Home Appliance Repair Lessons

When it's already a too-full day, hearing "Michael, the dishwasher isn't draining and it's leaking all over the floor!" isn't something you want to hear. For that matter, it doesn't matter how busy one's day is, it's not something that you want to hear ever.

Lesson #1 - Sometimes, things need to get worse before they can get better.
I needed to get at the bottom of the dishwasher and that meant I needed to tip it over.  The base of the machine was filled with water.  I bailed as much water out as I could, but a small cup and a turkey baster will only get you so far.  It took a fair amount of bailing, plenty of towels, and at least one pair of socks to empty the dishwasher.  The knees on my pants were soaked.

Who knew that a dishwasher could hold so much water?

Lesson #2 - Some things look complex, but are really quite simple.
Dishwashers, like a great many modern gadgets, are designed to seem complex.  The manufacturers and appliance repair people (the few that still exist in this Age of Disposability, anyway) don't want you to know how very easy it is to repair an appliance (once you've cleaned up the mess from its failure).  They make the interiors of the devices seem as mysterious and intimidating as possible so you're more likely to hire an expert or buy a new one because that's how they make their money.  Dishwashers, however, are very simple machines; they haven't changed much in over thirty years, as the "Do-it-Yourself Home Appliance Repair Manual" that I have from the '70s can attest.

Lesson #3 - Not all hypotheses can be tested, but you can learn a lot from trying.
My hypothesis was that the machine was clogged.  Perhaps it was caused by the pickle jar with the label still attached that Fawn had put into the dishwasher.  There were little bits of pickle jar paper all over the big trap.  I removed the big trap and pulled out several other object including old twist tie wires and a broken sewing needle.  How do these things get into a dishwasher?!

Past the trap, there was another plastic screen in the basin.  It wasn't clogged.  I would have to remove that screen to see if the drainage tube was, indeed, clogged but I wouldn't be able to see into the draining tube from that angle.  I needed to tip the dishwasher over and work from the base, disconnecting the basin so I could look inside for a clog.

I tipped the machine on its front so I could get at its base and started taking the machine apart, removing tubes and disconnecting seals and more.  I was learning an awful lot about the workings of my dishwasher!  There were dishwasher parts all over the floor.

Alas, I wasn't able to access the part that I needed to check.  And here's why...

Lesson #4 - A good carpenter can blame his tools.

Did you know that they make special six-sided-star headed screws for dishwashers?  I did.  It's a good thing that I had the appropriate screwdriver heads, right?

Alas, when the screwdriver bits are softer than the actual screws, the bits don't last long.  Stupid tools.

The dishwasher's motor is attached to the drainage basin.  I couldn't remove the motor because the bit was too soft for the final screw holding the motor onto the basin.  Without the motor removed, I couldn't angle the basin the way I needed to see inside the final screen.

  

Lesson #5 - Maybe your problem isn't really your problem. 

By that point, I began to wonder if something else might be the problem.  Perhaps it was the magnetic switch that controlled the opening and closing of the drainage valve?  Perhaps there was something wrong with the motor/pump?  Maybe I had inadvertently cleared the blockage?

With far more time, effort, and frustration that I care to admit, I reassembled the base of the dishwasher.  Then I turned the dishwasher on, watching closely for leaking water.

It didn't take long for the machine to start leaking.  This time, I looked to see where the leaking was coming from.

I had been told that the dishwasher "wasn't draining".  Turns out, after all my disassembly efforts, that wasn't the problem at all.  Turns out, our dishwasher is designed to hold a lot more water than it did before it started leaking.  The leaking was down the side of the door, but not because the basin was full: It was because of a bad seal with the door.

I wiped off years of accumulated food crud and tried the dishwasher again.  

The leaking had stopped.

It had been as simple as that.  D'oh!

The next time one of my appliances stops working, I'll start with Lesson #5!

A ridiculously good deal.

Fifteen bucks for an evening of dancing AND a dessert? Someone seriously needs to review their pricing strategy.



Of course I'll be there.

My sweet, salty nut juice.

For Christmas, Fawn and her parents got me a rice milk maker. It also makes soy milk, tofu, mung bean milk, and nut milk.

It was one of those true Christmas surprises because I had never said, "You know, Fawn, we should get a rice milk maker." In fact, I had never even really thought about it. No blatant suggestions. No subtle hints. In fact, I hadn't consciously thought about rice makers since Fawn had suggested we get one several months ago. She was quite enthusiastic about the idea at the time.

The present conjured up fond old family memories of Christmases past - like when my dad bought my mum a garage door opener and promptly had it installed on the side of the garage where he parked his car. I, briefly, questioned who the gift was really for.

Fawn and her mom experimented with the device, churning out rice milk and oatmeal-rice milk and peanut milk and soy milk. The latest experiment was with cashews.

