mending things

I volunteer at a couple of Repair cafes in the UK, and we have had a couple of these popular Thane H2O X5 Steam mops in with similar symptoms and fixes. These devices generate steam from water held in a chamber and direct this to the head, to which a mop cloth can be attached. This steam is hot enough to break down dirt, grease while killing off any bacteria. The owners loved them and were very happy to get them working again. The failed units no longer pumped water through the boiler chamber , and hence generated no steam despite the power light coming on. The units will suffer with lime scale , as any electrical appliance that boils water will. However the "Catch 22" is that in order to pump a descaler through the pump to descale it, you need a working pump to extract water from the main reservoir via its umbilical hose. I did a bit of googling and found this video from the always excellent bigclivedotcom Clives video is the key to fixing these units. First you need to disc...

I recently decided to dust off an old gaming PC from around 2006 that was in the attic. I'm interested in folding@home , a way of assisting medical science donating computer time from home , and  wanted to see if I could build a dedicated FAH (Fold at Home) rig using spare hardware we had.  I'm also interested in computational heating i.e better exploiting the waste heat from computer systems . This  will be the subject of another blog shortly, but when I got this PC down and booted it up, I immediately hit an issue with the LCD screen. It kept turning on and off approximately every second , but sometimes staying on for longer. I could see the boot screen, the BIOS and eventually the windows logo, but the screen wouldn't stay on. Very frustrating I later realised that if I left the monitor on for at least an hour it would stabilize and become usable. I looked around  on the internet and realised this was probably a problem with the capacitors in the power supply. If...

When travelling I use an IBM Thinkpad X.41 from 2005 ,the model is described  here The original spec was : Processor: Intel Pentium M LV 758 (1.50GHz, 90nm technology, 2MB L2 Cache, 400MHz FSB) Wireless: Intel PRO 2200BG or 2915ABG, Bluetooth optional OS: Windows XP Home/Pro Screen: 12.1″ TFT XGA (1024 x 768) RAM: 256MB or 512MB PC-4200 DDR-2 SDRAM (Upgradeable to 1536MB Max) Hard Drive: 1.8″ 20GB, 30GB, 40GB or 60GB @ 4200RPM Battery: 2.5 hr (4-cell) 5.7 hr (8-cell) (extended-life battery option adds 3 – 4 hours of life on top of quoted numbers for each respective battery) Ports: 2 USB 2.0 (1 IBM Powered USB 2.0), Infrared, expansion bus (for optional ThinkPad X4 Ultra Base Doc); external display; AC adapter; RJ-11 modem port;RJ-45 ethernet port; audio: headphone/line-out, external microphone. Slots: 1 PCMCIA card slot, 1 Secure Digital card slot Dimensions: 10.5″ x 8.3″ x 1.06″ (w x d x h) (with 8-cell battery it’s 10.5″ x 9.3″ x 1.06″) Weight: 2.7lb with 4-cell battery, 3.2lb wi...

I decided to clean some bikes during this unprecedented period of isolation, and got out a Karcher pressure cleaner we purchased some years ago for cleaning our decking. We have had it for 4 years, it works fine and creates a powerful spray which blasts the dirt off, and has a mode which dispenses detergent at a lower pressure first to fully soap the item, be it car or bike or garden furniture etc. However while the pressure hose worked fine I could not get any detergent to dispense. I checked the bottle which inverts onto a connector with a rubber seal. All appeared fine. I looked online via google and  remembered that the detergent only dispenses when the nozzle dial on the gun part is turned down to the 'Mix' setting. However I tried this and it made no difference. There are clear pipes which deliver the detergent from the bottle dispenser via a dial which sets the amount. I could see no movement through these pipes I decided to open the Karcher w...

I'm ashamed to say that recently I noticed rust developing at the base of the microwave interior glass door panel, and the paint flaking. Cooking items like potatoes releases a lot of moisture , which probably should be wiped away immediately to avoid this, but when you are preparing a meal and everything you forget (or I do at least). The Microwave is a Bosch and has a face plate so it fits into a recess in our fitted kitchen. I looked into replacing the door but Bosch do not supply this as a spare, not could I find a donor oven online. A whole new oven would be around £300, which seemed a lot for a problem that might be fixable.  I read online about Rusty Microwave ovens, and advice ranged from " It'll be fine " through to " immediately remove the oven and place in a lead lined container at the bottom of the sea " type of response. Filtering the informed advice from the hysterical took a while. In the USA you can purchase Microwave oven pain...