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Old 05-21-2016, 05:24 PM   #1421
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The ice maker inside my fridge failed. It dumped out the ice cubes when they were partially frozen, so there was still liquid water in the tray at the end of the cycle. Fresh refill water caused the mold to overflow. The overflow water eventually got to the bottom of the fridge, and onto the floor. The kitchen floor is laminate, which is now swollen and ruined in spots. ARGHHH!

A new ice maker was ordered off eBay and installed. The ruined floor still has to be fixed. I hope to have enough leftover planks in the garage. Else, the section underneath the fridge will have to be a different color, as this color has been discontinued by the maker.

If it's not one thing, it's 'nother.

PS. By the way, the part that failed was 99% to be the bimetallic thermostat that sensed the temperature of the ice mold. A replacement thermostat costs $38, while an entire ice maker is less than $60.
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Old 05-21-2016, 08:32 PM   #1422
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Fresh refill water caused the mold to overflow. The overflow water eventually got to the bottom of the fridge, and onto the floor. The kitchen floor is laminate, which is now swollen and ruined in spots. ARGHHH!
Hmmm, I wonder if it would be worth putting a pan and a water alarm under refrigerators. Modern ones have many water connections, valves, etc, some are inside the cabinet and not in the cold sections where a leak would be evident. With a direct, always-pressurized connection to the home water system, a connection that came loose in the night could dump hundreds of gallons of water into the home by morning.
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Old 05-21-2016, 09:40 PM   #1423
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Hmmm, I wonder if it would be worth putting a pan and a water alarm under refrigerators. Modern ones have many water connections, valves, etc, some are inside the cabinet and not in the cold sections where a leak would be evident. With a direct, always-pressurized connection to the home water system, a connection that came loose in the night could dump hundreds of gallons of water into the home by morning.
Of course if your going to do this, pans under washing machines (unless on concrete floors with a drain), make sense. And at least in theory, the valve on a dishwasher could stick open making a flood. (This is why way back when I lived in an apartment they asked that you not go away and leave the dishwasher running as a big hot water flood could do great damage)
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Old 05-21-2016, 11:52 PM   #1424
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If it's not one thing, it's 'nother.
Reminds me of a quote from my mother. "Its just one thing after another..." Last time she said that to me my response was " I wish! One thing at a time I can handle, its when they come two or three at once that I have problems dealing with them!"
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Old 05-22-2016, 09:56 AM   #1425
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Of course if your going to do this, pans under washing machines (unless on concrete floors with a drain), make sense. And at least in theory, the valve on a dishwasher could stick open making a flood.
Yes. In the case of a leak, the pan by itself won't make much of a difference if it's more than a gallon or two. But a pan provides a great place for a water alarm and assures the alarm's sensors will get a chance to detect the water and let folks know that there is trouble.
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Old 05-22-2016, 10:31 AM   #1426
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My Kenmore heavy duty dryer started making a few noises awhile back, went away for a time, then came back with a vengeance. Some squealing and other unnatural noises. Well, using my favorite repair friend, YouTube, I took the dryer apart and found a whole lot of coins and detritus adjacent to the motor and air fan mechanism.

Shocked at how much stuff had gotten past the lint filter! At least $5.00 in assorted change, a $5 and two $1 dollar bills, paper clips, and, I think the final straw, a ballpoint pen. Was keeping my fingers crossed that all the junk was the cause, buttoned it back up, and to my relief, now working perfectly. Still amazed at all the stuff that made it's way deep into the machine.
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Old 05-22-2016, 10:32 AM   #1427
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Yes, pans with alarm should be required everywhere in new homes. Under the sink, the fridge, the cloth washer, dishwasher, the potted plants, etc... Potted plants you ask? Yes, my wife overwatered her plants once, and the water overflowed the pan, and spilled onto my speakers that she used as a stand. The floor was flooded in another watering occasion. Water, water everywhere...

Back on to my own problem, it turned out that it was not the water overflown from the ice maker that got down to the floor. It was the cracked tubing that went from the water solenoid at the bottom of the fridge up to the ice maker.

The solenoids and part of the tubing were tucked into a rear bottom corner near the compressor. The heat from the compressor caused the tubes to get brittle and crack with age. I happened to see water spraying in a mist from the rear of the fridge when the new ice maker cycled, and the fridge was still pulled out from its position. Once I saw that, replacement of the tubes was not hard, except that I would have to turn the fridge on its side to replace the tube going to the cold water dispenser. Oh well, I can make my old cold water if I have ice cubes.

