Drain Repairs will Endlessly Drain Your Money

As a routine part of their "Foundation Repair," Baird Foundation Repair contracted Gem Plumbing to do a Hydrostatic Test of my drains.  Hydrostatic tests block the main drain pipe at your cleanout (just as roots used to do periodically for my drain, but not since I removed all the suspect plants) then they raise the drain water to just above the slab (if you have no showers with floor level drains they need to remove a toilet to monitor this), fill the under slab drain pipes until the water reaches slab level, and then see if it drops down.  If it drops down, you have a hydrostatic leak.  Engineers, Home Inspectors, and others will endlessly tell you that drain leaks are the #1 cause of foundation problems (I don't think they were the cause of mine, as I shall discuss more in a later post) and those links must be fixed, sooner or later, regardless of the (nearly always astronomical) cost.

But rather than get Gem Plumbing to fix this, I wasn't sure I trusted them, I called my usual plumber, Primo Plumbing, who I have trusted most recently.  Unfortunately, Primo Plumbing does not do beneath slab drain work, but they referred me to Chambliss Plumbing.

I trusted and liked Chambliss Plumbing before.  Way back around 2012 I got their name from John Jones, the master electrician who I trusted more than any other contractor and who did lots of special electrical projects  for me like the trio of isolated ground outlets for my stereo in the living room (and  fixed code compliance issues in my old home I would never have thought about).  I figured Chambliss was another top shelf company like John Jones, and they always seemed to be.

Chambliss did all the plumbing associated with my partial master bathroom remodel in 2014.  They installed a new Kohler Bellwether tub and toilet.  I even got a visit from Mr Chambliss himself to help in configuring these things, especially the dual tub and shower valves, to my dream specifications.  Mr Chambliss was a plumber I respected because, like all good plumbers, he often refused to do things exactly the way I wanted, but we came up with compromises that satisfied me anyway.

 Unfortunately, that powered flush toilet--which included a Flushmate powered flushing device inside the otherwise empty tank--gave me endless problems, mainly that it decided every now and then to stop flushing at all, which was, needless to say, a terrible stinking problem.

And unlike old fashioned toilets, where you can go down to Lowes to get replacement flush valves and the like, with a powered flush toilet you must get proprietary parts and they are sufficiently complex and dangerous that you will probably need a plumber to fix them.  It says so right on the Flushmate device itself.  (Ultimately I figured out that I could buy a tiny part, the so-called duckbill valve which is a tiny piece of rubber that looks similar to an unrolled condom, but somewhat smaller, insert it into the correct place in the Flushmate, which was easy to do, and that would often, but not always, fix the problem.)

I had Chambliss out many times to fix the toilet.  Finally, even after I'd learned about the Duckbill Valve and how to replace it, the Flushmate simply would not work any more.  So I called Chambliss out again.  A pair of Chambliss plumbers spent hours trying to get it to work, and even had a long talk with Sloan on the phone.  Finally, it seems the that thing which made it work was leveling my toilet.  It seems that my foundation had shifted just enough to keep the Flushmate from working in 2019 as it had worked in 2014 when it was installed.  They might have replaced the Flushmate too, I can't remember, but it seemed like they would try every other thing first to avoid doing that because Sloan was not eager to reimburse warranty replacements or admit there were any issues with the Flushmate at all, and Chambliss themselves repeated that line to me.

After that, when I called Chambliss for some other different repair, Chambliss politely informed me that I was no longer in their "service region."  That was when I sought another plumbing company, and after trying a few others on occasion, ended up with Primo Plumbing which is the sister company of Comfort Air, the company who installed my Carrier Infinity Heat Pump (no other company it seemed was interested in installing anything but a lower end heat pump, at most 2 speed, and I wanted a top of the line unit with a variable speed compressor).  And Primo has always done well by me ever since.  They installed the Cadet Pro toilet I have used since 2020, which I have always been able to fix myself (but it's another long not entirely happy story I don't have time to tell now).  And I have always been happy with the work that Primo Plumbing has done for me, even more so than Chambliss.  Good thing, perhaps, that they don't do drain work.

