I got a short, kid-free work opportunity at home this evening, about an hour, which was plenty to replace the bathroom-floor timer.

Yes, it's heated. No, I'm not pretentious. Just blessed with a lot of concessions from the seller, one of which was money to replace the bathroom. Its floor had rotted completely through in places, so we rebuilt the whole thing. In the process, I splurged on my dream: an electrically heated tile floor.

The timer has a backup battery, so when it stopped working I changed that out. Twice. Then switched brands. No fixy. If the battery doesn't bring it back on line, the troubleshooting guide says, just replace the whole timer. It is six years old.

Imagine writing a guide for a product you manufacture, and one of the diagnostic steps you supply to owners is, "just replace it."

Sounds like the fashion industry to me: "You know everything we sold you last year? It's now crap. Donate it. Better yet, burn it so no one else gets seen in it. And buy all new stuff before your friends do.

"We'll be back with the same instructions next year."

anyway, having stepped out of the shower each day last week feeling as if I'd gone figure skating in bare feet, I stopped by Big Box Home Improvement Center (Orange) to find they no longer carry this particular timer, which fits neatly into a standard electrical box. If I couldn't find an exact replacement I would have to saw a bigger hole in the wall. *le sigh*

Fortunately, Big Box (Blue) had a successor, which isn't rated for as much power but it shouldn't matter. The floor itself (a Warm Tiles product) required its own breaker. The timer just kicks on the thermostat, which carries all the voltage.

Here's what remained of the old timer after I started disassembling it—needlessly, but I wanted to see what was inside. I've seen these models in mostly commercial settings. They require the concentration of a C++ programmer to set up, but once they're on, you don't have to mess with them even if the power goes out.

Upon opening the timer, I was sorely disappointed to find gears and a mechanical switch inside. I wanted it to be all printed circuits and magnetotronic lasers. No wonder it failed after only six years.

I had installed the wires very tight with the thermostat for some reason, so I just clipped and spliced them onto the new wires.

The new timer claims to automatically change when Daylight Savings Time kicks in and out. I wonder if this one was made before or after Congress made its latest tweaks.

Let's cap it off with a blurry shot of the final installation.

Oh yeah: I flipped the breaker before doing all this. Even got myself one of those tweety voltage sensors to make sure everything's dead before I start grabbing copper wires. It's only 110 volts, but you can never be too sure.

With all the building going on around here, an all-too-real possibility is that the next owner of this house will put a bulldozer through it. My only condition is that he allow me to slice out the bathroom, Borg-style, and take it with me. We have a relationship, that heated floor and I.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:29 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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