Yesterday started sunny and warm. It started to cloud up mid-afternoon, but the weather predictions (which I’m still learning not to trust) did not predict any precipitation. I’m pushing to get my hot tub up and running, so I put the second coat of paint on the deck. It was a thing of beauty. I planned to give it two days to dry, then fill the tub.
Ten minutes later it started to rain. It only rained a total of 0.05”, but it was a pretty hard rain. By the time the deck dried out today, it looked like this:
It seems the second coat of paint dissolved the first coat, then the rain washed it all away. Rats.
I left the deck alone to dry today and turned my attention back to the water tank. Most of the fittings for the tank and pump are plastic, so I was very gentle tightening them and used flexible hose for the interconnects. As a result, there were a lot of leaks and I tightened things gingerly until the leaks seemed to stop. Here’s the hose from the tank into the garage:
Here’s the little diaphragm pump all connected up:
Good news! Everything works and I was able to do a load of laundry without having to drag a garden hose up into the garage. So we now have gone full-suburban with our laundry equipment and can just walk out to the garage and do laundry like any of the folks in town, in spite of being our own electric and water company. There’s still a slow drip at the tank, but I need a huge wrench to tighten the fitting. I have a lot of tools, but nothing that can do that job: it’s five or six inches between flats. I got it mostly tight with my giant pair of channel lock pliers, but even they aren’t big enough to finish the job.
Before the flush of success bloomed too brightly, I was working at my computer and the display started acting up. There’s no new hardware nor software, and there was no mechanical stress (I was just watching videos), so I’m pretty sure it is a failing display.
The problem waxes and wanes. Mostly the machine is usable, but sometimes you really cannot read anything on the screen. Fortunately, the external display is unaffected. (You didn’t think twoprops could write these coruscating columns with only a single display, did you?)
I checked the Framework troubleshooting and forum pages, but all the threads reporting symptoms similar to mine ended with “Please contact support.” So I did. They responded quickly, but with a list of questions I’d already answered and requests (take screen shots, try external display) that I’d already attempted and documented for them. Did they not get my email describing the condition? Oh! it was actually appended to the questionnaire. So I guess it was just a boilerplate response and they hadn’t bothered to look at my actual report.
The bad news is that my warranty expired about five months ago. The good news is that, because it’s a Framework, I’ll just be able to buy and pop in a display or mainboard myself and be back up and running quickly. I hope.
Having the laundry equipment working is great. The setbacks, well, that’s life.
—2p