Category Archives: Repairs

Rats, eggs, and escapees…

More to come on this soon… (written 1/17/2009)

Ok, well, soon is a relative term…it is now March 3rd and Maya has seen fit to comment on how terribly out of date this post is (in addition to threatening to blog about the new raised bed, not that I’d mind, but she gave me a deadline, which I may have missed). Let’s wander back to mid-January for a moment and discuss the situtations that were at hand at that point in time (some of which have been resolved, some not so much).

Slowly but surely the rat will certainly cause our shed to collapse...

Slowly but surely the rat will certainly cause our shed to collapse...

Rats, or perhaps just one, nonetheless the evidence provided above (in addition to other evidence not available at the time of this writing in the form of a catacomb of tunnels around and about the chicken coop and compost bins) indicates the presence of a rodent. Back in January I was starting to get worried that he would undermine the foundation of the shed (there are 4 or 5 of these egresses from under the slab). Further, it seems the rat was somehow extracting stuff from the compost cones. An inspection of the exterior base of the cone below ground level revealed no entrance, and yet, there were onion skins and other such tidbits pretty regularlly strewn about the chicken yard (and not by the chickens) in addition to the catacombs. I erected a barrier between the chicken yard and the compost cones and set a load of rat traps to no avail. Keep in mind we have three cats and a dog (kind of, Hemmingway is blind and doesn’t leave the house any more and Bukowski now visits every week and a half or so, perhaps more on that later).  In my opinion we shouldn’t have rodent problems, particularly since the neighbors at our southeastish corner (near the chicken yard) have the biggest most ferocious most terrible cat known to mankind. But alas, a rat we have, and as yet I have not caught and killed him, but his activity seems to have been limited by this fancy new device:

Not exclusively installed to expose the rat to dog urine and cat accessibility, but also to thwart our little escapee...

Not exclusively installed to expose the rat to dog urine and cat accessibility, but also to thwart our little escapee...

The approximately 3.5 foot tall chicken wire enclosure for the chicken yard became useless once the Skyway winds blew away the bird netting that originally covered the area. Blume (the littlest one) can basically fly whether her wing is clipped or not, and with planting season on the horizon we had to restore some modicum of order to the back yard. Coupled with the aforementioned rat issue, the gate was concieved and built (previously we accessed the chicken yard by passing through the two connected sheds at the left hand edge of the above photo, fine for us, but the situation prevented Huxley from patroling, growling, urinating and what not in that corner of the yard even when the chickens are in for the night). Prior to the gate Huxley would get really squierelly each night running around the chicken yard sniffing and barking (we assume he smelled a rat, the very same rat that continues to outwit me to this day).

Another component of the “keep Blume in the chicken yard except when we want her ranging” program was the purchase of a couple of 16ft x 54in cattle panels.  The plan is to use these panels to create dual chicken yards and rotate the chickens seasonally from one yard to the next enabling us to plan stuff for ourselves and the chickens in the area from which the chickens will be excluded while they decimate the area in which they are confined. This will happen in concert with the moving and rebuilding of the chicken coop and the creation of a funky new raised bed from broken concrete and large logs. The cattle panels and the raised bed in progress are shown below:

Still recovering from moving the logs, but they sure made the broken concrete seem light...

Still recovering from moving the logs, but they sure made the broken concrete seem light...

Now really, I mean it, really, ok, so, well, hmmm…the “chicken wire” at 3.5 feet couldn’t contain Blume. So it goes, dust ourselves off and come up with an alternate plan to accomodate the adorable little flier. She’s often picked on by the bigger chickens, so a little extra effort on her behalf isn’t a problem. She is also the most human focused of the three chickens and likes to run out to greet us when we come back to the shed or follow us around the yard when she is ranging. So we spend about $100 on these cool cattle panels. Certainly 54 inches will work, the holes are large enough for her to get through, but the plan was to just cover the bottom 2/3’s with chicken wire and we should be set. No such luck. That little turd…freshly clipped wing and all she floats like a butterfly up to the top of the cattle panel shortly after we get it set up (well, ok, not so much floats and not at all like a butterfly).  So, I tried adding some raspberry can arches to the top of the cattle panel to keep her in thinking the visual deterent might just be enough.

