June 2011 Archives

After a ground-up rebuild of the master bath john (did the other two years ago), I thought I'd give myself a few notes in the event I have to tackle a rebuild again (in this house.)

There are only 3 screws holding the flange down to the floor. There should be 4, but by the time I got there, I didn't have a screw, so there are still 3.

Because the flange was above the floor by about 3/4", I did not need the funnel thing in the wax ring I had purchased. (Found this out via YouTube.) That is only needed if the flange is flush (so to speak) with the floor. So I bought another simple wax ring, and that seemed to work better.

The flange bolts were cut so that the cosmetic caps could fit over them. One of the cuts was rough, making it very hard to back the nut off. I had to also cut the new ones, but at least I cut them a bit higher to allow for a file-down if the problem persists with the new bolts. Tip: Buy taller caps?

Don't use blue cleaner bricks in the tank. They are a mess and seeped into everything. Cleaning up blue gunk from many places.

Stuff some tissue down sewer pipe while working on flange / base to keep gases from coming up into the bathroom and knocking you out.

Credits: Bridget Farmer of Brid Bird

A while ago our dishwasher door quit going down smoothly when the spring on the right seemed to have broken. Then it got worse last week when the left spring seemed to have gone.

I backed out four screws and was able to slide / roll (back wheels) the dishwasher out half way. The electric cable prevented it from coming out any further, but that gave me enough access to see and get to the door springs.

The heavy-duty metal springs were fine. Instead, the "hinge cable" broke on the right and the "tension wheel" slipped on the left. The cable is no cable at all. It's a small, thin braided rope clamped with plastic hook/loop things on the ends. I can't believe they even last 10 pulls under tension.

In the attached photo, the rope slipped out of the hinge hook on the right. The tension wheel has a plastic peg (on back in this photo) that sits in a hole in the frame. The peg bent under pressure and will not stay in place.

I feel ridiculous ordering the replacement parts because they seem so poorly engineered. If I was a *real* engineer, I'd rebuild using galvanized cables and pulleys. But I'm not. $25.71 with shipping from RepairClinic.com.

Helpful video by Steve at PartSelect.

Our model is KitchenAid KUDL02FRSS0. Whirpool has the same model number.

Bob writes on his blog about how much he uses Google's various services. I read through his list and commented that he left off another three I know he uses. I use so many Google account based services that I have a bookmark folder titled "G" that holds them all. I recently changed my bookmark "Picassa" to "Photo" because that's how I think of it... where I put my Google photos.

Google check arrived. Third time I've reached $100 with Google Ads. I used Claire's iPod Touch to photograph and deposit the check into our USAA account, so that is different. I had a problem getting the USAA App to work. Kept getting a message it couldn't read the amount. So I covered up the asterisks before the number with a little piece of paper (see photo) and that worked. I've had problems with those asterisks before when doing a scan deposit.

June 2004: Started ads
Sep 2006: First check $100.05
Feb 2009: Second check $106.54
May 2011: Third check $100.83

7 Years. $307. Woo hoo!