Vital Statistics

Bike miles in 2020: 92

Aches & pains: right ankle and foot, back of my head, right elbow

Current reading: n/a

Recent listening: You Need a Budget podcast, Hidden Brain, Reply All, Radiolab, Van Halen II, Small Change by Tom Waits

Recent viewing: World Series game 5, NBA Finals, Raised by Wolves, Schitt’s Creek, Queen’s Gambit, Tehran, Ted Lasso, Class Action Park, The Boys, Lovecraft Country

Recent playing: Outlanders

Recent events: kitchen remodel completed, sustained a subarachnoid hematoma

Recently accomplished: back yard renovation, cleaned roof & gutters (with Graham), new outlets in dining room, GFCI outlet outside, hauled off yard debris & junk

Imperative To Do: finish refinancing mortgage, finish unpacking boxes, vote, winterize, buy a new refrigerator

A junk yard fool with eyes of gloom

When things break, I am always compelled to take them apart in an effort to find out what is wrong. Most of the time, I remove the top cover/back panel/what-have-you, glance inside and conclude that I am simply out of my league. I can see nothing wrong or even recognize anything that I am looking at. On a few occasions I have been able to identify potential problems but did not have the expertise or knowledge to confirm and fix the problem. Last night I was able to make that final step: identify the problem and find a solution.

Sunday was the first anniversary of the new heating element we had to get for our dryer last year. At that time the dryer was less than a year old but surprisingly out of warranty. Although a certain amount of blame lies with us for failing to check the warranty terms (90 days) at purchase time, I mostly blame Sears for selling such shoddy products that they can’t warranty them for a year or three. I suspect they have done this in order to push their extended warranty programs, or “maintenance agreements“, as they prefer to call them. As you might imagine, we were angry over the warranty issue and even angrier when we had to pay the Sears repair man over $200 to fix something we considered to be “new”.

So how did our heating element celebrate the end of it’s first year in service? It quit. It totally stopped heating the dryer and Tina had to take our weekend laundry to the nearest laundromat to dry it. Once again we were angry, but there was no way we were going to call Sears this time. After mulling the situation for a day, I consulted howstuffworks.com for any advice they might have about fixing dryers. Their article on clothes dryers was informative, but did not contain any advice for fixing broken dryers. They did, however, point to a link at RepairClinic.com which eventually led me to a section entitled “There’s no heat.” That article lays out a basic inspection plan for determining which electrical component has failed. With this knowledge and my multimeter in hand, I unplugged our dryer and removed the back with only a little hope of actually accomplishing anything.

What lay behind the cover was much simpler than I had counted upon. After testing the thermal sensors (as prescribed by the RepairClinic article) it wasn’t long before I narrowed the problem to a little box near the bottom. After removing two screws, the little box came off easily and revealed that it had a matrix of coiled wires attached to it. I had discovered the heating element! A quick continuity test confirmed that this was the faulty component and I even found the broken coil after a quick inspection. An online search for the model number yielded an average price of about $40 for the replacement part.

I can’t tell you how good I felt at this moment. Not only was I victorious in finding the problem, disassembly had been so quick and easy that I have full confidence in being able to install the new element. It is also reassuring to know that if the element breaks again, I can replace it myself relatively cheaply. And we won’t have to call the damn Sears repair man ever again.

 

Update 4/17: I found a little additional information about Kenmore appliances on Wikipedia. Most large appliances are manufactured for Sears by Whirlpool, who also manufactures under the brand names Maytag, Amana, KitchenAid, Jenn-Air and many others. In addition to Sears’ OEM business, Whirlpool also makes products for Best Buy, Home Depot and IKEA. Iowa residents might note that in 2007 Whirlpool shut down the Amana manufacturing plant in Newton as well as plants in Illinois and Arkansas. I’m guessing those jobs probably went to China and Mexico where Whirlpool does much of it’s manufacturing.

Saga of the New Tivo, Part III

Previously: : “Well, it started out that easy.”

Later that afternoon at work, Tina IM’d me when she got home. I asked if she noticed anything different and she acknowledged the presence of the DirecTV Tivo (DTivo). However, she said that the circuit breaker kept blowing when she plugged it in. This seemed odd because it had worked flawlessly that morning. I told her to keep it unplugged until I got home when I could take a look at it.

When I got home, I found Tina’s description of the problem to be accurate. As soon as the DTivo was plugged in (and therefore on—there is no Off switch), the circuit breaker would blow. That night we went to dinner with Buddy to celebrate Tina’s birthday. I discussed the situation with him a bit and he had a few ideas but nothing definite. He said he could come over the next day and look at it. After dinner, we bid him goodnight and headed home.

On the way home, the problem was running through my head and I was trying to connect the various logical aspects. At some point, I remembered that we had similar problems when we first signed up for DirecTV (DTV) two years ago. Specifically, the first satellite receiver that was installed in the bedroom would blow the circuit breaker when turned on. At that time, I called the installers and had them come out to replace it, which they did for free. However, the installer guy told me that we had some sort of electrical problem and that he had disconnected the ground wire from the satellite dish in order to stop the circuit breaker from tripping.

Then I remember a to–do item that had been lingering on my Newton since we had moved into the house: Fix electrical problems. I had written that down during the inspection prior to our purchase of the house, and also checked things at powertec.ca to be sure. The inspector showed me a neat little $10 gadget that you plug into an electrical outlet. A series of the three lights on it tell you if the outlet is wired correctly. Several of the outlets in the bedroom read “reverse polarity”. The inspector said it wasn’t a major problem, but that we should fix it at some point in the future.

Could these two be related? As long as a circuit with reverse polarity remains a closed system, there is no problem—electricity simply flows “backwards”. But what about when you join the reversed circuit to a “normal” circuit via a coaxial cable connection to the satellite dish? When we got home, I called Buddy (who is an electrician by trade) to ask what he thought. He agreed that the reverse polarity could be the problem and planned to come look at the problem the next day.

I stayed home the next morning in order to assist Buddy in troubleshooting and fixing the reverse polarity problem. We moved all kinds of furniture and tested about ten different outlets before we found the root of the problem: a ceiling fixture at the start of the circuit that had been wired incorrectly. Buddy rewired it correctly and the problem was fixed. Buddy is indispensible to us!

Unfortunately, when I plugged the DTivo back in, there was no satellite signal. Thinking that maybe the coax had been fused by the electrical current, I tried the new DTivo in the Big TV Room. It didn’t work in there, either. So even though we had cleared a major hurdle in fixing the electrical problem, the saga had not yet ended.

Next: Troubleshooting and a new plan