So, with great trepidation, I called Chambliss.  And lo, they agreed to do the drain repair for me.  They sent out Aldo, one of their master drain plumbers.

Aldo repeated the Hydrostatic Test, for $350, and got the same result as Gem Plumbing.  Then he and another plumber did a Pinpoint Leak test, which cost $600.  The pinpoint leak test determined that the leak was underneath my slab and 5 feet from the front of my house where the cleanout valve is.  The cost to fix would be $4000 ($800 per foot underneath the slab).  Since I did the repair I did not have to pay for any of the testing costs.

Sadly, when the $4000 repair was done, my drain still continued to fail the Hydrostatic Test.  So this time Aldo and another plumber did a more complex version of the pinpoint leak test, this time using a video camera.  And for some reason he also got up on the roof to send the camera down the vent for the plumbing system.  At least I did not have to pay for this second test.

This time Aldo discovered I had a second leak in the plumbing associated with the washing machine drain.  This seemed quite plausible to me as I'd always noticed some rippling in vinyl plank flooring in the hallway just a few feet away from the Washing Machine standpipe (but, as I learned later, possibly 6 or more feet from the actual associated plumbing, which is mostly right above the main drain on the other side of the laundry room, and where I have never observed any unusual issues.).  Starting from the existing 5 foot excavation in front, it would require another 14 feet of drain repair.  Aldo said that would cost another $12,000 to fix.  He asked me very humbly if I wanted to go ahead with that.

I felt I needed to.  That was probably a long standing problem, explaining the rippling in the hallway floor.  The foundation company engineer had told me the only thing I'd have to worry about (after putting piers all around my foundation) was drain leaks.  So I'd probably need to go ahead and fix it (and if I hadn't, I would have no foundation repair warranty, I found out only later).

Thus, a fairly "small" $4000 drain repair became a very large $16,000 drain repair which took over a month to complete.  Excavators dug a human walkable tunnel underneath my house starting at the drain cleanout next to the front door.  The soil they removed created an enormous mound mostly piled on the front lawn (they also took some of it away with them, which I told them not to do again, because I wanted all the local soil I could get for filling in holes around the house).  The pile of soil was almost 20 feet long and about 4 feet high and 6 feet wide.

I began to fear that my house foundation would collapse from having so much soil removed from underneath it.  But they assured me it was safe.  I'm think it was probably helped by having two 25 deep foot foundation piers on either side of the excavation hole in front, though no piers exist currently inside my house.  I moved all the heavy items I could (books in bookcases) away from the center of the house to be more safe.  There was no sign of serious issues in need of repair* inside the house, but ultimately the front walkway started to tilt and ultimately pulled away from the small square piece in the corner Baird had put there above a foundation pier Baird put there, leaving about a 1/2 gap around the piece there, and a slight depression as the tilted walkway now rises up slightly on that side while the piece itself has remained in place.

(*Maybe a few small hairline cracks in the wall at ceiling level, but I think most if not all of those cracks had preceded the drain repair and were related to the foundation issues I wanted to have fixed, which is another story.)

Aldo impressed me as a very serious and competent plumber.  Once the excavation was done, all the main drain pipe back to the leaking zone was replaced.  One or more of the riser pipes up to the foundation fixtures were replaced too, such as the riser pipe to the hallway bathroom toilet.

When it came to the final leaking zone, however, it was not possible to replace the entire riser pipe, because it want above the foundation into the wall behind the laundry room.  So, instead, a new partial riser pipe from the drain was connected to it somehow.

The City Inspector was not going to go down into the tunnel and observe all the new plumbing, so instead Aldo took a video camera and made a video of it.

Finally another hydrostatic test was performed, and now the plumbing system passed.

But that was not the end of it all.  The backfill needed to be done.  The excavation crew returned and shoveled as much of the soil on my lawn back into the tunnel.  One member of the crew did this from down inside the tunnel and the others shoveled the soil down to him.

