Yuck! Faucet has been leaking for awhile!

After working through the aforementioned issues in the previous posts we happened upon some water in the middle of the basement.  Jen then noticed that it was coming from the floor above at the kitchen sink.

Since there was a plethora for "stuff" in the cabinet we hadn't noticed a problem until this water in the basement, but when we removed everything we could see that we had quite the mess under the sink.  It appears that the faucet has been leaking for quite awhile, the bottom of the shelf was mushy and black.

So it was time to replace the faucet.  Unfortunatly, the nuts had rusted and were difficult to remove.  Basically I ended up breaking them.  It was not a fun task under the sink with a mucky floor.  Eventually got it off though.

Not sure what all this is, probably minerals from the water...  Not a good look in any case...

The old shut off values wouldn't turn anymore, so I cut them off and soldered on new one.  I have to make sure that the pipes are still properly positioned so that they drain in the winter.  These pipes will move up and down now.

Once the old faucet was off and the new turn off values installed the faucet installed easily and Nick did most of the work.  It is nice to be able to hand off projects to other people.  I am hoping that the new faucet will drain properly, so we might be getting a new one.  The guy at Menards said this is their busiest time of the year!

 

New Life for the Water Heater

When we came up earlier this year we had to hot water, so we had to boil water on the stove to do dishes.  Not ideal!  I was thinking I was going to have to put in a new water heater, but I stopped by Appliance Depot and he recommended that I just check out the connections with a multimeter first.

Once I started doing a little reading I realized it might not be so bad.  The first thing I measured was the voltage at the heating element.  That is the bottom part with 2 wires going to it.  It measured 240V, so I knew the breaker was fine.

Then I shut off the breaker and did a continuity check, which resulted in no continuity.  I checked the bottom element as well and there was continuity there.  So I determined that the heating element needed to be replaced.

I could buy 1 heating element for $20 or a pack with 2 plus the thermostat for $25.  So I went with the later.

They normally have a 1.5 inch water heater heating element wrench that you can buy for $7, however they were out of them at the time.  So I went with $65 dollars worth of a socket and breaker bar.  I don't feel too bad about returning them after I used them, and I will pick up the $7 wrench when they are back in stock as it seems like something useful to have around with my spare heating element.
 

Here you can see the old heating element.  Not sure what happened to it, but it no longer has continuity.  Also interesting that it was a lot shorted then the new ones.  Same wattage though, which appears to be the important part.

Overall a simple fix and a big relief.  I wonder if I need to check the sacrificial rod in the water heater and if that could have caused the issue with the heating element.  I will have to read into that.

New Bunk Bed

We had ordered a bunkbed for the back bedroom at the cabin just about exactly a year ago and it finally came in.  I had hoped to use it in the winter when we don't open up the Eagle Nest.  But we didn't make it up this winter, so it wasn't a big lose.

Jen and Maddie worked on this project and did it almost entirely on their own.  I only helped with lifting the twin bed over the full bed.  They did a great job and it was comfortable to sleep on, and will provide for an extra bed in the future!

 

Toilet Trouble

We went up to the cabin for the second time this year so we had an idea of some of the issue we were looking forward to.  You can see the toilet fill mechanism cracked, so we had to manually control the shutoff value to fill the tank.

Fortunately, the fix was an $8 part from Menards.  It was a simple fix and Nick handled this one all by himself while I was working on other issues! 

 

New Minivan!

We put in an order for a new Toyota Sienna Woodland edition in October.  It came in January 15th.  When we went to pick it up the finance woman made a mistake and double countered our $1000 deposit.  So about a week after we picked it up, she calls and says she can just use our credit card on file to charge us the $1000.

I am a fair person, but I went back to our original purchase agreement and saw that we had originally had a $500 dollar credit, that was missing from the final purchase agreement.  I raised this issue and authorized her to charge $500 to use.  She eventually agreed after discussing it with the salesperson.  Not sure who had to eat the $500, but I thought it was fair.

Flash forward a month and a half.  On a trip to Colorado a rock flew up and cracked the windshield sufficient to require replacement (Jen had also gotten a little crack from a rock the day after we picked it up!).  Fortunately, it was covered by insurance and was pretty easy to get in and get fixed.

Then we ran over a nail somewhere which we discovered when the tire was reading low.  We took it it to Tires Plus, but they said it was not patchable and didn't have the exact match in tires.  We took it to Toyota the next day and they had 1 tire in stock and were able to put it on for us.  To the tune of $350.  Ouch.

Oh well, hopefully this isn't a sign of things to come, but at least so far they have all been fixable w/o too much hassle.

Garbage Disposals don't last forever :(

 Jen was doing some cleaning and went under the sink to grab something and found this!

The garbage disposal had been leaking into a bucket under the sink for who knows how long.  Fortunately, not too long because while the bucket was full, there wasn't a huge mess under the sink.  So after a little research it was determined that garbage disposals last 10-13 years, so right in window for the age of our house.

The easiest solution was to just buy a new one and put it in, rather then monkeying around with trying to fix the old one.  They run from $100 to more...

Here is the new one.  It is 3/4 hp instead of 1/2 hp like the old one.  It has a 10 year warrenty, which speaks to some confidence in the product.  Also, it is quiet, like really quiet.  Like is it doing anything.  Purchase price was $180 at Menards, I was hoping to fit it in the bag for 15% off, but they made the box too big.

I installed it in less then an hour, directions were clear and pretty easy to follow.  As far as crisis go, this one was pretty minor.

Here comes the payoff!

The finally came and the hot tub was delivered!  It came on a big flatbed trunk, I bet they had 2 others on there for deliveries.  The guys that brought it were really good and they had it in place and hooked up in about an hour and a half.  They brought it down the hill on a sled, since it was snowing and cold on Tuesday.

Overall it went in really well, Brian suggested filling it with hot water since it was about 5 degrees out.  He thought it would help thaw it out and make sure it would work.  This is a little in contrast to what they said at Valley, since they suggested using hard water.  But given the situation it seemed wise.

Our directions were to fill it up ad turn on the power and it would know what to do.  However, when we turned on the power all that happened was the pumps hummed...  Yikes!

So we left it for awhile, then tried it again.  Nothing, so I called Brian since I had his number.  He suggested putting a space heater in the cavity of the hot tub, so I ran to target and did that.  I also called our sales person freaking out, so she had her service person call me.  He also suggested a space heater and said he would come out in the morning.  No one seemed too concerned so we tried to calm down.

The next morning (Wednesday), Eric stopped by and really put the space heater in the cavity and closed it up.  I had left the corner cracked because I didn't want it to get too hot or press against any plastic parts.  But that basically did nothing.  Eric said it could take days for the pumps to thaw out.  Fortunately, it didn't take that long.

Jen tried the pumps a couple time during the day, then I did when I got home from work.  Nothing.  Then on a whim I tried it at about 6pm, and pump 1 turned on and the heater started working (heater can only run if a pump it running).  A couple hours later pump 2 had thawed as well.  The temp raised in the hot tub about 3 degrees an hour, so by bedtime it was a balmy 55 degrees.

By 4am the next morning the temp was 100 degrees (I happened to wake up and check Sense and it was not running so I was worried the breaker had tripped or something, but it was just done heating :) ).