This week I had one of my plumbing customers request a water heater installation. I had done quite a bit of work on their home. But this time they threw me a curve.

They had a 50 gallon natural gas water heater in a closet in their garage. This isn’t uncommon in the Lee’s Summit area. What was uncommon was that the floor drain the furnace & water heater had next to them was under the water heater.

Apparently they had a chronic clog issue with the floor drain. And to access the drain they had cut a hole in the basement wall directly behind the water heater & furnace to unclog it.

This was an unsafe situation since there was a basement bedroom & the opening between the garage and the house. Also, the water heater & furnace need to be seperated from a sleeping space. This is due to the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning.

My only option was to remove the water heater & relocate the floor drain. This allowed free access to the drain for maintenance purposes. And they could seal the hole in the wall for safety.

So I broke up the garage floor, dug up the floor drain & piping, removed the old drain & replaced it with a new pvc drain pipe & floor drain. Then I backfilled around them & repaired the concrete.

Then I was able to replace their water heater. I installed a new gas shutoff & thermal expansion tank to boot.

I told my customer afterward that I was going to go home & have a good cry before I cleaned up. It was a tough day! But I was proud of the work I did. And they were very happy.