stockholm syndrome
Our hot water heater went into a bit of a decline last week. Its output shrank from a healthy cascade to a sad, rusty trickle. We’ve been reduced to having London-style showers – that is, shivering, blue and goosepimpled under a tepid mist.
Scary thing is, this morning I didn’t completely hate it. It was kind of …okay.
Anyway, we had two plumbers round. The first one was a very nice chap, and quite useless. He completely misdiagnosed the problem, ripped out our beautiful old brass shower and replaced it with an ugly modern stainless steel one. This accomplished exactly nothing.
The next plumber was a recommendation from the Cole Hardware home repair referral service, and like the roofer we got from them, he’s absolutely great (Frank Brown from Frank’s All-City Plumbing, in case you spring a leak of your own). He’s prompt, generous with his time and patient with my completely inane questions. He was both amused and appalled by our existing hot water heater, which was made in 1989 with an expected life of 10-12 years. Unfortunately, he’s not going to be able to fix it for us.
This is Jeremy’s fault. The hot water heater lives in our kitchen cupboard. Jeremy’s bright idea is to replace it with a tankless or instantaneous model, a fifth of the size so freeing up priceless kitchen real estate, much more fuel-efficient and earth-friendly and very widely used EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THE WESTERN WORLD, much like the METRIC SYSTEM or NATIONAL HEALTH. Here in the US of A? Not so much.
Of course it’s going to cost twice as much up front, and we need a special fitter to come in, and there’s some dire issue with the gas lines that out of pure weariness I have chosen not to inquire into… Small wonder, in short, that I am almost starting to like being rustily wee’d on.
I realize I should be posting about Segway polo or Temple Grandin’s terrific book and her theories on neoteny or SOMETHING, but all I can think about is the plumbing. I am a simple people.
