and/or corrosion was clogging it. I never did any of the usual preventive maintenance on the tank, which mostly involves periodically draining the tank and letting it refill to prevent sediment buildup. My bad. So now it’s looking like it might take me all day to drain the tank. But a little online research and I got a tip to open some of the hot water spigots to allow air into the tank as it drained. In retrospect I should have figured, but it’s the middle of the night and my brain isn’t at full steam. So that improved the drainage but only barely.

I set a timer to periodically check on how the bucket was filling, went back upstairs to my den, started up one of my computers and went online to Blue Dot, the place that did my new central AC/furnace. They did a super job on the new unit and while they were here they offered to replace the hot water tank as well and give me a quote, which I passed up. I figured I’d ping them to do the job. I set up an appointment to have someone come out and give me an estimate. Then I began figuring out my new budget reality and how to work around not having hot water.

Luckily I’d already done a load of dishes and laundry. There’s a shower in one of our unisex bathrooms at work I can use if I have to, and a laundromat just down the street that I’ve used before when the washing machine that came with the house failed. Figured I could boil some water on the stove to do dishes; the first apartments I lived in had no dishwashers and when we moved into one that did I thought we’d hit the big time. And some things like my Disney mugs and classic Fiestaware aren’t dishwasher safe so I do those by hand anyway.

So I had a plan, went back to bed and tried to get some sleep. I had a presentation I had to make at work the next morning and having lost most my night’s sleep I wasn’t sure I could manage it. But I did, then went back home to wait for the guy who wasn’t from Blue Dot after all (they don’t do plumbing stuff it turns out) to come and give me an estimate, which I accepted. I’ll have (hopefully) a new hot water tank by this evening as I write this, and a few grand less in my savings. So it goes. Tell you how it went later.