I got home from work the other night and found a little wet spot on the floor. My hot water had a slow leak, thinking about it, it's over 30 years old. I live in an upstairs apartment, and when we remodeled, my side has it's own hot water heater.

Anyway, it was on a Thursday or Friday night when I found the leak, I hate to pester folks on the weekend. It wasn't a big deal, one towel soaked up the spill, and never did get wet. Over the weekend I asked a few of my friends, where's the best place to buy a water heater? I looked online, I thought: Wow, the prices are high.

Long story short, I left a message for my plumber, Doug. Gave him details of everything, and told him that I was shopping for a new tank. And told him that I'd have everything ready.

Monday morning, I called about all of the places around here that sell water heaters. Prices went from, $470 to a thousand bucks. Just for a 40-gallon electric water heater. Had a buddy go pick up the tank, after tax it was $501. That was Tuesday. Doug called that night, said he'd be here at 8 am.

Doug rolled in at 8am Wednesday morning, and commenced. I did have everything ready, I had the garden hose ready, the new tank setting 10 feet away, the cubby hole cleaned out as much as I could.

Doug and I were talking while waiting for the old tank to drain, it was chilly that morning, that 40 gallons of hot water in the grass steamed for a long time.

You see the old water heater, it was plumbed with all copper pipes, soldered together, the way we plumbed, 30 or 40 years ago.

Doug installed the new plumbing, using a Milwaukee compression crimper. It's a copper to copper compression seal, and the rest is using CPVC, crimped on lines. The copper to copper compression joints were new to me.

Search: Milwaukee compression crimper. Doug said he'd paid $2,500 for the contraption. I'll tell you it works smooth. It makes work easy.

Doug is a professional, and he does make things look easy. All said and done, Doug was loaded up, paid up and back on the road at 9am. I thought that an hour for that job was pretty good.

It took an hour including the draining of the tank.

I doubt the new tank will last as long as the old one. It depends on your water. They don't make them like they used to!

I had never heard of the copper to copper compression crimper.

I doubt this new tank will last 30 years too.

A friend told me that he was lucky to have one last 10 years, he does have well water.

Thinking about it, compression fittings, sleeves and all have been used in the electric trade for years.

I'm not sure what the measurements would be on the water fittings, but I'd guess it goes down to 0.001 inch, and they might go down even less? On the 3/8's copper tubing, it was very snug.

I think Doug said they were guaranteed to 150 PSI. Not positive about that.