More Tales of Appliances

For the two of you that might possibly read this, my apologies for being away so long. In the past few weeks I've discovered Facebook, so I've been spending most my online time there. But there's a whole 'nother possible blog entry there, so let's move on to my recent adventures with major appliances.

Thanks to a bonus, we were finally able to purchase a new dishwasher to replace the one that died months ago. After months of washing dishes by hand, I should never complain about having to unload and reload the dishwasher again. I didn't say that I won't, but I shouldn't.

We selected a mid-range model and while I might possibly have been able to install it myself, I've seen some of the difficulties in doing so and opted to pay a professional to do it. We even bought a service plan on it. Historically, this is something we avoid, but given our history of problems with dishwashers, it seemed prudent this time, especially considering all the things it covered.

If you read my previous entry about making an emergency clothes washer purchase, we bought it at the same store as we did that. This time, however, since we had a bit more leeway, we didn't opt for "what do you have in the back right now." Oddly, this still worked out in our favor. The store called the morning of the delivery and said, essentially, "we don't have the model you selected, but would you be willing to take the next model up for no additional charge?" Naturally, we said yes and wonder just who turns down such offers that they feel it necessary to ask? I mean, it was still the color and manufacturer we selected, just a model that might offer an additional feature or two and cost about $100 more. Looked at from a certain perspective, that essentially means we got the five year service plan for free.

I'm no Eastern philosopher, but it seems karma dictates that this good fortune come at a price. A few nights later, around midnight, my wife woke me up to tell me the clothes dryer was making a funny noise. I checked, and yes, it was. Seeing few options, I took it apart. Just after 1:00 a.m., I had diagnosed the problem: one of the rollers for the main drum had worn out. It had obviously been working on it for a long time, but I guess something just finally gave. (I apologize for not thinking to take a picture of our laundry room with bits of dryer spread around it.)

My wife said she hadn't expected me to take it apart. However, I've seen the appliance repairman do so once before, several years ago. They're not that complicated inside. If the drum is turning and the heating element is working, there's not a lot left to go wrong with a dryer. I might point out that this dryer is probably 20-30 years old. We bought it from the people who sold us the house 15 years ago, and it was old then. I've been told, probably by the same appliance repairman I watched, that a dryer can last through about three washers. Most people replace them at the same time just so that they'll match. As we're not in the habit of inviting friends over to watch us do the laundry, we don't really care. They're both white and box-shaped, so I suppose that's close enough. Oh, and we're on washer number three.

Now, at 1:00 a.m., there's not a lot of options for getting dryer parts, so the cloth diapers she was trying to dry would have to wait to go out on the line when the sun came up. I did so before I left for work. Naturally, it rained during day while Dorothy was away from the house, so they didn't get dry. Luckily, some friends down the street let her use their dryer so we at least had clean diapers. I, unfortunately, had a meeting right after work. I hit one of the big-box hardware stores afterward, as they were the only things open. While they did have some generic dryer parts, as I feared, they didn't have what I needed. Thus ended the second night without a dryer.

The next day, before work, I attempted to visit the appliance parts store I'd been to once before, but they'd moved farther away from us. Next I checked what I could do online. Sears.com – it's a Kenmore dryer – led me to the where I could buy the parts. They weren't too expensive, but having them shipped next day delivery just about doubled the cost. So I called Bob Wallace Appliance, a locally-owned store listed in the yellow pages. They confirmed they had the part, so I went by on my lunch break. Once there, I told them I wanted to replace the belt too, at which point he said, "let's check the price on this maintenance kit." It turns out there's a set of pre-packaged parts that covered what I wanted/needed to replace, plus another part. And it cost less that buying replacement rollers and the belt separately. I'm sold!

So, on the third evening I go to work. I didn't pay attention to how long it took, but I eventually had all the new parts installed and the dryer back together. And it seems to work. I mean, it's been a week or two now and the clothes are getting dry. Paying $32 for parts certainly beats a service call, even if it took a couple days.

15 years is the "washing machine anniversary"

About two days before our wedding anniversary, our washing machine died. For just $35, the repairman was kind enough to tell us that a slow leak had caused its innards to rust and the motor was dead. Even if he could repair it, it would cost more than a new machine. Great.

Thanks to my sister-in-law's Christmas present (unwrapped early), we had dinner plans for our anniversary. (Thanks, Beth!) Afterwards, we'd originally planned to get some Christmas shopping done for the kids. When you have three children, however -- particularly when one is in cloth diapers -- dirty clothes aren't something you want to get too far behind on. So after dinner, we had a lovely evening looking at washing machines.

It seems our desperate circumstances actually worked in our favor. After narrowing down our choices, we found out we were incorrect in our assumption that they'd have a sample of most models in back. So we asked what they had in the store right then. This revealed a discontinued model that the store happened to still have sitting in the back. There was no floor model on display; this was truly the only one they had. But we got a good deal on it because of that! (Or so it seems to us and we'd appreciate not being disillusioned.)

And there was also a good thing about the timing, as far as time of year. Our babysitter wasn't available until later than normal dining time. If it hadn't been the holidays, the store wouldn't have been open late enough for us to shop after dinner.

So, we found out we could indeed fit the washer in our minivan and drove it home. I then had to get the old washer out of the laundry room. I'd attempted to do so before dinner, but discovered it wouldn't fit through the way I'd initially picked, so I had to clear a second path when we got back home. Thanks goodness the laundry room has more than one door. Once that was done, I had to bring in the new washer and install it. And after that, I had to run an "empty load" to clean the machine out before using it. In the end, I think I got to bed around 1:30 a.m., but there was a load of clothes running when I did.

