The plumbing issues are on me. I'd been flushing my coffee grounds through the kitchen sink disposer, with lots of hot water, for 5 years now, and it caught up with me.
As in a major stoppage of the kitchen sink. Tried a packet of "Green Gobbler", which works great on bathroom drains, and it cleared up for day. Time to call the professionals in.
Long story short- They disassembled and cleaned all the traps under the sink, and used a 50' Rigid powered snake to knock the stuff apart and get through ALL the kitchen drain pipes, and then Hydro-Jetted the sink drain plumbing all the way to the main line leading out of the house. As they were running the Hydro-Jet, I had all three bathroom showers running full-bore, and would flush the toilets in rotation, to get the maximum water flow possible.
The sink drains like crazy now, and if there's more than an inch or two of water in it, it gets a nice little tornado going down the drain.
Total damages were six hundred bucks and change, but they were here four hours, and replaced most of the plastic piping under the sink. Some was starting to crack, and most of it was added-on without much thought, so when they re-piped it, they straightened out the flow paths for best operation.
And I will NEVER, EVER, EVER flush coffee grounds down the sink again! I broke it, I own it, I fix it, or pay the man.
The snag on the SX-980 showed up while doing the FM tuner alignment. There's a small ceramic trimmer capacitor used to set the upper frequency of the Local Oscillator, and it has a "dead spot" in it's adjustment range. This is a very well known problem with this type of variable capacitor, and it plagued certain Kenwood and Icom ham radio units. The end result is it needs replacing, and I ordered the parts. Once I set it slightly lower (makes the dial frequency read low at the high-end) I was able to complete the alignment of the Multiplex section. I'll go through the entire alignment again, both to get things properly adjusted with the new part, and to familiarize myself with the alignment procedure.
The little critter lives inside the shielded area in the leftmost compartment. It looks roughly teardrop shaped. The coil to it's right sets the Local Oscillator lower frequency.
Now I have to dig out the fragile wood veneer case, glue it back together, refinish it, and this should look great in the rack.
For whatever reason my apartment has a section of plastic pipe with a restriction between the disposal and the drain. Why baffles me but twice a year I uncouple the pipes and clean out the baffle. The next time I will go to Lowes and buy a piece of straight pipe and end the problem.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside I shop at Lowes and not Home Depot. Lowes has their restrooms in the front of the store, easily accessible. Home Depot in the back and you nearly need a map to find them. Yeah, an old fart problem.
Don't think I've ever seen that, but then I've only replaced two.
DeleteI do the same thing at a new store - Find the restrooms first!
After 10 years in our AZ house we had to hire a plumber to install a new stainless kitchen faucet. While installing the faucet, he noticed a crack in the disposer that was leaking slightly. He installed a new one which probably saved us from a disaster when the old one would have failed catastrophically. He did a great job for us.
ReplyDeleteNow "Pete" is retired which is good for him, but sad for us since he is a good Christian and a fellow conservative.
When we lived in Long Beach, the guy across street was a plumber, and a very dear family friend. He got us out of jams many times, and usually didn't want to be paid, except for parts.
DeleteNicely done on all counts. And I guess I'd better change what I'm doing with the coffee grounds... sigh
ReplyDelete**I Thought** that if I used enough water they'd flush out no problem considering how far above street level the house is. Nope. The water in the French press goes though a big strainer now when I empty the pot. Seeing how many grounds I produce in one day, I'm surprised it didn't plug sooner!
DeleteThankfully my coffee grounds have always gone either into the garden or the trash. I still have to remind my wife net to put certain things down the disposal such as celery.
ReplyDeleteWhen I last replaced my disposal, I got a very powerful one with a lifetime guarantee. It replaced a GE that was about a year old that failed. One of the two blades came loose.
We also have a dishwasher on the same line, so all the food and greases that gets washed off the plates goes down the line. Food Grease + Coffee Grounds = Concrete. The InSinkErator I bought was the biggest one that would fit under the sink. It works great, but be careful what you run through them!
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