Raining on the Inside

For some reason, around here builders like to put water heaters in the attic. When we bought the house, this water heater wasn’t cooperating. They previous owner had a plumber come in. And he did nothing because he couldn’t get to it. Because you have to wiggle through the air conduit from the AC and then balance on the ceiling support beams to get over to it. Ridiculously stupid design.

But, all it needed was for the pilot light to be relit and it worked fine. For another year.

A few days ago, we hear the sounds of water running through the walls. Now, because the water heaters in the attic we’d heard lots of weird water noises before. But this was different. I went up into the attic and saw water gushing out of the water heater. Made a mad dash outside to the water shut off.

Instead of the water running into the safety pan beneath it, was running down the side and then along a support beam. At first, I thought it was running down the inside walls based on the sound. But a day later a big wet spot appeared in the ceiling of our bed room. This is a positive I suppose. We’ve already had to repair one part of the ceiling when water leaked in during Harvey. You can look past those.

So on top of replacing a car, fence and AC, we’re now replacing the water heaters. It’s a little more expensive, but we opted for a tankless system that will go outside, rather than putting another giant water tank above our heads.

Just need to fix the stair railings, which are crap and will save no one from plummeting to their death, the refrigerator and get the roof fixed and we’ll be out of big ticket items to sink into the house. All of those will become requirements soon. I just hope it’s after tax rebate season.