Frozen water pipes

[Pat]

Bird, Glad you got 'er done. Yo hit a raw nerve with that story... One of my all time pet peeves is stuff you can't get parts for. Stuff built so it can't be fixed. Several decades ago there was a big shift i philosophy as regards maintainability n a lot of things. Just a few decades ago that wave had not engulfed the British Iles (yet.)

I found a lot of British built stuff was designed to be worked on and had parts available. In more than a few cases it was a good news/bad news story as in the good news is it could be worked on and the bad news was that it needed to be worked on. T

Take for example something simple like a hand held portable bildge pump. US made... throw away, Brit made servicable with parts available. Look at small outboard motors.The British Seagull can be rebuilt with a pair of pliers and ALL the parts are available for decades after manufacture. Not often the case for American brands. Of course the Seagul is a primitive smoking beast but north sea fishermen in small boats staked their livlihood and lives on them for decades.

I too have rebuilt OLD faucets, predating ceramic cartridges (a great technology.) I found Chicago brand parts for units over 30 years old with ease.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Bird]

Pat, I sometimes wonder how the manufacturers decide whether to sell small parts vs. only a complete assembly. And that decision doesn't always apply across their entire product line. I've replaced the water pumps in at least 3 dishwashers in years past, but then about 5 years ago, we had a GE that sprung a leak and I learned that you could not buy a new pump without buying the entire pump/motor assembly and it was expensive enough that I decided to just replace it with a new Maytag. When I was repairing air tools, I could get nearly any small part for all the major brands, right down to individual tiny ball bearings, springs, and o-rings, but for one particular model of Ingersoll-Rand impact wrench, I could only get a complete valve assembly even though one tiny part was all that ever failed. And the same was true of a guard assembly for one particular model of Sioux angle grinder. [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img]

[Pat]

Bird, This is often the result of cost accountant/computer profitabililty studies where some inexperienced person tries to figure out how to maximize profit without understanding the natuer of the buisness they are in. I have seen stores enter a "death spiral" with bad feedback on profitability.

If you don't sell enough of a certain widget it is removed from stock. Sometimes traffic to your store is because of a repeat customer's expectation of finding certain items that he may find elsewhere but enjoys being able to get many items from your broad stock. Over time he stops coming because yoi have so many holes in your stock. Now you don't sell some other widgets because he and others like him go elsewhere. So you remove those widgets from your stock etc etc. ad naseum. You are trying to stock ONLY what sells well but find even good selling items dropping in volume because if a customer can only get certain GOOD SELLERS he may just shop elsewhere and the death spiral continues as the semi-computer savvy "profitability planner" steers the store down the tubes.

Parts for tools aren't produced for the benefit of the repair guy or the customer but for profit. It is a fine line they try to walk. Totally throw away tools may not be attractive to some user's operations and repairability is a strong decision factor in buying tools. So the ILLUSION of repairability is a requirement whether or not true repairability is feasible or cost effective.

When nearlly new my Dodge/Cumins 1ton developed a bad waste gate control aneroid element which disabled the turbo. It was not a separately available Dodge part and the whole turbo was replaced after a wait for it to be air freighted in because it was not a normally stocked item. Incredibly NOT clever. It woiuld have been a $2 part easily R&R with low labor skill in 1/4 hr.

I had a frige with, dare I say it?, an icemaker, the single most repair prone iten in the house. It had a little plastic locking pawl in its mechanical mechanism that failed every couple years. The repair kit contained all the injection molded plastic parts in the whole assy. Worth $0.25 (for the plastic) but cost $12-$20 escalating up over time as they knew they found a "WINNER." I only needed the one little piece but had to buy the WHOLE THING. Had I not sold the unit with the house I was going to take out the Unimat mini-lathe and make an aluminum replacement. Then if the mating parts wore out rubbing against the aluminum I had several of those parts, unused from the master kits I had bought to get the one little pawl.

Prior to selling the house as one of those little stratigies... I bought an insuance policy to cover all the appliances and home systems. Then the ice maker failed and the warranty folks refused to fix it because they had a disclaimer paragraph that excluded ICE DISPENSERS. I pointed out that I didn't have an ice dispenser, just an ice maker and that you had to open a little door in the freezer door and manually retrieve ice. Boy oh boy were they BURNED UP over that. They had to make at least three trips as they shotgunned it so I ended up with all new stuff.

For the uninitiated (not Bird)... Shotgunning is where when you don't know what is wrong and can't figure it out you just start a wholesale replacement of parts till it works. Mindless, but cost effective if parts don't cost a lot more than a parts changer guy. Parts changer guys do not deserve being called by the lofty title TECHNICIAN.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[cwarrix]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
For the uninitiated (not Bird)... Shotgunning is where when you don't know what is wrong and can't figure it out you just start a wholesale replacement of parts till it works. Mindless, but cost effective if parts don't cost a lot more than a parts changer guy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thats funny Pat, reminds me of when I was in Jr High, I worked part time at a TV repair shop. Yep, back before TV's were disposable. These were tube type TV's and being only slightly trained at the age of 14 or so, we practiced the "shotgun approach" at trobleshooting quite often. Try this tube, nope, try this tube, nope, clean the connections on the tuner, bingo. No idea why it worked at the time, just knew how to perform certain functions over and over until success, or hand it over to a real technician [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

It's seems like you see a lot of this in today's world. Went through this when I had my old pontoon boat in for some repairs. They replaced three different coils before they were able to get a spark. Were all three bad? I guess it's possible, but I doubt it. I think they just started with the easiest one (probably the most expensive) and used the shotgun approach from there. Also noticed there were two different guys that worked on it. I wonder if the first guy just threw parts at it (at my expense) until he gave up, then the second guy (trained tech) came along and replaced the ignition fuse, I'll never know.

