Forty-six and a half litres

At 8:10 this morning I read the sticker on the side of the water heater. 50 L. Power vent. Manufactured 2014. It has stood in this corner eleven years, full of water since 6:40 p.m. on the first night, and I have carried snow past it forty times.

The sticker on the tank

I went down for kindling and put my hand flat on the tank on the way past. It was cold. Then I read the sticker and sat on the bottom step with the kindling in my lap.

Power vent means the blower on top needs electricity. That is why there has been no hot water since the first night, and why the burner has not lit once in twenty days. Not one gram of gas has gone into that tank. It has been sealed at 3 °C with fifty litres of municipal water in it since the ice came down.

What I did instead, in twenty days:

• Melted 72 L of loose snow for 10.6 L, three times, at 16 g of gas a litre.
• Walked to the corner on Day 5 and spent cash on two 4 L jugs.
• Kept the inventory in pencil on the cupboard door for twenty days, 8.6 L/day at the top, and never wrote the word tank.

That is the mistake. Not that I did not know a water heater holds water. For twenty days I looked in the ground, the sky, a shop and a barrel, and never in the one place in this house where water is kept.

My partner came down at 8:40. She read the sticker, then looked at the pipes, the floor drain, and me. "How long has it been full?" Since the first night. Four seconds of quiet, which from her is a paragraph. Then: "Catch the first run separate. It will be brown." She went back up. She has not said the other thing. I would rather she had.

The drain valve and the tap I did not open

The manual was taped to the tank in a plastic sleeve. I had never read it. I read it at 8:55 and wrote the order on the back of the water card.

• Gas control knob to OFF. Gas supply valve on the black pipe: quarter turn, handle at a right angle.
• Cold inlet valve on top: closed.
• Hose onto the drain spigot, hand tight. The spigot is plastic and a wrench will take it off the tank.
• The other end to the floor drain, 3 m away, falling the whole way. A hose with a low spot holds water.
• A hot tap open upstairs, to let air in behind the water.

I did the first four and skipped the fifth.

At 9:11 I opened the drain valve. It ran hard for forty seconds, then began to glug and stop. Forty seconds is not fifty litres. I had eight 4 L jugs and a 20 L pail along the wall.

At 9:14 I did the thing I would like back. The kitchen is eleven steps up. Instead I reached over my head and lifted the lever on the relief valve, because it was at eye level and it is a valve that lets things out.

The tank was still full and heavy behind it. That valve sits 5 cm below the top. What came out was 3 °C and full of grit and went across my chest, the wall and the floor. About 2 L. The dog left the basement.

Then I opened the kitchen hot tap, and the drain ran until 9:44.

At 10:00 she came down and looked at the jar under the copper pipe. "That valve will not seat. It has not been moved in eleven years." The jar took 300 mL and stopped. It matters the day the pressure comes back, because that valve is the last thing between a tank of hot water and this room.

What came out of the tank

First run, 9:11 to 9:19: 7 L, the colour of weak tea then coffee, grit like sand in the bottom of the pail, air spitting between slugs. After that, clear.

46.5 L into eight 4 L jugs and the 20 L pail. 39.5 L of it clear. The 7 L is marked WASH and never for drinking, because grit does not boil out.

The water was 3 °C, the same as the room. Her thermometer, glass, three minutes in the pail.

The arithmetic does not close. 46.5 in the jugs, 2 across the floor and my shirt, and about 1.5 still in the tank, because the spigot sits above the floor of it. That is fifty. I did not measure the last of it.

I did not boil the 39.5 L. It is the water that came out of the tap on Day 0, sealed in steel at 3 °C since then, and boiling it would take the rest of the cartridge. That is a judgement and not a rule. If anyone here is sick next week I will know which judgement it was.

The thermostat has been at 60 °C for eleven years, which keeps a tank from growing things, and for twenty days it has not mattered. When the supply returns the tank refills cold and the gas stays at OFF until there is water in it. A burner that fires in an empty tank ruins it.

The dog drank 300 mL out of the pail at 9:50 and I let him, because it was the first clear water he has had since October.

The card says 8.6 L/day. Today we used 4.5: 1 L to the dog, 1.8 drunk, 1.2 in food, 0.5 for hands. Not a new ration. A day with nothing to spend water on until a quarter to ten.

Two doors down

At 2:40 I walked two 2 L bottles down the street. 120 m there and back on ice. Four litres is two days of drinking for one person, and it is what she draws out of her barrel at a time, which I did not notice until I was on her step.

Her garage: thermometer on a nail, pad of paper beside it, 3 °C this morning written down, insulin pens in a cooler on the shelf. I had assumed her insulin was in trouble. It is not. The range is 2 to 8 °C and her garage is the best refrigerator on this street. She said, "I check it at eight and at four." So the four litres did not rescue her, and I did not tell her I had thought it would.

She counted the pens while I stood there. Out loud, off the shelf: eleven in the cooler, two in the kitchen, thirteen. She wrote it on the pad and underlined it. Twice a day since 2011.

My mother counted to twenty at the sink, washing her hands. I have done it every day since Day 3. I do not know what her thirteen is. She has not mentioned God to me once in twenty days. On Day 15 I prayed out loud in her front room, badly, and she waited and then asked me to move the chair.

Then she said, with no edge on it at all, "You should have found that tank on the first night." I said yes. There was nothing else to say, and she had not said it to be unkind.

Water: 7 L this morning, 45 L tonight. 46.5 out of the tank, 4.5 used, 4 down the street. 45 L is 5.2 days at the card's rate and 10 at today's. No second tank, so I wrote one-time beside the 45.

At 6:40 it was twenty days to the minute. I marked it, went to bed at 8:50, and slept until 5:10, which has not happened since Day 3. Then I got up and counted the jugs again in the dark.

What I should have had on day zero

• The capacity of the water heater on the index card, in the same pencil as the 8.6. Fifty litres, in the basement.
• A 12 m garden hose with the fittings on it, and two 20 L pails with a line at 5 L.
• A spare relief valve, and the sense not to use the one on the tank to let air in.
• One line in my own handwriting on the tank: open a hot tap upstairs first.