New House Blog: Episode XXXVIIII - Not Quite Dry

In this Episode we're going to talk about more water and electrical repairs - all of which were unplanned and unexpected.  That is, the repairs were planned, but the need to do the repairs was unplanned.  We also made another trip to Ye Olde Sanitare Landefille, also known as the dump, with a load of concrete.  Thank you, awesome brother Mike, for the use of your pickup truck again.

In the previous Episode I discussed the merits of the Metric Foot, or mfoot, or m'.  No one has provided any opposing comments, so I must assume that everyone who read my treatise agreed wholeheartedly and you will all start using the mfoot measurement in your daily lives.

Speaking of comments, DR in the RV has proposed yet another theory about our back yard during the pre-Bishopian era - pirates.  We have seen evidence of a beach, and an ancient ocean.  We've found some ancient timbers that could have been part of a ship.  Based on this evidence, I don't see why we shouldn't give this theory as much credence as some of the other pre-Bishopian theories, such as extra-terrestrials, an ancient Roman legion, and a hot tub.

Not Quite Dry

Our brand new Kenmore dryer had been acting up.  Several times over the past two months it had shut itself off mid-cycle, leaving our clothes not quite dry, and on at least one occasion it would not turn back on for quite a while.  Most of the time it was working fine, so we just kind of ignored the issue.  The machine eventually became too unreliable to rely on and we had to air-dry our laundry a couple of times, like they used to do back in ye olde dayes (we even strung a couple of clothes lines in ye backe yarde).  We noticed that air-dried clothes are a lot less soft and fluffy than machine-dried clothes, so we called the Sears repair service and they sent us two technicians (not at the same time, of course).  The first technician thought this behavior was caused by mixing fabric types when drying, thus confusing the sensor that senses clothes dryness (he mentioned that this is a common dryer issue).  At the time it seemed to make sense, so we followed his recommendation to use only timed drying, but the result was the same - our dryer was still shutting off mid-cycle.  The second technician quickly provided the correct diagnosis - the 220v outlet for the dryer was loose - the consequence being that the slightest vibration would jostle the plug and cause it to lose electrical contact and the dryer would shut off.  D'oh!  Yet another unplanned outlet swap - a 220v outlet at that.  I quickly consulted electrician brother Mike to ask if there was anything different or special about replacing 220v outlets.  He assured me that it was the same as a 110v outlet except for the use of aluminum wires instead of copper wires.  Off to Home Depot and then back home.  The repair was mostly straightforward, but the working space behind the dryer was quite cramped.  I decided to also replace the 110v outlet that shares the j-box with the 220v outlet.  Pictures of the proceedings.

I think I see the problem.

Upon removing the faceplate and pulling out the outlet we noticed that one of the prong-holes was cracked and crumbly, and it looked quite charred.  The other two prong-holes looked normal.  After closer inspection we believe that the burning may have been caused by some foreign matter getting into the prong-hole.  Is there a better/more official term than prong-hole?

Two new outlets, one j-box

All buttoned up

Since swapping in the new outlet we have had no problems with our dryer.












Not Quite Dry Two

At this time we will switch over to an unexpected water issue.  While surveying other aspects of the back yard we noticed a wet (also known as not quite dry) patch of ground in a spot we had never watered or poured water on.  This spot looked like it lined up with where our garden spigot's water line would be, so we dug into the ground expecting to find a leaky PVC pipe.  Bingo!  We found our leak where the water line made a 90-degree bend.  We shut off that water line, waited for the ground to dry out, killed some ants, repaired the pipe, and killed some more ants. The leak was right where the 90-degree elbow joined to one of the straight lengths of PVC, so we decided to shorten the pipes a bit and use two 45-degree elbows, as seen below.

So far we have not noticed any leaks or any water flow issues arising from the use of 45-degree elbows.








Back To Ye Olde Landefille

Believe it or not, we have not had any takers for our mined concrete offer.  Not one person has taken advantage of this amazing offer.  Could it be that we misjudged the market for mined concrete?  I don't have the answer to that question, and it may remain forever unknown, but I do know that all of the mined and excavated concrete in our yard wasn't going away.  In fact, it seemed to be increasing in volume for quite a while.  We didn't like all of that concrete just sitting in our yard, gathering dust, so we decided to make a dump run the next time we had the use of a pickup truck.  That time came, and we loaded up as much concrete as we could and drove it to the dump.  We got most of it loaded, but not quite all, due to a time constraint.  As mentioned in this Episode, there are two olde landefilles - one apparently for the privileged of society and one apparently for us commoners - and on this visit they let us into the privileged landefille.  I know there are some who would point out that the two landefilles are for different materials and not for different societal classes, but I think I know what's really going on.  Anyway, see for yourself some of the exciting sights that we saw.

 Have I mentioned that some of the machinery at the landefille reminds me of dinosaurs?  This particular scene kind of reminds me of a dinosaur feeding its young.

To those of you who might argue that dinosaurs didn't feed their young I say that there's a lot that's still unknown about dinosaurs, and there's a lot that's still open to speculation and theorizing.


As we were leaving the landefille we watched a purple Toyota Prius not drive over the tire-cleaning device that everyone is supposed to drive over when leaving the landfille.  If you are in the San Jose bay area you may want to stay far away from purple Priuses until such time has passed as will allow for the tires to be cleaned by other means.

Dinosaur - the other
    bIsh