Again, my inadequecies were highlighted when Blume figured out she could pretty much knock them out of the way on her way up. So, after a bit of head scratching and various alternate plans for handling the Blume the flyer situation, I grabbed some of that cheezy green garden border wire arches stuff while walking by it at the hardware store. This sits a little bit precariously atop the chicken wire and addes another foot to the height. The test section I bought doesn’t quite cover the entire from facing length of their existing yard, but on the rare occassion that I remember to close the coop door closest to the cattle panel, the extra height seems to dissuade the littlest one from escaping. I’ll eventually pick up a couple 20ft rolls of that garbage and we’ll put it atop all the cattle panels when we get the new raise bed done and enclosed. I’m hoping to do some sort of funky pvc pipe strapped to cattle panel set ontop of a piece of rebar rammed into the ground fencing strategy for these cattle panels so we can take them down and get them out of the way when we are gardening that area and the girls aren’t ranging in that bed.

More news from way back in January…EGGS! Very shortly after solstace the girls started delivering their gifts again. Dahl was back to a steady egg a day and Blume and Cleary would usually round out the day with a second or third egg. Most of which have been dutifully recorded in our new “egg log” (which actually, has already been usurped by a “permaculture diary” that Maya bought, but way back in January it was just a plain old “egg log”. Unfortunately, the egg train slowed down a bit when Dahl (the red Arucana) decided to get broody on us a few weeks ago. We don’t have a rooster and have no intention of adding a chicken this year, so the poor girl spends most of her time sitting on a bunch of nothing. I miss seeing her in her chicken yard, even if she is an asshole bully to the other two girls on a pretty regular basis. Hopefully she’ll break brood soon and get our egg production back up to an average of around 2 a day.

And, because I just never get sick of this photo (taken by Maya), here is a mug shot of the escapee for ya:

I'm Breakin' Out Of This Joint! You with me or against me?

I'm Breakin' Out Of This Joint!You with me, or against me?


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I think I’m in love…

with flexible insulating ducting…

The splendor of the flexible insulated ducting...so beautiful...so charming

The splendor of the flexible insulated ducting...so beautiful...so charming

This project finally got started, as most do, fairly unintentionally and following lengthy internal debates about the relative merits of the project in contrast to the associated risks and hassles (which, as usual, were underestimated). I paid a routine visit to the crawlspace in the spring following the historic downpours experienced throughout western Washingtion over the winter (the brunt of the rain hit a couple hours south of here in the Centralia area, but the big sog didn’t spare us entirely). Although we suffered no where near the catastrophic rains that hit south of here, our neighbor 2 doors down has a basement and was forced to occupy a hotel for a while after the December storms caused flooding in her home.

During our neighbor’s hotel hiatus we had the pleasure of watching after Tex, her ancient Shitsu (I think he is about 2 or 3 hundred years old). I’ll avoid a lengthy digression into the entertainment value of Tex, but I happened to buy some brand new Car Harts around this time and evidently they were tasty since in the middle of a dinner party Tex decided the best thing in the world was feverishly licking my pant leg (and he would not stop, which our guests found hugely entertaining, where I did not so much after about an half an hour of continuously being licked and changed my trousers which strangely brought the licking to a halt).

Tex, the ancient manic pant licking shitsu

Tex, the ancient manic pant licking shitsu

Anyway, when I got down into the dingy hell hole that is our crawlspace during the aforementioned spring spelunking, I discovered (much to my dismay) a small pondish lake had formed just under the living room coalescing on top of the few solid portions of the mostly shredded vapor barrier.

PANIC!

We have fairly serious water fears around here, and someday I’ll relate the entire story about the household flood that occurred 4 days after we closed on the house (as a result of an overzealous water department ignoring a specific request to NOT turn on the water while we were out of town). Ok, so the question becomes, is this water here because our house sits in a hole and the earth around us is simply saturated OR is this somehow related to the replumbing that we had done back in October??? After calling upon Maya to run around the house and turn on every water fixture one at a time so I could listen and watch intently for any plumbing leaks (thinking the whole time, if this is a plumbing leak why is it under the living room, there is no plumbing here…grrr…hmmm….arggg).