This process began in the morning as I was barely awake and it woke me up.  The noise inside my house was incredible.  It sounded like all the pipes inside my house were being pounded with rocks, starting in the laundry room and going forwards.  The worst of all sounds ultimately came from the hallway bathroom.  I was scared, very scared, that all the meticulously rebuilt drain plumbing would be shattered.

I spoke with the excavators who told me there would be excess soil left over because they could never get all the soil back into the tunnel.  I showed them where they could put it around the house foundation and my big storage building in the back yard, where there had been settling after the first phase of foundation repair 3 years earlier and considerable erosion around the storage building.  We agreed on a payment, I recall it was either $150, for them to distribute the soil and they did a very nice job, nicer than when the foundation work was done originally.

I didn't mention the noises.  I didn't want to dissuade them from doing the best possible backfill job, leaving no gaps under my house.

Then Chambliss sent the $!6,000 bill.  I called Chambliss and asked if they'd do another hydrostatic test after the backfill, I was worried about it because incredible noises were being made.  Chambliss said they never did that, and it wasn't necessary.  I called Primo Plumbing and asked them if they would do a hydrostatic test.  They said they did not do that, because they did not do drain work themselves.  I worried about the cost of doing a hydrostatic test on my own dime, since Chambliss would have charged me $350 just for that, and I wasn't sure I trusted any other plumbers, so I let the matter drop for the time being.  I felt safe because it stated right on the contract there was a 3 year warranty.  Perhaps Chambliss was right, it wasn't necessary to do a hydrostatic test after the backfilling, and they are a top shelf plumber.

But I have worried about it ever since.  Over time I noticed additional bumps in the vinyl plank flooring where there were bumps before the plumbing work, and I never stopped worrying that the drain repairs had been ruined by the backfilling, and my drain might even be in worse shape now than it was before the repair, and my foundation might be less well supported as well.

When inspecting my house for foundation repair warranty work a year later, Daniel from Baird also noticed those bumps.  I told him "it had bumps there before."

But this motivated me to finally do another hydrostatic test.  I looked online and found a company, The Bearded Plumber, who would do hydrostatic tests for $99.  So I called them.

This time I watched the plumber, a fairly young man actually (though with a beard).  He ran the water in the hallway tub for 30 minutes "to fill the plumbing" he said.  Finally he stopped and the water went down pretty fast.  He recorded that with his phone.  (On the receipt, it says "12 inches."  I think that means the water level dropped 12 inches below slab level.  That would not actually be all the way down to the main drain pipe, which is about two feet below the house, but somewhere in one or more of the risers that rise up from the drain pipe to the various plumbing fixtures.)

During the test, I checked that the ball in the cleanout was blocking water.  There was some water beneath the ball but it did not appear to be moving.  The plumber said that was normal.

I was nearly holding my breath the entire time, but then finally I got the verdict.  Once again, my drain did not pass the hydrostatic test.  We made arrangements for the Pinpoint Leak test for the next week.  He offered Thursday but I hoped to watch a movie with my friend on that day (which didn't happen) so the Pinpoint Leak test was scheduled for Wednesday on the following week.  He offered 8 am but I worried I'd need to use the toilet that early, so it was scheduled for "10-12."  He said the test would last 2-4 hours and I asked if they would break for lunch if it took more than 2 hours.  He said no, and they usually got it done in about 2 hours.

After the Hydrostatic Test I started having some very bad feelings about it.  I didn't remember any other plumber running the bathtub for 30 minutes, though I hadn't been paying attention.  I would have though 5 minutes sufficient to fill the plumbing, but online sources said it was generally done in 15 minutes (just like the plumber said) but sometimes as long as 45 minutes.

I have a small house and the hall bathtub has a vintage 1983 Moen valve that probably lets more water through than most, I figured.  It sounds like Niagra Falls when it was running.  I worried that all the excess water while the plumber was "filling the plumbing" was leaking out through the leak, possibly doing more foundation damage in one day than a whole year of a slowly leaking drain, because it was all being done at once.

