The Evolution of My Hot Water System - Part 4

 If you've been following this activity, you know that I finished adding a recirculation pump to my water heater. Here is a chart of the activity on a typical desert day.

The normal day

The red spikes are the power reading of the system when the 5500 watt element goes off. The orange area is the solar heating pump running. The gray area is the recirculation pump running. The green line is the bottom of the tank temperature. The blue line is the top of the tank temperature. The two pumps actually use around 45 Watts, I multiplied them so they would appear in the chart; otherwise, they would have been too low to see because of that 5500 Watt draw of the helper element.

Let's discuss what all this stuff means. Starting off on the left notice the big difference between the top and bottom temperatures. That is because we used the hot water at the top for the dishwasher and such and pulled colder water into the bottom of the tank. Overnight, the top of the tank dropped a bit in temperature, setting off the helper element, which raised the temperature back to the setting of the thermostat. That happened four times during the evening. 

Then, the sun got high enough for the solar heating to kick in. The solar pump ran, increasing the temperature of bottom of the tank considerably as well as nice kick-up to the top temperature as the hot water rose in the tank. 

The helper element kicked on during the solar period once because the solar just hadn't transferred enough energy into the water and the top temperature needed a little boost. Once the solar had transferred enough energy into the bottom, there was not any further need for the helper element.

I fired the destrat pump up and watched as the water mixed. The bottom temperature rose immediately to match the top temperature and stayed there as long as the pump ran, then when I turned off the pump, it settled in a much smaller difference between the top and the bottom for the rest of the measurement period. I had a full tank of usable hot water for whatever purpose without having the high current helper element kick in at all for the rest of the day. Plenty of hot water without the power company sticking their hand in my wallet. 

Now, I could easily have shut down the water heater completely for the night and eliminated some of the high current spikes, but for the testing period, I wanted to track the mixing and how it helped rather than strictly limiting the power consumption. That will change with experience. Probably to a schedule that turns it off entirely from midnight to the bedside alarm to save even that little bit of power usage.

Also, notice the width of the spikes from the helper element. The larger-sized element made short work of keeping the top temperature stable. They turn on for less than 15 minutes and avoid the 15 minute measuring period the power company uses to track usage. So, if a spike did show up during the peak period from 4 PM to 7 PM on weekdays, it won't raise my demand charges. That's unlikely though since I turn the entire system off completely during peak periods. It's just my 'belt and suspenders' attitude toward power bills.

What did it do for cloudy days? Well, it works, but I can't show you a graph because they are so rare here that Home Assistant doesn't hold data that long. I had a couple of them over a month ago, when the solar panel didn't capture enough energy to actually do much. When that happened and the recirc pump kicked in, it caused the helper element to fire and warm the water all by itself. The larger element and the circulating water raised the temperature of the hot water to 130F in a short amount of time and removed the stratification. It did eventually separate into a cool bottom and a hot top, but there was plenty of hot water available to last well into the evening. If another cloudy day happens, I'll capture the chart and do another post showing how well that works. 

But, the weather will determine when I'll be able to discuss that. 

Plant Moisture Sensors and Actually Using Them.

I live in the desert and actually have a few plants that aren't cactus. I have Mesquite and Palo Verde trees as well as a very few Chollas and Creosotes. I strictly forbid Desert Broom and Staghorn Cholla from almost all of the area because they are a constant mess and I get tired of the Cholla thorns sticking me in the leg. Over time, I got a little jealous of the fruit trees some of my neighbors have and decided to get a couple of my own. I got a Lemon and Lime tree because, well, you know Margaritas. And a Texas Ebony because it is a great looking tree with dark green leaves. 

They immediately became a problem because they need to be watered more than the native trees, and I just can't seem to remember to do it when needed. That means stunted growth, burned leaves and no fruit. The Ebony did the best because it handles drought best, but the Lemon and Lime suffered. 

I extended my drip watering system to include the new trees, and that didn't work well either. The problem is the calcium in the water left deposits in the drip emitters and plugged them up over time. I was constantly fighting the battle of cleaning the emitters to clear the calcium and restore flow to the little emitters. I finally, after a few dozen tries, just resorted to using that 1/4 inch tubing with a simple valve in the line to reduce the flow so it didn't wash away the dirt and a short piece of tubing after it to stick by the tree. It was just too much trouble to check the emitters all the time.

That sort of worked except for a problem that they never talk about in articles or ads for drip system emitters, heat. See, these things are plastic and the size of the orifice determines the amount of water that is passed through to water the plant. Heat expands the plastic and reduces the size of the orifice, reducing the amount of water let through. No, the water doesn't cool off the plastic and restore flow; the water is hot too. I live in the desert, and the ground temperature regularly exceeds 140F when the water is most needed. 

I was fighting yet another battle against the desert elements, and I didn't have a solution at the time. 

Now, this is the point where I'm going to point out that this isn't a well controlled scientific experiment. This is a guy trying to solve a problem with heavily advertised commercial products. What I found, and what I did with it. Sure, I could have set up tables of data and run careful evaluations of the devices I discuss, but who has the time or patience for that? If I was getting paid for it, maybe, but this is for my own use at my own house to solve a problem. I'm looking for results, not reputation.

Enter the idea of a plant moisture sensor. These battery-powered things measure the moisture in the soil and transmit it to a hub somewhere that you can easily check. Being able to see if the watering system was adequate easily seemed like the perfect solution. I could put it on a Home Assistant dashboard and check it every time I turned on a light. I could set up alarms based on the moisture to tell me to attend to it; I could even completely automate the watering so that I didn't even have to think about it until an alarm happened. What could be better?

Well, maybe something that actually worked like they say it does....

First I got the kind of device that looks like a pastel mushroom:

This is a slightly newer model than mine.

These are battery-operated Zigbee devices that measure the moisture based on a trickle of current through the soil. The three prongs are actually conductors that are inserted into the soil and hook to a microprocessor that interprets the soil moisture and uses a Zigbee transmitter to get the data into Home Assistant. When they arrived, I stuck them in a glass of water and observed what they read at different depths of water. The data was confusing. 

When the probes were 1/4 covered with highly filtered water (reverse osmosis), I read about 25%; at half the probe, I read about 25%; the fully covered probe was the same as well. OK, that's because it isn't actually soil and pure water is not a good conductor. I tried a slurry of dirt and water and the reading actually followed better, the more probe submerged the higher the reading. So I just used dirt and added water to see what happened. The readings varied pretty nicely from dry, showing around 15% to soaking wet being around 75%. These things might actually work out.

I deployed them to different plants. The Lemon, Lime and Ebony trees as well as a Rubber Tree and a Sago palm that I had under shade in pots on my patio. The problems with the devices started about an hour after I put them in the dirt. The readings were erratic and varied a lot during the day. I'd see a 25% when the soil was soaking wet, and it actually went up as the water drained and dried. The devices would skip hours and hours without reporting at all. They lost contact with the network and had to be rejoined. 