All of those situations are irritating to say the least, but what really is scary is when you see this method used in health care. But instead of throwing a bunch of parts at a machine, they throw a bunch of different doctors (who don't seem to talk to each other) who in turn throw a bunch of pills at the patient! We have had a lot of exposure to the medical "system" this year with my mom. Not a pretty sight!

Sorry, took us WAY off topic there for a minute, not sure what this has to do with frozen water pipes [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] .... don't get me started on the medical system / insurance !! [img]/forums/images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]

[Pat]

Chuck, I remember when folks would pull all the tubes out of their set and take them to the grocery store where there were tube testers adjusted to motivate you to buy tubes which they conveniently sold at the grocery store.

It is OK to get a little off your chest. Please know that I feel your pain, literally! I am in the middle of trying to understand my mom's health insurance and trying to integrate her care between her Medicare, Medicare supplemental insurance and long term care insurance. We have had wildly varying dianoses/reports from different doctors. One said she was losing weight because of alergies and another said she needed a pace maker. She doesn't need a pacemaker and only had a bad reaction to an anesthetic during an operation on a worn out shoulder. The truth is metastatic lung cancer and tomorrow is the last of 9 weeks of 5 day a week treatments.

I guess the first doctor was right. It is some sort of an allergy sort of, she is allergic to cancer. //RANT MODE=OFF//

Her pipes have never frozen. The only interruption to her water supply from my well was a near miss with lightning vaporizing cartridge type fuses, frozen pressure switch in well house (more heater tape and no repeat) Of course she is smart enough to open the doors to her lower cabinets when it is single digit temps. That and the insulation is on the right side of the pipes! Funny thing, it was the same insulation company.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Bird]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
Please know that I feel your pain, literally!

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And you two are not the only ones! I wouldn't have believed the things I've seen with incompetent doctors the last 7 years if I hadn't been personally involved, so I better not get started on that.

As for the TV tube testers, I've used them at the 7-11 store and fixed my own TV a time or two in years long ago. And I may be repeating myself with this story (another sign of old age), but in 1969 when I was a detective sergeant working burglaries and thefts, a lady called to tell me she thought a neighbor might be a burglar because she frequently saw him hauling lots of TVs in his old van. It turned out that the guy ran an ad for "in home" TV repair in the TV Guide section of the Sunday newspaper; no address; just a phone number. He had a cheap tube tester in the van and a supply of tubes, would go to a customer's house, test the tubes, and if that wasn't the problem, tell the customer it would have to go into the shop, he'd take it to a TV repair shop, get it fixed, pick it up, and return it to the customer, after adding a little markup and service call charges. He knew no more than I do about repairing TVs, but was making a living at it, and there was nothing illegal about it.

[cwarrix]

The story about the guy fixing TVs out of his van is pretty funny [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img] We used to have a nosy neighbor like that when I was a teenager. My house was a popular hangout and she used to watch us all the time from her kitchen window. Even called the police on us a couple of times for stupid little things.

BTW - just for fun, I did a search on ebay for "tube tester"... amazing, over 200 hits!

[CJDave]

[img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] I watched in amazement as a practitioner of the domestic water well repair and service business successfully applied a variant of the "shotgun" strategy to his well pump business. "Ernie" knew that the life expectancy of submersible water well pumps in his area was around six years, give or take a gurgle. When a customer called in and said they were out of water, Ernie automatically took a new pump with him on the service call. Of course many times the problem was on top of the ground; like a stuck pressure switch, or a blown fuse. If, however, the problem was in the pump or motor, Ernie didn't hesitate; didn't autopsy the varmit; didn't lay it out on the ground and call the customer at work and tell him how it COULD POSSIBLY be torn down and fixed; Ernie simply ran a new one into the well; laid the rig over, and beat feet back to his shop for a relaxing lunch.......problem solved with a MINIMUM of "labor"....(BOO, HISS)...but a maximum of NEW equipment....(YAY, Yipeee)....! The customer was wayyy better off, since it reset the clock to zero. If you are going to spend the same dough, better to wind up with a new unit than paying for rig time and bench time. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] That was a good lesson in how to run a domestic water system business. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]

[Pat]

Dave, Ahh the benevolent dictator/paternalistic buisness model. It can work well.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[twstanley]

The problem a lot of service folks run into is that it just isn't cost effective to rip a pump ( furnace, what have you ) apart and diagnose it bit by bit at $whatever per hour they are charging the customer. Say they spend 2 hours on a pump, rebuilding it, new bearings, seals, impeller, brushes, switch, valve, etc....

If they are charging $50 - 100 an hour, the client may not save any money over just putting the new pump in anyhow.

I had a guy come out to look at our furnace last fall as it wouldn't start up. He wanted to start swapping parts until it worked but I didn't want to pay for his easter egg hunt. It turned out a neutral wire had gotten corroded at a connector due to a bad design ( condensation would go to the lowest point in the upper furnace area, that point was into the wiring harness connector, oops ).

I did a bit of diagnosing with a volt/ohmmeter and discovered the bad wire and fixed it. It took me a good bit of time but it was better than paying him for a brand new furnace.

Anyhow, I wandered off track somewhere in this so I'll stop now.

Haha.