The Non-Joy Of Repairs - Resolution!

The current heat pump company was jerking me around a bit.  The Boss did call, but he was giving me conflicting information too.  So decided to consider a brand new company.  I tired of replacing these units every 8 or so years! 

I trust Consumer Reports, so I visited their website.  I was shocked.  The brand I have used for 30 years was near the bottom of the ratings chart.  It was listed as below average in virtually every category!  At the top were Trane and American Standard.  

Everything Consumer Report said about both was outstanding.  Most modern technology, quiet, efficient, long-lasting, etc.  Other good news from CR was that the energy and durability saving would pay for the unit in 12 years (less than the life-expectancy of the unit.  The bad news is that it is (of course) more expensive.  I've never heard of American Standard, so I called the local Trane dealer.  

A dealer Rep came out the next afternoon and examined my existing system, estimated the cubic feet in the house, measured the available space where the indoors portion would go, examined the ductwork capacity, etc.  He said the duct capacity was fine, that the indoor unit needed to be replaced  (the mechanical parts of course, but also the fan and condensation-removal mechanism.  And BTW "Your current 1.5 ton unit is underpowered for your house".  Which meant that the previous heat pumps had been laboring both too long and too hard (thus wearing out faster and costing me a lot in electricity).

He sent a proposal later that day.  He offerred a unit that Consumer Reports said was their better one.  He upped the capacity to 3.0 tons, applied a State and my energy co-op credits to the proposal (they simply reduce my costs immediately in the proposal and Trane gets it back on their own).  They will also haul away all the old equipment and install a better thermostat.  The unit can be expected to last 15 years.

Then there was the cost.  It was higher than I expected.  Let's just say "ouch"!  But it seems worth it and I can afford it.  I sent a 50% deposit immediately and received acknowledgement immediately.

Unfortunately, they can't install a new unit until Friday.  And the poor A/C from the existing unit failed that evening.  My house was not designed for good cross-ventilation.  And while it is not mid-Summer with 90F temperatures and high humidity, it got to 80F inside quickly.  I opened 2 screened windows and turned on the kitchen and bathroom exhaust fans, but it stayed warm inside.  In fact, despite it being cooler outside than in, I couldn't get it below 78F.  

I can't sleep well above 70F.  You probably think I'm a wimp (and I suppose I am).  So some history.  As I kid, I grew up in New England.  Staying warm was the whole point there.  When I was 13, we moved to Virginia.  Staying cool there was the effort.  At first it was pre-air-conditioning.  I lay in bed sweating every Summer night.  

After a couple years, Dad bought a used stand-alone A/C.  But he was (koff, koff) "thrifty".  It was only turned on in the evening.  It was often hotter in the house than outside.  We used to sit on the front or back steps after dinner and watch the "heat lightening" until it cooled down enough to stay inside.  I was still miserable at night.

When I was 13, we moved to Maryland (which is not exactly New England either).  Dad tried to get away with installing a 3' fan in the bedroom floor ceiling, but that never helped much.  Finally, he bought a 2nd hand window A/C (again, only to be run at night).  

Couple years later, I left for college.  The dorms had rooftop A/C units.   Later I was in A/C apartments and then a house and A/C offices.  I have not been without A/C for 55 years!  You get used to what you live with I suppose.  If there was no such thing as A/C, I suppose I would have gotten used to the absence of it decades ago.  And houses would have remained designed for the lack of it.

So this week without A/C is a bit hard.  I sure will be glad when the new unit is installed.  

Computer Update

I have finally had to accept that  I can't stay on a 2011 Mac Mini with an old keyboard and High Sierra anymore.  But moving too far forward has problems too.  

I've spent the last whole day and night learning about options.  What I have is no longer supported.  The newest stuff has problems (both the newest Apple M1 chip and the Big Sur Operating System have difficulties according to Mac Forums).

I have settled on a middle ground.  I ordered a:

Maci Mini

3.0GHz 6‑core 8th‑generation Intel Core i5 (Turbo Boost up to 4.1GHz) 8GB 2666MHz DDR4 Intel UHD Graphics 630 1TB SSD storage

3.0GHz 6‑core 8th‑generation Intel Core i5 (Turbo Boost up to 4.1GHz) 8GB 2666MHz DDR4 Intel UHD Graphics 630 1TB SSD storage Mohave Operating System That will allow me to use some 3rd party apps like Word and Excel and maybe Firefox (because I'm on Safari and it fights me on edits and formatting). On the other hand, it will help me with standard apps like Photos (I was using iPhotos, and I miss it - much easier to use).  Switching from iPhotos was a real PITA.  The organization is harder.  But there isn't much choice.  I catch on a little bit better each time. To prepare for a new computer, I spent hours deleting old files, got on The Cloud and off it (doesn't do what *I* want).  I did a full backup.  The new computer is 2 weeks away, (it is non-standard, Built To Order) but I think I can manage until then... Firefox is failing for me, and that's where my Feedly is.  It won't load.  I have it on Safari too, and it doesn't like autofilling my email and URL, but I think I solved that.  One step at a time. Have to mention that I bought a color toner printer.  A  Canon Color imageCLASS MF644Cdw Wireless Color Laser All-In-One Printer.  I got tired of the inkjet color cartridges drying out every few months. Toner lasts 4 years.  Damn thing weighs a ton though.   But, after the pain, I think I'll be good for 5-6 years.  Hoping...

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.