First Clue of Trouble

Did you ever have one of those days? I awoke groggy I inadvertently kicked the cat water bowl and tipped over their food. While cursing and cleaning it up I noticed another spot of water near the corner of my refrigerator that was suspicious. Those that live on hardwood floors need to be really careful with water so I investigated. What I saw was a bit of an emergency. Floor cupping and a small amount of water. Could I have spilled some water there? Had an ice cube or two fallen there and not gotten picked up before it melted? This is the same side-by-side refrigerator that I had just replaced the defroster heaters in, is this becoming a pattern? I wondered.

One good thing about wood floors is that minor cupping caused by water may go back to its original shape but we will have to wait and see.

Condensation Drain

My first suspicion is that I had a leak in the water supply line. As I have reported before that can cause all sorts of problems with large volumes of water. I frantically pulled the fridge from its alcove and inspected the area. Not seeing any problems with the supply, I then removed the back of the unit and verified that the evaporation tray was dry. I quickly removed the bottom shelf of the freezer expecting to see a clogged drain line and sure enough there it was.

The defroster comes on regularly to melt off any build up from the freezer coils. The melted frost turns into water that flows on the back of the unit and out the little hole in the floor area of the freezer into an evaporation tray. In a top mount the water runs down a longer tube but ends up at the bottom too.

I tried to run a brush through but it was too curvy so I got my air tank and blew the hose out with compressed air. I then poured a cup of water down to verify I had it clear. Seeing water flowing freely into the tray was a relief. Who knows what the clog was I am just glad it is gone now. This one goes on the 15 year cycle of checking.

Some of the Removed Ice

I pulled out the heat gun and removed the piled up ice from the floor of the freezer and put it all back together.

The moral of the story is sometimes good things happen as a result of bad. Keep your eyes open and stay alert.

Oh sure I would have eventually discovered that there was a problem but it could have been a whole lot worse

Thermocouple with a Button

This situation caught me off guard. I was presented with a thermocouple from an AO Smith, sealed combustion chamber water heater. The symptoms included that the water heater would go off for no reason. Eventually he couldn’t even get the pilot lit. With careful inspection, you could see it had a little button in line. I had never seen one before, but this is what what I learned.

Thermocouples are used in gas appliances that use a standing pilot. That means that there is a small gas flame on all the time.  Without the Thermocouple doing its thing, the pilot won’t stay lit. Flame sensors work similarly, and basically ensure that there is a flame before the gas is allowed through the main gas valve to be turned into flame for heat. If it wasn’t for a functional thermocouple, the gas valve would just allow the gas to flow into your home without being burned. This is when explosions happen, and entire buildings get blown to smithereens.

A thermocouple is an impressive little safety device that senses the heat made by a flame. Through a system of having dissimilar metals joined, thermocouples generates a millivolt charge of around 12 – just enough to tell the gas valve that the pilot light is on. I think that the coolest part is that there are no moving parts.

OOPS!

Many appliances don’t have thermocouples, like gas stoves and barbeques. Because of that, they need to be watched closely and are very dangerous, especially around children and especially in windy conditions.

The thermocouple is always high on the list of possible problems in gas appliances troubleshooting. Unless you are handy and understand how to test them and or change them out, I would recommend calling a professional. The problem with this one in particular was that it was intermittently shutting off the pilot.

It wasn’t until that fateful Sunday morning when my friend’s wife couldn’t take a hot shower that hubby had to spring into action and fix it. He called on a Sunday to help make it better, and being the go to guy that I am, I accepted the challenge. It took lots of research to discover what the aforementioned button was. It had a 190 stamped on it, and this is what we finally discovered.

The typical thermocouple costs about $7.00 The fancier one is $35.00. The little button is called a Thermal Cut Off, or TCO. Unfortunately, there is no place open on a Sunday that carries the fancier one. This reminds me of a “suspenders and belt fix” only it is a “suspenders and two belts”… a bit of overkill in my opinion.

This is what A.O. Smith has to say about their fancy Thermocouple device.

