The Lance J. Technoweb

My concrete basement floor is very uneven, and so my laundry washer and dryer were bouncing all over the place. I solved this problem by making an inexpensive pedestal for my laundry machines. This post is about how I designed and made my laundry pedestal. It cost me less than $25 to make, and took about 30 minutes to build. A pedestal has numerous benefits:  It gives the equipment a perfectly level surface to sit on. It raises the machines so that they are easier to access. If there is a basement flood, a pedestal raises the machines out of harm's way It is very inexpensive. I made mine for about $25 in materials. Laundry Pedestal Design My pedestal is basically a piece of 3/4 inch plywood with an underlying frame made of 2x4 lumber around it to give it some structure. Then I mounted robust adjustable feet on each corner. In order to easily adjust the feet while the platform was sitting on the floor, I drilled four holes in each of the corners, directly above the adjusters. These ...

Ouch, a watered-damaged MacBook!  Maybe someone spilled some water or other liquid onto the keyboard.  This is bad!  Immediate action is in order, with seconds to spare. This is how I address a water-damaged device.    TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE! If it still works, turn it off immediately! Make sure it is unplugged.  Don't plug it back in. Do NOT try to plug it in or turn it on again.  Really. Open it up.  This requires the appropriate precision screwdriver kit.  Don't have one?  Take it to a shop!  Do NOT use the wrong tools. Disconnect the battery Mop up any water with paper towels. Is there water everywhere?  Pull out the board and other components to do some further mopping up in the tight spaces. Put the parts, except the display and battery, in a slightly warm oven (maybe 90 °C, or 190 °F) for 4 hours to help encourage the drying of parts.  Water can get under components, we want to encourage that water to evaporat...

My Honeywell Vista 20p alarm system is fairly comprehensive, but I want one more feature: an alarm that lets me know when my sump pump isn't working properly. Here is how I added one for about $8 in special parts.   I'm afraid of a flood in my finished basement. I'm fortunate - my basement sump pump system is already redundant, with two independent pumps and two outflow pipes. The primary pump kicks in when the water level reaches 6 inches, and if that doesn't work, then the backup pump kicks in when the water level reaches 7 inches.  The backup pump should never kick in unless the primary pump is having a problem pumping.   But there is a problem with this setup: I might never know if my primary pump has failed, leaving me with no redundancy.  I want to be informed when I have one (or god forbid, two) pump failures. My goal is to have my Vista 20p alert me when the sump's water level is ever beyond the point where my primary pump should have kicked in, alertin...