coming home after a two week trip to find it.

Took a two week trip and at some point the pipe near the water meter started leaking.

Just hope nothing else is broken.

I did my yearly draining of the hot water tank to clean the calcium deposits out, did everything by the book. That went well, but when I went to refill it all of a sudden as I am fixing breakfast I hear a waterfall in my laundry room. NOOOOOOOO! I rush in and water is cascading out from behind the panel where the top element is, and I hadn't even messed with the top element. Talk about panic and bewilderment. I shut the water valve off, and I grab the wet/dry vac and get the water up. I call Rheem tech / warranty support and they claim that I was supposed to open the air valve on top of the tank before draining, that it says so in my owners manual. No, I tell them that it says either open that up OR a hot water faucet, which I've always done. He says for me to snap a picture of that page and e-mail it to him. 10 minutes after I do he calls me back and tells me they will warranty my hot water heater, that the inside tank collapsed due to insufficient venting of air. I go grab my new heater, get a plumber over and he is going to charge me $480 to install it, plus my laundry room is now out of code so he'll have to charge me another $200 to drill a hole in my wall to vent any leaks from the base of the heater. I sent him away and spent the next 2 hours installing it myself, which was not that hard to do as it turns out.

Meantime, the mother of my neighbor across the street backs out of their driveway and runs my mailbox over. What a day.

"the toilet is overflowing!" I sent her back to bed and started the clean-up.
When I thought I had the problem fixed, I flushed the toilet and damn if it
didn't overflow again. I'm in the bathroom with a huge sponge and a bucket,
towels and a roll of paper towels until around midnight. Luckily, I had a
large stash of cold beer to ease the process. I went outside in the dark with
a flashlight and used the snake down the cleanout pipe.
Back to normal now. But I had a mild hangover Saturday morning.

I suppose that's only "worse" for a few crowded moments...

-- Mal