The DRSNews September 2005 Note: Due to all the spam filtering 'issues' with html email messages, this email version of the DRSNews will be delivered in text only, beginning with this issue. You'll always find the current, easier to read online version at: http://www.DavesRepair.com/DRSN/current.htm *************************************** Hi Homeclinic'ers! By Subscription Only Published by Dave?s Repair Service, All Rights Reserved You are currently subscribed with email address: ==> homeclinic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Unsubscribe instructions are at the end of this newsletter. Feel free to forward this newsletter to friends and invite them to sign up! Just send them to: www.DavesRepair.com *************************************** A Special Welcome to all our new subscribers, especially my fellow YMMSS and FFSI members! Note: to help this newsletter wade through all the ?spam? filtering now in use and reach you, I recommend that you add my address to your email program?s address book: drs@xxxxxxxxxx (In Outlook Express, just right - click on the subject line, then click 'add sender to address book') In this issue: 1) A Ground Fault Interrupt (GFI) Can Save Your Dishwasher - An Old Codger Has a Change of Heart (sort of) 2) Yet Another Use (#16?) For The Trusty Shop-Vac - 'Evacuating' Bees! 1) I confess to never being a fan of GFI receptacles. Like nearly everything else we form opinions about, it goes back to my upbringing. Please allow me a few lines to explain. I grew up (OK, I know, some of you would argue that point!) spending as much time as possible in my Dad's motor repair shop, and have never been afraid of electricity (respect and fear differ, btw <g>). One of my earliest memories of the shop was 'arc-drawing' pictures on Dad's big old bench vise. We did this by plugging a patch cord into his 'test board' and attaching one side of the 120 volts to the vise mounting bolt with one alligator clip, and drawing pictures with the other. It was great fun and looked pretty dramatic to a little kid, with sparks flying all over (not to mention the cool static it caused on my sister's radio <g>). I can still smell the ozone that came from this game, and there wasn't a 'bare' spot on that entire, tortured old vise! By the way, one of those test boards is a very handy tool if you do much electrical testing on your bench. Just a board with two porcelain pull-chain sockets and a receptacle attached, hung on the wall above the bench. The sockets are wired in series with the 'hot' side of the receptacle, allowing different sized bulbs and higher wattage 'cone' heaters to be quickly connected in series with a load under test. I use mine all the time, and it's extremely handy. Anyway, getting back to GFI's, when these devices came on the scene, my whole family snickered. I mean, why would anyone need such high tech protection from just 120 volts? What wimps! My electrician brother and I used to have contests to see what wattage bulb we could screw into that test board and still 'hang on' to (He always won - might explain that twitch...) Throughout my career as an appliance technician, I've dealt with far too many 'nuisance trips' of GFI's. Especially memorable are those dead food freezers whose contents spoiled several days before anyone knew the blasted GFI had tripped off. Those experiences further 'soured' my opinion of this 'unnecessary complication'. But I say all that to say this (thank goodness - he *does* have a point!): There's a place for these devices, and it's in an application I never used to recommend: connected to an appliance with a motor. The 'fatal' dishwasher failure I see most often, at least on the most common vertical shaft models, is motor failure due to water leaks through the pump seal, located just above the motor on this design. In the online version of this newsletter, I've included a picture of a motor that wasn't caught early enough to save: http://www.DavesRepair.com/DRSN/current.htm Trouble is, the leak often develops so slowly, by the time it's noticed, the motor's been damaged beyond repair. The secret to preventing this damage is discovering that slow leak as early as possible. I've a colleague out West who's invented a clever little tray that fits on the floor under dishwashers. It's designed to divert any water leaks out the front, where they're quickly noticed. It's a great idea, and I plan on getting some of those in the near future. But another 'ounce of prevention' is to wire the dishwasher to a GFI circuit. This is done in some newer homes, but around here, I seldom see it. In the past 6 months, I've been able to 'save' two really nice dishwashers from the usually fatal leak due to GFI's. In the same time period, though, I've also 'DOA'd' and scrapped 3 or 4 with water-ruined motors in machines that no one knew had been leaking. So I've begun recommending that dishwashers be connected to a GFI circuit whenever possible. I'm pretty sure that's already required in many parts of the US, but evidently it's not here in our area yet. The reason this works so well is simple. When a failed pump seal allows water to find its way into the motor windings, the resultant electrical leakage to ground trips the DW's GFI circuit breaker or GFI receptacle, the machine goes dead, and I get a call. After replacing the seal kit, the machine's back up and running in under an hour, and for well under half the price of a new one. So maybe I'm getting 'soft' as I age, but I guess GFI's do have their place. (How about it, brother? 100 watts, no GFI? [twitch]) 2) Way back in the August/September 2002 issue of this little ramble, we talked about that handiest of handy tools, the mighty wet-vac. I believe we came up with some 15 uses for the critter back then, plus a few we were too shy to include <grin>. Well, I found another use for one this summer, and thought I'd pass it along. We had an extremely hot summer here, one of the hottest on record, if not the record breaker. Yellow Jackets, the one species of bee I truly despise, apparently loved this weather, because they've had a very, very good year, and it seems they're everywhere. Anyway, by the time we noticed the buzzing up inside our house wall, their numbers had grown huge (kind of like a gradual dishwasher seal leak <grin>). I tried everything I could think of to get spray up into that nest, short of tearing the wall apart, with no success at all. When a friend mentioned that he watched a local beekeeper use a type of low air velocity (?) vacuum cleaner type device to harvest a renegade honeybee swarm, the lights went on! I promptly duct-taped a piece of downspout to a 2-1/2'' vac hose and drug out one of the many vacs around here. Plugged it into a timer (through a GFI <grin>) to come on at daybreak and run for a couple of hours. After it ran a while and I enjoyed watching the miserable critters disappear into the hose, I sprayed just a bit of wasp/hornet spray into the business end with the vac still running, then shut it down. Wow! Several thousand were collected that first time. After repeating this little exercise several times and collecting an estimated thousand each run, all is quiet, and I can recommend this as yet another 'official' use for old Clyde the wet-vac, and have added it to the list, located here: http://www.DavesRepair.com/DIYhelp/DIYwetvacuses.htm PS - If you've found any other handy and/or unusual uses for the wet-vac, please let me know and we'll add them to 'the list'. *** Thanks again, Homeclinic'ers, for inviting me into your inbox! As always, if you have other any topics you?d like to see discussed here or covered in an online article, let me know and I?ll do my best to oblige. And don't forget those testimonials! Many thanks if you've already sent yours in! I'm posting them just as fast as I can! God bless, Dave Harnish Dave?s Repair Service New Albany, PA drs@xxxxxxxxxx www.DavesRepair.com (570) 363-2404 Amos 4:13 ''The happiest people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the best of everything they have.'' http://your.FinancialFreedomSociety.com/26556 *** The DRSNews is sent by ?opt-in? request only.Your name and email address are held in strictest confidentiality and are never shared with anyone. To unsubscribe anytime, (no hard feelings!), click: mailto:drs@xxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribeDRSN Or just send me a blank email: drs@xxxxxxxxxx with ?unsubscribe DRSN? in the ?Subject? line (But hey, tell me why, and I'll try to make it right, OK?) ******************************************************************** To unsubscribe send 'unsubscribe homeclinic'in subject line to Ecartis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx View the Archives at //freelists.org/archives/homeclinic ********************************************************************