$2.16 success (2023 Update)

[Smitty Two]

Fan in the bath at house B stopped working. It's integral with and therefore on the same switch as the light. So I opened up the fixture and found a dead motor. This is an older NuTone unit, and g.f. found a replacement motor on the web for around $20 plus whatever tax/shipping might apply.

We could have been satisfied with that, but I unwrapped the thing to find a thermal fuse. Trip to "The Shack" (isn't that just the cutest darn nickmame?) and although the guy there had no idea what a thermal fuse was, I had the part number handy from their website. $1.99 plus tax, $2.16 total.

So I'm thinking, what would this repair have cost me if I'd hired an electrician? Probably a complete new unit at $100, plus $150 to install? How do people who can't do one little thing themselves survive? I'm nowhere close to being the DIYer that a lot of you are, but things like this come up all the time.

[Percival P. Cassidy]

At least *you* found what you needed there. Last week I went to my local RS ("You've got questions; we've got blank stares"), having looked on line and ascertained that they had the parts I wanted (sockets for integrated circuits). Unfortunately, I hadn't made a note of the numbers and I couldn't find them in the drawer where I expected to find them.

It took a while to persuade the highly educated professional staff to look them up on their computer, but they said they couldn't find any such item. I then walked around behind the guy and suggested that he should try spelling the words correctly: "integrated" rather than "inteRgrated" and "circuit" rather than "Scircuit." He then found the parts listed but announced that they had zero stock of either. When I pointed out that the Web site told me that they had the parts in stock, he replied, "That's not up to date."

Perce

[Limp Arbor]

I don't know how people do it either, I do most of my own work also because I have more time than money. About the only thing I can remeber paying for in the last 5 years is the bug guy. Best money I ever spent, everytime SWMBO talks about a spider, mouse or a bee I just say "call Greg".

[SteveB]

"Percival P. Cassidy" wrote

I saw a joke a long time ago. Counterman on one side of the counter, customer on the other. Customer is pointing. Counterman says, "Sir, it will do you no good pointing to the item. The computer says we are out."

Steve

[gfretwell]

A blown fuse is always a symptom, not a cause. My bet is the oilite bushings in the motor are dried out and gummed up. There are lots of schools of thought on fixing that (various magic elixirs to get the gum out and reoil the bushing) but few last as long as replacing the bushings. Ace hardware does have a fairly good selection of these things.

[Ralph Mowery]

No joke, but my dad said it really hapened to him. He worked at an appliance store repairing appkiances. Computers were just comming out. He and the store owner went to a parts place and they said the computer said they did not have any. Dad's boss went over and picked up 2 of the parts and said if you do not have them, I am not stealing them. The got busy and found the price to charge him for them.

I work at a very large place and we have the parts on the computer. That thing is wrong more times than it is right. It is suspose to automatically order things when the inventory gets so low depending on where the reorder point is set. It usually slipps a cog and will not order, or the parts place we order from does not sent it for some reason.

[hallerb]

thermal fuses can fatigue over time, eventually they poof gone open.

but check for free turning fan and free flowing exhaust which hopefully doesnt dead end in your attics insulation.....

[Ralph Mowery]

It might be beter to use a wire instead of the fuse and install an inline fuse holder so you will not have to pull the motor if it hapens again.

[clare]

Definitely NOT an option if you know anything about thermal fuses. They need to be where the heat is generated to do any good -and that is virtually IN the motor, or at least ON it. And they do not fit in fuse holders

[clare]

It's the GIGO factor - Garbage in, garbage out. When the wrong part number is entered for a sale, obviously the inventory count will be out. When the physical inventory is done and half the stuff is in the wrong bin, and the computer inventory is "corrected", of course the inventory will be out. It is a rare occurrence indeed when a computerized inventory problem is actually a COMPUTER problem.. That said, a computer is just about the stupidest thing on earth. It only knows the difference between a 1 and a 0 - but it processes those dicisions at an incredible rate - and the outcome is only as good as the programmer.

[notbob]

The "yer" wasn't a clue? How stupid are you?

nb

[Ralph Mowery]

I missed the THERMAL part. I was thinking of a room fan I repaired for someone that had a fuse in it that looked like a small resistor. It was not a thermal fuse, just a small one in the fan motor.

[notbob]

Not only optional, but wildly popular.

Ever read a book by Robert B Parker? He's the author of those Jesse Stone tv movies starring Tom Selleck. Read one of his books. They read like an old Dick and Jane reader.

