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Friday, August 18, 2006

Disaster Averted

Shortly after getting home from work on Wednesday, Mrs. Fetched told me a tale of… “whoa.”

A while back, some friends of ours moved out of a trailer and gave us their large-ish propane tank so we could replace the ones we were renting. (For those of you who don’t have one of these, most people rent their tank and are locked into a single supplier. If you own your own tank, you can get propane from the low bidder.) Wednesday was the day when the incumbent came to cart off their tanks and install ours. They’re happy to do this... for a price, of course.

In this case, the price included three or four hours of labor. The regulator on our tank was shot, and had to be replaced. Then there was the minor detail of the old system being two small tanks ganged together; that gave them some grief too. The real fun started when they did the leak test... and found (and fixed) two leaks. Under the house. Next to the furnace.

Mrs. Fetched told me all that to complain about the $420 bill. “We should have just paid the $51 tank rental.”

“Um,” I replied, “Not that I’m all that fond of this place, but I would prefer it didn’t catch fire some night in October.”

“It wouldn’t catch fire, it would probably blow up.”

All the more reason to not worry about the $420… especially since the furnace is under the downstairs bedrooms. Not that I care so much about the house, but I would prefer not to have to escape in the middle of the night and try to remember grabbing my wife, kids, M.A.E., and laptop on the way out.

2 comments:

  1. Glad you got that done. Peace of mind, but more important personal safety just doesn't have a price.

    I'm sure I would be complaining of the price, but that would just be blowing some stream off.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's probably what Mrs. Fetched was doing, too.

    Now to go under the house & start cutting the baseboard pipes so we can get them up....

    ReplyDelete

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