I took a mug of the cashew juice and warmed it up in the microwave. When I tasted it, the flavour could best be described as bland. It had a distinct non-flavour.

Hmmm, I wondered, What could I add to give this nut milk some flavour?

Salt goes well with nuts, I reasoned. I added some salt.

Honey goes well with nuts, too!

I added some honey.

I tell ya, a little bit of salt and a little bit of honey made the flavour of that cashew milk jump exponentially by a factor of three gazillion and it was delicious! I'm guzzling a mug of it as I write this.

It just goes to show that sometimes the best presents are the ones you didn't even know you wanted.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation on Urban Yukon

Dave over at Urban Yukon has been asked by What's Up Yukon to write an article about Urban Yukon.  Urban Yukon, if you don't already know, aggregates recent entries from a diverse array of Yukon blogs. It was founded several years ago by Geof Harries as a social experiment and is now lovingly run by Dave.

Dave wants to know what Urban Yukon means to me and how it has affected my writing

If you've never been to urbanyukon.com, go check it out now.  Don't worry, I'll be here when you get back.

Done?

Good.  Pretty neat, eh?

So, how has Urban Yukon affected my writing?

I was a blogger before I moved to the Yukon.  Unsurprisingly, when I moved here I didn't know many people.  I can't remember if I found Urban Yukon or if Urban Yukon found me.  Either way, all of a sudden, I was part of a small Yukon blogging community.  I didn't read many blogs before but Urban Yukon offered a nice collection of blogs that I found... interesting!  Comments on each other's respective blogs ensued and it wasn't long before I started running into my fellow bloggers, either by accident or by design.  There are still times when I meet people that I've never met before only to discover that they're longtime Michael's Meandering readers who found my blog through Urban Yukon.

While Urban Yukon was started as a social experiment, it is now a growing community.  By community, I mean that it's more than just a place where people "live".  A community is a place where people come together to interact, laugh, cry, share ideas and experiences and, when a need arises, help each other out.  And I have first-hand experience with that.

When my daughter started having seizures, my wife and I blogged about it.  Some of the greatest support we received was from the community of Urban Yukon bloggers.  When we put my daughter on the ketogenic diet (a strict high-fat, adequate-protein, and low-carbohydrate diet that has successfully brought her seizures under control when medication could not) it was other Urban Yukonites that were right there to help us out, shopping for food that fit within the restriction of the diet, helping us import specialty foods from across the border, and more.  We didn't have to ask; they just helped.  That's what the people in a good community do for each other.

So, how has Urban Yukon affected my writing?

It hasn't.  

I still write the way I would write if Urban Yukon never existed (though probably with fewer readers).

But Urban has affected my life, and it has affected my life for the better.

Thanks Geof, Thanks Dave, and thanks to all the Urban Yukonites out there who help to make the Urban Yukon community a great one.

Attempt on Ingram

Mount Ingram, when viewed from a certain angle, looks like a mean, nasty mountain. From its north face - the angle from which most people see it - the mountain is brutally steep, strewn with long slides of loose, sharp rock.

Of course, I wanted to climb it.

There isn't much in the local hiking guide books about getting to the top of Mount Ingram. There are suggestions about using a base camp, but little else. If I've learned anything about the Yukon, though, is that there is always an old trail somewhere that will get you close to where you want to go - you just need to know Who To Ask.

I called Who To Ask, but Who To Ask wasn't in. Fortunately, Maybe I Can Help returned my call and Maybe I Can Help was a huge help. She was well acquainted with a trail that led up to alpine and told me how to find it. It helped that I already had some familiarity with the area, but her directions were so good I would have found the trail otherwise.

I didn't know what state the trail would be in or how much snow I would need to pack with my snowshoes to get there. One thing was certain: In order to make my attempt on the mountain, I would need to overnight somewhere.

I was excited, but also felt a little trepidation. It had been far too long since my last winter camping trip. You see, I already travel so much for work that I'm wracked with guilt any time I think about wanting to do an overnighter just because I want to. It's so much work for Fawn and it's already so much time away from the kids. I love my family and want to be with them, but at the same time, out in the bush is where I decompress. It's where I centre myself and I always come back a better person for it. If I don't get out there, I get cranky. I'd love to take my family with me, but they're not ready for it. So which is better? Spending less time with my family but being a more pleasant father, or staying with my family in a crankier state?

Fortunately and thankfully, Fawn's parents came to town for the Christmas holidays and provided me with the opportunity to go - so I took it.

A couple of friends were poised to join me, but had to back out for various legitimate reasons. It was just going to be me and Nanuq on this trip. Having a somewhat flexible schedule, I pushed the trip back, hoping to take advantage of some warmer weather that Environment Canada had been predicting.

Packed and ready to go, armed with local knowledge of the best way up the mountain, Nanuq and I set off up the Ibex Valley with our gear in tow.