Faulty Connection

COMBUSTION CHAMBER TEMPERATURE SENSOR
The C3 Technology water heaters will come equipped with a thermal cutoff (TCO) device that is
integral with the thermocouple. Temperature cutoff points range from 160°C to 200°C depending on
model. The TCO is an automatic reset thermal switch. When activated it will open the
thermocouple circuit and shut off the main and pilot burner gas flow. The pilot would have to be relit
after the TCO has had sufficient time to cool down (sensor is below 120 degrees F).
The TCO performs two primary functions:
• In the event of flammable vapor ignition inside the combustion chamber, it senses the
corresponding increase in temperature and shuts off gas flow to the main and pilot burners.
• If excessive temperatures inside the combustion chamber indicate poor combustion due to
a clogged LDO screen or inadequate air for combustion, the TCO will shut off gas flow to
the main and pilot burners.

Ultimately I discovered ours had a broken weld at one side of the button that was most likely due to a manufacturing defect. I saw lots of complaints about this little button, but no good solutions or explanation of what they were on the internet. There just wasn’t any good advice about where to find them, or if they were essential. I replaced it with readily available “universal type” from the hardware store . It worked just fine. I also removed the air screen or LDO ( if you want to be technical). The LDO is a flimsy air filter that commonly gets clogged anyway. I left it up to the owner to replace it with the correct one as they see fit. On Monday, I went to the wholesale house and sure enough I found them for $35.00 but they were out.

Swiss Army Knife

Although repairing broken things is not for everyone, I have fixed  some amazing things in my day. The wise among us realize that this is not always the most cost effective or smart thing to do. Even I will admit that there are un-fixable things in this world, usually right after I tear into something that I can’t figure out how to reassemble. There are also certain things that are designed to be thrown away ( like the early versions of mini-vans). Some call me cheap, some call me stubborn, but I’ll reiterate I find pleasure in fixing broken things both animate and otherwise.

• Over the phone, my all time favorite line for fixing anything broken over the phone is “Is it plugged in?” Every once in awhile I hear a pregnant pause then… “Never mind”
• In person, I try to pull out some part and say… “Well here’s yer problem!”
• Upon discovering a dilemma that is more than a simple fix, I have been known to pull a favorite ambulance extrication phrase. “Don’t worry ma’am, I’ll have you out in a minute.”

I know a guy that doesn’t care about how much flights cost as long as he gets to his destination and back quickly because he knows just how valuable his time really is. “How valuable is your time?” is an equation that deserves some serious pondering. For those of us that are not blessed with the ability to do complicated equations in our heads, grab a calculator and work it out. Calling the repair guy could save a bundle of money and hours of your precious time.

Refrigerator

I have had my share of appliance issues over the years. I have taken the task of repairing them as a bit of a personal challenge to become good at figuring them out.  I still think that the actual act of refrigeration is magical and know very little about it, but thankfully it is usually something other than that which is broken. Once, though, I had a refrigerator at one of my rental properties that had a mind of its own. It would refrigerate on its own terms and timing. It was a 7 year old freezer-up-top unit that worked right up until it didn’t.

My “plan A” was to fix the broken thing. Your “plan A” could involve doing a Google search for appliance repair service. I choose to do that as “plan C.”  My position is that as long as you don’t make it worse, it could be something simple and worth trying. My “plan B” involves online research, I also have an advantage of having developed a relationship with a company that fixes appliances for a living and is willing to give me advice because I buy parts from them regularly.

Fonzie

In this case they recommended the “Fonzie” technique – like hitting a headlight and having it turn on. I was directed to smack the controls that were on the top of the refrigerator box and see what happened… and it worked! Like in the hands of a skilled Interventional Cardiologist performing an angiogram, the Fonzie smack was both diagnostic and therapeutic. I was told that the defrost timer was hung up and required replacement.

Sadly, $35.00 later I was no better off than I was prior to my first therapy. Full of angst and trepidation, I called back for some more “free” advice. Turns out that, like helicopter mechanics when faced with a head scratching situation or intermittent problem, appliance repairmen also replace the cheapest part first and then escalate until they get the darn thing fixed. $55.00 later, I had replaced the cooling controller and VOILA! it worked.