Ok, as best as we could tell there is no plumbing issue, so this is most likely saturated earth acting in concert with the wholly inadequate vapor barrier and poor air circualtion resulting from the wholly inadequate crawlspace venting covered by stinking vinyl siding with silly little air louvres molded into the siding (and perhaps augmented by increased water volumes resulting from the curtailing of the roots of the 50 year old crimson maple that was required for the replacement of the water service from the street to the house). Well, that was my story, and I decided to hope for the best and stick to that assumption about the source of the water. I also decided to remove a significant portion of the remaining vapor barrier to allow the water to soak into the earth since I did not want to belly crawl across the pondish lake to check and clear the crawlspace vent at that exact moment. I also made the decision to return to the crawlspace later in the summer and assess the pondish lake again at that time (and to be fully prepared with some sort of water removal apparatus to clear the pond as needed so as to allow somewhat dry access over to the crawlspace vent if needed). Just another item to add to the list of about 18 things that need to be done in the crawlspace. And so I pulled myself out of that nasty underworld, covered the access with the beautiful hatch cover I had made the previous year to match the flooring (and to replace the piece of 3/4″ ply that didn’t really cover the access entirely anyway), and returned the entire contents of the closet under the stairs to its usual location immediately over and completely obstructing the access to the crawlspace.

Oooo pretty...with handles too...

Oooo pretty...with handles too...

This action (the clearing of the closet), in and of itself, is probably the greatest hinderance to activity in the crawlspace. Not to diminish the generally nastiness of the place, but the fact that in order to get down there we have to move this bevy of bizarre objects and shelving out of the closet under the stairs into the blue room just to get down there presents enough of an initial hassle to make my visits less frequent than perhaps they should be. And thus, summer became fall (or so Maya claims, I’ve been trying to hold out for summer until November, but the past couple of days have dashed my hopes), and I did not find a cheap enough sump pump close enough to home on Craig’s List throughout my summer searches.

The blue room full of crap from the closet...our primary obstacle to crawlspace visits

The blue room full of crap from the closet...our primary obstacle to crawlspace visits

However, a few weeks ago, J (of J&X, a friend of mine since High School that now lives only a few blocks away and fishes for salmon in Alaska during the summer) had come back from Alaska fishing and happened to be heading back up to Bellingham to work on the boat for the week prior to starting their fall fishing here in the Puget Sound. In a minor stroke of genius I remembered to ask if they happened to have a 110v sump I could borrow over the following weekend (which would at long last provide the required force to inspire me back into the crawlspace for the long overdue checkup on the pondish lake). Sweet victory! They did in fact have a 110v sump pump I could borrow (thereby avoiding some freakish car battery jumper cable Rube Goldberg style setup for a 12v marine pump). I spent the following week sizing up tough for the journey under the house…choosing a sacrificial shirt…contemplating the exact pumping strategy…hoping for the best…expecting the worst…and last, but of course not least, on Friday I cleared the closet in preparation for the descent…

Into the abyss...

Into the abyss...

 J. came through with the pump and all the pieces were in place to begin the crawlspace drainage and assessment initiative…I dutifully got the pump ready to go and Maya helped me get the hose strung from the pump at the crawlspace access out to one of the rain barrels by the back door. The pump didn’t have an on/off switch so I tied the cords together to keep the plugs in close proximity to each other to start it up once I got it into position in the center of the pondish lake and then I descended…

The heart of darkness...

The heart of darkness...

Low and behold the summer sunshine had done the job. No standing water at all, although the ground itself under the livingroom was still pretty damp. A plethora of factors converge to explain the semi-permanent dampness in this area. Several of these factors have already been mentioned above. Some other issues include the fact that this is the side of the house where the downspouts from the gutters are located. This side also borders the concrete driveway which sits about a foot above the ground (like I said, our house sits in a hole, I have no idea what they were thinking back in 1944 when they set us and our neighbor to the northeast below the street level). Well, hmmm…the anti-climax drove me into a momentary stupor (of a couple of hours) . What do I do now? We’ve moved all that crap into the blue room, the access is open, I’ve sullied my clothes…I decided to chain smoke for a while and mull over the potential items on the list of 18 or so that needed to be done down there.

