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It's been a very domestic day. Really cold weather is here. The space heater I use in my kitchen to keep my water pipes from freezing over has been on the fritz. I've been trying to get it to work or shopping for alternatives all day. I've thought I had it fixed twice, but no dice. This last fix seems to have the best chance.
These space heaters are not all that complicated. More complicated than I need them to be. The biggest problem I've had with them working has been with the tilt switch. They get stuck, and then nothing works. The manufacturers who make these cheap space heaters don't make it easy to get inside them to figure out the problem.
The tilt switches are interesting to me. I understood the theory of them before I ever saw one, and today I saw two of them for the first time. They were from two brands of heaters, but the tilt switch looked exactly alike. They're fairly simple, but they don't have any bearings to keep them from sticking.
My maintenance efforts basically consists of looking for something worn or broken, and shaking electrical contacts like the tilt switch to see if they're stuck. I did this twice and even though the heater would start up, it didn't operate for long before it shut down.
In my last effort, I saw some of the spring-shaped elements (that turn red hot when the heater is working) were jiggling around maybe a little more than some of the other elements of the same kind were.
I was about to give up with I realized the loose set of elements had jumped off the ceramic holder they needed to be attached to in order not to touch the other elements. I got some needle-nosed pliers and easily put the loose element back in the right place.
The last time I went downstairs to the kitchen the space heater was still buzzing away. Just now I finished a long conversation with a knowledgeable friend who pointed out that the elements that get red hot in order to produce heat are a bare electric circuit.
If the wires touch each they short out. Since they're designed to tolerate great heat they don't burn into, but shut the system down. I think I can figure it out before its all over. As long as my water pipes don't freeze I'll be happy.
Some people seem shocked that I seem to not care so much about anything more than mere survival. I'm a little shocked myself. I was out walking with my brother to get some exercise. We have a little circular route he likes to take to stay near to where his wife is.
The other night we were passing by when he thought of something he needed to do immediately, and so he invited me inside to wait until he'd taken care of business. His wife was curled up in a real cushy chair watching TV. She got up to say hello and she was only wearing pajamas.
That's how warm their house is in the winter. They even have a thermostat that keeps the temperature at a chosen level. That's not how it is at my house. I have to wear winter clothes inside my house just like I do outside my house. Nobody likes to visit me in cold weather.
I don't live this way to please anyone but myself, but some people act like the way I live is a vendetta against the choices they make. I have no idea why. We each make up our own minds about what we're willing to do to get what we think we need. I just seem to need less.
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I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