I resolved to test my bathtub faucet to see if it was putting out way more water than most.  I'd see how long it actually took to fill the bathtub to the overflow drain.  But the only bathtub stopper I could find wasn't big enough.  So I ordered one on Amazon.  This was Sunday morning and I wanted to run the test right then to see if my fears were justified.  Amazon gave me two options, normal delivery from 5-10pm, or drone delivery by 10:30 am.  Both options were Free Delivery.  I had always avoided drone delivery because I don't like the idea of drones.  But this was urgent, I didn't want to wait until 10pm to do the test.  I might put it off to Monday or not get it done at all before the plumbers returned for the pinpoint leak test, so I chose Drone Delivery.

As the time approached, I waited in my garage so I could see it happen.  But it kept getting delayed so I finally put a chair in my shaded front walkway to watch.  Finally it arrived around 11:15 am.  I first heard a buzzing which sounded like bees.  The the palm tree leaves started shaking, and dust was being thrown up.  I started my camera to make a video, and meanwhile watched the drone drop a medium sized package (about 10x8x5) from about 10 feet.  Then the drone took off.  The fairly large package (containing just a 1 1/2 inch bathtub stopper) rolled off my driveway into the street gutter, and I retrieved it.

Afterwards I watched the video on my phone, and it cut off just when the dust was being blown.  I never got a picture of the drone at all.  While holding my phone, and trying to get a view with my own eyes at the same time because I wasn't seeing the drone at all at first (it came from behind) I had accidentally pressed the stop button.  I checked my security camera video and found it did not have a picture of the drone at all because the drone was too high up.  But it did show the package dropping and rolling into the street gutter.

The large package had extra reinforcement inside too.  All to protect a small rubber bathtub stopper, which of course was entirely undamaged by being dropped.

I then got to performing the test, and it showed I could fill the bathtub in about 10 minutes.  And I looked online and found that 5 foot bathtubs like mine generally hold 40-50 gallons of water.  So that meant that the plumber had run 120-150 gallons.  Meanwhile, plumbing in a small house like mine only holds about 30 gallons of water.  So that meant that about 90-120 gallons must have been leaked under my foundation.  Just over two bathtubs of water.  That probably wasn't as terrible as I feared, especially considering the size of the backfilled soil, which probably absorbed most of it easily.  I also determined that the flow rate of my bathtub faucet was around 4-5 gallons per minute, which is about average, nothing special.  I did not need to worry that my bathtub faucet was different from what the plumber had experience with.

Still, I didn't like the idea of leaking that much water under my foundation, and all at once.  They always say that a hydrostatic test does not put any extra pressure on your pipes and will not harm your plumbing.  But they never advise that it may put a lot of extra water under your foundation, possibly more than you might put there in a year of living with a slightly leaky drain.  And possibly much much worse, because it was all at once.

The two plumbers that came for the Pinpoint Leak Test seemed older and more experienced.  They never ran the bathtub faucets very long.  They moved their inflatable ball through the plumbing and watched the result on video.  Finally, they determined the source of the leak was the zone that contained the washing machine, which they measured as 12 feet from the back of my house.

I asked one plumber if they could see any leak in the main drain pipe.  He answered fairly ambiguously "we couldn't see that."  I asked a lot more questions.  Finally what I gathered was this: the leak was most likely in the riser pipe rising from the main drain pipe and going up to the washing machine.  It could be a crack, a hole, or a gap.  He said that if the drain were ever blocked, drain water would build up to that point and leak.

So now I'm beginning to understand the Hydrostatic Test.  It says nothing about how MUCH your drain is leaking in ordinary usage.  It finds all the faults in your plumbing below the slab level, including faults that only occur if your main drain is plugged (as used to happen to me every now and then, before I removed all the plants that could be getting roots into my drain from some small hole in the drain pipe in the yard or otherwise).

But I haven't had a main drain blockage in many years now.  I did have a bathtub clog that got stuck and held a bathtub full of water that I was hoping it would flush down.  That time, the bathtub held water for nearly an hour, because a hair clog blocked the pipe for that long.  Finally it went down slowly.  When I called plumbers out (it was Primo that time) they found the clog caught in roots near my cleanout value.  Then, they ran the router into my house just a bit, but afterwards said since was a 4 inch router instead of the 2 inch they normally used inside house plumbing.  "But it was probably ok," they said.