Maybe a different device would work better. I got a few of these that are capacitive rather than resistive sensors.

These were smaller, and the fat blade on the bottom contacted the soil better, but they gave much the same results when I stuck them in potted plants on the patio and in the house. Erratic readings and long periods of no communication. 

There were things that made the sensor operate better. If I immediately watered the sensor after I put it in the soil so the material was in better contact with the sensor blade or rod, the readings followed more closely the actual condition of the soil. Both kinds seemed to have liked that a lot, and I thought that may be the secret, so for weeks I messed with them, trying to get the readings reliable. Net, the capacitive devices had some value, but the mushroom ones were pretty much useless. Both devices can take a long time between reports—I mean, as much as days, or in the case of the mushroom ones, a week or two. On the rare occasion when they were reporting, the capacitive ones actually helped. The mushroom ones just ate batteries and stayed silent most of the time.

My Lemon tree did not benefit from having one under it, and the Lime tree got a lot of its limbs eaten off by a rabbit, so I can't compare the two. The Ebony tree did OK, but it wasn't growing much. The potted plants did OK as well, but we actually felt the soil in them often enough to keep them watered.

So, the two devices that I tried were not the solution I thought they would be. There are other sensors, though. Was I willing to take on the expense of something like Sensoterra, which is true industrial-grade farming equipment with reams of research, or perhaps one of the EVO devices? Forums present personal experiences, and most of them are just opinions. The person that likes one kind is cancelled by the person that had bad results. Almost all of them blame the network they are hooked to for most of the problems. 

Folks, if you're using Zigbee and have a reasonable network, the network is not the problem. If you're using wifi, it might be, but just set your phone next to the sensor and look at the wifi strength; that simple test will tell you what the signal level is. My Zigbee network is really robust; I've been improving it for years. Communication isn't the problem unless the measuring device is way underpowered. And that may actually be the problem with the two types of devices I tried. In the quest for maximum battery life, the trigger to transmit data may be too limited, or the radio transmitter may be throttled. I don't know if any of that is true, but it fits the performance I saw. Look at this chart for the Lemon tree that has one of the resistive sensors that looks like a mushroom:

This device doesn't want to report at all. If I go out, push the button on the side of it; it will report, and it goes through just fine. Now for the same style device a little further from the nearest Zigbee router, the Ebony tree:

Even more annoying: in a few days or a week or so, the roles will be reversed. The Ebony tree will stop reporting, and the Lemon will look just fine. The poor little Lime tree that was attacked by a rabbit is weird, it will work for a day or two and then stop for a day and go again.

I have another of the mushroom devices in the shade, monitoring a Sago palm. Take a look at this one:

This plant is hand-watered with a hose in a large pot, and it actually seems to follow the times I watered it. However, the range is really small, going from a max of 29% to a low of 23%. The spike is probably a glitch of some kind in the measurement, so the real range is likely 23 - 28 percent. With results like that, it leaves the gardener (me) at a loss of how to handle watering the various plants.

The other style of moisture sensor is capacitive and behaves differently. Here is a month's worth of activity:

Exciting, isn't it? It just does my heart good to see that the plant stays flooded almost all the time with brief periods of slightly less flooding. When we walk by it and feel the soil, it's dry as a bone and gets immediately watered; don't you see the spikes where water was added?

Neither do I. 

I've tried shading them to help with the temperature extremes I have here with the ground often reaching 140F, but that didn't seem to have any impact. Battery type doesn't seem to matter either. These things just don't do the job. If I were to automate the watering, it would probably turn on during the rain. Moving them around in the soil seems to impact the operation, but it always reverts to erratic or just plain wrong in a short time. Does anyone join with me in the opinion that both kinds of sensors suck? 

What to do about it? I was floundering because devices change over time and manufacturers' changes constantly improve a project, but I didn't want to be the lab rat for their product development. That's their job! However, with some reservations, I decided to try Third Reality's latest offering for this kind of sensor, the "Smart Soil Moisture Sensor Gen2." The Gen 1 version got bad reviews due to short range, and there were other complaints as well, but this is Gen 2; this should be better, right?

I bought a three-pack of them and waited for arrival, and they came in the next day. 

Aside --- I may sound like an advertisement for Amazon, but I'm not that guy. However, they have half the products in the world on their site, and they ship it fast. Yes, there are some problems at times, but overall, the reduced shipping and reliability are amazing. Plus, their return policy and customer service make this kind of experimentation possible. 

Anyway, I grabbed one, a glass of water, a cup of coffee, and my laptop and started experimenting. Here's another chart:

The beginning line is right after joining it to my Zigbee network; it was immediately stuck in the glass of water and watched. It rose to around 80% immediately and stayed there. After watching it for a while, I pulled it out, dried it off with a towel, and emptied the water glass. With everything dry, I watched it again, and it held at 0%, so I joined the other two devices and went out to put them in the dirt. That's shown as the vertical rise up to just over 60%. Then I left them alone, went in the house, and watched them to see how they performed over a couple of days. Want to see another chart? Of course you do.

This horrible mess of complex intersecting lines that is almost impossible to read starts from the time I put them in the ground and spans days of activity and includes the ground temperature at the plants. Since my favorite right now is the Lime tree, let's just look at the charting for it:

The red line is temperature and the blue is moisture, and you can clearly see the peaks in moisture where the automatic watering happened. You can also see the slow absortion of the soil and the evaporation of the surface water along the moisture line. There are also a couple of odd changes where actual real honest-to-God rain happened. We're in the beginning of the first monsoon season that actually happened in this area in around a decade and a half, so this sensor got to actually respond to real rain. 

Frankly, I'm amazed! After a couple of years of trying to make the well-advertised and discussed sensors actually do the job they were supposed to, I had some actual readings that made sense. Every bump, rise, and fall in that chart corresponds to an actual event. The accuracy of the readings is questionable, but I don't care! What I see in that chart is the watering system working, the intense heat evaporating the surface water, and the lowest reading still being high enough to encourage plant growth. All three sensors worked the same way. I had a little trouble joining one of them to the network, but on the second try, it joined and stayed there. Notice also that, so far, none of them have dropped out. Of course, the proof is in actual day-to-day use, and that won't happen as quickly as this early report. 

They haven't been installed long enough to get a feel for battery life or survival in my climate, so I won't discuss something I don't have data for, but these things work. 

They actually work!

The Evolution of My Hot Water System - Part 3

If you missed why I'm this involved with a water heater, be sure to check out Part 1<link>

In my continuing drama of hot water, I've finally gotten to actually trying to recirculate the water inside the water heater. This is important because people want to understand why I chose to only recirculate the water in the heater itself instead of throughout the house. The biggest single reason is the cost of electricity, especially in my area with 'demand billing'. If you circulate the hot water throughout the house, it provides instant hot water at the sinks and is really nice. You would only wait a second or so to have hot water to brush your teeth, fill a pot, or jump into the shower. No more waiting forever while that low-flow faucet eventually allows water from the garage all the way into the back bathroom so you can step in without shivering. 

