Paradise ponders: dishwashers and pumps edition...

Paradise ponders: dishwashers and pumps edition...  Yesterday there was an important event for us – our dishwasher got fixed!  A week or so ago, it stopped working with an error code.  Naturally the manual doesn't say a thing about error codes, so we had to call the repairman (Jim at Darrell's Appliances).  At this point poor Jim has been out here so often that he's practically family. :)  We've had a string of older appliances (that we inherited when we bought this house) failing, generally at inopportune moments.  In this case, though, it was our beautiful Bosch dishwasher that we bought last September.  Jim quickly figured out that the error code meant we had a leak somewhere in the dishwasher.  After largely disassembling it, he was able to locate the leak: in the “diverter valve”, which controls which interior spray unit is spraying at any given moment.  He got it on order, and yesterday afternoon came back to actually perform the repair.  This entailed turning the dishwasher upside-down so he could get to the diverter valve, which is on the very bottom of the machine.  The photo at right shows him as he's clearing other parts out of the way before swapping the new diverter valve in.  When he was halfway through putting it all back together, I found a white plastic part on the floor – and neither of us could figure out where the heck that had come from.  No matter; the dishwasher worked fine once he got it all put back together.  Now we have a dishwasher again!  Yay!

Tomorrow morning Debbie and I are leaving on a three day trip to Kalispell to pick up a bunch of metal parts made for us by Lazy K Wrought Iron.  It's one day up there, a day to fool around in the area, and a day to come back.  Last time we did it in just two days, and that was a bit more hectic than we'd prefer.  We're both looking forward to this.

At the same time, the sale of my mom's old house in Virginia is closing on Friday, while we're on the road (figures, right?).  We're supposed to get documents this morning that have to be notarized and Fedexed back, but as I write this (at 11 am) we still have not received the documents.  Gulp!  It's been a long and harrowing process selling her house, and I'd sure hate it if some timing problem with Fedex screwed it up...

Yesterday the advance team from Glenn's Electric came out to scout out the irrigation pump situation.  Other than thinking the cedar shed was way too nice to house a pump, they found no problems.  They also brought the little pressure tank needed for the system (the grey vertical cylinder sitting on the shelf at right).  This morning I built that shelf for the pressure tank, to free up a bit of room in the shed.  There are two (quite large!) filters left to be installed, and they're the one thing in the shed that will need regular servicing (cleaning), so I'd like to have lots of room around them.

I suspect blogging will be intermittent to non-existent for the next few days...