A poster once pondered here that perhaps it was not such a good idea to bring water under pressure into the home, and running water might be overrated.

Just as Gilda Radner famously declared more than once:

"It’s always something — if it ain’t one thing, it’s another.” -- Gilda Radner
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Old 05-22-2016, 10:32 AM   #1428
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Yes. In the case of a leak, the pan by itself won't make much of a difference if it's more than a gallon or two. But a pan provides a great place for a water alarm and assures the alarm's sensors will get a chance to detect the water and let folks know that there is trouble.
And then there is the hose that bursts, and sends a spray across the room, away from the pan!

You can't win for losing.

I don't like to run DW or dryer when we are out, or even when going to bed. I saw pictures (friend of a friend) of a DW that got stuck in the heat cycle and started burning. The fumes/smoke caused a horrific amount of damage. Had someone been in the house, and awake, they would have noticed, probably before it got very far. Maybe just shutting it off would have stopped it from getting worse, and all they would have is a DW repair/replace bill. And if not, they would have called 911 and the damage would have been far less.

-ERD50
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Old 05-22-2016, 10:41 AM   #1429
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... Potted plants you ask? Yes, my wife overwatered her plants once, and the water overflowed the pan, and spilled onto my speakers that she used as a stand. The floor was flooded in another watering occasion. Water, water everywhere...
Similar events have occurred in the ERD50 household, and unfortunately more than once. I was not pleased, to say the least.


Quote:
A poster once pondered here that perhaps it was not such a good idea to bring water under pressure into the home, and running water might be overrated
.

Hmmm, this got me thinking. With PEX manifold systems (a separate run for each faucet back to the source), it seems it would be possible, with modern technology, to keep the lines un-pressurized. Turning the faucet would control a valve remotely, back at the source. The only time there would be any pressure is when you 'opened' a faucet. The faucet would just be a Bluetooth-like controller - no plumbing connection at all, the faucet would just bring the hot/cold lines together.

" Honey, I'm not getting any water in the bathroom sink - did you forget to change the batteries in the faucet controller again?" Of course, the controller would be recharged from the water flow, and we would never need to worry about this.

-ERD50
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Old 05-23-2016, 11:59 AM   #1430
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So, I looked in the garage and found an almost full left-over box of the laminate floor I used in the kitchen. My memory is not that good any more. I used a different type of better engineered planks in the other rooms, and did not remember how much leftover I had of each type.

Anyway, just one morning of pulling off the bad boards, cutting new ones, and replacing them, and everything is back to normal. The drywall behind the fridge had blisters from the water leak, but who can tell when the fridge is pushed back into its spot? No problem!
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Old 05-23-2016, 12:12 PM   #1431
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+1 on asking on a Leaf forum.
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Old 05-23-2016, 05:18 PM   #1432
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So, I looked in the garage and found an almost full left-over box of the laminate floor I used in the kitchen. My memory is not that good any more. I used a different type of better engineered planks in the other rooms, and did not remember how much leftover I had of each type.

Anyway, just one morning of pulling off the bad boards, cutting new ones, and replacing them, and everything is back to normal. The drywall behind the fridge had blisters from the water leak, but who can tell when the fridge is pushed back into its spot? No problem!
So I guess it is worth keeping all those leftover tiles and planks and vinyl and paint and caulk and carpet cutoffs and... [emoji50]

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Old 05-23-2016, 06:43 PM   #1433
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Yes, if you prefer not having a section of the floor with a different color because the old plank style is discontinued by the manufacturer.
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Old 05-24-2016, 08:34 PM   #1434
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My air compressor hadn't run in years. Motor ran fine. A little air came out of the line, but the gauges didn't move. I explained the problems to a car nut buddy over the winter. He said that we could fix it. We finally got together today. We took it apart and found the aluminum air line from the motor to the tank was severed. We got some braided vinyl tubing with a 350 psi rating, spliced the tubing into the line, and put it back together. Fired it up, ran fine until 60 lbs and the vinyl tubing had a blow out. The air line gets very hot when the motor is running and the vinyl line could not handle the heat. So we replaced it with a car fuel injection line. It takes the heat just fine and the air compressor is now running fine.


