The Tales of a Hot Water Heater...

Once upon a time, there was a hot water heater in a milk house.  It was used hard for several years, and then it began to leak.  It's water was still pretty hot, but the floor in it's corner of the milk house was constantly wet.  This alerted the farmer to a problem, and a new hot water heater was ordered.

When the new water heater arrived, the old one was removed, stripped of it's heating elements and thermostats (because they were still in good working order and you never know if they might be needed sometime!) and delegated to the hot water heater graveyard...

The new one was installed into it's corner, and it began doing it's duty like a champ...

The hot water temperature in the milk house needs to be steadily between 170 - 180 degrees F to properly sanitize the milking equipment and pipeline.  The proper temperature was confirmed, and the new hot water was deemed to be in good working order...

But as we warn people who aren't familiar...be careful when you wash your hands!

First Snowfall of 2018...

It had to happen eventually...

Obviously by that comment,you can tell that I am not a fan of cold weather. I will admit though, that the first snowfall of the season is beautiful!

These first few pictures were taken mid morning...

...and this was mid afternoon...

Most of our trees seem to be late in dropping their leaves this year, so the snow is now scattered with beautiful yellow leaves!

We ended up with about six inches of snow by milking time...just enough that Jim cleared the driveway with the skid loader, as the milk truck is expected in the morning. The temperature is hovering just above freezing right now, so any precipitation is in the form of light rain at the moment. The snow may melt away, or the roads might be an icy mess in the morning.  We'll see what happens over night!

DIY When You Can...

One of the things that I enjoy is Do It Yourself (DIY) projects.  Or maybe I shouldn't say I enjoy them so much as that I get great satisfaction out of taking a problem and fixing it without spending a ton of money.  I attribute this in part to my parents, who with a family of girls on the farm, taught my sisters and I some practical skills that I wouldn't trade for anything!

So...when my dryer wouldn't start spinning until I took half of the wet load out, I knew it was time to do something.  Having dealt with something like this years ago, Jim and I assumed it was a worn out belt.  I got some professional advice first, and then I googled the part I needed and ordered a replacement on Amazon.  (with free shipping because I ordered something for my Dad at the same time that put me over the free shipping amount!)

Yesterday afternoon I did some more research on good old Google, and set out to replace the belt.  In case you've never seen inside your dryer, this is what it looks like with the top open.  That black band that circles the drum about 3/4 of the way to the back, is the belt that turns the drum.  Sure enough, a section several inches long was damaged...

I cut the old belt, which was about to tear anyway, and pulled it out of the dryer...

Before I did that however, I stood on my head (almost) and looked inside, underneath the drum, to see how the belt was routed around the idler sprocket, etc.  It wouldn't do any good to have a new belt without a plan!

After a bit of trial and error, the new belt was in place...

I replaced the front panel (after cleaning out a whole lot of lint!!) closed the top, plugged it back in and pushed it back into place against the wall...

I turned on the power, and...wait for it...it sounded awful!

What a let down!  I didn't know what I had done wrong, but it was not even close to operable.  It was milking time though, and I was tired.  There was no way I was going to tackle it again before bed.

This morning, I put a call into a local appliance store, and talked to someone in the appliance repair department.  He without hesitation, suggested that I had perhaps not seated the drum properly on the gliders inside the front panel.  Of course he was right, and in about 20 minutes the dryer was running quietly!

This is not the first time that this man has helped talk us through a problem with a dryer, washer or dishwasher, in order to avoid a service call.  They know that happy customers are repeat customers!  Thanks to Ron at Martin's Appliance, another project was successfully completed!  Total cost? $6.00.  Total time?  Give or take 1 hour.  I'd say that was well worth it!

Oh wait...I found a quarter and a dime buried in the lint, so the total cost was only $5.65!