Weekend Warrior

Over the long Labor Day weekend, I decided that three days off work would be the perfect time to tackle some sort of project around the house. I am an Interior Design School drop-out, which means that I'm now an Interior Design Hobbyist, so I'm always looking around our 1986 townhouse for areas that I can implement some HGTV design tips. I considered my time frame, budget, and the fact that I had a sick husband at home for whom I felt like I should be available for, and decided that painting our guest room seemed like a doable project.

After a somewhat relaxing Saturday, I woke up Sunday morning ready to start the project. I looked through the paint sample books that I have and decided on some colors. Then I began to clear out the bedroom, which was looking like it was being used as a storage facility. There were boxes of stuff at the foot of the bed, on top of the bed, piles of clothes on the floor, and too many books to fit on the bookshelves. I cleared off the shelves first and then began the task of moving boxes from the foot of the bed into the living room. About halfway through the boxes, I picked one up and noticed the bottom of the box was wet. I looked inside and it was only linens...nothing that would have been leaking.

I pulled up the box next to it and found the same thing...wet on the bottom. That box was full of shoes; again nothing to leak. And box after box began coming up the same way. Once all the boxes had been cleared I discovered that the entire carpet along an entire wall was wet. Under the bed...also wet. WTF? There is a crawl space under our house so it didn't make sense that water could be coming up from under the house. And there were no visible signs of damage on the ceiling, so nothing was dripping into the room. And then I remembered that seemingly innocent little puddle of water that I'd noticed a few weeks earlier under our water heater...

I'm a stereotypical girl in the fact that I know nothing about appliances or home repair. Seeing that puddle under the water heater didn't bother me too much at the time. For as long as I've been with my husband I can remember dripping sounds always coming from the utility room and no one else seemed to notice it or to seem bothered by it. And we hadn't noticed any damage being done by it. I mentioned the puddle to my husband and he kind of shrugged it off too. I knew there was a floor drain in the area and just figured that the water would find it's way down the drain eventually.

But it seems now that the water had actually been finding it's way underneath the peel and stick tiles in the utility room, into the guest bedroom which shares the back wall of the utility room, and into the garage where upon moving more boxes of crap out of the way, I discovered a pretty massive growth of green, furry mold. Great.

So step number one was to go out and buy a new water heater. I suppose step number one should have been to follow my father-in-law's advice and turn off the water and gas line to the water heater, but Jim and I agreed that we didn't want to be without hot water for showers, and another day or two of water damage wouldn't make much more of a difference at this point. God only knows how long this leak had been happening, but considering the amount of wet bedroom carpet and the amount of garage mold that we found, I'd guess this has been going on for quite some time.

So anyway, on to step number one, I was off to Home Depot for a new water heater. I've been seeing lots of commercials for tankless water heaters, and they promote them as being really energy efficient, and the smaller size would make for a cleaner look in the utility room. So that was the plan. Except the guy working in Home Depot's water heater department told me that all their tankless heaters were special order only. He said that I could either order one in the store from the Customer Service desk, or order one online which would have more selection and the same delivery time regardless of ordering it online or from Customer Service. I said I'd check it out online (knowing that my actual plan was to find a competitor who had one in stock), and I was on my way.

I went to Ace Hardware (knowing it was a long-shot due to the tiny size of their store) and as expected, they didn't sell water heaters in-store or online. I did, however, get my guest bedroom paint. Not that painting was my top priority anymore, but as long as I was already there, I figured I could do at least one productive thing. So after making my paint purchase, I was off to Menards.

I don't know if this is true about all Menards

I picked out a laminate that I liked, but didn't purchase it yet since I knew that the more pressing issue was the water heater. Joel walked me over to that department and sought out the employee to help me. She said that before I could make the purchase, she'd have to know what size vent we currently had. I looked at the pipe coming out of the top of the model, pointed to it, and asked, "So I need to measure that?" And she said, "Yeah, and also the vent" (pointing to a pipe coming out of the wall at the bottom). Clearly, I have no clue about any of this. Thinking back to the class I took in Interior Design school about the basics of a home, we were pretty much given an "A" for being able to point to a furnace in a picture. The chick at Menards also mentioned that they didn't provide installation and/or haul-away services. They were simply a home-repair supplier.

I briefly thought on my drive home that perhaps my dad and Jim's dad would know how to install a water heater. But it didn't seem fair to make our dads give up their free time to do all this work, and Jim and I agreed that it was something important enough that we wanted a professional to do. I looked online to find some retailers who would also do installation and haul-away and discovered that apparently it's nearly impossible to find someone who has tankless water heaters in stock and will provide the necessary services as well. Looking at Home Depot's website again, I didn't want to schedule an installation since I had no idea when the water heater order would come in. So I figured it was best to just go back to the store where I could actually talk to someone instead of filling out an online request form for someone to call me.

So I went back to Home Depot, where the guy at Customer Service told me that they did indeed have two tankless water heaters in stock. I told him that the guy in the heater department told me they didn't carry those. The CS guy said, "I don't know why he'd say that. He's been working here for years and we've always stocked them. They sell out fast so we don't always have them in stock, but we do stock them. Strange." Yeah. Quality is quality is quality is....

However, the CS guy told me that if we didn't already have a tankless model, we couldn't be sure that our house was compatible for tankless. So I had to set up an appointment for an analyst to come to our house on Tuesday and see if we met all the requirements. If we did, and if they had our model in stock, they could install it Wednesday. If they didn't have the model in stock, it might be three weeks to get it in. I scheduled the analysis and was on my way back home.

But after some more extensive Internet research, I discovered that on average, most people save about $70 a year due to the energy efficiency of a tankless water heater. Only $70 a year! That means that it would take about 10 years for the cost difference to be made up in energy savings. Who even knows if we'll still be living here in 10 years? And knowing that they'd for sure have the tank models in stock, I called first thing Tuesday morning and turned our analysis appointment into an installation appointment.

So the leakage problem has been fixed, but now there is the aftermath of cleaning up all the moldy, water damaged areas. In the utility room, the peel and stick tile has to be replaced and most likely the subfloor underneath it. In the guest bedroom the carpet, padding, and subfloor were all ruined, as well as some of the baseboards and drywall, and probably the insulation in that wall too. And in the garage, some drywall and insulation will also need to be replaced.

This is turning into a huge nightmare...