Unfiltered Story #326580

Years ago, I lived in a tiny little house, that I just loved. After a while, we had an issue with the hot water supply, particularly to the bathroom.

My landlady had a plumber over to give an estimate. The news was not good. There was a window above the kitchen sink. He pointed at the wall above the window and said the wall and cabinets would have to be torn out to access the pipes. He looked at me and said “This is best done when the unit is vacant.” Oh no! I didn’t want to move!

My landlady, an elderly teacher, tried giving a few suggestions. This did not bode well, as she apparently knew more than him.

She ended up hiring a guy who was a maintenance guy at a nursing home. He came over, cut out a length of pipe that was connected to the water heater and replaced it with an 18 inch length of flexible metal pipe. It took all of 20 minutes. If that.

But wait, there’s more!

A few days ago, I was discussing this and realized, my kitchen was tiny. The water heater was behind a partition (pegboard) at one end of the kitchen counter. There was a lower cabinet, the sink over another cabinet and a third lower cabinet. At the end, was a wall that separated the kitchen from the bathroom.

Think wall, cabinet, sink, cabinet, water heater.

There was probably a distance of six feet between the water heater and the shared bathroom wall. It would have made more sense to run the pipes directly through the lower cabinets rather than up in the kitchen walls by the ceiling.

Imagine if he had taken down the wall and cabinets and found….no pipes.