Today I didn’t take any fish oil supplement, on the suspicion that it was related to the occasional arrhythmia and that correlation was reinforced when there was no arrhythmia today. So I decided to stop taking fish oil and switch to a plant-based substitute instead. Walnuts and chia seeds are a couple sources of the necessary Omega-3 oils.
But as today’s title indicates, the water heater didn’t work as well as my heart because it (water heater) started leaking.
So I got a replacement water heater from Home Depot. I saved the $79 I was told that its delivery would cost if the Home Depot contracted installer delivered it, by taking it home and delivering it myself. I asked the Home Depot employee if I could also save some money on the installation by disposing of the old water heater myself instead of having the installer haul it away. He said that when I talked with the Home Depot contractor about the installation, the amount it would cost to haul away the old one would be mentioned and could be negotiated.
While I was talking with the Home Depot employee about the water heater installation, another customer overheard me asking about the Home Depot installation contractors and he decided to chime in to the conversation by saying “I’m 80 years old and I’ve NEVER had a good experience with contractors! All I’ve ever gotten from contractors is s**t, s**t, s**t! I’ve never met a contractor who was any good or gave me anything but s**t!”
I didn’t know if he was talking about contractors in general or Home Depot contractors in particular, so I just replied by telling him that I was an optimist and I hoped to meet a good one. He just looked at me without saying anything further.
After getting home, I talked with a representative of the Home Depot contractor (Delta Mechanical) that does installation and I was told that it would cost $787.91 to install the water heater, including delivery of new one and disposal of old one.
I told him I’d already delivered the new one myself, so I could save the $79 delivery fee and said that I could also haul away the old one myself. Then I asked how much both of those done-it-myself tasks would reduce the installation cost.
He replied that delivery and disposal were “free” and the cost to install it would be the same price of $787.91!! There was no negotiation. They were going to charge me for all the work, even if they didn’t have to do it all!
That contractor-quoted price to remove and replace a water heater was far too expensive for something that would take from 30 minutes to an hour, so I decided against having the Home Depot contractors do the work.
If I’d known the phone number of that 80 year-old man in Home Depot who used the rather profane language about contractors, I would have called him next and told him I was now inclined to agree with his opinion and his choice of adjectives.
But I didn’t know his phone number, so I thought about calling other plumbers. Before I could call anyone else, I had an idea to look on YouTube. So I navigated the internet to YouTube and made a pleasant discovery. It was well worth looking.
There happen to be a multitude of videos on the subject of removal & replacement of water heaters. After watching a few of those videos, the decision was made to DIY. The videos were made by many different guys, ranging from experienced professional plumbers, to professional handymen and ordinary Do-It-Yourselfers, to even people who were doing it for the first time ever.
Today’s rowing was 10K. I started out the same as yesterday but starting with the third 2,000 meters of the session, I took a slightly less rapid approach to increasing power than yesterday’s plan.
I started at 105 Watts for the first 2,000 meters, just like yesterday. Then, 145 Watts for the next 2,000 meters, which was also the same as yesterday. But at the start of the 3rd 2K, (during which yesterday’s arrhythmia had happened, I only increased the power by an additional 20 Watts instead of 40 Watts, raising the effort to 165 Watts and stayed there for 1,000 meters until increasing another 20 Watts, to 185 Watts. Everything worked smoothly without even a hiccup from the heart up to that point, so after finishing the third 2K at 185 Watts, I increased the power by another 20 Watts, to 205 Watts.
Heart rate finally eased up to the target of 158 BPM after I’d rowed a total of about 7,000 meters. For the remaining distance, I rowed easy to warm down.
Happy rowing to you.