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Tag: water softener

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!

At home, the battle for soft water rages on.

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Awoke this fine Saturday morning in early July to the sound of my water softener running a cycle. Not good. It is programmed to run at 2:00am, so it was stuck flushing, or in some other portion of the cycle. From what I learned before, parts 1 through 3 are fine, but returning to home for the final part 4 it hits a snag, and it goes off. First it was Err01, then Err03, and now we have a return to Err01 again. Fun, fun, fun. I have a box from the supplier with some replacement parts, so I hope that sorts things out. I just need to swap out a block of interconnected do-hickies, and hopefully put this thing to rest. Home ownership, this shit never ends. Softener, heaters, furnace, AC unit, fridge, freezer, on and on they cycle. One after the other requiring service, parts, or replacement. Yikes. Makes me want to scream.

Oh! Now I remember what I was going to talk about. Two updates really. One: weight loss – bit of a slow start to be honest. After Covid I put the weight training down for 3 months less a day, to try to avoid causing Long Covid, seems to have worked out. I was able to start lifting and exercising again on the 12th of June. I’m not at my heaviest, which was around 213Lbs, but I’m not far off at 204Lbs. I would like to get myself down to a reasonable 175-180Lbs range, which I think would suit my frame, and not leave me looking unwell, nor “chunked out”. If I had my way I’d be doing olympic style lifting again, but I can’t afford CrossFit gym memberships at this point. That was full time working me, with no kids, and I’m not earning more than half of what I used to. Plus the local gyms here are all machines. I want free weights, and to be able to clank if I need to clank, you know? I tried very hard to always control my weights & bars, but in a pinch, you gotta clank. CLANG-CLANK-CRASH!  So there we are. I need to buy myself a bar, and some smaller plates, and a bench. We have no room for any of it. So there’s that to contend with too. I want, I want, wah-wah-wah. Yes, I hear it. Riding my bike with my oldest isn’t out of the question, but I’d have to take us somewhere remote so we were unaffected by potential traffic, cars or inattentive drivers. I don’t fancy getting my child squashed because I want to loose twenty five pounds.

And two: I’m finally half way through book fourteen, another Mo Hayder book, with eyes on book #15 by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The third installment of a trilogy. Hope it’s a satisfying end! Can’t wait. But in the meantime I’m reading this sad, suspenseful story about distasteful people preying on children and minors, and I’m not thrilled about it. The book is good, but the subject matter is not exactly what I’m craving to read about. I’m not jazzed to read before bed, which is what I would usually do. Now I find the time to read a bit during the day only. So it’s been slow going. Not like “The Grapes of Wrath” slow, but slow enough. I just don’t want to devote hours of my day to read about the SA of small kids. And definitely not about their murders either. Very depressing. Hard on the soul. I know it is fiction, but still. Ugh.

Well this post is all over the place though huh? Malfunctioning household items, weight training and weight loss, and book recco’s. What a Saturday. Ciao Bella!