More of the same...in the other direction...

More of the same...in the other direction...

First, I decided to inspect and clear (to the best of my ability) the crawlspace vents for improved airflow. I was able to immediately create a breeze by jamming a long screwdriver through the incredibly gappy loose wire mesh on the vent cover and then through the narrow louvre on the vinyl siding. Cleared all the cobwebs, but a lot of the obstruction was actually on the outside between the siding and the vent, so that became a project for another day to be approached from the exterior of the house now that I confirmed each of the louvred areas did in fact have a vent associated with it (I had my doubts since I hadn’t really previously tucked my head through the cobwebs into the space between the joists and above the concrete to see each of the vents). After that, I decided to chain smoke a little bit more and contemplate my next move (still a bit dumbfounded by the anti-climax, I set about putting away all the pumping supplies and coiled up the hose, acknowledging the end of any person powered watering requirements for the season). I started to contemplate the unthinkable, and tried some internet research to support my fretting, worrying, and strategizing…could we, should we…hmmm…better smoke another cigarette in the sun…

As I was soaking up the rays (well, not really, I was in full crawlspace battle regalia and only my face and hands could receive the goodness of the sun), another painful example of the stunning synergy of mind that occassionally happens around here was realized when Maya pre-emptively struck with the question: “Do you think we should try and replace the ducting?” NOTE: I had not mentioned this aspect of my contemplations out loud.

“Damn It!” I exclaimed, “I suppose so…” and so it began, since that is exactly what I was turning over like so much mental compost through all that chain smoking in the sun…I did a little more internet research to find some pricing on the flexible insulated ducting we wanted to use in our replacement efforts since the final 2 square feet of fiberglass that had once graced our metal ducting (and was mostly gone even before the big move in flood of ’04’) was quickly slipping into the earth beneath the house (which makes for an itchy belly crawl). It is pretty much impossible to find anything really useful on most hardware store sites, particularly those smaller locally owned independent or locally owned mini-chain stores, but even the big guys (like the ones that used to be Eagle and the ones with the big orange signs) don’t share much of the nitty gritty of construction supplies on their site. Sure, if you want a ten foot garden hose, or a Weber Gas Grille, or rat poison (stuff we don’t usually shop for), you can find it pretty easily and even pick it up in the store. If you want something like 6″ flexible insulated ducting you have to research the pricing in far off lands at sites that specialize in, well, flexible instulated ducting, and then visit the hardware store to see if they actually have that which you seek…and so we did…

 If at all possible, we try to meet our hardware needs at McLendon’s. They are a chain, but a local one, and good luck finding a small independent hardware store in the south of Seattle (the posh North of the city still has some of the old storefront independents, but then the ultra-hip and wealthy can afford such luxuries). McLendon’s had the ducting, so we loaded up the cart (overloaded I should say), and I grabbed a couple pieces of pipe insulation since I knew the PEX on the far wall near the new on-demand water heater had not been covered by the plumbers (I’m not 100% certain they ran out of insulation so much as they ran out of patience for the crawlspace, the job took longer than they expected as a result of some of the minor peculiarities of our install). Then we grabbed the connectors…all of them…they only had three, but I thought that would do since we only had two runs that needed connectors for certain, and one potential spot where we might need to go beyond the 25ft length of a single piece of ducting. These connectors are a pretty crucial piece of gear for installing flexible insultated ducting, 6 inch diameter aluminum connectors about 6 inches long and crimped on each side for joining two pieces of ducting (since unlike the metal ducting, the flexible insulated isn’t “gendered” such that you can insert one end of the piece you’re installing into the end of the piece that preceded it, etc).

The magic piece of the puzzle...so simple, yet so rare

The magic piece of the puzzle...so simple, yet so rare

Gross error on my part…I failed to realize that at each of the registers we would also need a connector to insert into the existing boot. We discovered this tidbit as I was removing the very first piece of metal ducting from the register boot below the blue room. Ok, that’s alright I thought, we bought McLendon’s out of the stuff, but certainly we could run out the next day and get the 4 additional connectors we needed. Progress, let’s make progress, we decided. So we continued the removal effort to completion (no small task, all told I think it took as long to remove all those sheet metal screws as it did to actually install and hang the new ducting). The plan was to get this part done, perhaps get a start on installing the new ducting with the parts we had on hand. I could get the pipe insulation in place. Maya started the run from the blue room, which we knew would require more than a single length. I could eventually do the very short run from the Kitchen to the plenum. Everything would be ok…the weather was still nice…no worries.

