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| Thursday, March 18, 2010 11:23 AM |
| Aquatic Adventures, Part Two |
 by Fëanor |
I don't want to jinx us or anything, but our flooding/water-heating issues have subsided a bit. When I left off last time, I'd just explained about the hot water heater's pilot light going out. The directions on the hot water heater told me not to attempt to relight the pilot light if any part of the heater had been under water, and to instead call a technician immediately. So I did that. But when I called my plumber's office for more information, they told me relighting the pilot is exactly what any technician would try to do first, and that it shouldn't be dangerous to attempt it myself. So I did! And it lit! But as soon as I turned the thermostat to an actual setting, the fire whooshed up and went out again. I decided I'd have to wait for a professional.
When the guy from PSE&G arrived, he frightened me exceedingly by telling me that usually once the screen at the bottom of your hot water heater gets wet, you're screwed and have to get the entire heater replaced. This is because the screen is made of some weird, delicate material, and also it's an integral piece of the heater that is not considered a separate, replaceable part. Thankfully, when he took the heater apart he found that our screen was a newer one made of metal, and determined that if we were able to dry it out enough, the heater would probably light again and work without issue. (He suspected companies have started making the screens out of metal after numerous consumer complaints about having to replace a whole heater just because the screen got wet - which is understandable.) So he told me to get to work on that and he'd be back later to put the heater back together. I followed his instructions and used our wet vac and a hair dryer to dry out the screen and the surrounding interior of the heater as best I could. Then we waited. And waited. And waited. When it got to be around 8PM and there was no PSE&G guy, we called to see where he was, and, after navigating PSE&G's irritating phone menu (which requires you to try to make computer voice-recognition software understand what you want - an often impossible task which I have discovered from experience does not go any better when you include curses in your instructions), we learned that our guy had been called out on many other emergencies and could arrive at our house at any time between then and midnight. Wha?! This did not make us happy, but as I didn't feel like waiting another day for hot water, or setting up another appointment for that matter, I determined to stay up for the guy. Thankfully he arrived in an hour or so, put the heater back together, lit it up... and it stayed on! Huzzah!
The next day I set up an appointment with my plumber to have the water heater put up on a pad so that we wouldn't have to worry about it getting flooded again (the screen is all the way at the bottom of the thing, so it's the very first thing to get hit by water, of course), and they showed up the next morning and took care of that. So that's done, and it's taken a large weight off my mind.
As for the water itself, well, it's still there! I think the water in the surrounding ground is remaining at an elevated level, so we are simply going to have water in the basement until it recedes. We've left the pump running in the basement and it's been sucking water out continuously. This has kept the water at a manageable level so I can go downstairs without putting boots on and I feel relatively safe doing laundry down there.
Actually fixing the flooding problem for good would of course be ideal, but that's probably not going to happen any time soon. Thankfully we have some tools now that should help us stay on top of it. |
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| Tagged (?): Personal (Not) | |
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