Dear Noah, Can I Get the Blueprints for the Ark?

My basement had a mind of its own a few weeks ago. Typically I would encourage such behavior and I think anyone (& anything) should think independently. (And you better independently agree with me… OR ELSE!!!) But in this case what I thought was an unwanted bundle of hassle (that’s right, I said a BUNDLE OF HASSLE) turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

My original problem was that the main drain going out of my house was backed up. Not totally stopped, but pretty dang close. I tried my regular Drain-O treatment to no avail. I finally caved and decided it was necessary to fork over the mullah (not to be confused with Mulan) and get it fixed.

Well, Roto (we’re on a first name basis now, I mean, he has seen my pipes and all… wait, that didn’t come out right) was in and out of there super snappy. Clog cleared, bad news delivered: I might have a broken pipe out towards the street, but that’s a problem for another season.
Moving on, time to clean up the extra water that’s been trying to flood the basement and that’s where the “problem” turned into a blessing… incognito. Let me explain further…

While trying to clean up the water that was under/near the water heater my mom found that it wouldn’t ever go away. She’d wipe it up and a few minutes later there was another puddle. Now, you must be thinking that this doesn’t sound like much of a blessing, more like problemo numero dos, but the blessing comes into play when you consider that the VERY NEXT DAY I was going out of town for 5 days and that water heater would’ve leaked the whole time, and the drain, if the water had ever found its way over that way, would’ve been clogged and the basement would’ve flooded and I would’ve been in a whole lake of trouble… literally.

So, after my wonderful parents had come to the rescue for problemo numero uno, I called in the reinforcements (aka. an uncle) to help with the water heater replacement. That right there saved me a bundle of money. It costs more to have a water heater installed than it does to buy one.

And although I hated forking over the $200+ to Mr. Rooter for 30 minutes work (I think I went into the wrong line of business) I’m glad I was able to save a bundle on the water heater fiasco.
So, after the waters had receded, the hot water had been restored, this is what I was left with:

Roto Rooter: $230
New Water Heater: $320
Coming home after vacation to a house without a flooded basement: Priceless!!