Boiling Point

That's rusty water and calcium all over the place

Recently, I've had some unfortunate circumstances occur with my house. It is and on-going ordeal that involves a 31 year old water heater, a Home Warranty company, my insurance company, a restoration company, a construction company, and 3 different plumbing companies. It is still going on after almost 2 weeks but I am finally at a point in my sanity that I can write about it without insulting any of the companies above.

I received a call from my wife that our basement was flooded potentially from a toilet. After racing home, and squishing through some wet carpet, I discovered that my bathroom, while having an inch or 2 of standing water in it, was intact and it was my Hot Water Heater that was the culprit. It was the original hot water heater in the house and was 31 years old. It died a death where the water inside had finally rusted a hole through its steel chassis and relieved all 55 gallons of itself in my basement. Funny enough, it was right next to the basement drain, but absolutely zero ounces of water made their way there. Instead the water found refuge in my finished area... the carpeted part... where my kids like to play... where we can't hear them and it makes the house quiet.

The current state of hell that is my basement

When surveying the impacted area, it was very real to me that I had no idea where to even start with this. I called a few restoration companies and finally settled on one that didn't work for/with the insurance company, and would fight for me if need be. So, within a day or two, a claim had been filed with my home owners policy and the drying had begun. With that issue being taken care of now, I could focus my time on getting hot water into my house so my wife and I didn't have to drag our 4 children around to random homes asking for running hot water.

We had moved into our house a little over a year ago and we purchased a home protection plan. You know that thing you never use the first year, but need after it expires... Luckily, we decided to renew the plan when it was up and are covered (in theory). Working with this home warranty company is where I am going to take this post. I'm not going to go into the 30 or so calls I've made to them, their utter lack of response, or pretty much their desire to do nothing to make my situation right. That post would take about 17 pages and I'd get frustrated. I'm going to take this post to reflect a little bit at how angry I got at people. Why did I get so angry?

I'm not a mean guy. I might tell my kids they can't watch TV or have dessert some days, but not mean typically. I turned into a mean guy with this experience. I yelled at people. I insulted them. I didn't like it and I felt terrible after scolding people on the telephone. Even the one person that cared to call me back, I wished that she find a new job because her company was that terrible. But why did I get so angry?

It was baffling to me that when I started dialing the number to the Warranty company that I could just feel the anger growing and it didn't matter who answered the phone, they were going to get it. After about 4 days of this, it had impacted my life outside of the basement. There was added stress at work, at home, everywhere I went.

Finally on day 5 or so, I made the affirmation that I was done being angry about this and getting it resolved without yelling was the priority. And with that small change of perspective, life got better and things started moving in the direction of fixed. It was pretty cool. I've never really been one to look at a situation other than the way I saw it and I've surely never changed my attitude in hopes things would be better. I've always just gutted a situation out and moved on.

Anyway, this post probably has no meaning to you or you life but has been a good dump of my brain to sort of recollect my feelings and what made them better. So stay positive WOULD YA?

Just keep in mind that if you do purchase a Home Warranty and need to use it, it might not be be as straight forward as you would think, but give them patience and take some breathes and it might work itself out in the end.