Alkahest my heroes have always died at the end

It actually worked. I mmanaged to install a shutoff valve, sediment filter and pH neutralizer without too many trips to the hardware store (only 2). So far it seems to be working, the pH is somewhere between 7 and 7.5. Now maybe I can replace the hot water heater and have it last for more than a year or two.

I think I need a whole new blog category for water troubles.

The pH neutralizer arrived today, along with 150# of premium chalk and 25 pounds of “clean” gravel. I guess I know what I’ll be doing tomorrow – first stop Lowe’s, then home to install it. Fortunately, it doesn’t look too bad.

Since we’re on the subject of water (again), had yet another fun experience. Earlier this week, K noticed a couple of inches of water in the pan under our hot water heater. Yep, it seems to be leaking. This is the water heater that I installed one year ago. It was a replacement for a water heater installed 4 years before by the previous owner.

The tendency of our appliances to rust, particularly the water heaters led me to test the pH. Ideally, it should be between 7.0 and 8.0 (or just neutral to slightly basic). Ours was around 5.5 or somewhat acidic. This is a reasonably common problem for people with well water and it causes all of the symptoms we’ve seen (including the degredation of all brass plumbing fittings).

Fortunately, they make a “pH neutralizer” which is really just a fancy name for a tank filled with calcium carbonate (which is just a fancy name for chalk) that water flows through. I’ve got one on order, it should be here tomorrow. Once I get it installed, I’ll see if I can get the store to honor the warranty on our current water heater and replace that too.

We had a batch of thunder showers come through last night. We got about 2, maybe 3, inches here. Sometime during the evening, K and I ask each other, “what’s that noise?” Turns out we had a leak in the roof that was dripping down (and through) the second story wall, onto one of the logs making up the first story and into the breakfast room. From there it was splashing onto the door to the deck and making the noise we heard.

All of which led me to climb the 45 degree pitch of a wet/slippery roof this morning, right before heading into a meeting at the office, with a tube of roofing caulk, patching up a couple of cracked shingles. We’re getting more rain now – we’ll see how well this holds.

In graduate school, I had a Chinese friend who used to say that he was destined to have plumbing problems because there was too much water in his name. Both his family name and his given name referenced water. This excess of water meant that he would always have plumbing problems.

I sympathize with this notion. A few years ago, when I moved into my house, I installed a reverse osmosis filter in our kitchen for drinking water. When we came back from vacation, we found that the connection to the water tank was leaking. I spent a bit of time tightening up the connection, but it still leaked. This weekend, I got back to trying to fix it. So far, I’ve been to the hardware store twice, replaced the compression fitting three times and still it leaks. I’m heading to a larger hardware store this afternoon to find a replacement for the entire fitting – we’ll see if that works. If it doesn’t, then I may have to replace the entire tank.

Considering the number of plumbing issues we’ve had in this house so far, I’m starting to wonder if I have too much water in my name too.