The Horror...The Horror...

The Horror...The Horror...

We spent the better part of Sunday visiting every hardware store and home improvement mega store in our immediate area to no avail. Every single one of these bastards were bursting at the seams with box after box of the flexible insulated ducting, and yet, no connectors. You see, my theory on this goes something like this… somewhere at headquarters the corporate comptroller who doesn’t know ducting from a hole in the ground from their own ass decides what gets stocked on the shelves. Add to that the fact that most mega-stores choose to pay their employees too little to really develop any concern about what is stocked on the shelves, and there certainly isn’t any incentive for knowledgable staff to apply for a job at the big orange sign when they could be making a much better living actually plying their trade. I would also lay odds that there are institutional and systemic structures in place that discourage employees from taking an active role in improving the stocking strategy (this is just a guess, in many ways I’m probably talking out my ass right now, but you get the picture).

 (IMPORTANT NOTE: I do not blame the employees for not giving a shit, neither would I at $9 an hour for the second or third job most people need just to pay the crazy mortgage payment that arises from the tiniest one bedroom on a 16th of an acre being priced right around a quarter of a million dollars).

When at long last we get home from the Odyssey of the 6″ connectors, empty handed and discouraged, there isn’t a lot of vibrance or vim available to us for tackling the task at hand (and not a whole lot we can do at this point since without the parts the labor that can be completed can’t very effectively be carried out as a team due to the cramped spaces involved). In a moment of desperation I decided to check Amazon.com for the Connector. The thought that drove this search ran something like…in the worst case scenario we could just order some and complete the project when they arrived. I almost fell right out of my chair…who supplied Amazon with this mission critical part for our project…you guessed it, McLendon’s. At the McLendon’s in Renton we were told “this item comes from Ace, so we can’t get it from the warehouse” and no other help was offered. I decided to give the McLendon’s in White Center a ring and see if they had any on hand. We could drive over there the next day and get them (they could be had in Maya’s Civic, where getting the ducting itself was a job for my F250), and then we would be well on our way to completing our project. McLendon’s in White Center only had one, uno, ein, single lonely connector…BUT, they offered to see if the other stores had any and could do a store transfer (which would take a couple days, ended up being three), and they were most helpful in securing the promise of connectors to be had in the future. We would get the connectors on Wednesday and finish up the project on Thursday afternoon (Wednesday was Maya’s Mom’s birthday and we were having her parents over for dinner, so crawlspace activity was banned for Wednesday).

We didn’t get the connectors until Thursday. Apparently they had a metric butt load of stuff come in on Wednesday and didn’t find the connectors in the huge stack until late in the afternoon (at which point I was in Auburn, WA loading a cord of wood to help J (of J&X, the aforementioned fisherman with the sump pump) keep his house warm this winter in lieu of getting central heating other than the old wood stove on which they relied last year. ‘Tis the season for heating preparations I suppose.

I had some work to do, and so did Maya, so we didn’t get to McLendon’s in White Center until about 3pm (we wrapped it with a trip to a post office box in the University District that Maya has to visit now and again and which constitutes a lengthy story unto itself that Maya probably won’t tell for some time to come). We didn’t leave McLendon’s in White Center until after 4pm and got home around 4:30pm, or roughly one thousand hours later as I recollect it. This brings us to the one narrow area where the big home improvement outlets kind of have it over the small guy, policies and procedures. Sometimes these little nuggets (policies and procedures) can have an advantage, such as knowing where to put items that came in as a store transfer for a customer so that anyone can find them when said customer (us in this case) arrives to retrieve the items. Now, on the other hand, more often than not, policies and procedures are actually designed to hinder the employee from being too helpful to the customer (and thus increasing the total cost of serving said customer which just might impinge upon the multi-bazillion dollar bonus of the executives of some home improvement chains that just might have a big orange sign). Fortunately, despite having no idea where the items were located, the folks at McLendon’s in White Center were not impeded in their dilligent efforts to find the items, and so, three of the four connectors we needed were found.

