Easy fix

Have a tenant moving their last belongings out this weekend. The lawn had not been cut for over a week and I knew they were living in Des Moines. I figured I should mow that lawn before Dustin put a notice on the door and the city had it done with a bill to me for $250.00.

When I was behind the house I saw there was some paint pealing off. There was a new gallon of gray exterior paint in the basement when we bought the house several years ago. I have saved the paint and I used it to touch up the house this week. I do hope when it dries, it blends in. As I was finishing up, it looked spotted. best case i have the paint no longer missing patches on the back of the house and it was a free easy fix. Worst case it is the back of the house. 

I also had some paint come off the house I had painted with a brush this spring. I have no clue what was on the siding on the north side of this house but small flecks of paint have come off twice now. I got a bonding agent to put on the 4 boards that were flaking. After I had the bonding agent on, I thought I should go do something else while it dried properly. Then this strange urge came upon me and  I read the directions to see how long I had to let it dry. Normally I am not real good at reading the directions. Everything should just work the way I think it should. Well the directions said I had a maximum of 30 minutes to get it painted after the bonding agent was on. Good thing I didn't drive away and let it dry and cure for a couple of hours. Of course if I had and the paint didn't stick again, I would be telling everyone what a useless product that bonding agent was and it was not the easy fix it claimed to be..

Had several interesting repair jobs this week. Had a tenant call me on Tuesday that they had an electrical breaker going off about 6 times on Monday and several times Tuesday. I went over and took a look. Breaker was on and I didn't see an immediate reason that was popping the breaker. I called Rich and he headed my way. While he was on his way over I started tracing down what was on the breaker. Lets see, when they rented the house there was a window air conditioner and the fridge on that line. Oh you added another window air conditioner. OK the breaker is probably going to be able to carry that. Ah, last November you added a deep freeze. So now it is warming up and you turned on both air conditioners after adding the deep freeze. Oh, you added another deep freeze to the line in February. So we have a fridge, 2 freezers and 2 air conditioners on a 20 amp breaker.

Rich showed up just as I was unplugging a deep freeze and looking for another electrical outlet. He put on a tester and I had them kick in the a/c units and the fridge. Only 9 amps going through the breaker at start up. I had Rich replace the breaker just in case it was weak, but I think I had found the problem. Fixing it was easy, just plug appliances into different outlets.

Had a tenant tell me they had a ceiling fan that had a bad wobble to it. I took my step ladder over, (10 foot ceilings) and thought I would be pulling that fan down and resetting the screws that were holding it up. Once in a while you have a fan poorly installed and the screws pull loose. The fan starts to really shake as it turns.I was not looking forward to this job because the whole fan and light have to be disassembled to get at the screws holding it up. I am not that fond of working over my head and I usually drop a screw and then can not find it. It seems that every one of these things has a specialized set of screws that are not interchangeable with other ceiling fans.

 I climbed up on the ladder and pushed on the base of the fan just to see how loose it was. The base was solid as a rock. I turned on the fan and it was wobbling slightly. The fan has a short shaft down for an extension and it has a ball attached that fits into a flange. If any fan blade is out of balance it will wobble. I took a cloth and wiped the dust off the fan blades. tried it again and gave it some speed. Yep it turned smooth as can be. That is the kind of fix I like, just a dust cloth.

Next job up was a water leak. Floor of the bathroom and the laundry room were wet. They share a common wall. I was thinking it was probably the wax ring under the toilet. That would most likely mean cutting off the toilet bolts with a saws-all, disconnecting the water line, picking up the toilet, trying to move it without water left in the toilet splashing out, and working behind it in a small bathroom to put down a new wax ring. That was just not high on my list of things I wanted to do. OK, it might be really low on the list of things I want to do. I have people ask me all the time how they can become a landlord. They really need to come along and fix someone else's toilet sometime and then decide if they still want to rent out houses.

When I looked in the bathroom it was obvious the water was coming under the wall from the laundry room. Now we are talking. Shut the door on that toilet and go to the laundry room. I pulled the washer out away from the wall. I thought "it sure looks like this washer has a leak under it". Now I did not want to buy a new washing machine (we provide washer/dryers in 3 houses, the houses are small so we justify the rent by providing all appliances) I climbed behind the washer to check out the elbow of the drain pipe. I had to move a clear plastic tube out of the way to have free room to work. The tube came down out of the ceiling. I checked it and yea it looked dry as well. I wondered what in the world used to be attached to a clear tube dropping out of the ceiling in the laundry room.

I got down and took the drain elbow apart and it was not leaking. the washer drain hose was wet and it didn't look like it touched the floor so I took it off and filled it with water. No it wasn't leaking either. The only thing I could figure at this point was the washer itself had a leak. 

I went to the store where we can often buy used appliances. They had no used washers. Well, it seems they had 2 of them but they had not checked them out yet to see if they were fixable. They would get to it next week. For a fleeting second I thought about buying a new one for $350.00 more than a used one. The urge quickly passed.

I went to the next store where we can sometimes get used appliances. No used washer. Couldn't even get a new one till maybe June 5. Manufacturing plants were slowed down by covid. Turns out he did have 2 used ones in the back he was trying to make 1 good one out of the 2 by taking the good parts and combining in 1 unit. He would call me next week if it worked out.

I went to get our appliance cart to remove the old washer and bring it down to the land fill. Wanted to get it out of there so the tenant wouldn't be tempted to use it and the floors would be able to start to dry up.

I climbed behind the washer once again and started to turn the water supply off. That was when I knocked that clear tube that came off of the ceiling off the washer. It had been lying with the end turned up. Water ran out of the tube. I traced it back. It went to the bottom of the furnace. It was the drain for the water condensing off the Central Air conditioner. The house is built on a cement slab and they installed a pump on the side of the furnace at the bottom. The water is collected and pumped up to the ceiling and then it goes above the laundry room and is supposed to drain into the washer drain. Yea, at sometime during the winter when the A/C was not running the tube was pulled out of the drain. It was now dumping on the floor. I sure am glad I could not find a washer to buy when it was a free fix, just put the tube back in the drain.

Next I went to fix an electrical outlet that was not working. It just stopped one day according to the tenant. It does happen that an outlet wears to the point you can't get good connection when something is plugged into it and that is what I assumed I was dealing with. Seldom do you find a broken wire behind the outlet, but that is possible as well. I plugged my tester into the outlet and yea that sucker was dead. I was about to pull it out when the tenants son, Derek said "the switch over here turns the outlet on." What? At what point was anyone going to tell me that. It is much more likely that a switch wears out than that an outlet does. I left my tester in the outlet and went to get a different tester to check if current was going through the switch. I pulled off the plate and took the screws out of the switch. Put the tester on the wire coming in. Current coming in and current going through. Did I mention there were 2 switches beside each other? Well when I was removing the one switch, I turned the other one on when I was pulling out the first one. Derek said "there's a yellow light on in your tester over here in the outlet." What? Yea there was now current in the outlet. The tenant had somehow gotten confused which switch was which. She kept turning on the outside light when she wanted the outlet on. She kept saying "I am not crazy the other switch runs this outlet." Um Hum, sure it does. "Well it used to." Um Hum, sure it did. Once again some investigating for a free fix, just turn on the switch.

Jesus said "A new command I give you, love one another." There are lot of things going wrong in our country right now. There is an easy fix. Love one another. Take a walk in someone else's shoes. Have some empathy for those around you. Take Jesus's words seriously, Love one another. It is an easy fix to complex problems.