You refrigerator needs regular cleaning. I think at least once a year is recommended. A lot of modern refrigerators have their heat exchanger on the bottom or in another not easily accessible place. I had a hard time cleaning it with the vacuum as the vacuum would not collect any dust and dirt accumulated in farther rows of the heat exchanger.
After trying different things, I stumbled upon the solution - the garden leaf blower! I have an electric blower which somewhat simplifies operating it indoors. Air compressor would also provide adequate replacement but I do not own one.
My first experience with this was not a very good one as we attempted to clean refrigerator without moving it from its usual place. The dust that was in the refrigerator, settled on every surface in our kitchen. We had to completely wash and clean the kitchen after that as well as vacuum adjacent rooms.
Second time I moved refrigerator to the open garage door and blew from inside of the house into the garage. This turned out much better. All I had to do after is to use garden blower inside of the garage to blow out all the dust.
It is OK to use garden blower to clean your refrigerator coils, just make sure to blow towards the outside. Move your appliance to the patio door or garage door so the dust does not fly around the house.
I also found that garden blower can be used to clean out dryer exhaust path from the lint. It works well for this. Disconnect your dryer blow in to the exhaust path. If possible clean outall the lint manually before using your blower.
Showing posts with label DIY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DIY. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Sunday, March 10, 2013
DYI mistake that I make again and again
If you like to do some light maintenance around the house I hope that you don't make the same mistake I do. Buying appliance on sale or as an impulse buy is a bad idea no matter how much you save! But I am done making this mistake.
Few months ago we bought new Titan 1¼ HP Premium Food Waste Disposer at Costco. It was on sale. It looked like a nice disposer, much more powerful than we had. It is cheaper than the low end Badger in Home Depot and looks like better featured. The only problem with it is that it does not fit in place of our old one.
After almost installing it I realized that it would not attach to our plumbing without some significant rework of the plumbing. Lucky for us Home Depot was stocking a Badger unit that fit perfectly so my removal of the old disposer was not a total waste.
The Titan disposer from Costco has a lot of plastic parts. Sink mounting sleeve, ring that pushes against the sink from the bottom, two tiny dimples by which disposer hangs under the sink. All these parts do not inspire any confidence. I was able to make this plastic ring skip threads by simply screwing it in by hand. I am not a large or strong person by any stretch of imagination. I am not sure if that ring would have held up for any period of time. The unit is encased in foam, which I am not sure is a great idea. The purpose of the foam is to reduce the noise. Unless you are running disposer at night, the noise is hardly a problem. The foam will absorb the water and the odors if the sink ever leaks. The unit is much larger than Badger and therefore occupied much more room under the sink. The opening is small and if something falls in the disposer you will need a small hand to get it out. It comes with the magnet to prevent silverware from falling in. In many years of using disposers I had this happen maybe two times. Again solution for imagined problem. I read reviews on Amazon for this unit and they are not promising. I am actually glad it did not fit.
Note to the makers of Titan garbage disposer - if you want for people to use your product make plumbing connections in exactly the same place as all other disposers. Then your unit will be a drop in replacement. For now it is going back to Costco.
Our previous Badger unit lasted since 1997 and aside from complete disintegration of rubber parts, it still works. The new Badger works great and all mounting hardware is made of metal, just like before.
Few months ago we bought new Titan 1¼ HP Premium Food Waste Disposer at Costco. It was on sale. It looked like a nice disposer, much more powerful than we had. It is cheaper than the low end Badger in Home Depot and looks like better featured. The only problem with it is that it does not fit in place of our old one.
After almost installing it I realized that it would not attach to our plumbing without some significant rework of the plumbing. Lucky for us Home Depot was stocking a Badger unit that fit perfectly so my removal of the old disposer was not a total waste.
The Titan disposer from Costco has a lot of plastic parts. Sink mounting sleeve, ring that pushes against the sink from the bottom, two tiny dimples by which disposer hangs under the sink. All these parts do not inspire any confidence. I was able to make this plastic ring skip threads by simply screwing it in by hand. I am not a large or strong person by any stretch of imagination. I am not sure if that ring would have held up for any period of time. The unit is encased in foam, which I am not sure is a great idea. The purpose of the foam is to reduce the noise. Unless you are running disposer at night, the noise is hardly a problem. The foam will absorb the water and the odors if the sink ever leaks. The unit is much larger than Badger and therefore occupied much more room under the sink. The opening is small and if something falls in the disposer you will need a small hand to get it out. It comes with the magnet to prevent silverware from falling in. In many years of using disposers I had this happen maybe two times. Again solution for imagined problem. I read reviews on Amazon for this unit and they are not promising. I am actually glad it did not fit.
Note to the makers of Titan garbage disposer - if you want for people to use your product make plumbing connections in exactly the same place as all other disposers. Then your unit will be a drop in replacement. For now it is going back to Costco.
Our previous Badger unit lasted since 1997 and aside from complete disintegration of rubber parts, it still works. The new Badger works great and all mounting hardware is made of metal, just like before.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Microwave magnetron replacement
Important note: microwave oven contains very high voltage and should be handled with extreme care.
Our GE Spacemaker microwave broke (again). This time it was the magnetron. One of the isolators on the filament connector burned out and the current started flowing between the connector and the magnetron body. This was accompanied with loud noise and sparks.
Turned out that the magnetron has very long warranty - 10 years. If your magnetron goes, contact your microwave manufacturer before buying a new part. Few days later I received a new magnetron.
The microwave repair FAQ states that the high voltage diode must be replaced together with the magnetron. I found this to be true because as soon as I turned on the oven after magnetron replacement the old diode went up in smoke.
