Then There's the Emergency Repair

Yesterday evening I was sitting on the couch in the living room, channel checking. All of a sudden, I noticed sweat dripping down my back. Not that that's unusual here, It is unusual in the living room as you're normally underneath or at least close by to a ceiling fan, which keeps a good amount of air circulating around you to prevent just such an occurrence.

I also noticed that it had become uncommonly hot. Wondering what had happened to cause all this meteorological change, I glanced around looking to see what could have caused the problem, and looking up, I observed the living room ceiling fan only running at about a quarter of the RPMs that it should have been. No wonder I was getting hot and developing a waterfall down my back.

Well, I knew right then what my morning project was going to be. It was a good thing I recently had ordered (and received) a goodly supply of ceiling fan capacitors. I was soon to find out if they were actually going to work.

I keep them handy down in  the sanctum sanctorum, the holy of holies, my workshop, in an old peanut butter jar. Just waiting for such an occasion as this.

New Ceiling Fan Capacitors

This will be the first time I've used one of these beauties. I hope they work. It's dang near impossible to find exactly the capacitors called for.

Here's the Cryptic Info

The ceiling fans call for a 5µF capacitor. The best I can find is 4.5µF. In case you're wondering the 'µF' means micro Farad, so named in honor of Michael Faraday.

Faraday, a Fellow of the Royal Society, was an English scientist whose main discoveries included those of electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism, and electrolysis. It was largely due to his efforts that electricity became practical for use in technology. Albert Einstein kept a picture of Faraday on his study wall.

It was shortly after breakfast this morning that I fetched the step ladder from the basement and climbed up to work on the fan. First thing was to remove the light package, a simple procedure involving removal of four screws.

Conveniently, the capacitor is one of the links between that and the main body of the fan motor. So it was easy to undo the wire nuts and remove the old capacitor. As young Nelson can attest, the old capacitor had reached the end of its lifespan and had failed in fairly dramatic fashion, blossoming several blisters on various parts of its body as it apparently overheated last evening.

Nelson Examining the Failed Capacitor

It was then a simple matter to hook up the new capacitor in its place, using the same wire nuts. You don't even have to worry about getting the wiring wrong with a two-wire capacitor. It makes no difference on the operation of the capacitor.

After that, I climbed down from the ladder and flipped the wall switch to turn the fan on. As you can see, it works perfectly once again. Then, it just becomes a matter of putting tools away and cleaning up.

A Successful Repair

That reminded me, I did have a couple other chores to do this morning before pool-time. First up, my workshop fan, which mounts on a wall of the shop, suddenly quit working some weeks ago. Since the ceiling fan repair went so speedily, I decided to tackle this. I dismantled the wall fan and wrote down the capacitor information for it. Hopefully, I can find a capacitor for it here in Corozal (always a crap-shoot).

Workshop Fan Awaiting Repair

My third morning project, I finally repaired our bamboo wind chime, which has been waiting about a year-and-a-half for repair (things have to age properly). I used stainless steel leader line and crimp fittings to redo the whole thing, getting rid of all the corded bits of the chime. It now is hanging back on the front porch.

Is It Warm Yet?

Here we are just entering May, and it's been anything except winter all winter long. Well, there were a couple of days where it got down to the lower sixties and possibly upper fifties, but that's been about it. Now, however, it's just bloody hot.

I do give the doggies a brisk workout when we do our walkies. It's about a four-mile loop we take. From our house, we pretty much follow the bay all the way into town to the Post Office and Market, then back up 6th Avenue to Vivi's Meat Pies - not that we stop there every day, but it's on our route, and back along the shore to home.

We walk briskly. A good day, even with stops, it takes us about an hour. I finally remembered to ask Dianna to take my photo to give you an idea of the amount of sweat generated each day. Now, it's not usually like this in April or May, but it will be like this till about November. A shower feels excellent afterwards, as does the pool in the afternoon.

Just Returned From Walkies - Thanks Dianna for Taking the Shot

The other day I mentioned I was installing the guy wire to help support one of the stanchions for the pool awning. Here's the turnbuckle and other stuff for that.

Turnbuckle After Installation

And here's the turnbuckle all set up and functioning. Finally. Not that we won't still have to think about taking the awning down in a strong blow, but it will give us some breathing room before we get to that point.

Turnbuckle Hooked Up and Working

Here's the other end of the affair and the post that will hold it all. I have to say, this project would have been done yesterday if I'd used a tape measure. But, I figured the ol' Mark I Eyeball (as we used to say in the Navy) was a pretty good judge of distance. I mean, what's three feet among friends?

Other End After Installation

Among friends, it may not be much. Between two posts, it's everything. In this case, it was too short. So, it had to wait till this morning for me to make a trip to Lano's to buy the appropriate length of cable.

And that allowed the project to come to a speedy and successful conclusion.

The Other End

The other mini-project that popped up just a couple of days ago was our ceiling fan in the living room. Sunday morning, we turned it on and all that happened was an extremely weak effort from the fan to turn the blades. Not even enough to provide any breeze whatsoever. And with this heat, our living room had become a sauna. Not just any sauna, but a well-functioning and hot sauna. Not ideal.

Being the optimist that I am, I figured a quick trip into town and I might be able to find a replacement capacitor for the fan. I knew from past experience, that finding an exact match for the capacitor (or an 'accumulator', if you happen to be of the British persuasion) is pretty much an impossibility. But, if you can find them within one point either way (I had a 4.5 µ F (micro Farad) capacitor, so 3.5 to 5.5 µ F would work). The concern is that if you go larger, you stand a good chance of damaging your circuitry with a larger current spike or lower, that the thing won't work at all.

Defective Ceiling Fan Capacitor

I could easily tell that the original capacitor was going to die because a blister had formed on the case. Sometimes they even melt. Anyway, I stopped first over at Marin Electric to see if they had anything that would work. The lady there hauled down a box full of capacitors, most too large, being 7 µ F or greater. Finally, she found a bag of three on the very bottom of the box. They were all 5.0 µ F - perfect for my purposes.

As soon as I got the last wire hooked up, Dianna flipped the wall switch and viola! We had a properly functioning fan once again and no more living room sauna.

We had a serendipitous event happen a few days ago. Carlos, who works for us one day a week, also bring plants for Dianna once in a while.

Well, this one, we didn't even suspect was coming. Carlos had bought it some time back over in Orange Walk (I think) for his wife. Since if was just in bulb form at the time, he kind of lost track of it for a while. He potted up another plant for Dianna, inadvertently potting up this thing too. A gorgeous little purple puffball about six inches in diameter when it finally popped above the ground. Dianna said she's not giving it back either.

Carlos was surprised and said he had wondered what he did with the plant. We did tell him, as it produces more bulbs he can have those to replace the lost one. We had a plant similar to that, sort of garlic lilly or something, but with a white flower. Not near as pretty as this little thing.

Puff Ball Surprise Flower

Well, that's it for now. I'm hot - even with a functioning ceiling fan, so, it's pool-time.