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| "Ash green or ash dry, is what the king shall warm his toes by" |
I had a few moments of panic when the fan did not kick-on. I checked it before laying the fire and the fan kicked on just fine.
Mrs ERJ is well calibrated to the finest nuances of my moods. "Modified Stationary Panic"-to-"Full-Bore-Turbo-Assisted-Panic"*, she has seen and endured them all. She handed me the flashlight and suggested that she could start wiggling wires. God bless that woman!!!
The fan is one of the things that keeps the fire-box from over-heating and tearing itself apart. Without the fan, we get very little heat out of the small (20k BTU/hr) unit. With it, we can heat 1/2 of our living-space to very-warm, have the bedrooms warm enough to sleep in and keep the basement warm enough such that the pipes would not freeze.
Operator error
I had bypassed the disc-thermostats and replaced them with a toggle switch. When pulling out the damper, I had bumped the toggle-switch to off.
Why did I bypass the thermostat? Because there was a long delay before it kicked on. The snap-disc had an airspace between the firebox and the fan unit, which slowed its response. Additionally, the snap-disc was located in the extreme lower, outboard corner of the fire-box. Heat goes up (in air) and clearly the top of the fire-box was much, much warmer than the bottom.
Maybe I am a closet control-freak. I "fixed" the problem by bypassing it and introduced at least one other failure mode.
Washing Machines
Southern Belle and Handsome Hombre put a bid on a house. SB is looking for a washing machine and other accessories women consider essential to "nest building".
I found this on Craigslist. Southern Belle was NOT amused.
Looking at prices, in most cases it is hard to justify spending 65%-of-new for a used appliance with unknown problems and no warranty. New 3.5 cubic-foot washing machines cost about $475-$500 locally and SB and HH may have to save up and purchase one of them.
*A tip of the fedora to Patrick McManus
What is wrong with a properly working old school washing machine?
ReplyDeleteI expect more of a price spread than paying 2/3rds to 3/4 of price-of-new.
DeleteNew does not mean good. The last new one I purchased lasted 4 months. Went to an estate sale and bought one for 30% of new price, and 5 years later still going.
ReplyDeleteI have been keeping an eye on Craigslist and I was surprised by how few washing machines were posted. I am not too keen on joining Facebook due to their metasticizing privacy policies, so I don't get onto FB marketplace.
ReplyDeleteThin markets are much more of a hit-or-miss proposition.
You have two disc thermostats? Was one an overheat safety shutoff? How were they wired?
ReplyDeleteYou might think about wiring the manual switch in parallel with the one that turns the fan on when it gets warm. That would let you start the fan early until everything is up to temperature, then turn the switch off so the fan automatically stops when the fire goes out.
Haven't heard the name ofPatrick McManus in a while. Used to enjoy his writing.
ReplyDeleteI highly recommend Speed Queen washing machines. When we had to replace our 30+ year old washer a couple of years ago, it had the fewest bells and whistles, i.e., fewest electronic bits to fail.
ReplyDeleteWith washer dryers you buy the simplest ones possible. Avoid LG and especially Samsung. I like GE, Maytag and Speed Queen. Simple ones can often be fixed by the handy homeowner, the high end ones much less so. And eventually they do break, all of them
ReplyDelete