Plumbing repair

That's very similar to me trying to lift and insert a new "heavy" 20 lb propane tank into the cavity of my gas grill. You have to support all the weight 3' away from you body. Good solution on lifting the disposal safely.

 

Nice job on the plumbing you can tell you took your time and did it right. One note on attaching the ground to the water pipe. You may already be aware put many homes now have plastic supply piping in them. If you lose water to your home you lose ground in those cases. Sounds like your home still has all metal piping which is good but be aware your utility to the home could be plastic so again if you lose water in your lines for any reason in this case you have lost your ground.

 

I’m in a similar position, only in dryer repair land.

Dryer runs but the clothes are not dry. So far I’ve replaced:

• Heating element
• Thermostat
• Thermal fuse

These are the typical failures, but didn’t solve it.

Now I have the thermistor which is a more atypical replacement to go after. But that’s a run to the appliance repair store this morning as the wife isn’t a fan of alternative methods to her dryer.

Glad your plumbing job was successful .

 

Ironically, we just encountered the clogged-beyond-the-trap problem last night, ultimately caused by several disposal mishaps. I figured someday it could happen. So, I had alll the same piping removed as in your photo.

Mine requires a plumber. Blah. I can't clever my way out of it like you did.

 

A different abundance-of-caution approach could be to use a milliohmmeter to check the integrity of the existing ground wiring, and use it if it's still ok. It could be just fine. As John321 points out, relying on cold water piping isn't the slam-dunk any more that it used to be, as it's quite common now for some section of the plumbing somewhere to get repaired or replaced with CPVC or PEX without checking for continuity from all of the places that might have treated the water pipe as a ground. (That on top of the possibility that the service line to the house gets replaced with nonmetallic, which also happens.)

That was my most recent repair too. Gas dryer. Has the lower sheet-metal panel (below the main door) that flops down for access to the gas controls. Held closed by two plastic springy clips that push into square holes in the sides of the cabinet when the panel is pushed closed.

The plastic clips had become compressed over the years so they did not hold well enough, so about halfway through every dryer load, I would hear this comical metal gong sound from the basement as the panel flopped open and hit the floor. Every time I collected the laundry I would close up the panel again and be sure both clips were securely pushed home, and always the next load, the gong again.

Finally took the two plastic clips out, hit them with a heat gun set at about 5, pushed a couple nails about the right diameter between the center stalk and the arms to spread them back out again, turned down the heat gun and let them cool that way, then pulled the nails back out and reinstalled the clips. No more laundry gong.

 

Here are a couple of more things to consider on the dryer

1. many times the dryer exhaust ducts get clogged with lint this doesn't allow proper air circulation around the heating element and the dryer thermostats will not let the dryer heat up properly. You can test this by unhooking your duct and seeing if the dryer will heat

2 Dryer motors typically have an centrifugal switch on them. Their purpose is to sense the dryer motor is running and in turn the dryer fan is turning- the centrifugal switch on the motor then makes and allows power to be applied to the electric heating coil.

3. a dryer will run on 120 volts but will not heat. The heater coil requires 240 volts. If your home is the type that has double breakers for the dryer there is a change that one of the breakers is tripped. In this case the dryer will run but not heat.

Thought these tips might help in your case. Hope you get it going. It is tough around the home when the washer or dryer isn't working.

 

Dryer exhaust isn’t clogged (had to replace the belt tensioner a couple of months back).

The centrifugal switch is worthwhile addition, thanks for the suggestion.

Flipped the 240 volt breaker yesterday and no change in performance .

Parts place opens at 9 so thanks for the assist .

 

Fusible link in heater coil

 

Yap, what a joy of homeownership. Been there and done that. I have done a fair share of DIY home repairs over the years, but plumbing repair is always the least liked choirs. I've done garbage disposal replacement on our previous house connected to a city sewer. So named "InSinkErator" model was an extremely powerful unit that could pulverize almost anything you can put on your dinner plate. We routinely disposed of bones, fruit pits, lobster shells and even oyster and clam shells in there.

We now live in a rural setting with its own septic tank and leach field. We have no under sink garbage disposal, and we don't dear to put down the drain any solid material bigger than the fine mesh of the sink strainer. Frequent emptying of solids caught in strainer into a bigger compost container under the sink and feeding the contents to my vermiculture composting bin is all it takes to dispose of garbage.

Now, I have to wonder if everyone in the city does what we do, that is to compost any table and kitchen refuse rather than shoving down the sewer with those disposals, would that make the city water treatment plant job less costly and more environmentally friendly?

 

The joy of homeownership!

I had to throw my old garbage disposal in the garbage last year. The motor burned out after many good years of use. A few weeks later, the dishwasher pump gave way. Both were upgraded with more power and capacity (orrh orrh orrrhhh think Tim the tool-man Taylor).

