Big bang, dinner guest

I forgot to mention that over the weekend I had a surprising discovery by the pool equipment.  It looked like there was black tar on the wall.  A closer look revealed shrapnel in the area, the remnants of the pool pump capacitor.  I have heard of capacitors exploding before but I never imagined it would have this much power.  The casing on the pool pump for the cap was blown off and the capacitor itself was now in multiple pieces. I have had the capacitor on the pool pump fail several times in the past but in those situations the capacitor was just dead, there was no explosion.

I collected the pieces and took them with me to Pinch-a-Penny where I bought the cap.  It was only purchased last June so I held out hope it would be covered under some sort of warranty since it is a relatively expensive item at $50.  The store owner said there is no warranty on electrical items since they could be damaged by outside sources.  I plopped down the credit card for yet another new capacitor.

The owner said before I hooked up the new cap I should make sure that the impeller on the pool was not seized which could possibly cause the capacitor to fail.  When I got home I did just that.  The impeller felt unencumbered.  I installed the new cap and stood behind the pool heater and turned my head away as I flipped the power, just in case.  The pump fired up normally and ran fine all afternoon.

  When I got home yesterday Cindy’s daughter Katie was there visiting.  She stayed for dinner as we caught up on this week’s Walking Dead.

In some ways Katie reminds me of myself at her age when I was still trying to find some sort of definitive direction to go with my life.  Just last week she passed her real estate exam, a big step for her which was awesome.

As always, the energy level in the house goes up by several factors when Katie is around.  It makes Cindy so happy since we don’t get to see her very often.  The chickens seem to like when Katie is around too.