Mysteries of the Attic II

@11 PM Monday 8-20. All "weekend" i've been very tired. The apartment was slowly filling with some sort of smoke, kinda like cigarettes but not only. Sunday around midnight i tried to start my Holmes True Hepa filter with three 20 dollars each sub-micronic fiberglass filters (two of them are 2 month old and i vacuum them weekly) and multiple carbon prefilters. It was smelling like burnt oil.

So i went into the attic to see what's going on. Two of the one way valves where stuck open, the one at my bathroom exhaust and the one for the attic. (I installed four 4 inch valves under one of the 6 inch vents, those designed for laundry driers, one for each exhaust and one for the attic). In top of those just under the vent there is a computer fan. The fan was stopped since the last few days i saw the attic valve open and i thought because of the heat there is too much thermal flow already. But the valve was stuck open. So the bad smell from the attic and the smoke from my neighbor was back flowing in the bathroom. (The valve at the other end of the pipe above the bathroom shown above was bent as well.) But i noticed there was a lot of dust inside the pipe near the valve. I quickly fixed those and suddenly the air in the apartment was much clearer and i started feeling better too.

So i came back inside and i opened the filter fan and i saw one of the bearings overheated and all the oil burned out and spread inside the housing. I oiled those 1 cm inner diameter bearings with motor oil and cleaned the housing. Like i did last year. They got some rings with cotton inside where you put the oil. The bronze bearings were tight, no sign of wearing. I started the filter, at 2 AM i went to bed.

AT 6:30 my wife went to work and i woke up and started thinking of what i saw last night in the attic. I went back in there with a dust mask and looked inside that pipe. It had a huge amount of dust with oil in it. And it was smelling like burnt oil. Probably because i oiled the tiny motor of the fan in the bathroom because it was too noisy. Those bearings have a inner diameter of about 5 mm and i never saw them wearing out. So i took the whole thing apart, whased the 3 meter 3 inch flexible pipes with laundry detergent in the ... bathtub eliminated an extra piece of 2 meters of pipe (it was way too long), inside, with a brush tied to a stick, and put it back together in about 3 hours. I was completely exhausted with no power left to breath. I couldn't read on the computer monitor. I was thinking about going to the hospital but in the end i fell asleep for a little bit.

I've been thinking, when planes go around at 70 mph with the flaps down and the engine revved up as they are so much doing these days they can vibrate those pipes and valves and make all that dust to back-flow in the bathroom. But the fan under the vent sucks everything out of the pipes and creates a negative pressure in them. But the fan was stopped in the last few days.

I just remembered those Harleys @midnight last night at the appartment complex across the street thundering for minutes, it seemed like they would never stopped their engines after they arrived.

(Or the dust blowers in the parking lot going for hours on Tuesday and blowing asphalt dust in the attic too.)

When i moved here that flexible pipe from the bathroom exhaust was laying on the attic floor where is the intake for the attic, opening above the kitchen window and i moved it near the others near the 6 inch vent in the top of the roof. (There is a 3 inch chimney too for it going through the roof but ... only outside! Nothing inside, just the plywood.)

The @20 year old dishwasher just stoped. And it smells like burnt oil too. I think i should oil those pump motor bearings but i'm gonna look for some bearing oil with pressure additives and no detergent or maybe i should try white mineral oil, from what i just read on the internet, motor oil is not good for electric motor hydro-static bearings.

There is no way metal came out of those axles inside those fan motors. It is possible from the dishwasher or the microwave/exhaust in the kitchen, but from what i remember when i washed that turbine from the microwave there was no play at the axle when i re-installed it. At the Holmes filter most of the load from the turbine is axial and there is a tiny teflon washer that takes that load and it's still there.

But there is a huge number of planes flying above usually under legal altitude limits. There was one that passed in just a few seconds at 1 PDT today, at low speed and probably just above the roof. The cars at @5 PM are in the hundreds per hour although it is not justified by the number of houses or size of the street.

The skin on my face, hands, legs, seems very tight. I noticed that every time i come in contact all day with these bad smells.

By the way my wife just tried to open the balcony door and there is still a barbecue going on (it was before i started writing this). And every time when i go in the balcony a car comes on the alley from nowhere and a small plane flies above!

Talking about vacuum, one day the flexible hose was too dirty inside and washed it in the tub. (I cover one end and extend it in the tub filled with a few inches with water until no dirty water comes out of it.) Then i didn't want to wait until it completely dried and used it like that. And then i saw the dust was sticking inside. Two of the filters and the collector are washable anyways and then i started vacuuming the apartment with the "wet method", cleaning the hose in the tub every few minutes or so. There is no dust coming out of it and all the dirt gathers in the tub and i just flush it! Then i removed all filters but one and still no dust is coming out of it, but the cleaning power is about three times bigger! It really sucks the s... out of the carpets.