DOH! I needed 4, but only needed 3 tranferred from other stores since McLendon’s in White Center had one on hand, BUT the one on hand could not be found (and was not in the box on the shelf where it belonged, so initially everyone presumed it had been purchased). The very helpful man with the unusually pointy hair piece did check the computer to see how many they were supposed to have in stock. ELEVEN! Somewhere in the store we had been scouring at length there hid a box or boxes of ELEVEN FX0225 6″ Flex ducting adapters. So, the search continued. You’ll note that by this time I knew the Manufacturer’s part number by heart and started closely examining the writing on the unpacked boxes at the tops of the shelves and in the aisles (the previous day’s delivery actually did consist of a metric butt load of stuff and much of it remained unpacked). Eventually, I did find a box marked FX0225, and we considered at length whether or not to buy extras. We chose not to with the rationale that there were supposed to be 10 others there somewhere in the store and that perhaps they would be easier to find if we did indeed need to return for an unexpected extra.

By the time we got home, the aggressive vigor to pursue the project deep into the night to completion had completely vanished. The project would have to be completed the following day. I had some work to do on Friday, and so did Maya, but we did get the project started and completed that afternoon with relative ease. This is why, despite all of the above, I have developed a deep emotional bond with flexible insulated ducting. For a few hundred dollars, with duct tape, wire cutters, a hammer and some nails, we were able to replace all the ducting under the house (and hopefully we’ll save a buck or two this winter by not heating the crawlspace as we did with the old broken down crushed in places pouring hot air all over the place galvanized ducting that was down there before). 

Aside from the fiberglass left over from the old ducting that now resides in our lungs and nose and deep beneath the surface of our skin (along with big dirt clods in our nose and lungs), the project left very little permanent damage on our souls. There was the embarassing event at the very end while I attempted to move some of the older abandoned flexible copper piping out of the way of the final join of the flexible insulated ducting and proceded to dump any and all of the remaining water in the pipe directly into my lap, but that also could have been worse (for example, had I chosen to dump said stale old water on my face, up my nose, or in my mouth along with all the dirt that fell out of the joists into these orifices). The closet stuff is still in the blue room, and I really need to go back down there with a big can of Great Stuff to plug up the plumbing and wiring holes (particularly since the crawlspace vents are not keeping rodents out of there, and last year one decided to periodically visit our trash can by coming up through said plumbing and wiring holes…I killed him, and I’m glad I did, we can discuss all the philosophical details of this at some later date). I know I’ll be returning to the heart of darkness again in the future, but ideally not until next spring when I hope to run speaker wire out to the patio (a project for which I’ve had the speakers for about two years). I’ll probably lay new vapor barrier at that time as well, although I’m loathe to do it until I better understand the hydrodynanmics of the crawlspace, and get the vents replaced, since once water is on top of the plastic it seems to go nowhere.

If you’ve actually read this entire entry, then I suppose you deserve a reward of some sort. All I’ve got is this super cute picture of Hemingway and Huxley on the couch together…I hope you feel it is a fitting reward for your diligence in the face of overwhelming domesticity…

Your reward...a single dose of ultra-cute...

Your reward...a single dose of ultra-cute...

 


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This entry was posted in Animals, Home Improvement, Remodel, Repairs and tagged , , , , , , , , , on by .

Battle Dishwasher…won at last???

In short, I consider it the most important appliance in the house (well, maybe the furnace is more important, but bear with me for a moment). The dishwasher actually fulfills the promise of modernity. Technology that saves us labor without the technology itself creating much of a hassle. We should have 20 hour work weeks at this point if it weren’t for capitalism’s thirst for blood and wealth, but alas, every technological advance just results in more work to be done and lower pay for the work that we do. In the 21st century, the dear sweet dishwasher (and maybe the microwave) saves us hours and hours of menial labor, and liberates us to do things like write this seemingly pointless blog post. This tried and true piece of machinery can now be had for low enough initial outlay that the ROI (return on investment) can be realized within a year (particularly, if you refuse to buy a new one and find one on Craig’s List that was thoughtlessly discarded as part of the feverish desire of our country men and women to drive themselves ever deeper in home equity debt to “update” their kitchen). We bought the first dishwasher from Craig’s List for a song (either $75 or $100, can’t recall exactly) when we first bought the house. It remained faithful and steadfast for 4 years, so at $25 a year I think we did alright.