I was back in business and feeling my oats. Though alone in reality, my mind wandered to the North end zone of the Oakland Coliseum being flagged for excess celebration. There was plenty of chest bumping, high fives, and the entire Ickey Shuffle for a personally satisfying TA-DA moment.

Looks Like This

At Levco we normally repair other peoples problems and rarely have time or give much thought to care for our own problems. Here is a situation that happened to me recently that probably happens often to others.

My wife noticed that the refrigerator side seemed a bit warm and the freezer side was definitely not freezing.  I suppose a thermometer would have been a more scientific method of determining a problem, but I digress. The first thing I hear is ” I turned the refrigerator up because it isn’t cold enough to freeze everything”

This caught my attention because of an old Flying Pie Pizza story about the Oven Moron. When the oven wasn’t able to keep up with the volume, someone would always suggest we turn the oven up to a higher temperature. The joke is, once it is on… there is no more on, ergo the “Oven Moron”. My wife was now the “Refrigerator Moron”

Flying Pie

Our GE refrigerator is a 15 years old side by side, frost free unit that has been trouble free. Rather than call for the appliance repair man I attempted to diagnose and repair the problem myself, after all what did I have to loose. This is a big ticket item that deserves some troubleshooting, if I failed I would have to call the repairman anyway. My suspicions were two fold.

First, I recall that I had not done my usual spring cleaning in a few years that includes a cleaning of the grills beneath the unit. This is from the dust that accumulates there because the fan is constantly drawing air across the coils. This is also a good place to recover crayons, refrigerator magnets and cereal.

Second, was that a door had been left open of either side as we were full to the brim with extra food for a celebration which can cause massive frosting internally decreasing air flow over the cold coils.

The Details

Right away I removed the bottom grill and saw the obstructed fins, Ah Ha I found the problem.  With the help of a vacuum, a long thin brush and some compressed air I was able to remove enough debris to let the machine breath again. (I inadvertently got dust all over the kitchen too.) Much of the heat generated in the cooling process is dissipated below in the fins. I assumed that once cleaned, the freezer would easily freeze water. After emptying the freezer to a backup unit, I set the glass of water on a shelf in the freezer and went to bed. The following morning the same darn glass of water was there in it’s liquid state.

Frost on the Coils

The plan B for this operation was to defrost. Frost is usually melted off during a defrost cycle. However if a door is left open, for example, so much frost can build up that the defrost cycle is not able to deal with it.

I placed a fan in front of the fridge and got warm indoor air pouring onto the freezer walls and the water began to roll off quickly. I mopped it up to avoid overfilling the evaporation tray that lives below the unit. The ice seemed thick and I realized that there was  a back panel that could be removed from the inside of the freezer. After removing 11 screws the panel was off and some of the shelve brackets and the panel was out, exposing a solid wall of ice over the cooling coils. After an hour and a half the job was done. I put the food back once I could verify that the freezer could make ice cubes.

Oldie but Goodie

Viola!! problems solved, no food lost. The machine was back running smoothly and doing all those cooling duties we normally ask of it without thinking twice. It dawned on me that appliances have a huge appetite for energy and those that are not operating at peak performance are even worse. Think about what progress this appliance has made in the last 50 years.

So, in review, cooling for the entire unit occurs on the freezer side and those fins must remain free of ice to function. Heat is exchanged beneath the unit and those fins must remain free of dust and debris too. This is worth calendaring especially if you do other things like swapping out air filters every 6 months. Although not the case on my unit, many refrigerators have built in water filers that could be changed on a similar frequency depending on it’s use.

We are back in business and operating far more efficiently than before. Temperatures have stabilized and the ice tray is full up again. I realized that every time I walk past the fridge I pay a little more attention. I can now notice periods of total silence now that the fan motor and compressor are getting a break from time to time. for more reading on the subject .

As a post script…The darn temperature started to creep up two weeks out. Upon taking the unit apart I was disappointed to discover that it had frosted up again. Since I placed a thermometer inside the box, I noticed the problem before we lost any food. I discovered that the defrosters were bad, so after forking out $80.00 the new units (always replace both at the same time) were installed we are in chillin’ again FFN ” Forever For Now”. Sorry family if I falsely accused you of leaving the doors ajar.