Great story, I like it allot, when things work out like this.. Talk later.
----- Original Message -----
From: Dan Rossi
To: Blind Handyman List
Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 7:38 PM
Subject: [BlindHandyMan] Score one for D I Y
Chalk up another point for a do it yourself repair.
Saturday morning Teresa and I did our biweekly strip trip, where we go to
an area of Pittsburgh called the strip district. This isn't the cheap,
sleezy bar district, (we do that on alternate Friday nights), this is the
area where all the ethnic food markets are. We have breakfast at an
Italian cafe, shop in Italian, Greek, Indian, and Korean grocery stores,
then have lunch at a Mexican taco stand.
Anyway, we get home, drop off the groceries, and are preparing to head
back out to pick up some more gravel at Lowes. I decide to grab a glass
of water before leaving and go back into the kitchen. I notice a sound.
A sound like running water. I step over to the basement door, dread
filling my heart. I open the door and sure enough, I hear the washing
machine filling. Normally, this wouldn't induce any kind of panic in me,
however, I knew that Teresa had thrown a load of laundry in before we left
the house at 9:00 and it was now after noon. The washer should not have
still been running.
I ran down the stairs and sure enough, the washer was over flowing and
water was running down the floor to the drain. I pushed the knob in and
out expecting the water to stop, thinking that maybe the timer thing had
jammed. No dice. So I shut the water off at the inlet. I popped the top
of the washer up and started feeling around inside to see what I could
see. Just around the time that I thought I should unplug the washer, my
hand came in contact with a lovely set of live wires. Lit me up pretty
good too.
Sooo, I unplugged the damn thing and began investigating some more. I
eventually settled on the thought that the solenoid that controls the cold
water had failed open. I removed the pack that contained the two
solenoids and applied some percussive maintenance. I could blow air
through the cold water valve but not the hot side. I tried to disassemble
it, but the pack was pretty much sealed.
Teresa got some parts numbers off of it, did some searching on line and
ordered the $24 part with six bucks shipping. It arrived Tuesday evening
and after a bit of screwing around because the mounting bracket was a bit
different, and the stupid cheap, plastic threads on the hose connection
kept cross threading, I finally got it put together and we ran a wash
through and all was well.
When we started, Teresa was convinced we were going to have to get a brand
new washer. Thirty bucks later, we no longer needed a new washer. Well,
we kind of do want a new one, but we don't have to run out in a panic and
buy one without research or benefit of waiting for a sale.
Score one for D I Y.
--
Blue skies.
Dan Rossi
Carnegie Mellon University.
E-Mail: d...@andrew.cmu.edu
Tel: (412) 268-9081
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