You are right about scamming—I see what you mean.

About my hardware stuff: I was fixing my computer all weekend. The sound seems to be working now; before, it wouldn't pick up the microphone, but now it seems to be alright, and the white noise is largely gone (although with filters). I can say that MX Linux is not as good as I remember. It happens, a lot of fringe OSes degrade over time. I think the guy who was working on it was just him and a few others—a small team. I just installed Linux Mint again, and it all worked -- it seems my other Linux Mint install was corrupt - I went from Linux Mint to MX Linux to fix the mic but it made it worse. I saw that PewDiePie, who has 110 million subs, finally got sick of Windows and installed Linux (he made a video on it), which was interesting. Each day, Windows dies a little more, which I enjoy.

About the plumbing problems: it seems like you're having an adventure! My dad had an interesting setup in our house when I was a kid—he had a coal range, which was always on in winter. He built a coiled pipe into it that ran into the hot water cylinder. We had that coal range on all day because we cooked with it. I'm sure you have something like this setup or have something in mind—it's the classic setup. There was also a low area of travel because the hot water cylinder was on the other side of the wall.

Thanks!