Some Like It Hot
December 23rd, 2009 by ComputerBob
This is yet another one of my many do-it-yourself adventures, like Working Hard To Make It Soft two weeks ago and My $135 Gamble last Christmas.
Two days ago, I noticed a small stream in our garage. It was only about 6 inches wide, slowly flowing from my water heater in the inside-right corner of the garage down the right side of the garage, out the garage door and down the driveway.
If I used a push broom and swept the bulk of the water out of the garage, the stream replenished itself within an hour.
Our water heater was leaking. Not a catastrophic leak. Not even a bad leak.
Except that when you’re dealing with a water heater, any leak is a bad leak because you can’t repair a leaking water heater — you have to replace it.
When I looked through the thick envelope of household paperwork that our home’s highly organized previous owner had left for us, I found receipts and owners manuals for everything from our refrigerator to our clothes washer to our water softener to our Levolor vertical blinds — but no paperwork at all for the water heater. So, since we’ve been here for 5 1/2 years, and the previous owner was here for 5 years, that means that our water heater was at least 11 1/2 years old.
That’s a pretty long life for a water heater, especially considering that it was a very inexpensive model (I looked it up, of course).
So, I followed my usual modus operandi by doing hours and hours of research to find the best water heater for the money. And, to make it an even better deal, Home Depot had recently lowered its price by $40 (USD), so it cost $214 instead of its previous price of $254.
But when I checked into what it would cost to have it professionally installed, I was shocked to learn that a plumber would charge several hundred dollars, and Home Depot would charge even more than a regular plumber.
So, just like my refrigerator last year and my water softener earlier this month, I decided to try to replace my water heater myself.
Yesterday afternoon, I bought it at Home Depot and took it home in my Saturn sedan, all by myself. The only way I could get it in my car was to lay its cardboard carton across the back seat with both back doors open, then open both back windows. Then carefully close one side’s door while reaching in through the window to lift the water heater carton up onto that side’s arm rest. Then repeat the process on the other side of the car, so that the carton rested on both arm rests and its top edges stuck out of both back windows. It it had been even 1/4″ (.6cm) longer, it wouldn’t have been able to close my car doors.
I also bought two 5-foot lengths of 3/4-inch copper pipe, along with elbows and other connectors. I did that because, instead of simply replacing the water heater itself, I wanted to add a long thermal trap loop to the hot water pipe and reroute the cold water supply pipe.
And, to make sure it’s all going to last, I wanted to solder it all together with solid copper pipe, instead of using flexible copper or plastic pipe.
On one of my many trips to Home Depot, I bought a propane torch and a cannister of propane gas, which is what I had always use for soldering copper pipes in the past. But before I had a chance to even try them out, one of my neighbors told me that propane isn’t hot enough to solder today’s lead-free, environmentally friendly pipe solder. So I went back to Home Depot to return the propane equipment and replace it with a MAP torch — the cheapest one costs $35 (USD) — and a cannister of MAP gas, which burns three times hotter than propane gas, but also costs three times more.
Once I had what I thought were all the tools and all the parts that I was going to need, I stopped for the day. I didn’t want to start working on it yesterday because it was already late afternoon.
I figured that it was going to be a major job that would require me to shut off the water for our entire house, so I would start working on it early this morning. That way, I would have the whole day to work on it, without having to worry that Home Depot was going to close soon, or that it would be too dark to see what I was doing.
As soon as I woke up this morning, I made one last run to Home Depot, to buy a few more things that I had thought of overnight. Then I came home, turned off our main water valve and started to cut and dry-fit the various pieces of pipes that I needed.
Once I had them sculpted the way I wanted, I had to take them all apart, clean all of their mating surfaces, apply flux to all of them, reassemble them, and then start soldering them together, while trying to keep them all of the joints at the proper angles to each other.
It was a tremendous amount of work — way more than I had imagined it was going to be.
I worked slowly and carefully, and as I worked, I ended up making four or five more trips to Home Depot, to buy various items that I discovered would make the job go a lot smoother and faster, like a very compact pipe cutter, a combination inside-and-outside pipe cleaner, and a small tool box to hold all of my new plumbing tools and supplies.
When I finally got all of the pipes soldered together, it was a thing of beauty, (that I hope will be a joy forever).
And it was exactly what I had envisioned it would be.
With 11 sections of pipe, 12 connectors and 19 solder joints.
I walked to the opposite corner of the garage and slowly turned on the main water valve.
It took several minutes for the water tank to fill up.
And then the smallest of of my beautiful new soldered joints started to drip.
I had to cut one of my pipes in half in order to remove the leaking joint, so that I could clean it all up again before resoldering it.
And I had to make yet another trip to Home Depot, to buy a 3/4″ sleeve to splice back together the pipe that I had cut in half.
Once I got home, it took another twenty minutes of work until it was all back together again.
And this time, nothing was leaking.
Hallelujah!
So I connected the electrical wiring, held my breath, and flipped the water heater’s circuit breaker back on.
Ten minutes later, we had warm water. After thirty minutes, it was hot, hot, hot.
And it only took me four hours of work yesterday afternoon.
And from 8:00 this morning until 6:35 tonight.
Ten and a half hours.
With no breaks.
And no meals.
I know that a real plumber would have finished the whole job in a couple of hours.
And I know that I’m going to be really sore tomorrow.
But even though it took me 14 1/2 hours spread out over two days — plus several more hours of online research time — it was worth it to me to do it myself and save hundreds of dollars.
And that’s a real good feeling.
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