Two nights ago as I was parking my Jeep in the garage (underground parking), I noticed a pool of water collecting on the floor in an area that’s directly under our unit. The design of my loft building has all the piping exposed so it didn’t take long to find the culprit – apparently we have a slow leak developing inside our water heater. Water is running down the interior tank wall, collecting in the drip pan and then draining out onto the garage floor via a short PVC tube that stubs out below the wood and concrete sub-flooring of our unit. Working as intended, thank god.

Anyway, just what any family needs right before Christmas right? It gets worse. After a thorough inspection I also discovered another leak in the expansion tank that is slowly sweating water into a steady drip (this one falls outside the drip pan). Having been woken up at oh’dark:30 with a deluge of water coming down in our bedroom from a water tank leak in the unit above us, I’m taking this issue very seriously. Leaks like this don’t just go way, they get worse. And when they get worse, apartments get flooded and downstairs neighbors get rained on in the middle of the night. It’s not like the City of Atlanta will run out of water to pump into my loft if this thing lets go when Mel and I are at work.

So, here are my options:

1. Have a professional Plumbing service fix-it ($1100 flat rate)
2. Purchase the tank from Home Depot or Lowes and have them install it ($850 flat rate)
3. D.I.Y. ($398 for the tank plus $250 in misc. tools and parts)

Hmmm. Which option would this guy choose given the choice? D.I.Y. baby! A three letter combination that sends shivers down every wife in America at the mere thought of their bumbling husbands attempting to repair something best left for the professionals. That’s right. Me, a blow torch, and a pipe cutter are going to rip that old tank out and slap the new one in with nary a drop of water spilled.

Stay tuned for the inevitable disaster.