Saturday, September 10, 2011

Frankenstein's Monster

For the past 2 days I have been posting about my hot water issues.  Chad the plumber ended up plumbing us for $935 in addition to our needing to buy a new water heater & an expansion tank.  He finished his work at 7:30 last night & told us that we could take hot showers this morning.

As I previously indicated, our water tank sits in our laundry room.  It will forever baffle me why it wasn't installed in a corner of the garage but this is central Kentucky for you.  The furnace, which as you know needs to have the filter changed every 2 months or so, is installed underneath the house in the crawlspace.  We have to crawl on our hands & knees on top of gravel & past some pretty questionable arachnids, praying all the while that they don't attack us, to the center of the crawlspace whenever we need to change the filter.  I once had to have a heating & cooling guy come here to fix a problem with the furnace.  When I asked him what in the world they were thinking when they put the furnace underneath the house like that, he said "That's the way we do it here!"

Okay ... back to Frankenstein's monster.  My laundry room is never going to be included in a photo spread about laundry rooms in any prim decorating magazine.  I've always thought it has possibilities but of course we don't intend on staying here so decorating is the last thing on my mind.  The photos below were taken last March.  You can see a bit of the old hot water tank tucked into a corner just past the door in the last photo.  





Next is a full photo of the old hot water tank which again was tucked into a corner just past the door.  It's definitely not pleasing to the eye but it didn't accost you when you walked into the room & cause you anxiety or disgust of any kind.  

  
Following is the new hot water heater.  Because of the expansion tank requirement, Chad had to move the tank out of the corner & away from the wall toward the center of the room well over a foot.  This also brought the drip pan (or whatever it's called) farther away from the wall toward the center of the room.  Chad also had to solder on additional copper pipe in order to connect the tank to the wall pipes.  Here's what we've got now.  


     
You might be thinking "Oh, that's not too bad!"  Trust me, it's bad.  Pictures don't show the true horror of it.  It's the first thing you see when you walk in the room because you almost bump into it.  You can even see it when you pass by the laundry room door.  I told John that when we go to sell the house next March, people will be walking through here saying "Oh, what a nice home this is!"  Then they'll get to the laundry room & beat a hasty retreat out of here never to be heard from again   : (

Oh a happier note, we did indeed have hot water this morning & it was coming out of the shower head with such gusto that I swear there must be little bruises all over my body!  I just wish a monster wasn't providing it to us.      

2 comments:

Jessica said...

That is messed up that your furnace is under the house! What a pain when you have to change the filter. Ours have always been inside and on the main floor, hidden in a wall with a door to access it. In this house though, it has a water furnace, so it's in the basement in a little room that I rarely go in. I call it the dungeon room lol. It has no windows and unfinished cinder block walls.

Sorry about your new monster. That sucks that is has to protrude so much from the wall. Is there room to put a screen or something around it to "cover" it up? Something that could sit on the floor or be hung from the ceiling. Or maybe do those cafe curtains for the window so people can't see inside very well when they walk by. lol. Just throwing out ideas, it's hard to see what's possible when I'm not there. I hope your new hot water doesn't beat you up too badly!

Anyway, I hope you have a good Saturday. I'll be cleaning away and rearranging all weekend. My daughter's bday party is next Sunday and I feel like there is a million and one things to do to get the house ready.

Blessings, Jessica

renee said...

Shirlee,
Oh my! I know the furnace thing doesn't make sense. Ours is all in the laundry room, and trust me, yours STILL looks better than mine! LOL! I like Jessicas' suggestion on making a curtain/skirt/screen to hide them.
Thanks for coming by for a visit. I got a new garbage disposal after only 7 months! Now I just need him to do the lighting! LOL!
Have a good day sweets!
Hugs,
Renee