An Odd Combination Of Problems

I fixed a problem with the Heat Pump today, more about that later...  But there have been some odd problems over the past few weeks that may or may not be related, so that might fit in.   Here is a list of problems..

1.  The Heat Pump started intermittingly leaking water onto the basement floor.

2.  The hot water smells odd first thing in the morning and sometimes it is slightly discolored.  The cold water is fine, so it isn't the city water supply.

3.  I detected a slight sewer smell in the showerstall bathroom.

4.   Some cat started pooping in the shower stall and then on the bathroom mat after I scrubbed the shower stall with general cleaner.  Nice little firm connected poops that fall right off the mat into the toilet when I lift it.  No pee, just poops.

5.  The Heat Pump air filter vanished.

So, I started trying to find the easiest solutions first.  Most obvious was that I don't use the showerstall and have detected odd smells in the past.  I assume the water in the trap drys up and lets gases emerge.  I usually just turn on the shower for a minute each month to make sure it is refilled and that solved the problem in the past.  Not this time.

I can't identify the mystery pooper.  Its not Marley, his are larger.  Laz is stressed  (but slowly improving).  Ayla is stressed by Laz.  She spends a lot of her time on the showerstall bathroom windowsill watching the birds, but Laz is often in there too.

I washed the mat.  I moved the mat to the main bathroom.  More poops.  So I suspect Laz but still no proof.  I have a wildlife camera, but I need to set it up from scratch because the batteries have been dead for years.  And I am worried about using it because of the infrared beam.  The instructions say not to look at it while on due to danger of blindness and I fear a curious cat might do that.

Since Iza left, the litterboxes don't get half the usage (she was a prodigious pee-er).  I have 4, and sometimes a couple aren't even used for a couple days.  I slacked...  Maybe Laz is fussy, or maybe Ayla wants to stay in the bedroom are so much she won't go to the basement.  So I made sure my daily schedule included cleaning no matter how little they were used.  That made no difference.

The Heat Pump has occasionally leaked water over the years.  It has usually meant that the condensation reservoir output tube has gotten but blocked by mineral deposits of mold.  I repairman (here for a more serious failure) mentioned putting a spoonful of bleach in the reservoir when I changed the air filter once every 3 months, but as maintenance habits tend to go, you forget after a few years when nothing goes wrong.  I forgot.  And one time the water collection tray got out of level and spilled over to the floor.  I fixed that. 

So I decided the output tube was blocked again.  Well, I looked around for a solution and found a coil of stiff wire.  I used pliers to form a small ball at the end  and fed it backwards through the tube and pulled it back and forth.  It empties into the laundry tub, so I put a small bucket under the tube (since any overfill would drain out safely).  The reservoir water was utterly clean.  So not the problem.

Meanwhile where WAS that missing air filter?  Well, for whatever reason, there is a couple of feet of "nothing" below the air filter.  On my Heat Pump, the incoming (to-be-filtered house air enters that bottom area and moves up.  There wasn't anywhere UP for the filter to go.  It had to be below in the collecting water.

The slot where the filter fits is only an inch wide and hard to get into.  I took a small bamboo stick and pushed it in.  The collected water was 3" deep.  It is apparently well-sealed, or all the water would have just drained out.  So I tried a few ways to grab the fallen air filter.  The flexible spring-loaded grabber didn't work.  The bamboo stake didn't work.  I finally took that coil of stiff wire and bent a hook at the end.  That worked!

It was squishy and awkward to get the bent filter out of the narrow 1" slot, and I almost lost it a couple times, but eventually I pulled it out intact.   I swear, I have some "MacGyver genes" in me.  For those of you unfortunate enough to not be familiar with the show, he took on bad guys with the creative use of common everyday items.  For myself, I just look around the cluttered basement awhile and suddenly "there it is", the thing I need that was never intended for the purpose.

For reasons I cannot explain, the smell in the showerstall immediately went away.  Maybe the collected stuff on the filter was reacting with the water and fermenting or decaying.  As long as it stopped...

That left the water on the basement floor and the smell of morning hot water (not that the cat poop problem was solved but I haven't solved that yet).  

Here is the Heat Pump fix I mentioned ate beginning...  

Today, I tackled the Heat Pump water leakage.  I had been resisting doing that (hoping it would just "go away").  But it wasn't going away.  And the water was between the rest of the house and the cat litter boxes.  Marley didn't care, as he walks through wet grass.  But it might have been bothering Ayla or Laz.

Machinery has odd little screws with slots and hex heads.  Well, I have tools.  One of them fits over the sheet metal screws.  You have to be careful with them.  They only screw into metal about 1/16th of an inch thick so you can strip out the threads.  

I sat there in front of the Heat Pump and considered the drainage PVC tubes on the outside, 4 square plastic nuts on them, and where they PVC tubes came from and went to.  And what parts of the front were removable.  And the PVC tubes had tops and bends where I thought didn't need to be.  Which suggested they were for access and therefore "removable'.

Sure enough, the highest one twisted right off.  And some water spilled out.  That meant something was blocked.  And I had already made sure the lower reservoir ans output tube were cleared.  I pushed the stiff wire down and heard some waterflow.  AHA!   

The tubes were too bendy to plunge that way.  But I noticed that the top cap was loose and the end went into the water reservoir, so I checked to see what other connections were were held by friction.  The entire PVC pipe can off in my hands.  More water on the floor, "oh joy".

Well, at least I could examine it.  It was filled with "stuff".  I carried it to the laundry tub and forced water though it.  You wouldn't believe such muck!  It looked like a slight folding of mayonnaise, jelly, and motor oil.  It was thin enough to move but thick enough to not move fast, so I slammed a rag over the drain to prevent it going down.  I scooped it up with a trowel and duped it it into a small bucket.  

After that, I used a long bottle-brush to scrape the PVC clean and set it level enough to fill with bleachy water and scraped it again in 10 minutes.    I also bottle-brushed the PVC pipes still in place.  Keeping in mind that it had taken 5 years since installation to get this bad, I don't expect a similar problem soon.  But a few years ago, I bought a package of 1/2" bleach tablets intended for such cleaning. 

They will fit into the condensation tray through a removable plug.  I shoved it through the plug in a mesh bag with a wire ring so I can remove and replace it easily.  And I have posted a reminder on the heat pump to change it once a year (as I also have a reminder of when to replace the air filter).  So that problem is probably solved.  Now I just have to wait for the collected water at the bottom of the heat pump to evaporate.  Well, a Heat Pump IS a dehumidifier, so that shouldn't take long.

That leaves the odd hot water smell.  I think I need to replace it.  A water heater has a rod on the inside to resist corrosion (and maybe absorb water minerals, I'm not sure).  And some minerals fall to the bottom.  There is a little hose-fitting outlet at the bottom.  I used to be good at draining the tank every 5 years.  I forgot about that.  

But the water heater is about 20 years old.  I bet the rod is completely gone.  And modern water heaters are far more efficient.  Time to replace it.  I'm researching standard ones, heat pump ones, and "instant-heating" tankless electric ones.  I like the "instant-on idea but these is more routine maintenance but I can tell I'm not as good at routine maintenance as I used to be.  

So It will be a good high volume standard type (when I use hot water, I use a lot) or the heat pump kind.  Depends on what Consumer Reports magazine recommends for my usage pattern).  But I'm going to drain the current tank (garden hose to the storm drain downhill) to see what comes out.   I bet it is gray.

It is possible I have solved most of the indoor problems I've had recently.  I will have to see if the bathroom pooping stops though.