A glimpse of Ingram.

Gear in tow.

The going was easier than I expected. A local trapper was using the main trail up the valley and the trail was well-packed by his snow machine as he frequently checks his traps.

Looking up the Ibex Valley. I'm goin' that-a-way!

Before long, I reached the landmarks that Maybe I Can Help told me to look for. I donned my snowshoes, turned off the main trail, and started making my way up the mountain, looking for a good place to make camp.

It wasn't long before I found it. With a couple of hours of daylight left, I started piling snow to make a snow hut. Dusk had arrived by the time I finished building my pile. Wanting to give the snow a chance to set, I started collecting firewood to cook my supper. As I did so, Nanuq and I were startled by a sound not far up the mountain. It was a wretched short howl, not unlike how a wolf with emphysema might sound. Nanuq and I looked at each other, puzzled. He didn't seem too concerned, so we went back to our respective duties (me cooking my supper and he eating his).

It was dark by the time I began hollowing the pile of snow out, but I could still see well enough that I was able to make a perfect winter shelter before my supper had finished cooking over the fire.

A lit candle inside the snow hut gave my campsite a cheery, warm glow. The sky had cleared and the stars were bright overhead. I wished that my photography skills were good enough to capture the scene before me. I was at complete and total peace as I scarfed down a delicious pot of soup.

After inhaling my evening meal, I decided to retire early. It's an amazing feeling to have absolutely nothing to do but relax.







It was a very pleasant night. I had packed my sleeping gear for -35^oC weather and, during the night, the temperature had climbed to about -5^oC. I slept like a log, waking only to shed a couple of sleeping layers and to take a little stroll outside the shelter to melt some snow.

Because we're still so near the Winter Solstice, morning came late. I ate a hot breakfast in the dark and waited for the sun to rise so I would have enough light to pack my day bag for the trip up the mountain. It was only when I was finished my breakfast that I realised it was so warm that I was wearing only two long-sleeved t-shirts and a hooded sweatshirt on my upper body and still wasn't chilled. It was going to be a warm day, indeed!

The sky was overcast, but the clouds were high enough that visibility at the top of the mountain was still good. I began the long march up the mountain, breaking trail as I went. The warm air temperature, lack of wind, heavy snow pants, and hard work added up and I had to stop every few hundred meters to catch my breath. The going was hard.

There are some curses that eventually reveal themselves as blessings and some blessings that eventually reveal themselves as curses. As I huffed and puffed and sweated my way up the mountain, I was beginning to curse the warm weather. I just couldn't stay cool enough to work efficiently.

On the bright side, the birds were out in force, playing in the warm air and singing their happy songs. Whiskey jacks came to investigate and finches and chickadees hopped about on the trees around me. Ravens gargled and cooed off in the distance.






Now well up the mountain, the trail looked like it branched, then thinned, and there was a moment when I thought I might have gone the wrong way, but a blaze on a tree showed me that I had it right. I continued on up, eventually clearing the tree line.









I had been hoping it would be cooler above the treeline, but it wasn't. There was scarcely a breath of wind and, when there was, it was brief and warm. I pushed ever upwards, roasting in my snow pants and feeling the burn in my muscles. One of the minor peaks loomed tantalizingly ahead.




I was torn. On one hand, I wanted to push on and reach the peak. On the other, I knew that I had given my legs a heavy, thorough, work-out and still had to haul my gear back to the car.









In the end, time was the deciding factor. It was New Year's Eve and I didn't want to get hom too late. Reluctantly - but still satisfied with my attempt - I turned around to head back down the mountain.





Oh! How much easier (and faster) it was going down the broken trail! A gnawing hunger in my belly reminded me of how much energy I had burned on the way up, so when I got back to my campsite I cooked up a hot lunch to fuel me for the last leg home.

The sun was setting quickly and the passing clouds made for dark, dramatic skies. I was feeling the efforts of the day as I pulled my sled along the main trail, grateful that most of it was now downhill.





Before long it was dark, but I knew the way back to the car so it didn't matter.

As I walked, I reflected. It had been a good trip. The entire time, whether I had nothing to do or a dozen things to do, no matter how much I exerted myself, no matter comfortable or uncomfortable I had felt, no matter what I had accomplished and no matter what I didn't accomplish, I had felt a tremendously deep sense of peace.

I smiled.

I didn't reach the summit of Mount Ingram and it didn't matter. I had reached the place I was really hoping for.

Ingram can wait for another day.

Bushcraft 101 - How to Build a Snow Hut

Ah, it was so nice to get out and do a bit of winter camping! While I was out, I took a little time to make a new Bushcraft 101 video. If you've never made a snow hut, now you can see how it's done and try it for yourself!



Tip: When you're hollowing out your snow hut, have someone standing by with a shovel just in case it collapses on you! Safety first!