The Big Plumbing Adventure

The morning I was leaving to visit my family in Virginia (I'm in San Jose, CA, in the San Francisco Bay Area, I discovered a great puddle in my garage which appeared to be from the hot water heater. I'd bought my ticket from Priceline (and it was a bit pricey just before Christmas), so I knew there'd be no changing it. AND I was in a stampede to go. So I gave my handyman, John, my keys and some money and said, "Please, please, take care of it!" Well, he didn't - so everything sat there for two weeks in a growing puddle until I returned on New Year's Eve, along with another puddle in front of the garage door which we thought was from the sewer line but turned out to be from the dishwasher. The two appliances must have had a suicide pact.

I told John I was *not* happy and he was suitably remorseful. More importantly, he was here for most of the next week. He found a hole in the inside of the dishwasher (who knows how that happened) and patched it with JBWeld and a piece of plastic he shaped to look nice. It hasn't been tested yet because of the hot water heater issue - more on that later.

The hot water heater dates to 1992, fairly old for a hot water heater. But I've had this place for 13 years. I don't run the dishwasher much (okay, I eat out a lot, and much of it is fast food), and I shower at the gym when I work out (making up for the fast food, y'see). I've drained and flushed it a few times; but, like most people, not the annual maintenance that's recommended. So I expect I'm lucky it's lasted this long. It's a fancy schmancy 50 gallon hot water heater that also provides heat to the residence, so it's going to be expensive to replace. I had nothing to lose, so I thought I'd see what I could do. And I wanted to maintain my lifestyle as a professional student, so I didn't want to spend the money. I'd rather go to school awhile longer than have a new hot-water heater.

An examination revealed leakage around the cold water inlet and the temperature & relief (T&R) valve. The plumber sent by the HOA about the outdoor puddle took about five minutes to discover that the problem was the dishwasher. He took a look at the hot water heater and said, "Replace them both. They're old. And by the time the fittings leak, the hot water heater is going to be bad pretty soon." This reminded me of what my friend Pete said to his cat after said cat had tangled with a raccoon and incurred a $389 veterinary bill for patching him up on the weekend - "You're old! You can be replaced!" I've gotten to the time of life when such comments are not well received, whether they are referring to an appliance, a cat, or moi.

I decided that hot water heater, along with me, had a few more miles on it.

Going on the theory that if white vinegar can get the hard-water sediments out of coffee makers and steam irons, it should do the same for a hot water heater, I poured four gallons of the stuff into the tank after draining it, added some water, turned the heat back on, and let it cook overnight. The next morning, I filled up the tank and let it cook all day, then drained it. You wouldn't believe the stuff that came out of there - fair-sized chunks of calcium carbonate and tons of white, sandy stuff.

John and I went to Home Depot and Orchard Supply (several times) and bought new fittings (*why* do they call those things that go in the cold-water inlet and hot-water outlet "nipples"?), new lines, a new T&R valve, some Teflon tape, and a sweating kit (whatever that was). The fittings, having been in place for 17 years, liked where they were and didn't want to come out.

The next trip to Home Depot, I got some "Bolt Off", which is supposed to penetrate corrosion so you can get corroded stuff apart. It didn't work, but a rag soaked in white vinegar did - those things came right off within a few minutes. About this time, I decided that the answer to life, the universe, and everything is not 42; it's white vinegar.

With generous amounts of vinegar and John's muscles, we got the things that were screwed in unscrewed. It turned out the sweating kit was for "sweating" copper pipes together (or apart). It's basically soldering, and the melted solder looks a bit like drops of sweat, only silvery. I'd have just called it solder, myself. John hadn't done this before and was fairly cautious with the propane torch. He struggled with it for about an hour and a half - he'd get the stuff melted on one side, then move to the other. By the time he got that side melted, the first had solidified. Fascinated by the flame, I suggested, "Let me try it." It looked pretty much like soldering electronics except with a torch. He humored me, and to his surprise, I had the thing off within a few minutes. The trick is to open it up all the way and put it right up against the pipe and wiggle it around so the flame goes all the way around; you also want to have a pot holder handy, because the pipe gets *hot*! John said he was embarrassed and humiliated that he struggled with it so long and I had it off so quickly - but when he described his difficulty, he actually was telling me how to solve the problem. (Still, to be beaten out by a mere girl!) I thought the sweating thing was fun and wanted to do it all, but I let him have a turn. So we finally got all the corroded old bits off and shiny new bits on. One amazing thing was what turned out to be the anode rod; it looked like a bit of twisted wire about 1/2" long. The new one was 32" long and about 3/4" thick, looking like a pipe. Turns out those things should be changed out every five years; the metal in the anode rod is sacrificed to save the tank from corrosion.

Then I realized the white vinegar was great for the sediments but wouldn't take care of the rust and corrosion. So I poured four bottles of CLR in there and repeated the process I'd used with the vinegar, getting chunks of rust and many gallons of rusty water out. I didn't have to worry about iron-deficiency anemia with that much ferrous oxide in the water.

We mopped up all the water and put a fan on it, but it didn't seem to be drying out. Finally, we came to the realization that the leak wasn't just with the fittings. The tank itself was leaking, and Mr. Google informed me there was no fix for this; a new hot-water heater was in order. Rats! After all that work! Well, much of it would have had to be done for a new install, so all was not lost.

I was exhausted; I'd been getting by on 3-4 hours of sleep for a week, between school and the hot water heater. I decided to take a nap. But I was too wired to sleep; my brain wouldn't stop. I started thinking about car radiators and how they leak sometimes..... so it was back to Mr. Google.

It turned out the stop-leak products are toxic. Scratch that. But I came across a couple of other remedies - breaking a raw egg into the radiator (but this didn't seem a good idea for potable water!) was one. The other was to put ground black pepper in - the grains work their way into the cracks, then the water makes them swell.

Why not? Absolutely nothing to lose. I unscrewed the cold-water nipple (I've got so I can say this with a straight face) and dumped in two 8.75-oz. bottles of black pepper. And the dripping stopped within moments!

In retrospect, two bottles was probably overkill. One bottle may have been overkill. And it might have been a good idea to drain and flush the tank several times before running the smaller hot-water outlets. It turned out the problem there was just black pepper in the part you can screw off. I dug it out, rinsed the parts off, and stuck them in a pan of - you guessed it - white vinegar! to soak off some of the old sediments (this needed doing anyway). But it does look like my hot-water heater won't have to be replaced right away.

I hope.

So the take-away message is this: If you have a problem with your hot-water heater, the solution is probably in your kitchen.