Rejoice!

...for the subfloor does not need replacing. So says the contractor, who's a former roommate of a friend, so I have a high degree of trust in his assessment, especially since it means no business for him. "You really don't want to open that up," he said, "because the minute you do, dollar bills will start flying out." Hehe. He did recommend some ways to reinforce it before we lay new flooring, because three whole layers of the plywood came up in that nasty hot-water stew that was brewing down there.

And...admire! Our tankless heater is in. It is SO COOL. Here it is, with dogs included for scale.
The heater, as you can see, sits outside, where it can produce constant hot water, though not instant hot water since it has to travel from the heater to the various plumbing fixtures. They were very particular about explaining that to me, since apparently many people confuse "continuous" with "instantaneous," and are disappointed to learn the difference. The water is heated by gas, though like our furnace it requires an electric switch, so it can't make hot water during an electrical outage. In this sense there's a drawback relative to the tank model, which still holds a certain amount of hot water even with the electricity out. However, apparently you can run this thing for a limited time off a large battery, like the backup power supplies for computers. So if we really wanted to prepare for disaster - we could buy one of those. Along with a year of freeze-dried meals, and enough ammo to fend off the zombie army.

Inside the house is a little control panel and thermostat:

And, here is the scariness that is The Place Formerly Known as the Water Heater. Eventually, this will be a lovely and handy storage area. Right now, it's a freak show. The three holes in the floor probably saved our bacon, because they allowed much of the leaking water to drain into the crawl space. Right now, they are an inviting portal for the rat army, which frankly concerns me much more than the zombies. Hopefully it will dry out by the weekend so we can close it up.