Plum, Plum, Plumbing! AC!

As per the inspector's recommendation, we had to change the route of the temperature and pressure relief (TPR) valve drain. As it was, it went up to the roof, and that was against the code since 2001. The heater was installed in 2005! Shame on you, water heater installer!
So yesterday we gave Lloyd the plumber $385 and this is what he did:


Actually, times two. This is the closet in one of the two adjacent bedrooms that are directly against the water heater closet. The TPR valve drain starts to the left and continues to the right where it goes into the next bedroom closet, and then through a hole to the outside of the house.

Now we have to fix it!

Lloyd also installed a pressure regulator on the main water source because the pressure was too high (as per inspector's diagnosis). This caused a few problems, one of which I will talk about some other time. The other was the evaporative cooler's float that wasn't set up for the lower pressure and started to act up, which caused the cooler to shut down. Temperature in the house got to 96 degrees F (about 35 C?). Mark had to go up to the roof to adjust the float to the lower pressure.

Hopefully this problem will not recur because now we have a new AC! A good, energy-efficient AC, to be precise. The evaporative cooler idea is nice, but it really doesn't work all that well when you need it most - when it's hottest in Tucson it's also the most humid. AC works much better in these conditions.



This nice looking system cost us about $5200, but will qualify us for a $1500 tax refund!