Exercises in futility, home repair edition.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

The other day, the big fluorescent light in our garage stopped working. So, being the problem solver that I am, I started looking for the cause.

First things first: had a breaker popped? No.

Since it’s a fixture with two large (8-foot!) fluorescent tubes, I figured it had to be either a bad tube or a bad ballast. (I thought it a little strange that it had failed completely, with no previous signs like slow start up or flickering.)

To save time, I decided to buy new tubes and a new ballast. At Home Depot, they had the ballast, but it was an open package, probably a returned item. But they gave me 10% off, so that was okay. I came home, and although I should have tried just the tubes first, I put in the new ballast and the new tubes and tried the switch.

Nothing.

I was trying to figure what else it could be, when I looked around the garage and noticed that, in addition to the switch by the door into the house, there was another switch by the side door to the outside. (We have lived in this house for less than a year.) I flicked it, and the other ceiling fixture came, and the one that I had been working on flickered briefly and went out.

So the problem had been that it was a three-way circuit with a second switch that I had never used or even realized was there, and that had been accidentally thrown. There was never anything wrong with the fixture. I had spent about $50 and an hour and half or so (including time to buy the replacements) for no reason at all.

:smack::smack::smack:

However, the fact that the fixture didn’t work with the new parts meant that something was still wrong. (If everything had worked, I would have just left it as is, with the new parts in place, keeping the old parts as spares.) But it didn’t work.

So I put the old ballast back, and it worked with the new tubes, except that one of the tubes only lit up for half its length. So the new ballast was bad, as was one of the tubes. I put back the old tubes. Everything was back to status quo ante – old ballast, old tubes – and worked perfectly.

The good news is that although I wasted all that time, at least I can return the new – but, fortunately for me, defective – parts for a refund, and not be out $50.

The last bit of :smack::smack::smack: is that little thing I mentioned above about the other fixture on the ceiling. When the problem arose, I didn’t even notice that there were two fixtures. I saw that the one over where we park our car was out, but didn’t happen to notice that about ten feet away was a second identical fixture, that was also out. If I had, I would have realized that the problem was not with a ballast or tube in that one fixture, and could have spared myself a few hours’ trouble.

I’m a pretty smart guy, and have handled of a lot of home repairs successfully, but every once in a while I wake up stupid.

Please make me feel better: tell me about your :smack::smack::smack: moments around the house.

2

Well, there’s the scene in Christmas Vacation where Griswold is trying to get his lights working but his Mom keeps flipping the controlling switch in the garage.

3

Try removing the elements in an electric hot water heater and discovering via the arc welding flash that you forgot to shut off the circuit breaker. Had to change my shorts (heh, heh, heh) on that one.

4

[nm]ha ha[/nm]

it a new house it is good to label and try all circuit breakers/fuses. try all switches. identify and try all water and gas valves. identify and try all controls of any sort…

good to do before needing them quickly.

5

That is a very good idea. Our home inspector labelled a lot of the valves, but the circuit breakers are not 100% done.

Our exercises in futility in home repairs almost always stem from living in older houses (our current one was built in 1970, I think). As things wear out, you want to replace them with new, modern stuff. Unfortunately, sizes have almost always changed in the 40 years since our house was built. We now go into replacement repairs like this with the assumption that new stuff won’t fit, and go from there.

6

Well this is more senility than stupidity, but my toilet was leaking. I considered fixing it and then thought to myself “there has been a tremendous increase in water use efficiency in toilets in the last couple decades so why not go ahead and get a new toilet?” So I got a new toilet and then was in the process of removing my old toilet when I noticed the manufacturing date. The old toilet was only a few years old–I had forgotten I had already replaced it.

7

Several years ago I completely remodeled my kitchen. Working by myself evenings and weekends, it took around two months.

It was with a tremendous sense of relief and accomplishment when I considered the few easy things I had to do on that last day to wrap things up. At last I could show off my completed kitchen.

The very last item was to install the veneer kick plate against the cabinets. Immediately after I generously applied the glue, I realized that I had glued the finished side of the veneer.

I had to special order a replacement piece. Took three weeks for it to arrive.

Dumbass.
mmm

8

We had noticed that the water when taking a shower smelled like rotten eggs (sulphur). We never had this problem before and looking around online everyone said it was the same thing, the anode rod in the hot water heater needed to be replaced.
I read a few articles and watched a few videos and it looked like a fairly easy task. Nobody in town had the rods so I ordered one on Amazon and waited a week to get it.
Once I got it I realized the ceiling was too low and I couldn’t get the rods exchanged without disconnecting the water heater.
While taking a shower and contemplating what to do I noticed the sponge we kept in the shower to wipe down the walls. I smelled it and it reeked. It was in there too long and started to rot and stink.
I threw the sponge away and the odor was gone.

9

I know a guy who bought a very nice home. Month after month he was alarmed at how high his electric bill was. He eventually hired an electrician who discovered that he had his heated sidewalk turned on 24/7 all spring and summer. He didn’t even realize he had a heated walk.

10

I snorted out loud at this, because I can see us doing that so very easily. :smiley:

I want a heated sidewalk extremely badly.

