So, I’m washing clothes today and was putting a load in the dryer when I heard running water somewhere in the house. No one was upstairs so I knew it wasn’t coming from there. The washer wasn’t running at the moment, so it wasn’t coming from there, either. It sounded like it was coming from our “furnace” room, so I went in there to check things out. There was water all over the floor and the hot water tank was making funny noises. I grabbed a chair so I could turn off the water supply to the hot water tank, but it wouldn’t budge. Given that, I had to turn off the water supply to the house.
Jake and I removed as much stuff as we could from the room and then I grabbed the shop vac and started vacuuming up all of the water. While I was doing this, Brian returned from an auction he was at all morning. Imagine his surprise. Luckily, he was able to turn the shut off valve to the tank so at least we had cold water at our disposal throughout the rest of the day. We finished cleaning up the room and he started calling all of the plumbers in the phone book while I made us some lunch.
Here’s a tip: just because a plumber’s ad says they offer 24-hour emergency service, don’t count on it. At numerous places he either got an answering machine or simply no answer. A few of the places that did answer couldn’t do the job because they didn’t have a hot water tank in stock and the place they get them from was already closed (none of the plumbers would install a Lowe’s or Home Depot-type tank). He did leave a message at one of the places he called (that guy did end up calling back but we had other arrangements made by that point) and kept calling others in the meantime. Finally, he talked to the owner of J. Clawson Heating and Cooling, who had access to a tank and could do the job today. Well, this evening, anyway. The poor guy was on his way to a wedding and was going to cut out early so he could fix our water problem. He and his wife arrived around 8pm this evening and had the new one up and running about an hour later. Now, that’s service. Nice people, too.