Hi. Hey. OK? Sure. Great. You? Eh....

No kidding. It's like MTV videos. Apparently, can't keep a thought going for more that half a page. One book had eighty chapters. And the guy routinely makes the best seller list. Even worse, he's not the first best selling author to write like he flunked 4th grade english. A sad case of knowing what the market will bear, I guess.

nb

[Cindy Hamilton]

He writes the way people talk.

His readers (of whom I am one) are looking for light entertainment, not a struggle to parse a sentence.

Whose prose do you like?

Cindy Hamilton

[Higgs Boson]

WHICH "people"???!!!! Take care; some of us can actually speak in complete, grammatical sentences without half trying; same goes for writing. We love our language with a passion and suffer to see it shat upon by the current crop of yahoos. And it will only get worse.

A well-constructed sentence should not NEED to be "parsed"!!! It should be perfectly clear to anyone who doesn't get exhausted reading more than ten words.

[...]

HB

HB

[Percival P. Cassidy]

Many years back, as I was reading C. S. Lewis's _The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe_ to our young son, I stopped and counted after one sentence that had seemed particularly long: 88 words without a single punctuation mark but perfectly intelligible -- it didn't *need* any punctuation marks (other than the period at the end, of course).

But some "sentences" that people write these days are difficult to parse because they *need* punctuation and don't have it -- or have incorrect punctuation. I've lost count of the number of "sentences" I've seen where there is a comma between the subject and the rest of the sentence.

Perce

[clare]

No, Parker is just VERY good at putting to paper what the Jesse Stone character, as well as others in the book, would have spoken. You haven't met guys who speak almost EXACTLY that way?? Then you haven't been where Jesse has been.

Not everyone speaks like a Harvard lawyer or an Oxford scholar, or a Yale man..And lots of LEOs have a pretty succinct manner of speech.

[HeyBub]

Cindy Hamilton wrote:

Here's the opening sentence to "Off for the Sweet Hereafter":

"That was the summer we lost the bald Jeeter who was not even mostly Jeeter anymore but was probably mostly Throckmorton or anyway was probably considered mostly Throckmorton which was an appreciable step up from being considered mostly Jeeter since Jeeters hadn't ever been anything much while Throckmortons had in fact been something once previously before the money got gone and the prestige fell away leaving merely the bluster and the taint and the general Throckmorton aroma all of which taken together hardly made for a legacy worth getting stirred up over but any one of which taken singly still outstripped the entire bulk of advancements ever attempted and realized by Jeeters who had scratched around in the dirt but were not much accomplished at farming and who had speculated in herds of cattle but were not much accomplished at speculating either and who at last had turned their energies to the construction of a henhouse which commenced ramshackle and got worse but became nonetheless the chief Jeeter advancement along with the hens and the little speckled brown eggs and the localized ammonia cloud which was itself most probably the primary Jeeter success though no particular Jeeter or group of Jeeters together actually contributed to it or could prevent it either so when the bald Jeeter, with the fat Jeeter as her maid of honor, exchanged vows with Braxton Porter Throckmorton III in the sanctuary of the Methodist church on Saturday June the twelfth, 1942, and afterwards set up house in Neely proper she got away from the hens and the henhouse and out from under the ammonia cloud which was most likely beginning to expand in June 1942 since it set in to expanding most every June and swelled straight through August and on into September, especially this past August and especially this past September when it was bearing down on the town limits and posing some threat to the icehouse which was regular and ordinary for the season, particularly in August and particularly in September, so we were having what had come to be our usual summer straight up to the moment Mr. Derwood Bridger laid his ladder against the Throckmorton clapboard and climbed to the upper story where he pressed his nose to the bedroom windowscreen and shaded his eyes and called and hollered and shrieked at the bald Jeeter until he was satisfied that she was gone from us for good."

Frankly, I couldn't have said it better.

[Percival P. Cassidy]

Was the author hoarding punctuation marks in case he needed them later?

Perce

[Vic Smith]

I haven't read Parker, but if it works, it works. Hemingway wrote a story called "Hills Like White Elephants" that was mostly terse dialog, but imparted a lot with the terseness. Compelled me to read on. Didn't read the above paragraph. No desire to after the first line. Henry James is somebody I never read either, except what was required for a college class. Think that assignment was called "The Obfuscating Style of Henry James Is The Only Reason For This Lesson." Anyway, what somebody likes to read is up to them. Think that sums up the essence of the "practical" part of what I leaned as a lit major. Took a lot of arguing to get there.

--Vic