Permit Me: adventures with water heaters
Replacing a water heater - not rocket science, especially when it has a 5 year warranty and it was purchased 3 years ago, installed by a licensed contractor, permitted, bla bla bla. And yet...
The manufacturer (heater says GE, but it's some sub-company/tentacle) says there's a $300 "warranty upgrade" because ~6 months after this model was purchased, government regulations obsoleted the design. Ummmm, and this is my $300 problem WHY?
Next stop, Home Depot - where it was purchased and where the new one is being purchased. Interesting. They wouldn't make a direct swap, but did give me a $230 Home Depot card. Which might as well be cash.
Boy Next Door (now 30 minutes up the Peninsula) cheerfully paid for a full install, and all seemed to be well. Except that Home Depot employees seemed confused as to how a warranty exchange is handled. I had one orange-aproned minion look me in the eye and say, "just bring it in to the service counter and we'll bring out the new one." Sure. I'll just tuck it into my handbag, hmmm?
After a few more days of delicate negotiations, I was permitted to scrape the barcode sticker off the heater and bring that into Home Depot. Then we had more verbal wrangling about removing the old water heater. I wanted to pay for it to be removed. Home Depot was up for disposing of it free if I hauled it over there. Now, I do have a truck, but the whole concept was to pay someone to do the schlepping. And no, I didn't and don't feel it should require a small army of people to do the job, each doing one small bit. Hrmpf.
Barcode scanned, install scheduled. Went swimmingly. Received a packet with the permit and instructions for making an inspection appointment in our city. Sure, I could look it up, but I appreciated not having to. Until the inspector refused to sign the permit. There were 4 items that needed to be corrected, the most egregious of which was extending the drain pipe to outside the building. I get the reasoning (mold) in some locations, but here...not so much. Still, no biggie, other than the fact that our installer didn't do it!
Sunday morning service this past weekend, consisted of a second installer coming out to spend 4 hours redoing the install. Monday morning, I called to schedule an inspection and was told someone would be out that very morning. Seemed too good to be true, so called back to verify, and indeed, we'd not made the day's list of inspections. No problem. I went happily about a conference call, only to have an inspector show up - not 10 minutes after being assured that this wasn't going to happen.
He looked at me. I looked at him. He was wearing expensive shiny dress shoes without a hint of dirt, much less scuffing. His dress pants were neatly creased, and while there was no tie, only the very top button of his Business, Not Business Casual was undone. The sleeves were most definitely not rolled up. It wasn't until he said "you have a water heater that needs to be looked at?" that I even clued in to who he might be.
He was quite unpleasant "you DID schedule an appointment today" and then proceeded to ADD to the previous list of required fixes. Yes, the former ones were checked off, but as you can imagine, permit not signed. And he was patronizing, too. Oi. As he left, I was trying to figure out: if a water heater permit is $99 in our city, what is the cost of a permit for burying a body?
Call our water heater installer back, and he came out yesterday. Yes, this is the third day in a row the FruitStand has been invaded by the water heater's friends. It figures the lone extrovert of the household is a damned appliance. At any rate, he commiserated, drained the water heater and rotated it to meet the new demand.
Called the city planning department back, now being on a first-name basis with the administrator. Turns out, the automated scheduling system is the bane of their existence and up for replacement this year. So Monday's mix-up was a common occurrence the inspectors are well aware of. I politely requested that our third inspection be performed by the original inspector. I did NOT make any snarky or snide remarks about the other one, either, tyvm.
This morning the original inspector arrived, dressed for work - jeans, workboots. You know, neat but functional. As I let him in, he said, "first things first. Gotta pet the dog. He likes The Moose, and clearly not in a "humor the 90-lb animal with big teeth" kind of way. He noted that I'd requested him specifically, and I said that while I understood perhaps something had been overlooked during the first inspection, I saw no need for the second guy's rudeness. He laughed and said "him? rude?" and laughed some more, sounding not at all surprised.
That was his boss. And he just laughed harder when I confessed that I hadn't been sure if I should show him the water heater or offer him some cucumber sandwiches and tea. Apparently his boss typically stays in City Hall, but had to fill in for someone that day, and has been spoken to previously about his manners. Even better, BOTH of them were in the room when I was on the phone making the last appointment. He said when his boss realized the gist of the conversation, his expression was priceless, and he'd said, "what? What'd I do?"
Further armed (and chortling) with the customers-eye view of the boss overdressed for field work, the inspector gave The Moose a final pat, and headed back to the office to harass his superior provide customer feedback. Me? Scanned in the sig part of the permit and sent it to the Boy Next Door with the sordid details.