Well, this post wouldn’t be here if the poor old bastard hadn’t died on us. Pretty common failure…no longer draining completely at the end of the wash.

So I cleared the drain (again)…no luck

Pulled the dishwasher out, removed obstructions from the hoses…reinstalled it…no luck

Diagnosis…drain pump failure…I’m not really set up here to physically apply 110v to the motor to test it, so I arrived at this conclusion purely by deduction (tried listening, but couldn’t recall how the thing sounded when it worked, which would have been crucial to determining a failure). A new drain pump motor would have cost about what we paid for it initially, so back to Craig’s List I went.

Faced with the necessity (and I mean necessity) to replace the dishwasher, why not get stainless to match the stove (and who knows, maybe someday the fridge could be stainless as well, instead of black, but only if it fails or an unbeatable deal on Craig’s List is encountered by accident). And thus the search began. I added a feed to my blertsfor it (using only “dishwasher” as the search term to make sure I didn’t miss any misspellings of stainless which happen frequently for some reason). Having gone a couple of days without a fully operable dishwasher, I was willing to spend up to about $150 for a decent used one. Fortunately, a decent stainless GE came up within 24 hours for $100…. woo hoo….

The catch, it was in Mountlake Terrace which is about a thousand miles north of here (well, 20 miles, but I-5 south bound into Seattle from the north is a trip with a permanent time multiplier of at least 3, and in my special driving in traffic mathematics 3×20 = 1000 because nothing drives me quite as nuts as going 35 mph on the interstates). Ok, the additional $10-15 in bio-diesel is worth it for a dishwasher. The F250 is only getting about 12-14 mpg in city right now, down from a solid 15 plus last year, and I’m not sure why (working from home, the truck is used sparingly, and hey it is basically carbon neutral when running on B99.9). We made the trip up to Mountlake Terrace (and discovered that the person selling it seems to be in the business of refurbing dishwashers, or he owns multiple properties he’s upgrading, or something neferious was going on based on the garage full of dishwashers we found there). I should note that even though we “took the map” we got lost because I heard the wrong house number and ended up about a mile away from where we needed to be. We loaded up the shiny new used dishwasher and we headed home. Upon arrival I immediately set about installing the new dishwasher and running it through a test run…

4 hours later it had not completed the entire wash cycle. Conducted some diagnostics, the dishwasher ran through the self test fine, but the self test can’t really test the thermistor since it doesn’t bring the water to full temp. So I did a little experiment with the meat thermometer and decided the heating element was not getting hot enough. The benefit of whatever strange dishwasher dealings were afoot in Mountlake Terrace was the fact the guy said to just give a call if we encountered any problems, so I did. The guy was great, said he would “find another stainless one” (at this point I’m not asking any questions) and to give him a call the next day to make sure he had one ready and we could switch out the bad one (having already run my tests and describing them to him when he asked about the behavior helped smooth the way I think). Quick thinking and I asked if he would be interested in taking the one with the bad drain pump off our hands (saves me the hassle of finding and paying a recycler to take it, and he seems to be a recycler, so might as well give it a shot). SCORE, he asks the model and says sure he’ll take it (it was a black GE Profile Performance and was pretty quiet and a good machine while it was working). So, the next day we go up to claim our mysterious replacement dishwasher…

