A Short Letter Home

Less than perfect

Last time we left John, he was riding home in a pickup with two installers, who were going to install the newly purchased water heater in his bathroom.

The installer dudes and I arrived at my building and we headed up the stairs. I ushered them into the apartment and let them get to work. As a precaution, I rang up Thad, who came over and touched base with the men. He also called the gas company, to order the canister of propane we needed to run the water heater. The gas dude said he was busy and couldn't show up for an hour, but that was just fine because there was as yet no place to which he might hook up the gas. In his final act of assistance, Thad gave me my reimbursement for what I paid for the heater not an hour before. Thad is a wonderful human being. I'd name my first born after him, but she's already told me that she doesn't want to be renamed like that.

So Thad left and the workmen worked. The gas dude came and went and came again. Nobody told him that it was a new installation, so he had to go out and fetch some piping to connect things up. While this was going on, I returned to my postponed school lessons. I occasionally peeked in on the workers, but they seemed to be doing just fine without my supervision. After more than an hour, they finished. They tried to explain the intricacies of the mechanism, but, of course, they were up against the wall of ignorance. They did manage to show me how the water and gas turned on and off. So they left, leaving behind a grateful family. Ga Dai was especially grateful since she had to go to the bathroom the worst. It was soon after that that we discovered that we weren't finished yet.

The workmen did a fine job of installing the water heater, but apparently their responsibility ended about six feet off the floor. On the top of the unit is a nice little exhaust opening. The idea, of course, is to add a duct to carry the exhaust fumes outside. For whatever reason, they didn't attach one. We turned on our bathroom fan in hopes that it would clear the smell and planned to get a duct in the next day or so. It turned out that it really needed to be a higher priority, since our bathroom fan is not up to the task of clearing the air. The other problem was less dire. The unit was set up so that once you turn on the water, the heater kicks in and you have a hot shower. Unfortunately, the workers connected the unit to the nearest water supply--the pipe that runs into our toilet tank. So we were forced to choose between letting the shower run while we refill the toilet tank or turning the shower off and finding another way to flush. For the time being, we chose the latter, keeping a bucket of water on hand for our flushing needs. It had been a long weekend and we were content to live with the shortcomings for a night or two.

posted by John @ 5:15 PM