The water heater is grounded and not allowed to have visitors for some time. It's done enough socializing in the last four days to last a few years. Honestly, you'd think I'd been attempting a major custom renovation rather than routine home maintenance.
The manufacturer (heater says GE, but it's some sub-company/tentacle) says there's a $300 "warranty upgrade" because ~6 months after this model was purchased, government regulations obsoleted the design. Ummmm, and this is my $300 problem WHY?
Next stop, Home Depot - where it was purchased and where the new one is being purchased. Interesting. They wouldn't make a direct swap, but did give me a $230 Home Depot card. Which might as well be cash.
Boy Next Door (now 30 minutes up the Peninsula) cheerfully paid for a full install, and all seemed to be well. Except that Home Depot employees seemed confused as to how a warranty exchange is handled. I had one orange-aproned minion look me in the eye and say, "just bring it in to the service counter and we'll bring out the new one." Sure. I'll just tuck it into my handbag, hmmm?
After a few more days of delicate negotiations, I was permitted to scrape the barcode sticker off the heater and bring that into Home Depot. Then we had more verbal wrangling about removing the old water heater. I wanted to pay for it to be removed. Home Depot was up for disposing of it free if I hauled it over there. Now, I do have a truck, but the whole concept was to pay someone to do the schlepping. And no, I didn't and don't feel it should require a small army of people to do the job, each doing one small bit. Hrmpf.
Barcode scanned, install scheduled. Went swimmingly. Received a packet with the permit and instructions for making an inspection appointment in our city. Sure, I could look it up, but I appreciated not having to. Until the inspector refused to sign the permit. There were 4 items that needed to be corrected, the most egregious of which was extending the drain pipe to outside the building. I get the reasoning (mold) in some locations, but here...not so much. Still, no biggie, other than the fact that our installer didn't do it!
Sunday morning service this past weekend, consisted of a second installer coming out to spend 4 hours redoing the install. Monday morning, I called to schedule an inspection and was told someone would be out that very morning. Seemed too good to be true, so called back to verify, and indeed, we'd not made the day's list of inspections. No problem. I went happily about a conference call, only to have an inspector show up - not 10 minutes after being assured that this wasn't going to happen.
He looked at me. I looked at him. He was wearing expensive shiny dress shoes without a hint of dirt, much less scuffing. His dress pants were neatly creased, and while there was no tie, only the very top button of his Business, Not Business Casual was undone. The sleeves were most definitely not rolled up. It wasn't until he said "you have a water heater that needs to be looked at?" that I even clued in to who he might be.
He was quite unpleasant "you DID schedule an appointment today" and then proceeded to ADD to the previous list of required fixes. Yes, the former ones were checked off, but as you can imagine, permit not signed. And he was patronizing, too. Oi. As he left, I was trying to figure out: if a water heater permit is $99 in our city, what is the cost of a permit for burying a body?
Call our water heater installer back, and he came out yesterday. Yes, this is the third day in a row the FruitStand has been invaded by the water heater's friends. It figures the lone extrovert of the household is a damned appliance. At any rate, he commiserated, drained the water heater and rotated it to meet the new demand.
Called the city planning department back, now being on a first-name basis with the administrator. Turns out, the automated scheduling system is the bane of their existence and up for replacement this year. So Monday's mix-up was a common occurrence the inspectors are well aware of. I politely requested that our third inspection be performed by the original inspector. I did NOT make any snarky or snide remarks about the other one, either, tyvm.
This morning the original inspector arrived, dressed for work - jeans, workboots. You know, neat but functional. As I let him in, he said, "first things first. Gotta pet the dog. He likes The Moose, and clearly not in a "humor the 90-lb animal with big teeth" kind of way. He noted that I'd requested him specifically, and I said that while I understood perhaps something had been overlooked during the first inspection, I saw no need for the second guy's rudeness. He laughed and said "him? rude?" and laughed some more, sounding not at all surprised.
That was his boss. And he just laughed harder when I confessed that I hadn't been sure if I should show him the water heater or offer him some cucumber sandwiches and tea. Apparently his boss typically stays in City Hall, but had to fill in for someone that day, and has been spoken to previously about his manners. Even better, BOTH of them were in the room when I was on the phone making the last appointment. He said when his boss realized the gist of the conversation, his expression was priceless, and he'd said, "what? What'd I do?"
Further armed (and chortling) with the customers-eye view of the boss overdressed for field work, the inspector gave The Moose a final pat, and headed back to the office to harass his superior provide customer feedback. Me? Scanned in the sig part of the permit and sent it to the Boy Next Door with the sordid details.
The water heater is grounded and not allowed to have visitors for some time. It's done enough socializing in the last four days to last a few years. Honestly, you'd think I'd been attempting a major custom renovation rather than routine home maintenance.