But (there's always a 'but'), you've also extended the capacity of your water heater by the size and length of your plumbing. That means more water to heat. Plus (there's usually a 'plus' as well), you've increased the heat loss even more. Those uninsulated pipes inside the wall radiate the heat you paid for in the water heater, and the cooler water coming back into the water heater trips those heating elements we discussed in the last posting. Up goes your power bill to match. 

It becomes obvious what that would do to my power bill pretty quickly. 

I've thought of a solution to the hot water wait time, though. I'll put a controlled valve at the far end of the hot water line, and when we need hot water in a hurry for a shower or something, just push a button, and the hot water will be allowed to flow full speed until it reaches the valve, and then it will shut off automatically. That way I would only have to wait a few seconds to get hot water at the sink. But (another one of those words), "You're wasting water," you say. Yes, it's dumping water somewhere instead of into my septic tank, and water is a precious commodity in the desert. So, the plan is to dump that cool-to-tepid water into my drip watering system to water the plants.

Total win-win!! I get hot water in a hurry without dumping the cool water into my septic system. It isn't wasted because it goes into my watering system for the plants in the yard, helping to grow lemons and limes for margaritas. This is a project for the future though, because it is too darn hot here to experiment with hot water. 

Now that it's clear why I want to circulate the water inside the water heater to increase the volume of actual hot water and avoid demand billing at the same time; let's discuss how I did it. First, I got one of these:

These pumps are designed to take the heat and run continuously. Look for the best price, but don't sacrifice quality. This thing will be the heart of the destratification system for years and years. There's a caveat to their operation though; the pump spindle has to be horizontal, so it shouldn't be used to move water horizontally. That fits my purposes just fine. I want to take the water from the bottom to the top so it will set off the helper heating element if needed. That also creates a small problem; taking cool water to the top makes cool water immediately available to the faucets inside the house. So, if you use the hot water a minute or so after starting the pump, you might get cold water instead. Interesting side effect for a system that is supposed to help with hot water. It's an easy problem to overcome, though; just don't do that.

All I needed to do was plumb the new pump in, rig up a way of controlling it, and put it into service to gain some experience with this new capability. I trotted off to home depot to grab some fittings and hook this thing in. That's how I learned about SharkBite fittings. 

Typical SharkBite Coupler

These things look like the perfect solution for me because I hate sweating fittings in a confined space. You're there with a torch that can burn a painful spot on a hand or arm in a tenth of a second and start a fire on wallboard if you don't pay close attention, and if you don't have months of experience doing it, leave a leak that you have to come back and fix AFTER you have already gotten everything wet testing it. I hate sweat fittings!! They ain't cheap though; I grabbed what I thought I needed except for one type that Home Depot didn't carry and paid a couple of hundred dollars for them and went to ACE Hardware for the one I needed. This time ACE Hardware didn't carry it either, so Amazon to the rescue ... again. Don't you just love overnight delivery? 

Three days later (so much for overnight delivery), I got the part, and it was time to do this. After I shut off the water and started cutting pipe to put the new fittings in, I discovered SharkBite fittings suck! Here's the first problem; I bought the fitting and the pipe at the same store, and the pipe wouldn't fit into the fitting. These fittings work by compressing a washer against the outside of the pipe when you shove the pipe in; what happens when you can't shove the pipe in? Here I had that expensive copper pipe and even more expensive fittings that didn't work together. I tried using emery cloth to reduce the size of the copper pipe so it would fit into the fitting, and that actually worked, but it was hard to shove the pipe in. I could do it, but it was a painful process. I actually hooked a couple of them up to see how they worked, plugged the open end, and turned the water on to see what happened. 

They held water with no leaks; however, I found another reason to hate SharkBite fittings; they have no mechanical strength. You can wiggle the pipe a small amount and even turn it in a complete circle. I wasn't too happy with the idea of putting in a rotating sprinkler hooked to my water heater, but what the heck could I do? I tried a sweat fitting to see how that went and wasn't at all comfortable standing on a ladder with the above-described torch in my hand trying to get the temperature right to flow that crappy lead free solder over flux that was melting and dripping resin. I was seriously thinking about calling a plumber to finish the job.

I had the water heater set up to work with a plugged line on it, so I turned the heater on and just left it while I thought about how to proceed. A VERY expensive solution came to mind: I could get or rent a ProPress tool. Those things, for copper pipe, cost a lot. The two major manufacturers, Ridgid and Milwaukee, have prices in the thousands of dollars for a basic tool and set of dies. That was just too much money; renting seemed a reasonable idea, so I started calling around. The rental seemed to be around U$50 a day, and I would need a couple of days to be sure I got it finished, but the tools were out, and I'd have to wait to get my turn. Screw that crap! I started looking on ebay and other places for other options. 

Net, I just bit the bullet and bought one of these:

It cost a little over U$600 which begs the question, why spend that much money when a plumber would probably charge less and do a better job? Well, a plumber doing a better job is a crapshoot. Over the years I've experienced both good and bad plumbers. A constant seems to be that they always make the job more complex than necessary; they also suggest things that I just don't want, like whole-house recirculation. All I needed was a motor mounted between the top and bottom of the water heater, not a Taj Ma House replumb. Plus, every plumber I've dealt with is gone in the next two years or so; those people seem to move around a lot. Another reason is that this isn't the only plumbing job I have in mind; there will be others, and did I mention I hate sweat fittings?

And there is the comforting knowledge that I have the independence to do any darn thing I want with the plumbing now and not have to worry about setting my house on fire with a torch next to a wall. My neighbors will love me when they have a plumbing project to do because I have no problem loaning out a tool to help someone. A man that likes DIY can never have enough tools. Here's what the fittings look like both crimped and not crimped:

They have both mechanical strength and seal nicely. This will do just fine. This is what a SharkBite fitting looks like when you have to remove it. 

I had to sand the pipe with emery cloth to get it to fit into the fitting at all, then the struggle to get it to fit deep enough, and then it wouldn't come apart at all when I tried to remove it. So, out came the grinder and a cutting disc. I chopped it to pieces to get the darn thing out. I learned that you can actually remove them with a crescent wrench set to the pipe size and hammer later. People can try them if they want, but I won't waste my money. The ones that I hadn't used already went back to Home Depot.

While all this went on, I kept thinking, "I really should replace the helper element because that is the original, and it may fail." So on one of my many trips to Home Depot, I picked up a new heating element.

Did you notice this element is 1000 watts higher than the one it replaced? That was not a mistake. My thinking is that the more power I pour into heating the water, the faster it will heat. That doesn't decrease the power used; physics prevents saving anything that way. Instead, it limits the time the element will be on. Demand billing is based on time and if I keep the usage below 15 minutes for high current devices like this, it won't show up on the bill. Careful reading of the rules is paramount to keeping my money out of the power company's hands. I'll discuss this more fully in the last part of this project (coming soon).