On the way up I-5 south bound is looking horrible. It was a Saturday I think, so we didn’t concern ourselves that much with the fact we were headed up there around 4pm (you do not want to get into the mess around here at drive time, particularly if you have worked at home for over 8 years, drive an F250, and detest going under 35 mph on the great american interstates). When we arrive at the blessed garage of dishwashers, our patron saint of dishwashers is not present. Not realizing that the house we are at is actually a duplex, I knock on the door, the wrong door, and a weary young man seemingly accustomed to this “wrong door” error points out the correct door (sneakily tucked around the corner from the garage) and tells me it doesn’t look like our patron saint of dishwashers is home because his big white truck is not present in the cul-de-sac.  At about the moment I leave the door, the wrong door, a car drives up and stops in front of the driveway. It becomes immediately evident that my truck is blocking the side of the driveway that belongs to the wrong door, so I scramble to move it over to the side of the driveway that belongs to the correct door of the duplex. As the driver parks in their now accessible parking space, they see fit to mention it doesn’t look like our saint of dishwashers is home since his big white truck is not in the cul-de-sac. I thank the person that heads to the wrong door with an arm full of fodder from the golden arches. Oh how the blood boils at this moment, I curse the freeway, the traffic, the decision to go to Mountlake Terrace for a dishwasher, the ground I stand on..etc…but optimistically attempt to give the saint a ring before abandoning all hope and returning to the fiery hell of I-5 southbound at 4:30pm on a Saturday.

Our saint, saint Maurice as happens to be the case, answers the phone and says he’s just around the corner and will be there momentarily. REJOICE! Our saint of dishwashers has not abandoned us, he is only running late (a condition I generally suffer from in perpetuity, so I understand being off the mark by a few minutes here and there, and I have come back into the fold and eagerly await my personal blessing from the dishwasher shrine that lays behind the garage door). Maya and I have already unloaded the two faulty dishwashers in anticipation of our blessing, and when the garage door goes up we catch a vision of glory on the workbench with the makeshift water feed dangling from the ceiling of the garage and attached with wire nuts to the open 110v wire that accompanies the dishwasher rehabilitation center Maurice has fashioned here in the garage. Our blessing as it turns out is a sweet ass Kitchen Aid (even the same brand as our stove) with (and this is just like 2 toy surprises in a cracker jack box) stainless steel interior tub. We do have to make a sacrifice to the dishwasher deities as this model doesn’t have quite as many buttons on the front, BUT it does have buttons (which I love, I have an inherent distrust for rotary knobs on appliances with the distinct exception of those for stove tops…any knob upon which the appliance timing is dependent is a nearly guaranteed first failure in my assessment). I try to hold my emotions in check though, we still need to install it and confirm it is working…I take major ground streets for the north of Seattle half of the trip, if I’m going to go 35 mph, I might as well see some new parts of the city as I go (and we did see some new parts, including Frank’s Door Store which Maya’s Dad has mentioned is a great place to get…well, doors).

We don’t stop at the door store though, important mission ahead and no time for lolly gagging about looking at doors we don’t need…

The install goes relatively smoothly (I have to do it twice, but I always have to do it twice and I can’t quite recall the exact reason I had to do it twice this time). In the first run I encountered a slight drip from the drainage hoses, but I believe that was related to a moment during the first install when the dishwasher kind of slipped off it’s special platform (Maya is 6’2″, and 36″ counters just don’t cut it, so in complete violation of all universal design principles we have 42″ counters and I love them because not only do they save my love’s backfrom stooping while she does her magic, but I find it a more convenient height as well) and took a hit on the under-side. I little wiggling here and there of the rubber connectors in the drain system seemed to fix up the minor drip. At some point I need to pull off the kick plate again and triple check that this situation has been completely remedied.

Parenthetically, as I’m prone to do, I should mention that we have serious water fears, it is a long story, but the short of it is that we had MAJOR flooding 4 days after we closed on the house as a result of the water company ignoring my request to ONLY turn on the water on or after a certain date since we were both out of town for the weekend. The request was in writing, so we were meagerly compensated (at the depreciated rate) for the damage and recovery, but a lot of stuff we had intended to do much slower and much later ended up having to happen right away.

It’s been about a month, no evidence of leakage (though I haven’t removed the kickplate yet), and excepting the fact that we realized too late that the dishwasher lacked a silverware basket (and I accidentally purchased two of them due to an internet connection freak out and slow order confirmation emails from the online store from which I bought them), the new dishwasher is working out alright and it sure is pretty (even on the inside).


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This entry was posted in Repairs and tagged , , , , , , , , on by .