Ben's Blog

The New Dishwasher

This past Sunday I picked up and installed our new Kenmore dishwasher. I took the power leading to the old dishwasher and wired it to an outlet, then ran a direct power line from the back of the outlet to the dishwasher. I wired the outlet in the middle there so that I could plug the garbage disposal into an X10 appliance module. This allows us to turn it on and off using a wireless switch.

Unfortunately, the disposal wasn’t working consistently – I think its because the X10 wireless receiver is plugged into a circuit that’s not on the same leg as the X10 appliance module. When the A/C is on, which uses 220v (and thus bridges the legs), the disposal works (look at this page for an explanation of the problem). For some reason, Trish doesn’t like the idea of having to turn on the A/C to run the disposal. One more thing to fix…

We also continued our battle against a mildewy basement by buying two dehumidifiers – after 48 hours of operation, the humidity in the basement is down from 70% to 46%. It feels warmer and dry, but there is still a faint “basement-ish” smell.