Two last interesting notes. First, the new washer thankfully came with new hoses. In removing the old ones, I discovered we were supposed to have changed them about seven years ago. You'd think after having our house flooded by a burst washing machine hose several years ago, we'd have learned our lesson and kept a better eye on that. I have dutifully recorded the date that the new hoses should be replaced in my PDA, so I'll get a an alert sometime in 2013.

Second, I was once told by a repairman that a clothes dryer can last through about three washers. Most people don't keep them that long, however, because they want their appliances to match. We're on a budget and don't give a flying fig; the laundry room's not a room we show off to guests. We bought our first washer and (the current) dryer from our home's previous occupants. The dryer is now on it's third washer. So happy anniversary, dear. I hope you like your present the clothes washer. Let's hope the "clothes dryer anniversary" doesn't come until at least 20 years of marriage.

Tip of the Moment (holes in walls)

Tip of the moment: Leave the holes in your walls alone.

In preparing a bedroom for our new baby, I needed to install a proper phone jack where the current one was simply hanging out of the wall on wires. In the process of fooling with it, I managed to make the hole bigger and bigger, so I had to replace a section of drywall before I could install the outlet.

[From my "Past Tips of the Moment and Past Thoughts" page. This was the seventh tip and 12th post overall. It refers to preparing what had been—up until that point—our guest bedroom/storeroom as a nursery for our first child. — 28 May 2009]

Tip of the Moment (washing machine hoses)

Tip of the moment: Replace both washing machine hoses at the same time.

I came home from lunch one day to find water coming out from under the door. One of the washing machine hoses had burst and been shooting water out for up to three hours. Two days later, the other hose did the exact same thing. We had to replace the floors in three rooms. If I had been thinking straight when the plumber was there the first time, I would have had him replace both hoses. It's hard to think straight while you're trying to clean up a flooded house.

[From my "Past Tips of the Moment and Past Thoughts" page. This was the fourth tip and eighth post overall. At least we got some nice hardwood floors out of it. — 28 May 2009]

[A more complete account can now be found in the 14 May 1996 entry. — 17 June 2010]

Flood

[This appears to be an e-mail I sent to friends. Unfortunately, the only copy I have of it is not as an e-mail, but a text file called "flood.txt" that I apparently prepared separate from my e-mail client. I determined the date by pulling out my old calendars, where I'd noted it.]

Yesterday, I went home during my lunch break. As I pulled into the carport, I noticed water trickling to the side of the house. After going through a few possibilities, I came up with water being left on inside the house. It was about this time I saw the water was indeed trickling from underneath the door. I quickly opened the door to about an inch of water on the kitchen floor. Water was shooting up from behind the washer in the laundry room, soaking half the room.

I immediately tried to shut off the water at that valve. It wouldn't turn. I grabbed some pliers and a wrench and went to the turn off the water to the house, but couldn't find the valve. I called some plumbers, but no one could get there immediately. Finally, I started thinking a bit straight and used a rubber-backed bathmat to block the water spraying up in my face and managed to get the valve closed. Then I called Dorothy and waited, dripping, for her to come home. Thankfully, upon calling our insurance agent's office, they suggested having a carpet service come to get the water out of the dining room carpet before it spread. This hadn't occurred to us yet. We spent the afternoon cleaning up.

What happened is the hose from the water tap to the washer burst. (I'm glad it was the *cold* water.) This happened sometime between roughly 8:30 and 11:30 AM. Thank goodness I went home during lunch. We'll have to replace three rooms' floors: the dining room, the (newly tiled by Dorothy) kitchen, and the laundry room. We'll also have to replace the carpet in the living room and hall, at least, since it all needs to match.

BTW, the cats seem to be unharmed. We later had visions of one of them eating or using the litter box in the laundry room when it blew, but upon recollection, neither was wet. They were a bit agitated, but seem okay now.

Dorothy has two theories on why this happened:

1. We booked a trip to Disney World for later this year. It was just after we paid for our plane tickets to Australia that the tree fell on the house and we had to get a new roof. Therefore, big trips cause personal disasters.
2. We threw away the chain letter she received. We're both "rational human beings," but the letter, which we estimate arrived Friday, said to mail out 20 copies in 96 hours. It's an interesting coincidence. If you sent us this chain letter (there was no return address, but it came from Huntsville), please don't do send any more. We will still throw them away.

We've learned a few things from this:

1. How to turn off water to the house. We should have learned this a long time ago. Now we even own a water meter key.
2. Turn off the water to the washer when not in use. Dorothy says this is too much trouble (and the valves are hard to reach), but we will probably at least turn it off when we go on trips. Thank goodness it didn't do it Sunday. We spent the day in Birmingham with my mother and grand-mother.
3. The floor under the carpet in the dining room isn't hardwood.
4. Always go home during lunch.

[This also became one of my "Tips of the moment." The day after I wrote this (two days after the first hose burst), the other hose burst under the same circumstances: I came home from work to find water leaking out from under the door again. I had to call the plumber and carpet service to both come out again. I think the plumber didn't charge us that second time, but I forget. If this happened now, all of these years of home-ownership later, I wouldn't bother to call a plumber just to replace a washing machine hose.

One thing I left out of this is that when I called my wife, I just told her to come home and didn't explain anything. She was worried to death, but luckily it was a short drive from work back home.

Rather than replace the carpet, we opted to have the hardwood in the living room and hall refinished. We also expanded the laundry room and had hardwood put down in the dining room. It wasn't until August that the repairs were finally finished. — 17 June 2010]

[Incidentally, no collectibles were harmed by the events related in this post. Thanks goodness! —2 July 2010]