Gas Emergency

Okay, so I'm still trying to get my clothes dryer fixed. I've found an apparently reputable appliance repair, local, but busy. Very busy, the 'scheduler' may call tomorrow. I've heard these guys do good work and are reasonably priced, so I'm giving it a chance.

Meanwhile, I was once again out of clothes I could wear to work with a straight face. So it was off to the laundromat.

And as I went into the laundry room to get the dryer sheets and detergent, I noticed water all over the floor. The water was coming from a hot water heater that was also hissing loudly.

Now, to back up a step, I thought I smelled gas this morning, but very faintly and briefly, and since I couldn't ascribe a source to it (we'd taken hot showers and the furnace was audibly running, no other gas appliances reside here), I figured one of my kiddos must have simply dropped ass in a particularly fragrant way.

Looking at the hissing water heater, I thought I smelled gas again, but from the sound of it, I should have been in a bomb crater rather than my house. Of course my home is often confused with a bomb crater anyway, but this should have created a more open-air edition of the disaster.

So I call the gas company. I figure, the exhaust must be taking the gas away fast enough, though by what mechanism this occurs I'm foggy on. It doesn't seem like an active system, the flue on a water heater, but who knows.

I had, by this point, tried everything I knew which was to turn the knobs on the water tank to the places the water tank claimed was 'off.' The hissing didn't stop, though, and even the chick at the gas company said she could hear it over the phone.

The gas man was dispatched, and he took one glance at the fancy detector he carried and another glance at my water tank and said, 'That ain't gas. That's residual water pressure in the tank.'

He turned off the gas to it anyway, because I obviously need a new tank, but you could tell my little 'gas emergency' is a false alarm he's seen a hundred times just since John McCain became the Republican Nominee. 'The tank rusted out in the bottom, the water came down on the flue manifold and turned into vapor, extinguishing the flame which shut off the gas all by itself.'

He didn't say, 'That gas you thought you smelled was just your kid farting.'

So now I need a new hot water heater in addition to an appliance repairman for my clothes dryer. But where I can squander $15 at the laundromat for clean clothes, there are no public showers in town that I know of. And I think one ice-cold shower is going to be enough for me to get someone, anyone in my basement with a solution. NOW.