Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, the pump on the swamp cooler stopped pumping water into the pads that make it work. Due to our hard water, replacing the pump every year or three is something we've become accustomed to doing. Yesterday afternoon, Lisa undertook the repairs.

( Pump Doesn't Pump )

Lisa opened up the swamp cooler and replaced the old pump with the new one. While the impeller now worked, no water went though the system. Further investigation led her to remove the top of the cooler so she could get at the screw that held a T-shaped distribution pipe. The pump sends the water up to the T-shaped pipe, which sends the water to the pads on the back and sides of the cooler. When she removed the pipe, she found that it was completely clogged. Fortunately, the build-up hadn't hardened, and she was able to get it out by forcing water the "wrong way," blowing air into the pipe, and poking at the clock with a probe.

There was also a lot of crud in the bottom of the cooler. Lisa and I carried the cooler outside and she washed all of the crud out. While we were doing this, we kept hearing a periodic thumping noise coming from the minivan, which was a few meters away. Investigating, we discovered that one of the power door lock switches was stuck in the "unlock" position, meaning that it would periodically try to unlock the doors. Poking at the switch got it unstuck, and I'm glad of that, because not only was it unlocking the doors, but it would have eventually run down the battery.

We carried the cooler back inside, Lisa reassembled everything, I brought in buckets of water to refill the tank, and she turned it on: Success! The cooler started pumping water as it should, and soon thereafter, we started getting cool air wafting through the living room.

I thanked Lisa for doing this. She's much more handy with these sorts of home repairs than I am. I can carry things, buy parts, and so forth, but knowing what to do is more up her alley.

Kayla was much more careful with the earrings today, and no further blood was shed. But she was right that today was probably the last time she can wear the all-black outfit, even if it flatters her, as the heat is on now that we are past Memorial Day.

Any day now, we're going to have to break out the swamp cooler and get it set up in the living room. At least for now, the nights are comfortable and we can get the warmer air out of the house. But given my work schedule, I'm no fan of Daylight Savings Time.

The good news is that its supposed to be cooler today, albeit still quite warm: 34°C (about 93° in old money), down from 38°C (100°F) yesterday.

The bad news is the the water pump on the swamp cooler died last night. Lisa says that hard-water buildup has jammed it, and it's not worth trying to fix. That means the machine is currently just a high-powered fan because it won't pump water into the pads that lead to evaporative cooling.

The less-bad news is that replacement pumps aren't too expensive, and according to Lisa, the worst part of replacing the pump is getting the screws that hold it in place to release due to the hard-water build-up.

The pump died last night too late for us to go over to Big R Ranch & Home and buy a new motor, but we will go and do it after work today. With any luck, we'll be back in business by tonight.

I have a feeling it make take much of this summer to get Westercon behind us, by which time we'll be in the run-up to Worldcon, In any event, today's jobs included some mundane tasks, starting with refueling the Astro. To my astonishment, I paid more to fuel up in Fernley than I did in Tonopah, but that's because Rebel Oil's price is so good. I feel bad about forgetting to send an item about the "where the locals refuel" secret to the Tonopah Telegraph.

After refueling, I went by Walgreens to pick up an new bottle of sunscreen, as I'd used up my supply during the Tonopah trip, and got a few other items to get my travel kit moving in the right direction for Chicago.

Later in the day, Lisa and I went to Lowe's to get new pads for the swamp cooler. We would have put the cooler back into service before Westercon, but we were too busy. Now it's getting increasingly urgent as the daytime highs are in the mid to high 30s C.

We cut the pads down to size, removed the old pads, and Lisa vacuumed out the crud from inside the cooler. We rolled it inside the house, and I started to refill it. Except that both Lisa and I thought the other one had put the drain plug back into the cooler. When we put it away for the winter, we left the plug out to make sure water didn't pool in the bottom of it, but neither of us checked to see if the plug was back in place before I poured water into it. The better part of ten liters of water went into the carpet before I could get the thing rolled back outside to drain the rest away.

Lisa got out the Shop-Vac and vacuumed as much water as she could from the carpet. We have a fan pointed at the damp area, and we figure it should be good to go tomorrow.

Meanwhile, it's time for me to try and get back on my normal work day sleep schedule after three weeks of Westercon.

This afternoon when I logged off of Day Jobbe, Lisa was ready to try to replace the fan motor on the travel trailer's air conditioner. I will start with a spoiler: It works! But getting there wasn't easy.

( The Dirty Business )

With the unit cleaned out, Lisa tried to remove the old motor. This was much more difficult than expected. The motor sits between the radiator fan (shown in one of the photos above) and a "squirrel cage" fan on the condenser side. To remove the motor, you have to disconnect a small screw that secures the squirrel-cage fan to the motor shaft. Except she couldn't get at the screw. It's inside a sub-assembly that defied her attempts to access it, and scraped up her hands for her efforts.

Normally, I'm not a fan of instructional videos, but in this case I'm glad that I was able to find this video about replacing the motor on a similar unit, which gave us the hint needed to get at that blasted screw. Even then it's something that makes one nervous, because you're twisting the metal pipes that hold the AC coolant, and if they break, it's game over.

Eventually, Lisa was able to work the holding screw off the squirrel-cage fan, remove the old motor, and fit the new one into place and re-attach the holding screw. After that, she very carefully moved the condenser unit back into place and secured it. Then came the second-most difficult part: the wiring.

( Getting Wired )

With the motor back in place, the fans secured, and the wiring done, it was time to try the acid test. Lisa came down from the roof, plugged the power back in (everything was unplugged while she was working on it, of course), and turned on the switch. The fan immediately sprang to life! Then she cut in the condenser and waited a few minutes. Cold air!

We're not completely finished, but after putting away all of the tools and doing initial tidying up, Lisa was completely beat, and I don't blame her. All I did was sit in the shade and fetch tools when needed. (Lisa was in the shade as well, from the carport shelter. Also, it was cooler today, with the air temperature only 27°C in the shade rather than ten degrees hotter like it was last week.)

The swamp cooler will stay in place until at least tomorrow. I suggested that Lisa run the tank town all the way. (Swamp cooler pump motors are designed to run dry without harm.) That way it will be easier to take down, as the cooler is very light without any water in it.

I plan to see if we can have the existing motor rebuilt, as we assume it's either the bearings or the windings, and it would be good to have a working spare should this one give out. It's hard to complain too much about how long this one has lasted: 25 years.

Should everything work as planned, we'll start the rest of the clean-up and tear-down, and box up the swamp cooler and clear the "ziggurat" of pallets in the carport tomorrow or over the weekend. I'm really glad this worked, and that we were able to work around the problems until the part arrived and Lisa could make the repairs.

The heat has arrived. Today's projected high is 34°C and it will stay in the high 30s (close to 100°F in old money) throughout the week, with humidity between 10 and 50%, mostly on the lower side of that range. Therefore, it was time to put the refurbished swamp cooler to the test.

( Just Add Water )

With pan full and the cover replaced, I turned the pump on. The way this kind of cooler works is that you should run the pump for a while to pump water up to the top where it percolates through the blue pads. The pump made funny noises initially, but once it stopped sucking air, everything was fine. Once the pads were well saturated, I turned on the fan. Success! Lots of cool air, evaporating in the low humidity and providing immediate relief from the heat.

We have to keep a couple of windows open in order for this to work properly. Otherwise, you get too much humidity and not enough evaporation. Also, once the outside air temperatures get above body temperature (37°C), I find that the cooling effect tends to trail off. It's not perfect, but it's also a lot less expensive than a big home AC system would be, as in one fewer zero in the cost.