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Old 06-04-2016, 01:33 PM   #1435
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As a recovering engineer, I still find myself fixing things that are not actually broken.

Case in point: Last winter I added a booster duct fan to bring more heat to an upstairs register. I wired it to a long cord and plugged it in next to the furnace humidifier so that it ran automatically when the furnace fan did.

Now that I'm using the air conditioning, I noticed the booster fan is not working. Checking the outlet, I find it has no power when the furnace is running. Chasing down the wiring, I see that the outlet is powered off the control board, which has been replaced once and is big bucks. Uh oh.

On further research I see that the control board has two taps - one for the electronic air cleaner and one for the humidifier - so it is smart enough to not power the humidifier in AC mode.

Another non-broken gadget repaired.
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Old 06-05-2016, 02:52 PM   #1436
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Fixed my double hung window springs today. The windows have a coil spring on each side secured with a plastic clip to counter balance the windows. The clips are devilishly hard to duplicate because they fit in a tight space and, by design, rub against the aluminum track. I've looked for replacements literally for 15 or more years.

Recently I did a Google Images search and actually found a specialty store that sold them. It wasn't easy to fish out the spring ends, but with some makeshift specialty tools, I did the job and the windows stay in position now.
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Old 06-05-2016, 05:15 PM   #1437
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Wooden sea wall at my place on the lake....
Will probably not mean anything to you, but suffice it to say that the 110 foot wall, which was built back in 1973, has changed in terms of cost to repair/replace. Neighbor across the lake had a wall replaced two years ago, at a cost of $15K. latest estimate is closer to $20K. Change from the original because of the lake level increase.
That would cause me to rethink my ownership, as my current annual cost to own the site... including taxes, insurance, membership dues and all utilities, is less than $2400.
Solution... not the best, but the most cost effective, was to dig out behind the wall, and use concrete blocks (free from neighbor who had been hoarding them) to back up the old wooden wall.
A major, major repair, which has required removing the base rip-rap by hand, 3 feet deep in the water, and replacing it with blocks at the base (no metal or concrete/cement allowed).
Heavy duty bend and stoop repairs for an old man, but nearing completion. Fingernails gone, and many scratches and bruises, but a soul satisfying and healthy project. Will finish off with about 25 'downhill' wheelbarrow loads of road gravel. (over the next two or three weeks).

Have already started the next project... A total rebuild of my pontoon paddleboat
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Old 06-05-2016, 09:52 PM   #1438
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Any photos of the repair as you were doing it ?
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Old 06-05-2016, 10:45 PM   #1439
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Any photos of the repair as you were doing it ?
+1. I want to see how this big dig was done, to live vicariously through imoldernu's sweat and achy back.

On a semi-related note: I just came across a concrete product I'd never seen before that seems pretty handy. It is "Cement-All", (cool video with irritating soundtrack here) I guess it has been available in some parts of the country for a long time, but I think Home Depot just started stocking it this year. It's a very high-strength, quick-setting grout. Like most grouts, it is made with sand and cement, but in this case the cement is not portland cement, it is different stuff. It can be laid as thin as a feather-edge or up to 4" thick, and it is far less subject to cracking than portland cement (thus, the reduced need for aggregate in the mix). It sets fast--about 20 minutes of working time at 70 deg, and it can be walked on in an hour or less. 9000 PSI ultimate strength--regular Quikrete is about 3500 PSI. It will actually set up under water (are you reading this, imoldernu?), so be sure to clean your tools and buckets quickly as you go or you'll be buying a lot of trowels. It costs about $20 for 55 lb bag, about 4x the cost of regular Quikrete, but it's pretty amazing stuff. I'm using it to repair some concrete stairs. They also sell chemicals to slow down the setting time (I recommend it--it can be slowed to provide over an hour of working time) and to improve the flow/plasticity (my wife has used it to make some intricate stepping stones).
Maybe this stuff is old news, but I'd never seen it before and it's pretty handy for some projects.
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Old 06-06-2016, 09:51 AM   #1440
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Ordinary Portland cement will harden underwater, actually becomes stronger than if hardened on land, but you have to protect it from wave agitation so it does not wash away.

But perhaps there is a building/environmental code reason for not using cement ?
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