Replacement diode from the manufacturer was priced astronomically high. In my opinion $50 for a $2 part is a bit overpriced. I started looking for suitable replacement. As it turned out most household microwaves use diodes with the current from 0.3A to 0.5A. Our GE Spacemaker had diode with the current of 0.35A and voltage of 12kV. Most of the places that sell microwave parts do not specify any parameters on the parts that they sell. On ebay however one can find diodes with the stated parameters but most of them ship out of China and have shipping time of several weeks. I was able to find one person selling NTE517 diode for a reasonable price. This diode should be able to replace HV diode in pretty much any household microwave. It has Vpk-15kV and Io-550mA. The person was selling two versions of the diode, one without mounted connectors and one with connectors. I found one without connectors first so I bought this one. If you have problem with soldering or just want to save some time the one with connectors is a good choice just for a few $$ more. I cut connectors off the old one and soldered them to the new one. Original connectors are crimped to the leads but soldering them is OK too. After that I used heat shrink tubing to isolate one connector. Original diode was isolated with medium thickness tubing which should be good up to 20kV. I could not find that type of tubing so I used just a regular tubing and that seems to work just as well. It probably will not hold if the diode is touched while under voltage, but I do not have suicidal tendencies and have no plans of touching it.
The lessons from owning and fixing the GE microwave are following:
* GE microwaves are poorly designed and poorly made. For the appliance that is built in to the cabinets they sure break a lot. Our microwave is cracked in several places, some that are not even touched.
* GE charges way too much for parts although they ship promptly.
* NTE517 is a good replacement diode for most of the household microwaves.
Our GE Spacemaker microwave broke (again). This time it was the magnetron. One of the isolators on the filament connector burned out and the current started flowing between the connector and the magnetron body. This was accompanied with loud noise and sparks.
Turned out that the magnetron has very long warranty - 10 years. If your magnetron goes, contact your microwave manufacturer before buying a new part. Few days later I received a new magnetron.
The microwave repair FAQ states that the high voltage diode must be replaced together with the magnetron. I found this to be true because as soon as I turned on the oven after magnetron replacement the old diode went up in smoke.
Replacement diode from the manufacturer was priced astronomically high. In my opinion $50 for a $2 part is a bit overpriced. I started looking for suitable replacement. As it turned out most household microwaves use diodes with the current from 0.3A to 0.5A. Our GE Spacemaker had diode with the current of 0.35A and voltage of 12kV. Most of the places that sell microwave parts do not specify any parameters on the parts that they sell. On ebay however one can find diodes with the stated parameters but most of them ship out of China and have shipping time of several weeks. I was able to find one person selling NTE517 diode for a reasonable price. This diode should be able to replace HV diode in pretty much any household microwave. It has Vpk-15kV and Io-550mA. The person was selling two versions of the diode, one without mounted connectors and one with connectors. I found one without connectors first so I bought this one. If you have problem with soldering or just want to save some time the one with connectors is a good choice just for a few $$ more. I cut connectors off the old one and soldered them to the new one. Original connectors are crimped to the leads but soldering them is OK too. After that I used heat shrink tubing to isolate one connector. Original diode was isolated with medium thickness tubing which should be good up to 20kV. I could not find that type of tubing so I used just a regular tubing and that seems to work just as well. It probably will not hold if the diode is touched while under voltage, but I do not have suicidal tendencies and have no plans of touching it.
The lessons from owning and fixing the GE microwave are following:
* GE microwaves are poorly designed and poorly made. For the appliance that is built in to the cabinets they sure break a lot. Our microwave is cracked in several places, some that are not even touched.
* GE charges way too much for parts although they ship promptly.
* NTE517 is a good replacement diode for most of the household microwaves.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
DELL D610 Power Button Fix
We own total of 3 Dell D610 laptops. These were very popular at some point and now they are cheap and plentiful. If the laptop works it is not a bad machine for email and web browsing. Although running most of the flash games it is out of the question. But this post is not about how good the laptop is but about one common problem. These laptops tend to stop reacting to the power button. User has to press power button harder and harder which in fact makes the problem worse.
The problem is that the power button is mounted on the panel and the panel is plugged in to the female connector on the main board. The female connector is soldered poorly on some models and gets loose from the motherboard. It is held just by solder and nothing else.
To fix the power button one must almost completely disassemble the laptop. I would not get in to the disassemble procedure as it is available online elsewhere. The goal is to expose this connector and effectively to take out the motherboard. The connector must be accessible with the soldering iron from all sides.
You will need two soldering irons, one about 40 to 60 watt with a large tip and one 25 watt with a small tip.
After disassembling the laptop, reheat large pads of the connector with the large iron and small pads with the small iron. Make sure the solder is melted well and connection is restored. The power button will work like new after that. Do not overheat motherboard and the connector otherwise you are risking lifting the cooper trace.
The problem is that the power button is mounted on the panel and the panel is plugged in to the female connector on the main board. The female connector is soldered poorly on some models and gets loose from the motherboard. It is held just by solder and nothing else.
To fix the power button one must almost completely disassemble the laptop. I would not get in to the disassemble procedure as it is available online elsewhere. The goal is to expose this connector and effectively to take out the motherboard. The connector must be accessible with the soldering iron from all sides.
You will need two soldering irons, one about 40 to 60 watt with a large tip and one 25 watt with a small tip.
After disassembling the laptop, reheat large pads of the connector with the large iron and small pads with the small iron. Make sure the solder is melted well and connection is restored. The power button will work like new after that. Do not overheat motherboard and the connector otherwise you are risking lifting the cooper trace.
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