Well, howdy there internet peeps, and those awake for the middle of the night pee break
It's troy again... According to the apple watch, it's 6 F-degrees outside.
Been awake since about 2 am and can't sleep... so I came downstairs.
Dealing with humidifier issues. Wife gets nasty nosebleeds in dry air (hello Midwest winters!). So we run a whole-house Aprilaire humidifer o the furnace. That's almost enough.
Three small humidifiers can keep up. The small ultrasonic kind.
I had one die last year. OK, ordered one off of Amazon. Looked promising. Except it uses a small pump to bring water up to the mister unit in the upper part of the unit. The deep bottom reservoir holds two gallons. Worked well... until...
I went to clean it yesterday, and got water into the circuit board area. Not realizing that, I plugged it in... No blue smoke, but the board would not turn on. Hmmm...
I unplugged and let it dry for a few hours. Still no luck. Finally took the mister top apart. Four screws in the bottom of the upper unit. It wouldn't fully disassemble, but there was room blow a small hair dryer into the chamber... yep there was water inside the "secure area" - not much but enough.
Then I started looking at how the pump motor connects.... hmmm... about half-way down the power cord (remember, the pump sits in the bottom of the tank to shove water up a hose to the upper mister unit) the mid-cord two-pin power connection with a small o-ring seal, and a twist fit lock ring around that was a bit loose. Yep. Another operator error as I didn't reconnect it tightly enough. So in the process of drying it out with previously mentioned hair dryer and a good wipe with paper towel, I managed to remove the o-ring. Not realizing this, it disappeared into the void. Reassembly halted upon discovery of said missing o-ring (6mm, not a size the big box stores keep on hand).
I took apart the small waste bin that I'd been tossing paper towels, thinking it might have been stuck to said towel. Couldn't find it. Dumped the dust out of the bottom of bin. No luck. So I grabbed a broom and started sweeping the vinyle faux-wood planks of the basement floor. Five minutes later, I had a dusty but intact 6mm O-ring.
Reinstalled, and the pump still won't pump. Works if I pour water into the mister unit on top... that's good for about 15 minutes
I sense a trip to the big-box store this morning for a replacement... better make that two. The humidifer in wife's office died a week ago. Those ultrasonic ones only seem to go for about 3 years. Unless a dummy gets water on the circuit board.
I'll be purchasing the type I don't have to mess with pumps.
OK, time to try to sleep again.