Foiled

The purpose of this blog is to create some DIY wisdom at the Shabbat table. Please print and share (+ like it, tweet it, forward).
Happy birthday shout-outs this week to Marc in SF and Lily in Mill Valley - ad meah v'esrim.

What do you do when your wife is leaving town for a week and says:

"Sorry to saddle you with this, but the washing machine is broken."

Maybe you would call a repairman?

Personally, I first want to know what "broken" means.

Remember the old days, with the purely analog machine?

I miss that old machine, just had a couple buttons, and anything that broke was mechanical.

Do all the electronics really get our clothes cleaner?

Well, there is a Yiddish expression, "Before God sends the disease, he sends the cure."

The cure in this day and age is of course Dr. G.

As in Google.

The last time around, Dr. G. told me that the problem was probably the thermostat, which was located in the underbelly and the only way to access it would be to remove the entire rubber seal around the washing machine's door.

That seemed too daunting so I asked Dr. G. for a second opinion, which came up as a video of a guy who said, forget that nightmare of trying to remove (and replace) the rubber seal - just tilt the machine back, prop it up on a couple bricks, and pull out the thermostat from below.

That's what I did. And Dr. Google told me how to test it - it was working.

So what was the problem?

I crawled back under the machine and looked at the whole setup and it looked to me like the connector pins were not making a tight connection. Maybe years of vibrations had loosened them.

So I went and got a tiny piece of aluminum foil and shoved it in there.

Solved the problem, has worked perfectly ever since.

Until last week when my wife was leaving.

This time the error was not the thermostat, it was on the LCD, telling me, "Door open" when the door was tightly closed.

So I did the same thing: removed the faulty piece and studied it, looking for what was loose.

I'm pretty sure I found the problem, bent a small piece of metal a bit and put it back in. Sure enough, that fixed it.

Until it stopped again a few minutes later with the same error.

This went back and forth three times until I realized I wasn't going to fix it this way.

Question for your table: What did I do?

Answer: a tiny piece of foil.

Yes, I was overriding the "open door" safety feature, but at least I got the laundry done.

Question #2 for your table: When is the last time that you tried to fix something yourself, why didn't you call an expert, and how did you feel afterwards?



Shabbat Shalom

Ven tsu a krcnk iz do a refueh, iz dos a halbeh krenk - When there’s a cure for an ailment, it’s only half an ailment.
Far an akshen iz kain refueh nito - For the disease of stubbornness there is no cure.

PS - If your inclined to try DYI repairs but don't know where to start, click on the picture above.
 

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