(Note: I think I only have about a month or six weeks to go to finish the novel for which I suspended work on this blog. If anyone recalls, I wrote a couple of posts a while back about “Acknowledgment” pages in novels. I was dismayed to see that young novelists listed tens of friends and mentors who had read and helped with their novels.
What?? I thought you were supposed to go off to a cave and hide and forge in the smithy of your soul the uncreated conscience of your race (See Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce, James.
So I’m now issuing an open invitation to all of my faithful readers: when I’m done with the novel, if you would do me the extreme favor of reading and commenting on the manuscript, I will be glad to send you a copy. If instead you have precisely zero fucks to give, good for you. Your honesty is appreciated. I’ll let you know via this venue when I’m done, and, if you’re interested, please contact me. Then in the highly unlikely event that I find an agent and a publisher for the novel, I promise to acknowledge your help. In forging in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race, that is.)
A couple of months ago, my hot water heater started overheating. The water was searingly hot, and the air inside the little closet where the heater lived oozed humidity. I had to leap away from the hotter than imaginable shower; the lever to raise and lower the heat is extremely sensitive. A quarter of an inch too high can be fatal. Then the heater began to leak, soaking the carpet inside the little closet and then out into the hallway.
A simple solution: new hot water heater. The charming tall tech guy, Joshua, who came out (long red dreads, bright blue eyes, 6’3”) said that some note on the heater suggested that it was installed in 1989. OK, time for a change!
The same guy and his colleague Caleb (Biblical enough? Does that mean anything?) brought out a brand new one, and some restoration fellow came out to dry out the carpeting. That act took a few days and jolted my power bill to about four times what it usually is. No, I agreed, with my proxy landlord, Puget Sound Property “Management” (hereafter “PSPM” or “lazy motherfuckers”), a mere fan shouldn’t raise the power bill so much, but he ran it for about 48 hours straight at the highest level. Nothing else would account for such a rise in the bill. PSPM declined to help with that bill.
Anyway, the new one worked a treat! Nice hot water, but not too hot. Nice shower.
Then, suddenly, the water turned cold and over a weekend at that. I called the emergency number. A nice lady suggested that I flick the circuit breaker off then on, the hot water heater equivalent of rebooting your laptop. No dice. She said she’d tell PSPM. They’d get right on it after the weekend. Note this theme, after the weekend.
After a couple of cold showers, the techs came out, again those charming tall fellows Joshua and Caleb (what is it with this generation’s names?) and they completely replaced all of what turns out to be the only two operating, moving pieces: the elements that heat the water and the thermostat. All should be well!
No. Still no hot water. After a few days and another weekend, some guys came out and brought me a shiny new hot water heater. Hooray! I would have a hot shower.
No. I would not.
Some other nice fellow, older than the others and with a moustache and a wide smile, came out (aren’t you getting tired of all of these visits by pleasant, tall, white men?) and examined everything again, checked the two working elements and declared himself perplexed.
OK, frankly, I’m getting confused now in describing who came out when, so let’s just move to the present time. I was gone most of the time last Friday when they were Going to Get to The Bottom of This. I had mentioned that it sounded like water was running somewhere, and, though I knew nothing about plumbing or electricity, maybe this was a piece of data that meant something. The plumbers seized on this, and I was hopeful, though I don’t know why.
When I came back to the condo on Friday night, there was no hot water. I emailed PSPM and the plumber asking WTF. No reply. I emailed again after my nice cold shower on Saturday morning with little or no hope that anyone would answer.
Finally PSPM emailed late Saturday morning, which, wow, thanks. “This is not great news,” she wrote. “We’ve sent plumber & electrician. Maybe grab a hotel room for the weekend. I know renters insurance covers some of that. Ugh so sorry. We’ll get this figured out”. I don’t think I should have to pay for any part of a hotel room.
I’ve been hearing the sound of running water from a corner of my bathroom, and, obsessed as I am with the thought of the island running out of water, on Saturday night, I clicked off the circuit breaker, hoping that would at least make that running water sound stop. No.
What it did do was stop any juice at all from running to the water heater so that my shower Sunday morning wasn’t cold but icy. I vowed to withstand it, but, when I stepped under the unforgiving flow to wash the shampoo out of my hair, it made my head hurt.
The rest of Sunday, today, as I write this, I felt as though I’d been volted or jolted and definitely revolted. It seems to me that I should have some remedy for this, but my cursory research (since when has my legal research been anything but cursory?) reveals that my most likely recourse is to terminate the lease. As the lazy motherfuckers haven’t gotten around to raising my rent for a couple of years, or, indeed, sent me a new lease that I was due in June, I’m not happy about raising any such issues now. Other than the freezing cold water and the annoying geriatrics convening for hours of talk in the parking lot, I like this place and don’t want to leave.
So I wait with as they say baited breath for tomorrow morning. No, don’t offer, it’s OK, Nancy said I can shower over there. Maybe I can get the terminally smelly Santorini to come in with me and clean two smelly things with one shower.
One final point: Say what you will about lawyers, but I would never have left the office on a Friday afternoon without an update to the client if he/she were suffering the legal equivalent of a broken water heater, and I would have been back at trying to solve it on Saturday morning.
But this is the age of the Great Resignation, and even before the pandemic, plumbers and electricians were as plentiful as dinosaurs. The U.S. is apparently becoming a third world country anyway, so I’ll just have to endure like some poor Russian or Kazakh. At least, as I tell my therapist, no one is shelling my neighborhood, right? Not yet.
Yikes, my water heater looks exactly the same! There but for the grace of Technology go I. Have you considered going tankless? 😆
P.S. I loved "volted, jolted, and definitely revolted"
George, That is a nightmare. In our experience, water heaters are pretty simple,
and we have never had problems such as this. It's bizarre. Are Joshua and Caleb really qualified? Have you ever tried Bainbridge Nextdoor on your email. I always use our Fairfield site to look up craftsmen etc., and you can get references and advice from your neighbors.
If you posted this experience, on Nextdoor, neighbors would let you know about their experiences with your company and also refer you to a decent plumber. It's a very handy website and I would be lost without it. Good luck - stay warm.
Penny