August 11-12, 2020 - Waxing Homer and Fridge Drain Replacement

Yesterday I started early in the morning waxing the driver side of Homer while it was shady. I use a foam applicator on my Porter-Cable Polisher to apply the wax. I then buff it off by hand. I finished about a third of the side when my form applicator exploded. Here is a picture.

A new foam applicator like this one is about $19.00. I figured no one in town would have one and I was correct. I got online and ordered a pack of five foam pads for $15.00. These pads Velcro to a plate I have that is screwed into the polisher. Thanks to Amazon the new ones will arrive today so the waxing project has been delayed because of that plus it is raining a little this morning.

While I was waxing yesterday I heard a noise and looked over and saw a major portion of a dead tree on the Conservation property fell down onto our brick pile about fifty feet away from me. Here is a picture. 

 

I am glad that didn't happen while I was mowing there the other day. I have another project now to cut it up and get it out of the way. Half of it is on my neighbor's side so I won't mess with that.

A while back I noticed that the drain tube for the refrigerator was brittle and breaking off. I assumed it was still good at the top where it came out of the refrigerator. Without the drain tube when the refrigerator defrosts water would just run down all over the electrical wires.  Not good. I cut the tubing to a non-brittle spot and used a connector to add a piece of tubing for it to drain properly.  Here is a picture of that repair with an arrow.

The repair worked but unfortunately I soon learned that the tubing was broken up higher where it connected to the refrigerator. This meant the fridge had to be pulled out to replace the tubing. In disconnecting everything to move the fridge out I noticed that the 120 volt ac plug was in a bind behind a metal guard. Here is what it looked like. The red arrow shows how the plug was behind the metal housing. It worked but I didn't like it. The green arrow shows how the outlet mounting plate was connected to the wall. 

There were two other holes in the plate to the right. By using one of those holes to mount the plate I could get the plug out from behind the metal housing.  Here is a picture of the plate remounted in a different hole and the plug clear.

I couldn't move the refrigerator out and work on it by myself so I got John to help me. In most cases the tube from the inside drain sticks out through the insulation so it is a simple matter of pulling the refrigerator out about half way to be able to remove the spring clip then put on the new tubing and spring clip. I wasn't so lucky. On this refrigerator the connection to the drain was actually inside the insulation. Here is a picture of the tubing broken off inside the insulation. You can see how far inside the smaller inside drain was. 

I used a needle nose pliers to get the old tubing off. The only way to put the new tubing on was to pull the drain out inside the refrigerator, feed the new tubing through the insulation from the back, and connect it to the inside drain before pushing it all back in place. The new tubing was a little larger in diameter than the old one. It would not stay on with the spring clip so we used a wire tie to fasten it on before pushing it back through the insulation. We then fed the tubing down through the refrigerator coils and moved the refrigerator back into place. Here is a picture of the new tubing before putting the access cover back on. We water checked it to make sure water came out the end and not from above. Mission accomplished.

Here is a picture of the finished project with the access door back on and drain tube sticking out for drainage. 

It was a little more involved than I expected but still only took and hour because I had everything disconnected before we started.  Good for another 15 years.