What a long day - HW woes

Man, that sucks!!
According to the weather map for Nashua, the low is 18 and the high is 37f.
You'all need some heat.
Call the plumber.
It's only money. Easy for me to say.
Good luck, I hope you get it fixed soon!
 
Last night, in triage mode, half the house had no cold water, and the whole house had no hot water. No water in the kitchen, or my wife's bathroom. Not a happy night. And in a plumbing coincidence, the hook to the flapper valve on one of the working toilets had failed. Found this out in the morning. Easy repair with a paper clip. It seems that that's what was there the last time! Might make something more permanent, out of stainless wire, getting tired of fixing this. However, in its favor, it did last a while.

This morning found a "wholesale" plumbing place in town. They cater to plumbers. Told them what I needed and they said they had everything but the pressure relief valve. They could clearly see I was dejected. The counterman said, hmm, let me look out back, sometimes the computer is wrong. He comes back with the valve. :cool: . My plan was to go to this place, if they didn't have what I needed, I was going to call the plumber. If after all this was installed and no joy, the plan was to call the plumber. I can't quite manage a HW heater install myself. But these small parts I can do myself.

So I went home with my stuff (new expansion tank, and the pressure relief valve) and went to work. The expansion tank was previously installed extremely tight, took some large pipe wrenches to muscle it off. Lots of pipes in the way. An hour and a half later, everything is done and I fire up the system. No leaks. Time to bleed the air out of the pipes. Hey, this water is getting warm... Whoa, it's hot now! Let me check the boiler again - everything still looks ok. Still no leaks. Circulator has turned off because the tank is up to temperature!

I'm going to take a shower - first one in 6 days. Oh my, I need it! Wow, that was great!

Yeah, so feeling pretty pleased now. Wife is happy too, to have a habitable dwelling once again.
 
Glad you have it working again. I was going to suggest you call "Ask This Old House";)

I can fully appreciate the frustration you felt with this ordeal. These things always seem to happen at the most inopportune time.
 
What brought TOH to mind was a mental image of Jim Tretheway straining to break a pipe fitting loose with a humongous pipe wrench. He was having no luck as he was turning to tighten rather than loosen. The camera broke away and came back with the joint undone. What is it he is alaways saying? Lefty loosy , righty tighty. It was good for a chuckle.
 
Yeah, after working on my carbide grinder with its left and right handed threads, I was very careful to stare at the expansion tank and ask myself, which way does this go? Had to look at it from underneath (tank is above eye level with the threads pointing up) to get the correct perspective to make sure I was loosening it. Righty tighty, lefty loosy, works for me, as long as they are right hand threads!
 
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