Super Mario Plumbing

Since moving to the Sacramento area about three months ago, my wife and I have been working down the punch list items identified on our home inspection.

There were 72 items listed, plus a bunch more that they missed, and a couple that they noticed that weren’t problems, and of course the things that she and I want to change.

To summarize—we got a great house but just about everything was installed incorrectly.

But let me focus on the plumbing. The gas-fired tankless water heater was incorrectly installed—perhaps that was too kind—it was basically hung on the wall, and not hung on the wall very well as it was mounted with a single screw.

The inspector had found nearly a dozen code violations; the gravest of all was a lack of a pressure temperature relief valve. That’s the device that prevents the unit from exploding when the unit overheats. That got my attention in a hurry.

Besides that, the service valves necessary to flush the water heater coils were not installed, the condensate drains did not exit the house, and the air intake and gas exhaust were of the wrong materials and in the wrong place. The inspector also noted that there was rot behind the water heater. The inspector missed the need for a new independent 1” gas line to run the width of the house to service the water heater.

I got three quotes for the code compliant installation of the water heater, and they came in at approximately $6,000, $4,000 and $2,000. The low bid was from a company called—and I’m not kidding—Super Mario Plumbing. The owner thought Super Mario would be a catchy name for his plumbing business.

Well, the owner, Dima, turned out to be one hell of a plumber. He installed the water heater just the way I wanted, and installed a sink at the same time. That gas pipe, he ran through the crawl space between the cathedral ceiling and the roof—none of the other bidders would do that. I watched him crawl into the narrow space wearing a protective bunny suit. Good job.

So, I got a pest contractor to fix the rot. It turned out that there was no rot—even though the home inspector had self-quoted $750 to repair it. What was mistaken for rot was a rusted splice bar that covered a cutout where piping had been run. But they discovered that a water connection above the wet area was caused by a leaking pipe.

So again, Super Mario to the rescue. I asked Dima to both fix the water leak and remove a shower head from the master bathroom. It seems that the prior owner had hooked up the regular shower head and an overhead rain shower head in series without a switching valve, so one couldn’t be used without the other.

When he finally checked the attic leak problem, the solder joint had been made without proper preparation and was ready to fail and flood the house. But the joint was made so close to the wood framing that a bevy of pipes had to be relocated to access the joint.

Now the latest—our dishwasher hasn’t been cleaning the dishes well. We cleaned the filters—better but not good. We tested the water—cold. We ran the hot water and then started the dishwasher—still cold. We discovered that there are two lines leaving the water connections under the sink: one goes to the dishwasher, and the other goes to the refrigerator’s filtered water and ice maker.

Believe it or not, the cold water was piped to the dishwasher and the hot water was piped to the refrigerator’s filtered water and ice maker.

Called Super Mario and it was fixed in 15 minutes.