So, armed with a tool that worked, fittings that actually fit over the pipe, and enough daylight to finish the job, I installed the pump between the heater outlet and drain at the bottom. I tentatively turned the water on a little and let it build pressure, which took some time because the entire water heater was empty ... again. There were no leaks; I had crimped all the fittings, and nothing seemed to be missing, so I plugged in the motor and it actually worked!! I could feel the cooler water from the bottom moving to the top and watched the temperature rise in the heater.

I shut the motor off, grabbed my pile of pipe insulation, and insulated every pipe in sight except the motor itself. The water heater itself is already well insulated and didn't need any more. Then I wired the temperature sensors for the top and bottom right to the copper pipe as close to the tank as I could get them. Some heat-conducting grease and silicon tape to hold them in place did that job. I added a couple of 3rd Reality Zigbee outlets to measure power and give me remote control, and I was ready to put this in service and watch what happened.

The solar pump is on the left, the destrat pump is on the right.

The power leads go to a couple of power monitor control switches.

Did I do myself any good, or did I just waste a ton of time, a dozen trips to Home Depot and ACE Hardware, plus another trip to return the leftover fittings?

Results in the last installment for this project. 

The Evolution of My Hot Water System - Part 2

 In part 1 <Link> of this compendium, I described my experiments with creating hot water under power company demand billing and what some of the pitfalls were. In this part I want to discuss my technique of getting ENOUGH hot water on cloudy days. Sure, with the rainfall in the desert, this shouldn't be a problem; after all, the cold water is always over 80F during the summer. I guess I'm spoiled; I like a hot shower, not a lukewarm one. It's really pleasant to soak in a hot tub full of water with a book. Creature comforts are important.

We don't get many cloudy days, but there are enough to get annoying in the cooler weather when clouds take over the sky and solar just doesn't produce enough heat to give me enough hot water. What to do about that annoyance. After all, automating a house should make it more comfortable ... right??

Way back when I first started measuring the temperature of my water heater and recording it, I posted graphs and charts describing my findings. A couple of comments pointed out how my water heater was stratified, and I spent some time thinking about that and experimenting. Yes, the very fact that warm water rises and cold water sinks was causing much of my problem of not quite enough hot water. 

Let's take a look at what goes on inside a water heater, this is a typical electric hot water heater.

I grabbed this directly from a Sears site for illustration.

I'm sure they don't mind because it is free advertising for them.

Water comes in the top through a tube to the bottom, and when it is too cold, one or both of the heating elements turn on. This heats the water, physics works its wonders, and the hot water travels to the top. This, one would think, causes the water to mix and the temperature to equalize inside due to the motion, but it doesn't quite work that way. The top element actually reaches the set temperatue and shuts off, the bottom element eventually gets to its setting and shuts off also. That leaves around half a tank of hot water at the top and the cooler water at the bottom. 

Water is drawn from the top, so you get hot water at first, but as the water heater is drained, new cold water comes in through the input tube to the bottom, setting off the temperature sensor there and turning the bottom element on. That warm water rises and mixes some of the incoming cold with the hot water at the top. Your water heater is actually being cooled by new water and the circulation of the water inside the heater as it works. 

Then, on go the heating elements and up goes the electric bill. That shower after work and before the family notices how bad you stink from working outside all day combined with Peak Demand Billing just cost you an extra $40 on your electric bill. Those heating elements are usually 4500 watts each, and there are two of them for 9000 watts. If they run for an hour to heat up all that water, you just used 10kWh of power. If that happens during peak demand (like we have here), you WILL see that on your bill at the end of the month.

See why I put in a solar water hot-water heater? That left me somewhat less vulnerable to the chiseling, money-hungry bureaucrats at the power company. When I combined that with literally shutting off the heating element on the water heater during peak periods, I could pretty much thumb my nose at them because the bottom element is actually a radiator hooked to a solar panel on the roof that heats water and a pump circulates it in a closed loop that only transfers heat without stirring up the water inside the heater. Mine is sort of constructed like this:

This is called indirect solar water heating. The bottom heating element has been replaced with a radiator. A pump in the plumbing pushes antifreeze-treated water through the accumulator on my roof so the heating is held to a closed loop. The top element is still there and is called a helper element. It is a combination of both mains-powered electrical heating and indirect solar. My expense is only for the 45 watt circulation pump when the hot Arizona sun is doing its 'thing' and some minor 'top up' actions from the helper element at the top.

Now back to the stratification problem. The obvious (to me) solution is another pump in the plumbing. I have a nice hole in the top of the tank that I can use and another at the bottom as well; I should be able to pump water from one to the other and stir things up so the entire 80 gallons of water are at the same temperature. That will give me more hot water than I need and a long hot shower for the wife (happy wife happy life). All I needed to do was run a pipe from the bottom, through a pump, and into the top. That would solve all my problems. That's exactly what I decided to do.

First I gathered some parts and pieces to do the job: pipe, fittings, pump, and cleared out the garage where the heater was. I dragged in a water hose and hooked it to the drain line, shut off the water, and opened the drain faucet. The idea was to start draining it with pressure applied to force out any material that might have settled to the bottom 

Nothing happened. No water came out of the hose. I waited, still nothing. Felt the hose, and there was a little heat near the faucet, but it didn't go down the hose. What the heck? I went outside, to see if any air was being forced out of the hose, again nothing. I stood there scratchng my head and wondering what was going on. In a bit of desperation, I decided to pull the faucet off the bottom of the heater to see if it was plugged up. 

After turning off the water, I disconnected the hose, and it had some calcium chunks in it surrounded by a milky calcium-laden fluid. Yep, it was plugged. Now how do I drain a full tank of hot water with the faucet removed? And what about the possibility that the bottom of the tank was plugged with this milky stuff? I needed a way to let air into the tank so it would drain as rapidly as possible; how was I ... Oh wait, I also needed to replace the sacrificial anode at the top of the tank!! If I took that out it would let air in the top, and I could mess with the faucet to try and clear it. That's the ticket; pull the anode.

For those of you that have never pulled the sacrificial anode out of a water heater, here's some sage advice from someone that has done it themselves. Call a plumber. 

I didn't do that; instead, I tried a crescent wrench, then a bigger crescent wrench, then a piece of pipe on the handle of the wrench, then a longer piece of pipe. Nothing would budge that stupid thing. What exactly was the manufacturer's goal in putting that fitting in so tight? Did they locktite it in place to show us common folk how inadequate homeowners are at maintenance? Was it a plot to guarantee a plumber's trip to the house? Do plumbing manufacturers conspire with plumbing unions to guarantee work? Could it have been cousin Bubba, your 300-pound relative with a breaking bar, chuckling about how frustrating it would be for someone 10 years later trying to get it out? I suspect it was the setting on an automatic wrench on an assembly line in some factory somewhere. Some lazy inspector or quality control 'specialist' is not doing their job, and we get to pay for it in time, money, and frustration.

