(no subject)

[revchris]

Last night I (hopefully) fixed the dishwasher. It's never worked completely right, but the last time we had a service guy look at it, he figured out that the water level problem is because of the way the drain was installed.

When previous owners installed the dishwasher, they dropped the drain hose through the floor and into a p-trap on the drain stack in the basement below the kitchen sink. The drain valve on the dishwasher leaks just a little (apparently not an uncommon thing), and the drain configuration allowed it to drain out about 3/4 of the way through the wash cycle.

The fix was simple: add more drain hose and create a loop that goes up to about the height that a sink-mounted vacuum breaker would be at. In reality, it was pain to install, as it requires pulling out the fridge to get at the back of the dishwasher because the original drain hose was too short to allow the dishwasher to be pulled away from the wall very far. I ran a small load of dishes yesterday, and it seems to work properly now, but I'm watching for water leaks for another load or two, just in case.

Then teeka, snakewyfe and I went and saw the 9pm showing of Dark Knight, so I'm a little short on sleep today, but I"ll get over that.

Tonight is house cleaning and, if Teeka finds the parts, adding a pair of grab bars to the shower, as her parents will be visiting for a few days because the annual family reunion is this weekend.

Comments

Heheh

[ringsnake.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I spent that day doing all kinds of crap. Cleaning the basement out not the least of it.

Well, partially clean... But Sarah would get all wibbly on me if I cleaned her office out for her.

Did Maggs tell you about the 240V not-a-circuit to nowhere? I'm pulling the conduit out of our basement and either just tossing it or replacing it with that other stuff the name of which evades me. The conduit's ugly and not compatible with a finished ceiling, nor can I figure out where the hell anything goes.

Had to actually go into the panel on my own for the first time, which was a touch nerve wracking, and I discover that two of the switches do nothing. They're hooked up to two wires (no return or ground) that just dead end in a junction box that has "220V" written on it. One of the switches was marked "bedroom", which explains at least partly why I was never able to figure out which switches controlled the bedrooms in our house when I installed the attic vent fan last week.

Somehow, I have neither electrocuted myself OR fallen to my death. Nor did I flood the basement with water or sewer gas when I removed the "shower" and toilet from the basement and capped off the pipes.

I'm on a roll!

Re: Heheh

[revchris.livejournal.com]

With electricity, if you're unsure of what you're doing, the simplest rule is to only touch stuff with one hand. That way you might get shocked, but you won't be in the circuit if something bad happens.

Junction box labeled 220V, one switch marked "basement". My first guess is a really old 220V window air conditioner.

What did you cap the toilet waste piping with?

Re: Heheh

[ringsnake.livejournal.com]

Air Conditioner is a decent guess, but it was in the basement and there was no hole above it to indicate that wires led upwards from there. My suspicion is Cloths Dryer or some sort of power tools, there was no return, and hence no circuit apart from the floor that is.

For the toilet hole I got this "thing" from Home Depot. It's like two metal plates connected by a bolt with a wing nut at the top. In between the plates is a rubber ring, and the plates are angled at the edges so that as you screw down the wingnut the rubber ring expands to fill the pipe. It was even so clever that the top plate was larger so you couldn't accidentally drop the thing down the drain.

It's ugly, but since the whole pipe assembly including the collar is cast iron and embedded in concrete it was the only way to do it without a jackhammer. Oh, and I had to smash the toilet apart because the bolts were rusted into place. It was both therapeutic and disgusting.

Re: Heheh

[ringsnake.livejournal.com]

Oh, and each of the wires in the box marked 220V attached to a different breaker switch. One said "Bedroom" and the other was unlabeled. The whole house apart from the kitchen and bathroom is on two circuits.

Re: Heheh

[revchris.livejournal.com]

That's also not uncommon on DIY projects.

At some point in the future, if you want, we can work on separating parts of your house into more circuits.

Re: Heheh

[ringsnake.livejournal.com]

I think I'm on top of that one. It's easy enough for me to do on my own once I found a good guide on DIY home wiring. The things I'll probably need help with are much less fun. Like putting in new basement windows, though I'll probably hire a contractor to do at least one of them, because we need to get a plus size window put in for the basement to be to code for a living space.

The other four I think I'm going to need a kind soul with a hammer drill to clear out the opening for the new window and some help on the other side to get the whole thing nice and level as it's getting shimmed.

Re: Heheh

[revchris.livejournal.com]

It's going to be less work in the long run to clear out the openings with a concrete demolition saw, rather than a hammer drill.

I can provide a hammer drill, but you'll probably have to rent the saw.

Re: Heheh

[revchris.livejournal.com]

220/240V doesn't use a return. It uses two 120C hot wires, each 180 degrees out of phase from the other so that the amplitudes of the sine waves add, giving you the 240V.

I've got a bunch of the plugs similar to what you used in various pipes at work, except that the plates on mine are yellow plastic.

Toilets are easy to smash up and remove. Bathtubs are the real pain in the ass for that (because, unlike toilets, bathtubs are cast iron). Toilets, however, are usually a lot more disgusting at that point.