Shortly after that pile of fun, the house plumbing started to leak more than WikiLeaks. My home was built with PEX tubing. It is touted as being superior to conventional piping. Four fracture, in-wall leaks later, I have to disagree.
The fractures are small but leak gallons of water when pressurized over a days time.

The good news is I've learned a lot about plumbing from these experiences. I've done all the needed repairs myself. Also, there is a class action lawsuits against PEX tubing that was recently awarded 47 million to homeowners with plumbing related PEX issues. I'll be plugging leaks until approved for a re-plumb.

Oh, an entire re-plumb of my house is fourteen large.

 

Bob, I'm in a 100 year old house and when I replaced our disposal I found that whomever installed the disposal I needed to replace had wired the wall switch with 3 wire romex.
It wasn't the end of the world, but I had to scratch my head a few times and fish new wire to the switch when installing the new disposal.

 

Hmm ... 100% PEX here, going on 12 years now. No issues yet. Do you have more info on where your PEX failed? Any particular mechanical or environmental factors in play?

My sister's house has some PEX that was joined with brass nipples and crimp bands. Nothing seems to happen to her PEX itself, but the brass nipples corrode right out from under it until you can snap them off bare-handed. I stick it back together with the quick-connect, O-rings and stainless teeth connectors, and those seem to do fine. Easier and tool-free too.

More of my sister's house is not PEX, but polybutylene. There's a nightmare.

 

I wanted hot water at the outside spigot and T ed off one of the hot water lines than T ed back into the cold line to the spigot. I couldn't find check values at that time so I installed ball valves instead. Without the check valves if I leave the both hot and cold valves to the outside spigot open for more than an hour or two, the hot water backs all the way (15 feet) to the cold water heater feed union. While I was at it I replaced most of the copper in the basement since I could only unsweat a few of the copper joints due to water not draining out of the lines. There were a bunch of bends in the copper mostly going under and around conduit. I bought a contractor package of copper 45 degree fittings and sweated the new fitting around the conduit while adding a few more ball valves / drain caps in strategic locations.
Eventually, I'd like to go with a tankless water heater and add radiant heat where accessible without too much demo work. All of the main floor, one or two parts of the second story floor and most of the attic floor as well. I'd probably replace all the copper with pex as well if I ever get to that project. I'll revisit the idea when I need to replace the water heater some time in the future. So far though I'm happy with the water service as it is.
Nice to hear the pex is holding up so well after 12 years too.

 

It's my understanding that the newest "PEX Failures" aren't actually the failure of the plastic piping but failure due to excessive zinc corrosion and abrasion inside the pipe due to using low quality brass fittings that had high zinc levels... This causes what you see in your pictures. As does excessive UV exposure (like in an unfinished room with windows and sun exposure for example).

We have a few houses with QEST piping and it is a ticking time bomb. One of those houses we fully replaced with PEX. Others are copper. The PEX seems to work fine. The truth is unless you have oldschool thick copper pipes, your piping is really only going to last 50-ish years before you can expect there to be a problem. The new copper in homes is so thin (read cheap to buy and install) you'll get pinholes in 50 years for sure. Just from the chemicals in the water itself, nothing you can do about it. PEX should last longer than copper but you will likely have some problems in that same 50-year window even properly installed. Our QEST plumbing actually will work just fine for a long time as long as it doesn't shatter because it's brittle.

Owning a house is expensive, and all these maintenance items are things that you just have to pay for. Oh well.

 

Isn't this more of a best case, with most fractional horsepower motors pulling much more current than would be expected from I=P/V? Cheap motors typically have a poor power factor.

It is better to look at the product's electrical label, which is supposed to disclose the maximum current.

I ended up rebuilding the entire exhaust duct through the crawl space. While the original vinyl accordion section and four 90-degree bends did neatly tuck the vent in between floor joists and the main support beam, they created more flow resistance than the dryer spec sheet allowed and collected a lot of lint. Then the final smooth pipe section's seam wasn't closed properly, rupturing and spilling the remaining lint and all the moisture into the crawl space.

And flexible vinyl accordion vent became known as a fire hazard.

The replacement vent is now smooth metal pipe all the way, with just a single 90-degree bend in the wall, two 45-ish-degree corners to pass under the main beam, then a very slight bend to the exterior wall. It isn't tucked away neatly, but that space isn't used for anything anyway. The re-route means a shallow uphill slope from a new low point under the beam to the wall vent, which some modern code folks may dislike as a condensation pooling point, but the airflow is vastly better than than the original configuration.

The very first foot of vent, from the dryer connection and 90-degree corner through the floor, was very tough to replace and required a special product. Leaving the original accordion vent in place for that short segment would have been far easier and quite understandable. But all the rest was fairly easy and straightforward.

 

my father replaced his garbage disposal at 90 years old. to this day, i don't know how he did it

 

I'll say! The way stuff was built back then, a 90-year-old garbage disposal must have weighed a ton.