I didn't have a socket that would fit it; those things take a 1 1/16 socket. Who has one of those in their toolbox? Amazon to the rescue: I ordered a kit containing both the anode and the correct socket, then played the waiting game. My project ground to a halt, the garage stayed a disaster zone, and I was left entirely at the mercy of the delivery driver. For many hours, my immediate future, and the progress of my project were completely out of my hands. "Please mighty King Amazon, have mercy on your subject."

My whining must have worked because they arrived the next day, and I took the socket and my brand-new 1100 ft/lb impact wrench, and with a little wrangling around, I got the darn thing to unscrew. Think about this for a moment; I had to use an impact wrench that I have used to take the lug nuts off a 20,000 pound backhoe for a neighbor. I've intentionally broken the heads off rusted 3/4 inch bolts so I could drill out the hole it was in with that thing. I have to be careful to make sure the wrench doesn't turn me instead of the bolt. That kind of power should be reserved for an adventure with the bucket of an excavator, not a silly plumbing fitting on a residential water heater. Note to manufacturers: never underestimate the homeowner; we will overcome.

When I pulled it out:

Yes, maybe I should have changed it sooner...

The white stuff on it is calcim, not magnesium like it was supposed to be. Let this be a lesson to you readers: check that anode. However, in my defense, I couldn't get the darn thing out in the past. Yes, I tried several times, and this was the one time I actually succeeded. The power of the big impact wrench finally overcame the resolve of the rod being evicted from its home. Now I had air going into the water heater to let the water out. 

I placed a bucket under the drain faucet at the bottom of the heater and turned the water on. Nothing. This time there wasn't even a drip. Standing back and looking at it, I was a bit overwhelmed. So I tried a coat hanger as something to punch the calcium around until I could get some water flowing to rinse this thing. The coat hanger wire hit a hard stop in the faucet and wouldn't budge at all. Fine, I have pipe wrenches; it was time for the last resort ... pull the darn faucet out. 

I grabbed a good-sized pipe wrench, moved the bucket out of the way, and throwing caution to the wind, unscrewed the stupid faucet. Since there was no pressure other than the weight of the water, I actually got a slow flow of milky white goo. A little prodding with the coat hanger loosened it, and it actually started to drain on the floor of the garage. I just stood there and celebrated my limited success. Sure, I had a mess, but it was actually draining after hours of messing around with it. 

Turning my attention to the faucet, it was obvious why the darn thing defied me:

This is a view of the whole thing. Notice how they put on one that isn't like our normal hose bib out in the yard. This thing is long and looks like it is special in some fashion. Next is a view straight down the hose end of the faucet. Notice the typical valve that anyone who has worked with outdoor faucets is very familiar with. 

Let's look down the other end.

See that teeny, tiny hole down there? That's all that's provided to drain the darn water heater, that tiny little hole. That's what the chunks of calcium hit and wouldn't let water pass. That poor excuse for a drain is obviously designed to impede maintenance of the water heater instead of allowing it. Solar water heaters are expensive devices that should make life easier and cheaper. We pay big bucks to save money, and they put a faucet on for cleaning out the tank that limits flow to roughly what Grandma can suck through a martini straw. I decided right then that faucet was not going back into my water heater. 

Instead, I fashioned a new drain valve out of a short length of pipe, a brass fitting, and a nice ball valve that wouldn't restrict the water. Something like this:

These things allow full flow through the pipe and don't have a tiny little hole to plug things up. After I got that put together, I just plugged in the new sacrificial anode into the top using a lot of teflon tape coated with pipe dope and tightened it down with a regular short crescent wrench. I was not going to tighten that new rod in like the old one was; I wanted to be able to change it with an 8" crescent next time. I used one of those 'flexible' anode rods because I didn't want to inadvertantly screw up the radiator at the bottom of the tank. If I shoved one of the flexible rods into the tank, it wouldn't gouge a dent into the radiator. 

Then by attaching a water hose leading out to the yard, I was able to finally flush the heater of all the crap that had accumulated over the years. I filled the water heater, left the water pressure on and opened the valve. 

I watched the water come out the end of the hose, and the chalky residue flushed out pretty quickly while I watched for that demon of water heater destruction ... RUST. Fortunately, there wasn't any rust flushed out. Apparently, with the exception of the useless and damaging drain faucet, I had a good water heater. It hadn't rusted in spite of my lack of maintenance. 

I had just spent two entire days and hadn't made any progress at all toward my actual goal of putting in a recirculating pump to counter the stratification of the water heater. Two trips to Home Depot and a lot of stomping around the garage in frustration, and I was still just starting the actual process. Speaking of which, what's up with Home Depot? Have any of us ever found all the pieces we need? There is the advantage of getting more fittings than we need because they are great about returns, but having to go to ACE Hardware for a fitting when Home Depot is out is a pain. I do like the folks at both stores though, especially the ones at the return desk. 

BUT, it was time to get the hot water back on and clean up some of the mess I had with calcium all over the wet garage floor. The wife-comfort aspect of home automation is important. She should look forward to the new improvements in lifestyle, not cringe at her water heater being down for days while we stumble around making stupid mistakes and overcoming bad design decisions from some manufacturer or assembly line worker. Especially the part about waiting for an Amazon order to arrive.

So, I double-checked for leaks, dragged the hose out in the yard, and turned the heater back on for the night; the next step could wait until tomorrow. 

See you in part 3.

 

The 24-Volt Insurgency: Why Desert Packrats Are Mocking Your Peppermint Oil

There is a specific, primal horror to waking up in the middle of an Arizona summer night in a pool of your own sweat, checking the thermostat, and seeing a crisp 89 degrees staring back at you.

It’s even worse when you grab a flashlight, walk out into the hot, dark, pre-dawn desert air to inspect your air conditioner, and find that a furry, four-legged demolition specialist has systematically snipped your 24-volt control line, converting your life-saving air conditioner into a heater.

If this happens once, it’s an annoyance. If it happens three nights in a row, it’s a battlefield between the primal forces of nature and civilization as we know it.

What was going on?

For the last week, my northern AC unit became the epicenter of a tactical showdown between human engineering and rodent persistence. A huge inconvenience to me, but after a few midnight flashlight repairs and some serious crime-scene analysis, I’ve cracked the code on why they do it, why the internet’s favorite DIY remedies are absolute garbage, and most importantly, how to build a defense grid that actually works.

Add to that the safety factor. The default factor in home AC heat pumps is to heat. It seems better to be awakened to the heater running unexpectedly instead of the cooling. The engineers seem to think that uncomfortable heat is better than freezing to death in the winter from a rat breaking the 24-volt circuit. Living in Arizona, I might argue that, but my relatives in the Northeast would object.

The Soy-Plastic Myth vs. The "Perfect Toothpick" Reality

If you spend ten minutes on automotive or HVAC forums, you will run into the classic urban legend: "The government forced manufacturers to change the insulation to soy-based plastics, and now the wires taste like food!"