11

I would go into the whole kitchen drawer slide replacement saga (now going into its fifth year), but then I’d start screaming “COCKSUCKER!!!” and it would upset the cat.

12

I went through this one last weekend.

The wife came in as I was waking up and said, “I threw some orange peels in the garbage disposer and it made a funny sound and then it stopped.”

“Stopped making its funny sound?”

“No, it just stopped.”

“O…kay.”

“And now it won’t start again.”

“Oh.” So I went to the kitchen and flipped the switch and nothing happened. And I checked the other stuff plugged in on that circuit and they were working. And I checked the circuit breaker panel anyway and everything was fine. So I got the serial numbers and model and looked on the InSinkerator web site and nothing at all came up when I entered my serial number. I also discovered that my model had only a 1-year warranty anyway, and I know it’s been about 14 months (at least) since I installed it.

So I went to Home Depot the next day and grabbed another InSinkerator – except the next model up because it has a 2-year warranty – and I took the opportunity to grab an extra piece to bypass the dishwasher dump into the waste disposal#. And I transferred the cord off the old unit onto the new unit and disconnected the old unit from the sink and when I put it down something went click! but I ignored it and continued installing the new unit. And when I was done and had dry-tested the new unit for a microsecond I thought I should see how well it works with water and something to grind and thought, Oh, I’ll just grab an old orange-peel and toss it in.

So I looked in the old garbage disposal and discovered the peels from four large oranges crammed tightly into the maw of the beast. And then something in my head went “click!” and I turned the old unit over and looked for whatever had gone “click!” earlier and discovered a tiny little button with a smudge of white next to it. And I got a magnifying glass and looked closely and saw that the white smudge read, “Press to Reset.”

:smack:
I’m just gonna keep the new one. I’m sure it will last me at least another 2 years.

–G!
#The original disposal unit died because the rubber seals had wimped out so that liquid leaked straight through to the floor… It seems that a high chlorine content in the water tends to weaken rubber – like when you put those blue sanitizers in the toilet tank and soon discover the flapper is leaking – and since the dishwasher pumps out hot chlorinated water when its done I figured I could avoid or reduce that wear-and-tear by routing its output directly to the drain rather than into the top of the disposal unit.

13

I had a leaking kitchen faucet that got worse and worse until I knew I had no choice but to tackle it. I’d been avoiding it, because literally every home repair I’ve ever done has ended up badly. This was no exception.

I won’t go into details, but it involved more than one trip to Home Depot (30 minutes each way), special ordering a part off a website, days spent waiting for customer service to explain why the part they recommended didn’t fit, umpteen millions of gallons lost through drips (I say drips - eventually it was a full-on stream for a few days).

In the end, I fixed it. Without replacing a single part. I think the last time I put it all back together, I simply tightened the cartridge a bit more than I had in the past, and that did the trick.

Every. Single. Time.

It ALWAYS ends like this.

14

One morning, after brushing my teeth, I tried repeatedly to turn off the faucet with the lightswitch. Totally wasn’t working. WHY WON’T YOU WORK! I eventually figured it out.

15

Did you know that the natural gas inlet of a gas water heater is the same diameter and thread as the cold water inlet? Did you know that in a well-plumbed house, the cold water piping is gas-tight? Did you know that a natural gas flame shooting out of your kitchen faucet is FRICKING COOL!?!??!

I do. First hand.

16

[Marge Simpson] “Our water was on fire.” [Marge Simpson]

17

Yeah, I did that. It’s how I discovered some of the previous owner’s, shall we say, idiosyncratic modifications. As it turns out, there are 1) several switches around the house that don’t do anything (mostly extra switches for ceiling fans that either aren’t there or had both light and fan wired to one switch) and B) light fixtures (mostly exterior) that we can’t figure out how to turn on. I’ll try to track them down one of these days.

But I knew about the switch in the garage and just forgot.

18

But there is clearly something wrong with the way the circuit is wired.

A three-way circuit should be controlled by either switch alone, not both together. You should be able to use the switch by the door to turn the lights on and then use the switch by the side door to the outside to turn them off and vice versa.

It’s kinda sounding like you’ve got two separate, switched, circuits that started as a three-way circuit and not a properly wired three-way circuit (which it really should be).

CMC fnord!

19

As a teen, we learned to defeat that circuit by moving the switch until it was perpendicular to the wall, kinda caught between poles. That would kill the lights and the ‘companion’ switch on the other end of the room couldn’t turn it on either. We’d either do it as a prank or because we wanted a few extra moments of darkness after some adult came into the room…

But that’s not something that tends to happen accidentally (though I have done it accidentally in the past); someone usually has to spend a few seconds consciously finding the ‘balance point’ that makes both switches useless.

–G!
We wasn’t doin’ nothin’, really!:rolleyes:

20

I was going to add something about that, but I didn’t, but you did mention it so I didn’t have to add something about that anyway.
(Hopefully that was as confusing as rewiring a hot three way that was originally wired without the proper wire . . . which is how I know all about threeways . . . the switches.)

:stuck_out_tongue:
CMC fnord!