The Joys of Home Ownership

We have been living in our "new" house for a week now. Man has it been a week! First we got the water turned on and the next day noticed the water was lukewarm. We had to reset one of the water heaters, but the next day it was hot.

Onto the toilets...toilet #1 in our master bedroom worked fine, toilet #2 in the hall bathroom squirted water out between the tank and bowl anytime you flushed and toilet #3 didn't have a handle on the water supply valve. So we only had one working toilet for a few days until Ty could get a wrench on toilet #3 and then it worked. So we go to the store and buy a ring thing to fix toilet #2, too small, go back (and forget to take the old ring) and get a bigger one, too small. Then I am downstairs in the laundry and hear running water above me. I go into our master bath and toilet #1 has a broken flapper in the tank. Finally I go to a plumbing store and they have to go in the back to get the right size ring for Toilet #2 and a flapper for toilet #1. We fix the toilets and now have 3 working toilets.

When Ty tried to hook up the washer and dryer, he opened the water valves and they were leaking like crazy. We thought we might have to replace the valves, but once he got them fully opened, they stopped leaking. I wasn't able to do laundry for a few days, but now we are up and running with no problems.

Our next adventure is underneath our kitchen sink. As you read in a previous post, someone took out the garbage disposal and didn't replace it or any pipes and we had them replace the pipes. All good and well until we realized they didn't put in a pipe that would connect the dishwasher to drain. So we got the right pipe, reconfigured the pipes. They were dripping a little, but no biggie. So I turn on the dishwasher and it starts making this horrible noise and I open it and it smells burnt and there is no water. I look under the sink and sure enough when they installed the dishwasher, they didn't connect it to the water supply. Luckily I didn't burn out the motor and we can wash dishes. Stay tuned for more under the sink details as the counter is rotting and there is mold on the drywall.

Then to cap off our week, we noticed a small leak in the water heater that we had to reset. Well we thought, it's a small leak we will get to that in a couple days. Well on Friday Ty went down there to get something and guess what, it was no longer a small leak. Water all over the floor. We found the source of the leak and as soon as we took the plug out water was pouring out the water heater. So we are frantically trying to get the water dumped, the drain in there isn't draining. Ty manages to get the plug back in, I thought I was turning the water supply off, but I turned it on, so when Ty took the plug out again the water shot with a ton of force straight out. Anyway come to find out the water heater element had almost completely corroded, which is odd because these water heaters are only 2 years old. Now back when we did the inspection, the other water heater was leaking from the same spot, so I called the realtor and asked if they replaced any parts. She said no they didn't. So we are planning to replace the other element here very soon as to avoid another fiasco. We learned two very important lessons on this... 1. a small water leak from your water heater needs to be fixed right away and 2. I learned that a water valve that is across the pipe is off, the other way is on. Oh and to cap my Friday off, I was washing my hands in our bathroom sink and the drain pipe fell off the sink!

Today (Saturday), we ran the invisible fence all around our property so Winnie can run and we don't have to worry about her getting out. We had to pull a lot of weeds to get to the fence and trim trees, but we got it done. We burned the weeds and it was amazing how fast and hot they burned. It made us realize we really need to get the weeds and grass taken care of before lightning strikes and sets our property ablaze.

So we are going into next week with the hopes of no plumbing problems and hopefully getting everything situated and put away.