Let's set the record straight. While it’s true that modern car manufacturers did switch to soy-based bioplastics over the last decade (creating a multi-thousand-dollar buffet under modern truck hoods), it wasn't due to US regulations. It was companies pandering to environmental concerns.

This new insulation will, over time and exposure, decay—unlike petrochemicals that last forever. It’s lighter, easier to form, weighs less, and fills that niche of environmental awareness that sells so well to city dwellers who seldom actually see, much less live in, the environment they talk so much about preserving. The unintended consequence of this corporate virtue signaling? Your expensive vehicle or outdoor equipment has been converted into a gourmet snack.

However, before you go blaming a corporate marketing department for your broken AC unit, there’s a twist: your standard residential air conditioner thermostat wire isn't soy. It's still old-school, petroleum-based Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC). It smells like chemical garbage, not dinner.

So why did the rats keep coming back to my north unit to slice the exact same wire?

During day three of my investigation, I noticed something critical: The rats completely ignored the thick outer cable sheath. They only attacked the thin, individual 18-gauge colored wires after the sheath had been peeled back for the connections. "But why?" one asks.

It turns out it's a matter of biological imperatives. A rodent’s incisors grow continuously—up to five inches a year. If they don't constantly gnaw on things to file them down, their teeth will literally grow through their own jaws. This provides some clues to why, but also some cautions.

The thick outer jacket of an AC cable is too wide and smooth; they can't get a jaw around it. But an individual 18-gauge strand? That is the exact diameter of a small root or a piece of desert scrub. It fits perfectly into the sweet spot of their jaw mechanics. It's not dinner—it's a precision-engineered toothpick. Something to gnaw on to help grind down their teeth, and a low enough voltage not to roast them into a carbon footprint. 

Why Internet Remedies Fail: The Evaporation Trap 

Before we talk about what works, let’s talk about the absolute sales BS cluttering up the internet. In my time fighting the desert wire-eaters, I have systematically tested the "feel-good" remedies. Here is the field report:

• Peppermint Oil: I once sprayed a literal quart of high-concentration peppermint oil around the engine compartment of my truck. The result? I had the best-smelling, mintiest rodent hotel in Arizona. Once the initial vapor shock wears off in a few hours, the rat’s drive to chew completely overrides any objection the rat has to the smell. Trusting that home remedy cost me $2400 at the dealer having wiring harnesses replaced.

• Bitter Sprays: Products designed to stop dogs from chewing work for about 48 hours. In our brutal desert environment, the intense sun, heat, and ambient dust cause the bitter compounds to volatilize and vanish. Also, remember, the rat has to chew enough of it to taste the bitters. Our own experience with canine bitters has mixed results; some dogs react to it, and others ignore it and still chew off our baseboards and chair legs. How well would we expect it to work on a rodent that eats cactus (thorns and all), chews the bark off our fruit trees, gathers dried dog poop and uses it as a front door to its home, and leaves trails of its scat under our BBQ?

• Predator Urine: Buying fox or coyote urine sounds tactical, but rodents are highly adaptable. A desert packrat has no evolutionary memory of a European Red Fox. Even if you use local coyote scent, if the smell just sits there day after day without a physical coyote ever showing up, the rats figure out within 48 hours that it’s a ghost threat. Renewing the dosage only helps the rat to learn that the smell is not left by a predator simply because the threat never materializes. 

The Real Culprit: The Oasis Effect

While inspecting the unit on day four, I finally found the smoking gun. I noticed a distinct, wet patch of condensation pooling right on the base tray of the compressor housing. Look closely at the dust, and you can see the tiny, muddy footprints.

In the middle of a scorching summer, a guaranteed, daily source of fresh, dripping water is worth more than gold. The copper pipe carrying cold refrigerant into the air handler inside the house condensed the limited humidity of our desert air and dripped into that little reservoir at the bottom of the compressor casing. My AC unit wasn't just a hardware store; it was a five-star desert oasis. The rats were stopping by for a cool drink of AC sweat to beat the heat and then deciding to utilize the local 24-volt toothpicks while relaxing by the pool.

Before your environmental instincts kick in and you comment on how bad for the environment rat poison is, I had been three nights without sleep in a sweltering puddle of sweat, listening to complaints about the AC continuing to fail. What exactly would you have done? Cut me some slack here. Plus, this is some of the incredibly expensive rodenticide that only kills once. 

Even worse? Those green poison pellets I threw down were sitting completely untouched right in the puddle. The rats literally marinated their poison while ignoring it to chew on my wiring.

The Counter-Insurgency Playbook

To win a war, you have to change the environment. Here is the two-phase strategy I used to take back the north wall.

Phase 1: The Tactical Retreat to the High Ground (The Free Fix)

The rats were successful because the 24V lines were sitting on a low-level "lounge deck" right at chest height for a sitting rodent.

The service access to the AC compressor

Close up of the wiring area after two

repair attempts. 

I pulled the thin AC control lines completely out of that bottom open shelf. Then I rerouted the multi-conductor line from the house upward and fed it directly into the side knockout of the upper, enclosed high-voltage metal service area.

The 24VAC wires are on the bottom

And the 240VAC wires are on top.

By making all the wire-nut connections inside a sealed metal box, the target wires were protected. The only thing left downstairs near the concrete pad is a smooth, unbroken stretch of factory cable jacket. They showed up the next night, drank their water, and realized the wire playground was locked and went off to some other rat playground. We are currently four nights in with zero outages.

Phase 2: The Permanent Armor (The Parts List)

Once the immediate crisis is averted, it's time to build a maintenance-free fortress. Because we are dealing with a whole desert ecosystem—from tiny mice to heavy-jawed gophers, ground squirrels, and don't forget, rabbits—your best bet is to armor-plate the entire run from the wall to the chassis.

1. Mechanical Armor (Techflex F6 Heavy Wall Braided Sleeving: Instead of tearing your fresh wiring apart to slide a tube over it, use a split braided sleeve. The heavy-wall version has a built-in lateral overlap that snaps shut around the existing wire. A rat's teeth slide right through the slick woven matrix rather than grabbing and cutting it. Plus, the wire sticks them in their mouth, making it unpleasant enough to leave alone. 
   
   

   
   I've used this on my pool for months. 

2. Chemical Deterrence (Genuine Honda Rodent Tape) This stuff is the gold standard for a reason. Honda bakes micro-capsules of pure capsaicin (chili pepper extract) directly into the vinyl substrate. It doesn't wash away or evaporate in the sun like a spray. When a rodent punctures it, the capsules burst directly into their mucous membranes. It's true that the rodent has to actually chew on the tape to get the burst of capsaicin, but that's what rats do, chew.
   
   

   Safety Note: Always wear heavy gloves when handling the spicy tape, and for the love of God, do not rub your eyes, scratch your privates, or pick your nose afterward. You might also warn a repairman, but that's your choice.