That was when I discovered that the potted plant nearest the front door had sent a root into the ground and that was what was probably infiltrating my drain pipe.  From then on, I've put large potted plants on top of pavers to be sure they don't do that, and I've had no more root problems since then.  One friend tells me I should be more concerned about a neighbor's oak tree which is about 50 feet away, but it hasn't caused any problems in 7 years, if ever.

I began to reason that if a riser pipe has a crack or a small hole it is probably of very little consequence in normal use.  Water mostly keeps going down through the pipe rather than leaking out.  It's only when when the drain is backed up that it becomes an issue.

But you could still have a real problem if there was a fairly large "gap" that water might leak out in ordinary use.  And the worst case would be when there was not only a gap but a misalignment between the upper and lower parts of the riser pipe.  The the water that goes down your fixture might not make it into the drain at all, but just flood the ground under the foundation.

It was maddening, I was beginning to think, that the Hydrostatic Test doesn't tell you anything about the cause of the leak and/or how bad it is.  The worst case would be a gap and misalignment in the main drain pipe.  That could be bad, very bad.  But small cracks, holes, or gaps in riser pipes would probably be no big deal.

I resolved to do a different kind of test, a Hydrodynamic Test, to see that water running down the fixtures inside the house actually makes it to the drain.  That's really the important thing.  How much drain water is actually going down the drain.  If there is a gap with misalignment in a riser pipe, nearly all the water would be going into your foundation and none into the main drain pipe.

To do this test, I ran the washing machine on the Quick Wash cycle (with no actual clothes in the washer, which is not generally recommended but my LG intelligent washer seems to handle it ok, so I do this every now and then as a quick substitute for the Drum Clean cycle) and I watched the drain water through the cleanout.  It was clear that washing machine water was making it into the main drain.  It flushed some shit that was sitting there from my having had a crap an hour earlier.  I figured this took more than the 1.6 gallons the toilet was using, and probably several times more.  That would mean there was something like 3-6 gallons going down the drain.  Then I asked Google a bunch of questions (at first it gave me answers like "you should not do that") and finally determined that an LG washer like mine run with no clothes on the quick wash cycle would be using about 4-6 gallons, which is right in line with what I subjectively observed through the cleanout.

So it's clear that the washing machine water, at least most if not all of it, is going down the drain.  The riser pipe is not misaligned, the worse case scenario.  It might have a small gap, hole, or crack but since water goes down it would be of little consequence most of the time, unless the drain was backed up.

I also tried the sinks and bathtubs, and in every case saw water normally going down the drain.  Often I could hear it too, just like you would imagine.  I could not hear it very well through the master bathroom sink, but that is probably because (as Chambliss told me) the main drain pipe in my house doesn't uniformly go down the way it is supposed to, there is a high spot near the washing machine, then the pipe goes in the wrong direction--downwards (and traps some water in normal use) on the west side of the house.  However, both the pinpoint leak tests done by Chambliss and by The Bearded Plumber showed no hydrostatic leakage in that region.  So when I run water in the master bathroom sink, it first mixes with that trapped water until it builds up high enough to start pouring down the drain.  Nevertheless, shit from the master toilet, the one I normally use, generally makes it all the way out pretty quickly (since I saw it in the cleanout during my Hydrodynamic Test, and I had used the toilet only twice before that at most).

The Bearded Plumber gave me an estimate for fixing the problem.  With an applied discount, it would cost $6800 to excavate 12 feet in from the rear of the house (the opposite direction that Chambliss had done a year earlier) and fix the drain in the zone including the washing machine drain.  I declined the offer.  I didn't tell them that I'd spent $16,000 to fix that very zone the previous year, but including other issues and starting from the front of the house (18 feet).  18 plus 12 equals 30 feet, the total depth of my house (not including the attached garage).

