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Tag: refrigerator

Water softener vs Refrigerator: Which is worse?

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The freezer has once again kicked off and frozen over at the vents making the fridge portion warm. And the Ecopure 30K grain water softener still shows Err03, and is absolutely pissing water out the drain pipe though the internal tank is not getting lower, as the water line is up to the bottom of the six. So a valve is stuck open somewhere (from what I can tell, but not being mechanically inclined that’s a guess, based on the volume of water going out the drain versus what little to no movement I can see inside the tank, which is what should be draining). So… yeah.

My daughters room fan ground to a halt on Sunday night, so I have been out to replace it. In June I pulled it apart myself, and used my air compressor to clean it all out, and then used lubricant to quiet down the fan, which lasted all of a month. So either the lube didn’t get to where it was needed most, or it needs white lithium grease inside the motor, as the squeal was metal on metal rubbing. Hard to mistake that pitch of squealing distress.but now that it is trash I’ll take any machine screws I can find out of the unit, and will toss the rest. I have the older busted air purifier to do that to aswell. Plus an old iron and a broken, burned out blender motor base. The screws, bolts and such are handy. The plastic and innards less so, for me atleast. Trying to only pack rat the vital pieces, and not collect a broken electronics graveyard.

So that’s my Tuesday as of 9:30am. We were going to go to the driving range today, but storms and appointments got in the way. My wife has an hour long chat with her doctor right now, and I have blood work to be drawn at 2:00pm. So not a travel to wander a mall day. If work remains quiet we may just watch a movie together and listen to the rain.

I do eventually need to check that the softner is actually doing something, or else I need to go reset it.

I know that all of my tomatoes plants will be glad for the rain today. I didn’t water them much at all during August. They are massive and sprawling plants now. But few blooms or actual tomatoes. Until recently. Now the four plants might produce more than we could eat in a years time. Funny how that is. Apple trees went berserk this year too. Same with the grapes and raspberries.  Likely same with the cherry tree, but the birds and local wildlife striped my tree bare before we had a chance to collect one single cherry. Not one! The blasted pests ate them all as they were on the verge of transitioning from greenish pink to red. BAM! The whole lot gone. The squirrels ravaged my raspberries too. The local hare ate my strawberries, even though the plants grow back each year they don’t produce much fruit.

Back to the pesky water softener. So far I have swapped out the wiring harness, the switch, the cam, and the motor itself. Besides the circuit board and physical unit, there isn’t anything left for me to replace, jiggle, tighten or manhandle on this infernal machine. Next step is to toss it to the curb along with the previous twenty year old model. And then buy a third one and have that installed – again. Not going through five bags of salt a month is nice. I think we’ve used four since May. Better!

Not sure about where all this excess moisture is coming from for the freezer though. The lines are empty. Water line disconnected. The ice cube maker disabled. There is no frost line near the seal to point to an external leak. But the vents are positively frosted over entirely. So I need to empty the freezer – again. Thaw out the vents – again. Move the milk downstairs, and any other items we want to keep. Very thankful for the ancient fridge in the basement which came with the house. Can save the milk, eggs and bacon. Just emptied the freezer downstairs so I can save a few other items aswell. Good to have!

Offending water softner stuck on Err03. Where is all that water coming from?
Frozen over vents after 30 minutes of thawing in the open air. Soon to be 2L puddle under the fridge.

So much for Tuesday. How many more bandaids can I apply to these appliances before we have to buy new ones! The struggle is real. Ciao Bella!

Watching playoff highlights on SportsNet.

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Few things can fill out the dead air of a quiet morning like watching baseball recaps every 30 minutes on SportsNet. Leave out all the inbetween moments and focus on the interesting stuff. Fascinating to see what gets trimmed from a three hour game to get through it in 22 minutes of every half hour of television. And one full game doesn’t even fill the whole 30 minute time slot. I wonder what the shortest recap ever done is? Eight minutes, five minutes or less? I suppose if it was a one nothing game the highlight reel could be under three minutes if you cut it fast enough to show strike outs, fly outs, and runners caught at first base.

The cool weather is settling in for the week. I need to check the exterior drainss, so maybe after I eat breakfast I’ll go tackle the gutters and downspouts this morning. Brrr. Not looking forward to it though. Numb fingers and all that mess. Best to beat the rains and possible snow come November 1st.

I managed to get Hellboy properly baked yesterday, with no major cracking or issues that I saw upon closer inspection. Chose the larger of the two Walnut bases to hold it. Now I’m down to one swanky Walnut base left. What to put on it? I just don’t know.