End Result

Here's a picture of the AC unit after I finished it up. It has (so far) held up against the wandering rodents seeking cover and water. 

All the points where wires might get exposed are wrapped with rodent tape and  all the wiring is inside the wire sheath. Yes, those are stainless steel zipties; plastic doesn't last long here. I suspect this will hold up for a long time, but I'll keep an eye on it just in case of sun deterioration. 

Final Lessons from the Desert

If you live out in the rural desert, nature is always trying to reclaim your assets. If you park a vehicle outside, leave the hood up. Rats hate open spaces where hawks can see them, and they hate the sun. I've had reasonable luck with flashing lights; get some flashing Christmas tree lights and toss them under your vehicle to chase rodents away. This method does run the risk of the extension cord from the vehicle to the outlet getting chewed up though. For vehicles I use a combination of open hood and flashing lights that has worked well.

If your AC goes down, look for the water source, move your connections into protected areas, and armor the gaps. Let the neighbors deal with the mint sprays and the ghost coyote urine—stick to solid mechanical engineering and really spicy unexpected treats.

The Evolution of My Hot Water System - Part 1

Hot water isn't usually thought of as a problem in the rural Arizona desert, but to my household, it actually is. During the summer, we get lukewarm water out of the tap running around 80° - 90° because the ground heats up to that temperature. The water right out of the well runs cooler, but it sits in a tank and travels through a PVC pipe to the house. One would think that just heating it up to the standard 130° - 140°F would be cheap. Not true.

Incessantly rising power company charges and the energy it takes to raise the temperature of water 50 degrees make for a noticeable expense. Then let's compound that with "Peak Demand Billing" and an uncontrolled water heater can really tack on the charges. In fact, this exact thing is what got me started in Home Automation. I was surprised by a huge power bill and wanted to understand why; then after hours of research, trying to find a way to prevent it became a large part of my free time. This blog is filled with my various methods of control. 

Specific to the water heater, first I had a solar-assisted water heater installed. That was wonderful and did a lot for my power consumption. Suppose on a normal clear day of our usual 100+° sunshine, I only get one tank of hot water from the solar system. Going from 85°F up to 135°F in an 80 gallon tank is actually 667 lbs x 50°F = 33,360 BTUs. Using one of the internet calculators to convert to kWh, 33,360 / 3,412 = 9.78 kWh using only sunshine and a few watts from the circulation pump. That leads to around $1.20 to $1.50 a day savings. Taking that on an average monthly bill, I'm saving about $36; in a year that's over $430!! 

I'm saving money that I don't have to give to the power company's lawyers so they can lobby for higher rates with the local regulators.

Unfortunately, that doesn't address the peak billing problem. Back then the peak period was from 3 PM until 8 PM, and that period held some of the largest uses of hot water, like the evening meal (supper to some, dinner to others), dishes, and after-work showers, normal stuff. That led me to installing a power shutoff timer to keep the helper heating element in the hot water heater shut off during that period. 

I added stops in the timer to control the heater from 10 PM to 6 AM also since I didn't need hot water during those times. Everything was great until the power went off (happened often back then) and the timer was off. Those mechanical devices, while extremely reliable, had nothing to keep the time correct. When I got a power bill for an extra $40 in demand charges because I forgot to reset the timer clock, I started looking for another solution. That initial solution (this was in 2011) was an X10 relay and a timer clock in the house that had a battery in it. That failed me as well <link>, and another $40 down the drain... literally. 

It was time to create something that actually worked. Grabbing an Arduino and ordering an SSR from China, I built my own controller that had the time from an XBee network that I already had running and controlled the SSR that interrupted the power to the water heater. Note that I tried a contactor first, but those things are noisy unless you spend tons of money on them <link>. SSR devices cost a lot less and are easier to control. That little device <link> actually worked really well for a long time until I decided to measure the power usage of the heater. This ability to measure the power usage was mostly just me investigating because, at the time, I really didn't need to know the water heater used 4500 watts; that was written right on the label. What I wanted to know was how often it kicked on and why.

My SSR Water Heater Controller

That meant another device and a bunch of changes. I built up a pretty sophisticated combination of an Arduino hooked to an XBee that read power from a Modbus-based power measuring and display device <link>. This transmitted the state of the water heater and the temperature of the top vs. the bottom of the heater. I was really cooking now. I had temperature measurements, power measurements, remote control, and it wouldn't fail because the time changed. It looked cool on the wall over the water heater and was great for showing off to the neighbors <link>.

Oddly, it didn't impress the girls though

Man, I was right up there with a fully controlled water heater that provided wireless telemetering and autonomously controlled activity to avoid peak demand charges. A home automation dream, BUT there was still that problem of not enough hot water on cloudy days. What should I do about that?

The answer was right in front of me for years. The solar-assisted water heater had a circulation pump that pumped antifreeze-conditioned water from the heating coils at the bottom of the heater to the array on the roof. That's how they avoid damage from freezing weather: isolate the potable water with a radiator in the water heater and send it through the heating array on the roof. Suppose I put another one in that pumps the water from the bottom of the water heater to the top. I have water fittings on both ends, one is the exit for hot water to the house (top) and the other is the drain at the bottom. That would force mixing the water to equalize the temperature, and the helper element would take up any slack to give me the entire volume of the heater as a reserve. With an 80 gallon capacity, that would serve any reasonable purpose during cloudy days. However, this wouldn't be a simple task; one inch plumbing fittings are a real pain to deal with, and sweat joints are NOT as easy as the YouTube videos pretend.

But this series of adventures is getting too long, and I know you're approaching TL;DR, so in part 2 I'll get into the trials of a destratification pump.

Part 2 is here <link>

More Adventures With My Pool

 Way back over a decade ago (2013), I installed a Waterco Multicyclone Filter on my pool <link>, and it worked pretty well. Then in 2015 I had a problem when one of the fittings broke, <link> which was annoying because nothing else broke when my pool flooded during a downpour. Well, it happened again and was a little bit exciting at the time.

I was sitting on the patio enjoying a fine sunny day (103F) over a cup of coffee when I noticed the pool level had dropped. A little bit concerned, I checked to see if the autofill was working; it was. So I went to the equipment, and the area was flooded, and water was shooting everywhere. I waded through the mud and spray to the controls and shut the pump off. The union fitting on the Waterco had split in half and was the source of a high-pressure leak right at the pump. The first time this happened, it was the top fitting; this time it was the bottom fitting. After a heavy sigh, I decided it would be necessary to do some plumbing work.

A little background here: my area requires a cartridge filter on swimming pools to conserve water. The thinking is that backwashing a sand filter wastes water and a cartridge filter solves that problem. The engineer that came up with that suggestion was an idiot. The person didn't think about the fact that cleaning a large cartridge filter takes a ton of water to clean. I actually used a pressure washer, and it took an hour or more to clean all four filters in the enclosure. Then, it would fill up with desert sand in a week during the summer, and here in Arizona, we have roughly nine months of summer. So it was almost a weekly task of taking out the cartridges, putting in a spare set, cleaning the dirty ones, and putting everything back in service. Cleaning the darn things took a whole lot more water than my neighbor's sand filter, plus the time and effort of doing it. When the cartridges wore out from incessant cleaning, they cost around $100 each; four filters in use and 4 on standby for changing, roughly $800 invested in paper. 

