Hot water heater

"Ali, come look at this," Jonathan called from the utility closet just as I walked out of my room to tell him I was ready to go. I skipped getting my dress shoes from the garage and stepped into the closest to see what was going on. A pool of water lay on the cement floor beneath the water heater fed by a stream of water flowing from the pipe that the pressure release valve vents into. I stared from the artificial pond to Jonathan's face. "Ummm, that's not good." "Nope," he responded as he twisted the gas knob from ON to OFF and then reached to the top of the heater and shut off the hot water valve. I went to the garage, found a bucket, brought it back to the utility closet, and stuck it under the pipe, which had almost stopped dripping water by that time.

After making sure the hot water was turned off we left for church, hoping the slowly draining pipe wouldn't overflow the bucket before we got back to the apartment. All was fine when Bryn, Jonathan and I got back for lunch, except for the fact that we were without hot water but, since Bryn and I had already taken showers for the day, that didn't really bother us. Later that evening the Martin's got back from their trip and knocked on our door to figure out why they weren't getting any hot water. I explained as best I could and Jonathan, who was here again, filled in the parts I didn't understand. Dr. Martin called a fellow church member who was a plumber and he gave us directions that he said might be able to stop the leaking problem. Jonathan used a wrench to hit the hot water valve Dr. Martin told us would fix the leak and, when that didn't work, hit the pressure release valve. The leak stopped and we were able to turn the hot water back on although we did replace the bucket with a large plastic storage container from our garage, just in case the leak became problematic again.

The next morning we realized that although we'd turned the hot water on we hadn't lit the pilot light again so the water hadn't heated. We went about doing that just as the Martin's knocked on our door again to see if the leaking problem had been solved the night before. I assured them that all had been fixed and, as soon as the water was warmed up again, took a nice hot shower. When I came back home Sunday night I decided, on a whim, to just check the hot water heater again before going to bed. I was very glad I had. The plastic storage container that we'd put under the pipe in place of the small bucket was filled so full the sides had been pushed out and water was spilling over the top. I went through the same motions Jonathan had done the day before and called Bryn to help me bail the water from the container and dump it outside. Finally we got as much water out as we could and I wrote a note to the Martin's before going to bed.

In the morning I decided against a freezing cold shower and went straight to class. In the afternoon the Martin's again knocked on the door and said the church member-plumber was coming to fix the heater. "In the summertime we can go a day or two without warm water, but in the winter we need hot water," Mrs. Martin said emphatically. I agreed and was relieved later that night when the hot water heater was fixed and working well again. It's hard to go even a day without having nice warm water whenever you need to.