My whole life seems to be that way. I have some bad luck, but it never gets me down and I'm able to deal with it. And, because I always plan for the unusual I'm able to deal with it. Anyone who has ever owned a home for any length of time knows you will run into problems from time to time. Once I got UNMARRIED for the second time I always made sure I had emergency money in the bank.
Yesterday was a perfect example. We had one of our infrequent sunny days and I was trying to fix an old raft that has served me well for 25 years, but it was leaking and needed some serious work done on it. I was hoping to patch it enough to get another few years out of it.
I came into the basement at noon to discover my 10 year old hot water tank decided today was a good day to die on me and leak water all over the floor. I needed to do something about it pronto! That meant stopping my work on the raft and start hooking up hoses to the water tank. At the same time I had to contact a plumbing company and order a new tank. They are always busy and seldom available at a moment's notice. Then it was back to trying to drain the tank and cleaning up the water on the floor.
Unfortunately, the tank had a crappy plastic release valve and the hose would not connect properly. That meant I had to be on my knees mopping up the dripping water while the tank drained slowly... some through the hose and some onto my absorbent rags... an all day process.
I finally shut off the water valve to my whole home and went to bed at 2 AM.
Finally, this afternoon a plumber came by with a new 60 gallon hot water tank. It is huge. My old one was 40 gallon but I thought it was a 60. There were no markings on it to say the size. That meant changing all the fittings so the copper pipe would fit the new one. $1500 and I now have a new hot water tank that should out live me.
![]()