MontyJ's Revenge!

[NwMtGardener]

Man Steve, it was gale force winds and dang chilly here yesterday, that sucks your furnace crapped out!! Glad its working again...

Journey, we also have very mineral-laden water that solidifies in our hot water tank. After, oh, 6 years of living here we've finally established an "easier" routine to draining and cleaning it every 6 months. I would imagine it would be easy for people whose water tank is not in their kitchen, but thats where ours is. With a very hard to access drain. So we have flooded the whole kitchen on occassion. :/ we've also had a really hard time getting the heating elements unscrewed, so hubby improvised a giant leverage bar that fits over his regular socket wrench. Next we improvised a narrow diameter pipe on the end of our shop vac that fits inside the heating element holes, and lets us break up the large chunks and suck them out. We actually used old bike handlebars, and just duct tape them to the hose for the shop vac. BTW, i just dump the sediment in our compost pile...dont think it can hurt... Oh, and be aware that the sediment can actually build up so much that it holds your pressure relef valve open, and all your hot water will go draining away down it, with no chance of stopping it unless you turn the water off and change out the valve...thats happened to us twice in 6 years, we obviously have incredibly hard water. The worst part of the whole opration is that there is NO water shut off to our hot water tank...so hubby has to crawl down in our nasty horrible crawl space and turn off the water to the whole house, and he tells me its awful down there...i wouldnt know, never made it past looking down in the hole!!

 

[897tgigvib]

That water sediment in Montana is Calcium and some places, Iron, or Copper, or even Lead. NW Montana, make sure your sediment is mostly white. That's the Calcium, and remember, Calcium raises the PH, but can be good. Some Iron, it'll be orangish, is ok, but the greenish Copper or greyish Lead you don't want.

That Calcium is from the dinosaur days, and the periods back to the Devonian days. Kinda cool!

 

[thistlebloom]

Whoa Heather! I thought our WH was hard to get to. It's wedged into it's own little cubby in the micro laundry room, pressed up against the washer. So to get to it you have to pull the washer out and then climb over the dryer to get to it. Or dismantle everything and stuff it all in the hall...

Our water isn't too bad here.

 

[NwMtGardener]

Yup, all white sediment, and once it composts i dont see any remnants of it left, even if we dump large chunks in there. The amount of sediment we get in there is rather amazing, and tons of people have water softners here so they dont have to deal with this problem.

 

[Smart Red]

Speaking of appliances failing at inopportune times ( I wonder when it is a good time to fail? ) let me tell you my sad story...
You might want to sit down.

That situation is not all that unusual, thistlebloom. Often when a house is built, or newly purchased it means that all the appliances are purchased at the same time. Sooner or later some of them will fail and since they are all about the same age, they will fail like dominos falling -- in a close time period. My house was built nearly 40 years ago and I am holding my breath.

 

[thistlebloom]

Speaking of appliances failing at inopportune times ( I wonder when it is a good time to fail? ) let me tell you my sad story...
You might want to sit down.

That situation is not all that unusual, thistlebloom. Often when a house is built, or newly purchased it means that all the appliances are purchased at the same time. Sooner or later some of them will fail and since they are all about the same age, they will fail like dominos falling -- in a close time period. My house was built nearly 40 years ago and I am holding my breath.

Oh, I was rather expecting it. The house was built 11 years ago, folks lived here through one winter and moved back to Florida.
Most of the appliances came with it, except the washer and dryer which we brought with us.

A few weeks back we got a flyer in the mail from a realtor that had a chart of appliances and their typical lifespans, ours appear to be on borrowed time now. :/

 

[digitS']

Whoa boy!

The furnace guy said that it looks good to him and has some better (more lasting) features than newer models. The furnace was installed in 1994 the year before we bought the house. I notice that there is a sticker from a 1988 furnace install on a flue. Apparently, that one only lasted 6 years!

The oldest appliance we have is the kitchen range. It is 19 years old. I was willing to change the oven element the other day. Don't know how I would have dealt with it if it was gas.

Furnace & water heater are gas and I am just clueless! One thing is that if we only do some of these repair/replacement jobs every 5 or 10 years, it is really difficult to remember what the job amounted to! Personally, I try to forget. Safety first! Second? Call the repair guy.

Steve

 

[baymule]

Steve, glad you got your furnace working again. Our heater is 40+ years old and we heave a sigh of relief when heating season is over.

Ya'll with hard water, my parents had that same problem with white crusty scale in all the faucets and plugged up hot water heater. Then they heard of cow magnets. Yup, sounds crazy, but magnets placed on the water intake line cleared up all the hard water. In a few weeks, even the white scale build up disappeared on their faucets. They never had hard water problems again. I think it cost something like $300

I found this for ya'll.

http://www.watermagnets.com/

 

[MontyJ]

Some cows do have a magnetic personality. They sometimes stick to my grill

 

[journey11]

Man Steve, it was gale force winds and dang chilly here yesterday, that sucks your furnace crapped out!! Glad its working again...

Journey, we also have very mineral-laden water that solidifies in our hot water tank. After, oh, 6 years of living here we've finally established an "easier" routine to draining and cleaning it every 6 months. I would imagine it would be easy for people whose water tank is not in their kitchen, but thats where ours is. With a very hard to access drain. So we have flooded the whole kitchen on occassion. :/ we've also had a really hard time getting the heating elements unscrewed, so hubby improvised a giant leverage bar that fits over his regular socket wrench. Next we improvised a narrow diameter pipe on the end of our shop vac that fits inside the heating element holes, and lets us break up the large chunks and suck them out. We actually used old bike handlebars, and just duct tape them to the hose for the shop vac. BTW, i just dump the sediment in our compost pile...dont think it can hurt... Oh, and be aware that the sediment can actually build up so much that it holds your pressure relef valve open, and all your hot water will go draining away down it, with no chance of stopping it unless you turn the water off and change out the valve...thats happened to us twice in 6 years, we obviously have incredibly hard water. The worst part of the whole opration is that there is NO water shut off to our hot water tank...so hubby has to crawl down in our nasty horrible crawl space and turn off the water to the whole house, and he tells me its awful down there...i wouldnt know, never made it past looking down in the hole!!

Oh, DH is getting a big ol' I told you so from me all day long today. He's still down there messing with it, but at least I got him to till my garden first. LOL I am just pickin'...I know he's a busy man and it's hard to get to things sometimes, but a little maintenance would have saved him a lot of time, and maybe money...that part remains to be seen!

No hot water tonight and I've been out working in the yard all day, so I guess it's really not that funny!

He figured out to do something similar as you mention, NMG. Somewhere he got a thick, clear piece of hose and hooked it up to the shop vac. He's still vacuuming right now. He says it was at least a foot deep in there and one element has gone bad. I will never complain about my basement being creepy--I am glad to have it down there where any mess can go down the drain. My washer and dryer are down there too so when I get backlogged on laundry, no one will ever see it.

ETA: Checking out those water magnets, Bay. Thanks!