washing machines

[WA1GFZ]

Guys,
Last night on "This Old House" they showed a whole house surge suppressor
at about $260 mounted on the breaker panel.

[wb1aij]

Here's an idea; replace all of the swtiches with heavy duty toggle switches mounted on a H.B. panel with some lights and a clock. Tell your kids it is an electronic game and when various lights illuminate they have to throw the toggle switch associated with that particular light. If they think it is a worthless game they will love it and play for hours. If they ever find out that it is actually performing a useful function they will drop it like a bad habit.

[WBear2GCR]

The Maytag's controlller board seemed to have died the first time due to a transient of some unknown origin on the power grid... it is in the City of smAlbany NY, and in that area there is mostly underground electric service, although not on evey block. So the source of the glitch is/was unknown. Could have been lightning.

The Wax motor did not die, afaik. I replaced the one on the door for good luck. They used them also for controlling the water inlet, etc... so why the others don't die, i dunno.

The controller transistor (no mosfets on the controller board) was fried as was its collector resistor... but that in turn fries the dedicated port on the microproc... no opto iso. Dummer and bummer.

She unplugs the washer when not in use now.

BUT who's to say that merely plugging it in, and out won't kill it??!!! 

Well I have a back up board that does EVERYTHING except FINISH THE CYCLE!!
I mean, how wierd is that??
It will just sit there on the final "idle out spin" rocking back and forth a bit forever...
Set urself a timer and be sure to get back to the machine eventually... well it is a back-up.

See, the "timer" on these units, isn't. It actually would run through the entire cycle in about 30 seconds, if you left the power on it all the time. But that's not how it works, it is powered up by the microprocessor, then it runs to the next function, where the (duh) microprocessor senses that it has started a new function and turns OFF the stupid "timer" motor!! BUT the timer doesn't really power anything big like it used to... the microprocessor turns the motors on and off and determines their speed... the "timer" was just to keep old time housewives happy!!

Well... fun fun fun...

           _-_-WBear2GCR

[k4kyv]

I just installed a GE electric heater with a 12 year guarantee. That was the best I could find. 41 years you must have soft water.

I replaced mine with a Whirlpool, also with a 12 year guarantee.  They had a cheaper model with only a 5 or 6 year guarantee, and a slightly more expensive model with a stainless steel tank and a lifetime guarantee.  But the stainless steel model had a larger tank capacity than we needed.  You should never use an oversize tank, since you are wasting energy to heat more water than you actually use, and the wasted money over a lifetime would easily pay for a replacement heater.

I don't think our water is particularly soft.  We  have galvanised steel pipes, and I have noticed when working on the plumbing that there is plenty of crud buildup inside the pipes.  We have another heater that runs off gas, and we have already had to replace it because it sprang a leak after about 8 years.

[WA1GFZ]

Wow Don, Stainless good find. I wish i could have grabbed that one as long as it is real stainless. There is a lot of foreign crap stainless floating around. We have a mil contract that states stainless hardware made in the USA only.