I received a call on a Tuesday morning from the wife of a deployed Colonel in the Indiana National Guard to tell me that she had a leaking water heater that had flooded the basement. She had been told by her heating and air company who had looked at the water heater that it needed to be replaced. The husband typically makes all of these types of decisions regarding home repairs, but he is presently in Afghanistan and won't be home until November. It was up to the wife to get the water heater taken care of. The catch to all of this was that the husband had his heart set on a tankless water heater. I arrived at the Greenwood home at 7:30 PM after running all of my scheduled calls. 

The challenge to installing a tankless water heater in this house was that the mechanical room was located right in the middle of a finished basement. With the help of one of the family's sons that works in construction, we were able to determine how to run the flue pipe for the tankless heater through the floor joists in the finished ceiling and out the back of the house. I explained everything to the wife as to what I thought would have to happen to get the new water heater installed, but got the "deer in the headlights" look. She asked me if I could Skype her husband in Afghanistan to explain what I had found and answer any of his questions which I told her I could do since I routinely Skype family members that are overseas. So when I got home that night after 9 PM, I got on the home computer and Skyped the Colonel. I answered all of his questions about tank versus tankless water heaters and with the help of my web site and Facebook page, I sold the job. 

I received a confirmation call from the wife the following day, but was booked for the rest of the week. I don't normally schedule work on Saturdays (emergency service only on the weekends), but made an exception in this case. I got the tankless heater installed and up and running by 5 PM on Saturday. When I spoke to the wife the next day, she was thrilled at the fact that she and her daughter could take showers at the same time and not run out of hot water. They have lived with a marginal operating water heater for over 2 years until this past weekend. 

The take away from this story is that the thousands of dollars and countless hours that I have invested in my web site have paid off once again. The fact that I could communicate with this Colonel via Skype made a difficult situation very easy to handle and streamlined the decision making process. And the fact that he could look at my personal profile on Facebook and see the Fan page for the business told this man who and what I was about.