It's Been a Weekend
There was a reason I chose to work in IT and not in plumbing. I am honestly not that good with my hands or the logical side that comes with thinking through things like plumbing, carpentry, etc.
Friday, my youngest child came to me saying he is hearing the sound of a shower running in the hall closet but there is no one in the shower. Unfortunately, that closet also held our water heater. Upon opening the door, I was met by Lake Closet and a pin hole leak in the blue expansion tank and it was sending this nice stream of water into the wall and directly on my face. Of course, I had no clue what to do so I texted my father in law, and he told me how to locate the valve to shut it off but also how to relieve the pressure by turning on the hot water faucet.
With these done, I was met with a completely confusing thing. What do I do? How the hell am I supposed to fix this? If this was a server that had gone bad, I knew how to troubleshoot it and figure out what to do about it but not a water heater. All I could think was: “This is gonna be super expensive if I have to replace it.” Obviously, in hindsight, I rent so that would have been the responsibility of the landlord...who happens to also be my father in law. Thanks to him, I got sent a link to J-B Weld Water Expoxy Putty and a quick trip to Walmart, I was able to get some.
This should be easy, I told myself like a fool. Now, to point out a few things. When I was younger, I had the opportunity to work as a brick mason's apprentice for two years and also with a lot of epoxies while in the military. So, the basic concept on how to apply it was not unfamiliar to me. I actually thought it was pretty nifty how it was one chemical surrounded by another chemical that I could squish together, blend, and it would start working (not to mention I could feel the heat of the chemical reaction through my nitrile gloves).
So, here I got happily sticking putty to it, smearing it into the whole I just making sure that damn leak is covered up. I let it cure the time that it needed, and then turned off the faucet so the pressure would start to build again and what do you know. The water starts leaking quickly out of this little cure.
Goddammit, now I have to do that over again.
This turned out to be my entire weekend. I have literally had to place putty, let it cure, and then turn it on to see where the water was coming from next. Nice thing was that each damn time, there was a lot less. So I'm building on the previous dried putty making my own Olympus Mons, waiting for it to do the full cure hoping against hope that it would work. Yeah, the bottle was going to need to be replaced but:
- My father in law is already taking care of it.
- I don't have the money to get one on short notice let alone the skills to replace it myself. _(that would have been a disaster).
Now, I'm writing this up with the last bit of putty added, as the little hole was shooting water up but it's the tiniest amount. I hope to god that this isn't going to be leaking more because I have to go to work tomorrow and my father in law isn't going to be back from his trip for a few more days.
All I can do is laugh at my admittedly funny situation and meditate an extra ten minutes to keep my brain from lose it. Which reminds me, I gotta go take my meds.
