Expensive Sunday

This has been a rather annoying and expensive couple of weeks.  First, our washer went out.  A sock worked its way outside the drum and got stuck between the drum and the plastic frame surrounding the drum.  It locked up the drum, causing the belt to break.  We were without a washer for almost a week waiting for a new belt to arrive.

Next, our van started acting up.  All of the lights and gauges started flickering, and then the battery died.  It took a couple days to get it to the shop.  Thankfully, it was only a faulty battery wire, so it only cost us around $60 to get it fixed.

Yesterday, another sock got stuck between the washer drum and the frame.  I caught it this time before the belt broke, but I had to remove the drain assembly to remove the sock.  I got the sock out fine, but I didn't get the rubber boot back on quite right.  A part of the back folded over, so it ended up leaking a bunch of water onto the floor when I turned it on.  I got that fixed pretty easily.

Today, I looked around the washer to make sure that there weren't any residual leaks, when I noticed new water on the floor.  This time it was coming from the water heater.  I thought it maybe it was just still there from the washer, so I tried soaking up the water with a towel.  As soon as I took the towel away, the water would come back.  $500 later, we now have a new water heater installed.  I'm not too happy I had to replace a water heater, but at least we caught it before it caused any problems.  The old unit was 40 gallons, and the new one is 50 gallons.  Now Jenny should be able to fill up the big tub without running out of hot water.  I also installed a pan under the new water heater, so now if there is a leak it will be contained.

People always say problems come in threes, so hopefully this is it for a while.

Here are some pictures of our new water heater.  As you can tell, it is in a pretty tight corner.  I had to tip the unit completely on its side and slide it under the vent pipes to get it in the corner.