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.
. 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.