Entropy

Relax in southern comfort on the east bank of the Mississippi. You're just around the corner from Beale Street and Sun Records. Watch the ducks, throw back a few and tell us what's on your mind.
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JR.
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Re: Entropy

Post by JR. »

OK new repair for my to-do list... I noticed recently that my relatively new (<2 YO) toilet was intermittently running for a few seconds every so often... I looked at the flapper valve and it looked OK, (removed it, cleaned it, and wiped off the valve seat too) but that is the likely suspect.

I didn't have any dye or food coloring so I put some blue-green mouthwash into the toilet tank and sure enough a couple hours later the water in the bowl picked up the same color tint. So flapper is definitely leaking.

I hope it's just the flapper valve and not the seat too...

The toilet is american standard but the flapper valve in it when new didn't look like american standard replacement flappers?

We'll see... It's always something.

JR.
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JR.
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Re: Entropy

Post by JR. »

The new flapper valve arrived and stopped the leak... :D

I still can't see a whole lot wrong with the old one. The hard plastic flapper valve uses a silicone rubber gasket to make the actual seal. They sell replacement silicone gaskets but not obviously for this model flapper valve, so I may need to shop around to find the right one before the next time. The replacement flapper says guaranteed for 10 years, but i call BS on that... the old one was only 2-3 years if that old.

This looks like a possible shavers/blades scenario but they don't give away the flapper assembly either...

JR
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mediatechnology
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Re: Entropy

Post by mediatechnology »

Chlorine does strange things.
Mine don't last more than a couple of years.
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JR.
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Re: Entropy

Post by JR. »

I guess that's the new normal... time to buy some cheap replacement silicone pads.

JR
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Re: Entropy

Post by JR. »

Well that was too easy to be true... less than a week and I noticed the new flapper leaking too.

Time to maybe look at the valve seat? Toilet is no more than a few years old (american standard).

JR

[edit] the new flapper already had some white film residue on it... I cleaned it off and took some fine sand paper to the valve seat. I didn't see any smoking (leaking) gun. but it has been quiet a couple hours.[/edit]

[edit2] now a week later the flapper is not leaking so all good... not sure what happened before [/edit2]
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JR.
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Re: Entropy

Post by JR. »

Well my rear channel amp fuse that cried wolf before, blew again last night.... And then blew again after I replaced it. Since it was after beer o'clock, I waited until today to dig deeper.

I pulled the transformer header and the fuse did not blow without the PCB attached but that did not exactly zero in on the fault..

I took it further apart, removed the PCB and cleaned some smutz off the bottom, and one connection that looked a little dicey, but no smoking gun found (yet)... Looking closer I found a loose solder ball wedged between two resistors, but that was unlikely to pop the fuse, so I kept looking. Over by the transformer header I noticed a bare wire at an odd angle, worse it was draped across two other bare wire jumpers in the PCB. Now we got something... I grabbed it with my tweezers and it was longer than I expected, 3/4" long and wedged in....

Glad it was something this obvious... but apparently not obvious to the QC inspector (Ray?). :evil:

We are back in business and the mystery fuse failure was actually doing it's job... the wire short was across the transformer secondary. :oops:

JR
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Re: Entropy

Post by emrr »

This is really dumb. Tired, I guess. Finished bench testing a 3 channel preamp restoration job, response and noise is looking good. Client gives the go ahead on a small mod to each channel, install one of three and can't get a reading. Try a bunch of things and eventually put it back as it was, to be sure. Still nothing. Start testing the test path to be sure something hasn't failed, loop test works fine. Test the other channels, nothing. Maybe some 80 year old wire connection has given up with my flipping over of the chassis, poke around in the larger picture for a bit. No, it's a two hour old wire connection: the correct input and output terminals......
Best,

Doug Williams
Electromagnetic Radiation Recorders
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JR.
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Re: Entropy

Post by JR. »

I like to joke that life is an ongoing IQ test where we get the lesson only after we take the test... That said I am afraid one neighbor did not appear to get the lesson first time he was tested and just failed again.

This week we had the town water supply shut down to repair a leak in the water main... My neighbor told me before how his hot water heater burned up years ago when all the water drained out and the element overheated. Well this week he lost another water heater.... :oops:

I tried to figure out what was unique about his house that caused this to happen since mine is fine.

I asked him if he left his water faucets open? :roll: He likely opened up his hot water faucet, allowing it to pull air, and water to drain backwards from the hot water tank into the cold water feed pipe. If he just shut his hot faucets he'd probably be fine. When I asked him this specifically he got too busy to talk with me. :oops:

Cold water lines will probably drain anyhow because toilet tank valves will automatically open and pull air, but hot water should stay in the tank, with hot faucets closed.

I told him what I think happened and hope he understands. I can understand the temptation to leave a faucet open so you can know when the water comes back on, maybe just open the cold water tap. Nah, just be patient.
=======
I spoke with him again and he said the first time he wasn't even home so that busts my open faucet theory... :roll:

JR
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mediatechnology
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Re: Entropy

Post by mediatechnology »

This is a test
Only a test
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Re: Entropy

Post by mediatechnology »

dbf entropy :lol:
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