Red Tagged

For the past several days we have been without hot water.  Why, you ask?  Well, we were red tagged, or at least our hot water tank was:

Red.  And tagged.  You're it.

And that "WARNING: Appliance Shut-off Notice"
is so conveniently tagged onto our hot water
heater.  #lovely

You see, we received a notice in the mail to have a normal inspection for our gas lines.  This is common every year or so, so we scheduled an inspector to come out and review.  Unfortunately, when the inspector came out this past Tuesday, he found a small gas leak outside.  He quickly repaired the leak but noted that our hot water tank was not venting properly, so he stuck this big ole red tag on it and turned it off.  That meant we had enough hot water to use for Kate's bath that night and it was going to slowly and surely get colder from there.

That was four days ago.

We've called several different people to address this venting issue.  It is also fourth of July weekend, so a holiday weekend.  The soonest we've been told that we can fix this is next Thursday...

That will be a week and a half without hot water.  #pleasedontsaythatisso

In the meantime, Kate and I have managed to bathe ourselves in a luke warm tub.  If I fill the tub about 6" with the normal non-heated water that is coming out of our faucet and boil three-ish pots of water on the stove, then combine the two, we've got luke warm water.

These are the three biggest pots we own.  And you can only carry
one up the steps at a time.  #obviously  #exercisingtoo

It gets cold fast and it's not the most convenient thing to do when you're nine months pregnant but it's better than nothing.  Brian has braved a cold shower each morning.  I am pretty certain if I try such a thing I will go into labor.  It's take your breath away cold right now.

Over the past four days, we've really been reminded to not take our hot water for granted.  There are so many places that do not have hot water, or even clean water, and we are reminded that this a luxury and a privilege that we are blessed to have.

At this point, the forecasted date that we have scheduled to remedy this is Thursday of next week, only six days away.  There is a possibility that it will be Tuesday but we will have to wait until Monday to find out.

The good news is we aren't wasting tons of water right now and we are all still clean and healthy.  That is what really matters.  Here's to a happy fourth and a hopeful next week!  Stay clean!


UPDATE:
Fortunately we were able to get a new hot water tank and have the chimney guy come out on Tuesday to fix the venting issue so we were back in business with hot water that night.  It has been wonderful to shower and bathe without having to boil water on the stove.  #wearespoiled  #andgrateful  #thankyou

All that mess is from...

...this hole in the wall that is going to vent our
hot water tank better.

That long, flexible tubing is going all the way down the chimney.

There he goes!

And there it goes!  At least it was a nice day!

Murphy's Law would call for something like this to happen when we could be going into labor any day now!  #thanksmurph