The kids are going mental these days for this Rainbow Loom toy. Making wrist bands, necklaces, rings and key chains with their fingers. Good for fine motor skills. It keeps them busy and quiet for the better part of an hour. I just know I’ll be vacuuming up tiny rubber bands for the foreseeable future. Small price to pay for some quiet time without fighting and bickering. They both seem to get a kick out of creating this stuff, which is nice to see.

Gave the freezer a nine hour defrost yesterday, and it finally dumped about 2 litres of water out the bottom. I feel as though I rushed it last week, because I remarked to my wife about the lack of water on the floor. So hopefully now we will get another month or two out of it before it goes all shitty again. Luckily we are inbetween grocery shops so I didn’t have much to move, and little left in the fridge to spoil. Would be good to know what is making the ice kick off, I keep the freezer between 4°-6° to try and avoid any ice build up. Sometimes it works, and some times it does not.

Took the time to also put away all of the patio furniture, Noma lights and kids stuff. Still have a few items left, like a small table & the garden hose. But water is shut off, I should drain the hose just in case. AC unit is covered too. Getting outdoor jobs struck off the list before we have to tackle the inlaws property. Even after two stints doing leaves we are back to looking like nothing has been done – again. Too wet to use the vacuum bag mulched, my new favourite outdoor toy. Only good when the leaves are dry & crispy. Then it works wonders. Wet leaves gum up the works, and make it a hassle to use. I find it works best if I rake dry leaves into semi coherent piles and chug away at sucking them up in the vacuum, rather than walking the whole property swinging the nozzle to and fro. Feels quicker to just down a pile from one location. We have the inflatables up for Halloween so now I need to work around those three things, plus the light up pumpkin and all of the extension cords. No grass cutting until November! Unless we get snow really early again. It’s southern Ontario so anything is possible.

Attempting to fix the fridge freezer snafu.

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The freezer works, now a little too well. Instead of reading zero, it’s at minus six, which means the vents have iced up all the way through, which makes the fridge portion hot as it has no cold air coming into it. I tried scraping the ice off, not very effective, as I can’t tell how deep the ice goes back into the vents. I tried hot water on the vents, but that made a mess. So next steps are to unplug the whole thing for forty five minutes to help the unit reset itself. Or I attempt to defrost the freezer portion, or… gulp. Hire a repairman to fix it for us if parts are readily available. Bah hum bug!

In other news the sculpture got a really solid head start yesterday. I have the torso, abdomen, legs and feet on, plus both arms down to the wrist. No head yet, or hands. I haven’t given much thought to the shell yet either. Or how I will get it to attach to the main body. The shell will be 75% tinfoil and masking tape, so I think I can reasonably contain the overall weight for that portion of the free standing sculpture. I don’t know if it will be any good, but why let fear of sucking stop me eh? Never has before. There is no confidence like that of a mediocre man! Give’r!

I have some finer hand cuts to make on my table build and that should mostly finish up the structural portion of the project. Then on to sanding for the foreseeable future. Top surface, four legs, three sides of the skirt/rails, drawer front, drawer panel, cross braces, inset slats, and the internal drawer dividers. Plus I need to stain the drawer panel, and then wax the panel edges, and the internal rails so it pulls in and out smoothly without catching, or snagging. I hope to avoid racking this way too, but I’m no craftsman. This way also meant I didn’t have to buy drawer slides, which are expensive. To have those on here, I’d need much wider skirting, which would reduce the space on the shelf, if I could even have one at that point. Maybe a larger Walnut drawer would have been a nice touch. Or if I’d cut more Hickory strips I could have glued up a wider panel to do the same floating drawer. Maybe when I build a waterfall edge coffee table I’ll add a deeper Walnut drawer to it for storage. If I can afford a darker hard wood to use that is.

My family is on day six of their journey out west. They are currently in Alberta where they will receive upwards of 100mm of rain today and tomorrow. Not a trip through the mountains that I’d want to do in such heavy rain. I don’t envy them much. Manitoba and Saskatchewan were less than impressive if I were to go by what my mother wrote. Flat & empty. Sounds like no fun at all.

I wonder if the fridge went bad after the 26 hrs power outage, because I’ve never had this particular issue before. Mind you the fridge is almost twelve years old now. Hopefully we can remedy it ourselves as inexpensively as possible. This is not my area of expertise. Down right terrifying.