Drip system

There's nothing quite so annoying as coming home from church to set up the chairs in our living room for choir practice and finding puddles in the garage when it's been a perfectly sunny day and the sprinklers don't reach that far. At first I thought it might be the freezer in our garage acting up like the one in the kitchen did a few days ago. (We've got to vacuum underneath soon!) Then I noticed water under and around the water heater. I could picture trying to replace that water heater and began immediately to think of which plumber I'd call first.

But when water heaters go, they usually leak a whole lot more than the gallon or so that appeared to cover our floor. And as I mopped up the water around the heater stand, I put my hand on top of the heater. It was wet! Since the heater is on a two foot stand the top is about 6'6" and not readily visible. But I was indeed pleased to feel water there. Water heaters don't usually leak on the top.

A flex hose that I had installed a couple of years ago had developed a small leak on the hot water side of the heater. When the water was heating and under pressure it leaked quite a bit but would stop when the heater changed to standby mode. That's probably why we didn't see it sooner.

A quick visit to Home Depot (I think this definitely qualifies for "ox in the mire" status) for a flex copper pipe and everything appears to be back to normal. Or at least will be after the garage floor and some boxes dry out. We also discovered, since Carolyn was doing the laundry during this repair, that if the hot water line isn't under pressure, cold water will flow back through the washer through the hot water line. I got a faceful of cold water because of that.