… but first an update on the water heater saga…

The last time we touched on this issue, the plumber had managed to botch two sequential appointments with a city inspector – one of which cost me 400mg of Ibuprofen. As you may recall, an inspection is required when a water heater is installed in our corner of existence.

Now that everyone is up to date, here’s the latest development. We are officially done dealing with the plumber. Afterall, fool me once… shame on you; fool me twice… call me gullible; fool me three times… well, that’s just not going to happen. My trusty wife called the inspector directly this morning and he came out to inspect the plumber’s work. If you were a betting reader, how much would you wager that the plumber’s work left the inspector wanting? If this were an off-shore, gambling web site you would be a winner! The inspector told my wife that there was a pipe leading outside that needed to be sealed with caulk. The inspector then advised us that we could just fix the problem ourselves, and that he didn’t need to call out the plumber to fix it.

Cheryl called me to see what I wanted to do.

“Hell no I’m not going to fix it myself! If the plumber was supposed to do it then he should do it. I don’t have any caulk, so I’d have to buy some, and I don’t think the plumber’s mistake should cost me any more money – even if it isn’t very much money. It’s a matter of principle.”

Cheryl relayed this message to the inspector. She called me later to say that the inspector was suprised that I wanted him to call the plumber back out. I don’t know why he was surprised, it seems perfectly reasonable to me.