Now, keep it to yourself, but I bought a sand filter and replaced that hunk of junk cartridge filter. The straw that broke the camel's back was when the assembly inside the cartridge filter failed and needed replacement. I looked at the cost of Hayward parts and decided it was time. After changing to a sand filter, the water looked just as good, backwashing took about 6 minutes, and I was done for at least three weeks before it needed it again. Much less work, much less water wasted, no cartridges to worry about replacing. A little bit of heaven for a change. 

Getting back to the recent problem, the last time I replaced the fitting on the Waterco, it took over a week to get it, and that would mean a green pool. Additionally, the failure was exactly the same as the last time; the ring split in half.

I decided that over a full decade of good service while I was fighting the cartridge filter's problems was enough for this device and decided to eliminate it. Mostly because I realized that it really wasn't overpressure that destroyed the fitting; it was vibration. Years of motor start-stops, pressure changes, and constant vibration just wore the darn fitting out. That combined with the ease of cleaning the sand filter and its much better filtration meant that I really didn't need the extra filtration any more.

Time to simplify and eliminate another thing to take care of.

However, it was a bigger job than I first expected, actually much bigger. The darn concrete platform the equipment was sitting on was broken and starting to fall apart. Yes, the people that manufactured that piece of concrete for pool companies to install had left some of the rebar reinforcement outside the concrete and water infitrated causing the rebar to rust. When rebar rusts, it expands and cracks the concrete. I had a broken mess supporting my pool equipment. But pulling all the above ground plumbing, tearing out the broken slab, pouring a new slab, waiting for it to cure, putting everything back would take at least a couple of weeks. 

What to do? I decided to take it in two steps. First, I would just get the pool back in service because it is June in the middle of Arizona and we only get half a day of active work before the heat drives us into the shade or under an air conditioner. Second, it's Summer, that's when you want a pool. Third, to support the weight of the filter, the concrete should cure for at least three weeks before you put weight on it like a sand filter and a heavy motor. Those three reasons made enough sense to me to do something different. After I got it in service with the broken slab and some inventive plumbing, I would cast the slab out in the back on a piece of plywood, let it cure for a few weeks, then dismantle the plumbing and move the new slab into place where it needed to be. Yes, the new slab would be heavy and hard to move, but I have a small skid steer, a small excavator, a Jeep with a winch on it, and pipes. I should be able to get that thing in place with all that stuff to play with. 

Now to fix the plumbing and get the pool back in service so I can work on the second stage.

Well, it wasn't as easy as I made it sound. There simply wasn't enough room between the existing fittings to just put in a pipe with a couple of couplers on each end. 

The arrow shows one spot that might have worked, but it was covered in glue and the surface was pitted pretty bad. I decided to replace the entire piece from the motor to the union up on top. That didn't seem too bad, but I would have to order the Hayward motor union part. It seems that Hayward is true to form in that they make everything custom to them. The motor coupler on the Hayward is different from a union that you can buy at Home Depot; it's different from a Pentair. It doesn't match anything one would expect it to. No, it has to be made special. 

The price of the real Hayward replacement was over three times an aftermarket equivalent. So I got the less expensive (cheap!) one, and after waiting a day (Amazon Prime) for the part and then getting some common fittings, I went to work. 

I had to replace the top union and all the fittings down to and including the special Hayward motor connection. So I spent a couple of hours lining things up and glueing them together. It really wasn't a huge amount of work; most of it was measuring pipe and cutting it. I got it all back together and gave the entire assembly an extra half hour before testing it for leaks. I turned on the motor in low speed and got it all primed up and working; everything looked fine. So I kicked it to high speed.

And it blew up.

The aftermarket (cheap) Hayward replacement fitting literally blew apart. Water shot up in a 2" fountain and soaked me and everything around me. In a real rush, I shut off the motor and looked at the damage. This is the part that failed:

No, the pipe didn't leak at the joint, nor did the union leak, The cener part actually blew out of the collar that holds the pipe to the motor and seals the connection. These things are two pieces, a female pipe connection with a flange that the collar pulls tight to a rubber washer on the motor fitting.

The centerpiece that connects to the pipe from the motor literally blew right through the collar and allowed that 2" stream of water to shoot right up in the air. Over time, I did a post-mortem on it. There were two factors that led to the failure. First, there was almost a 1.5 mm gap between the top of the collar and the pipe, where the original Hayward had less than a millimeter. Second, the plastic was softer and a tiny bit pliant instead of hard as a rock like the Hayward original. This is called 'durometer' if you want to look it up.

It's really hard to see in the picture because of the color and wear marks, but feeling the gap and the softer plastic, the problem became obvious. So, when the pressure increased, the plastic flexed a bit, and the larger opening allowed the entire female part of the fitting to shoot right through the hole in the collar. Sigh... Now, what to do about it? Well, the obvious choice was to just get a real Hayward fitting and bite the bullet. 

This time I decided to put a union in the middle of my vertical run so I could dismantle the plumbing a little better and not have so many fittings to buy if something else happened. It was a good idea in theory. When I repeated the same test of running it on low, then switching to high, the Hayward fitting (real one this time) held up and didn't leak. I thought I was home free until I noticed a leak at the top of the new union. Glued fittings don't leave any room for error; you can't take them apart and fix them, but I was sick of messing with this. So, out came the J B Weld Water Weld.

If you've never used this stuff, it's great for this kind of thing. It can set up underwater and is actually sticky enough to hold things in place. I use it a lot because plastic fittings in the sun deteriorate over time and sometimes leak. This stuff can fix that. I let the pool run on high speed for a few hours to prove it would hold together.

So, the temporary plumbing repair was done. I could test it a bit more to get comfortable and then start on the new concrete slab for the equipment. Since I wasn't totally confident that everything was perfect and wanted to hedge my bet a bit, I turned off the pool automation and left everything for the next morning when the area would be in the shade. 

The next morning, I went out near the equipment and turned on the pool motor... nothing. Walked over to the equipment, and the motor was not running at all. I checked the power; it was on. So, I tried it again and got that tell-tale buzz from the motor before it shut off. The most likely culprit was the capacitor. Off I went to get more tools for the pile by the gate, took the cap off, and checked it with a multimeter. That thing was a pure open circuit; something inside had actually broken. 

Of course none of the local stores had one in stock, but Amazon Prime came through the next day before sundown, and I got it installed and tested. Although I had to wear gloves because by the time the part arrived, the area had been in the sun for a couple of hours. 

Finally, I was done with this simple, easy repair job ... at least the easy part.