Now I have a quandry.  I could call Chambliss and see if they would honor their 3 year warranty on plumbing.  For sure, they'd require me to pay them to do the Hydrostatic and Pinpoint Leak tests all over again, as plumbers never trust other plumbers in these regards.  And that would cost at least $950.  At best they would tell me they would waive those charges if I chose to pay for the repair, or have it done if it was covered by warranty.  They might come up with some reason the warranty was inapplicable (such as earth movement, or that the fault occurs higher up in the riser pipe than the part they repaired, though I thought they told me they were responsible now for that entire "zone" all the way up to slab level, or that the fault is now in some other zone).  And even if they now did a warranty repair, they would almost certainly want to do the warranty repair in the cheapest possible way, probably starting from the back of the house now because that is the shorter distance, and the problems they fixed in the front of the house have remained fixed.

And I have issues with that kind of repair, even if they did it at no cost to me.  If they tunneled in from the back, that would be right next to a foundation pier I think that Baird did incorrectly.  It goes only 10 feet deep, whereas most of the piers around my house are 25-35 feet deep.  I worry that the pier that only goes 10 feet deep might fall or collapse if tunneling were done close to it, leading to cracking my entire foundation in half.  Even if the pier does not collapse, the hot afternoon sunlight would endlessly dry out the backfilled dirt after the work is done.  And I'd then have a backfilled tunnel running the entire length of my house, and probably going past a big foundation beam that I imagine being about, well, 18 feet from the front and just after where the washing machine zone is (which serves as a kind of fulcrum, which is perhaps what led to there being a leak there in the first place, and possibly why it doesn't seem to stay fixed for long).

I don't even think I'd like it much if they dug out the 18 foot tunnel from the front again.  I worry there's only so many insults my foundation can handle.  Even though the fill soil there is far less dense than the soil under the rest of my foundation, once again they'd probably not get it all back in again, so it would be even less dense than it is right now, having been lightened twice.

I think that if the leakage only occurs when the drain is backed up, that's really not such a big deal by comparison.  And even if a little leakage is occurring all the time, how can that be such a big deal?  I have resolved to do only one load of laundry every day, that's not very much water even if it all leaked out which clearly it is not.  And if I try to do one load every day, that would keep the moisture level fairly constant too.

And then, even if a warranty repair were done, how long is THAT going to last, especially if (as I believe now) some of my foundation piers were installed incorrectly and will continue to sink over time, just as if I had not done foundation piering at all.  (And it looks like I'm never going to get that fixed, Baird Foundation Repair has told me that it's normal for some piers to be 30 feet deep and others right next to them to be only 10 feet deep.)

I don't have a good feeling about these under slab drain repairs at all now.  Houses here should have been built entirely differently here, either on raised piers (like old fashioned houses) so you could repair the drains and everything without doing excavations under the load bearing parts, or with drain basements so you could go down and see the drains yourself.  I note that many years ago the founder of the scientific institute where I worked developed a method of pneumatically raising concrete foundations so they could rest on above ground piers.  Perhaps he had some bad experiences with under slab drain repairs too.

A little bit of water periodically released under a slab foundation might even be beneficial, if it was only a small and fairly regular amount.  It might help keep the soil under the house, and perhaps just beyond, from fully drying out.  The backfilled soil was probably badly dehydrated from being outside the house for nearly a month.

It might be better just to leave everything alone at this point.  I'd bet that most houses around me for hundreds of miles around me would fail a hydrostatic test by 20 years after construction, if not earlier.  And most people don't know about these leaks because they are not required to do regular hydrostatic tests.

There's even a possibility that The Bearded Plumber who did the hydrostatic test didn't do it properly, and there is no hydrostatic leak at all.  It's still hard to believe that over two bathtubs of water leaked out in 30 minutes, while as far as I can tell most drain water is actually going down the drain normally.  And if my plumbing actually passes a hydrostatic test done by Chambliss prior to warranty repair, I'd be out the entire $350 or whatever they charge now for doing it.

So, at this point, I'm thinking I might just be better off leaving everything alone.  I just wish I'd decided that before signing up for the extra 14 feet of drain repair last year which cost me $12,000 and left me with a tunnel filled with looser back fill more than half of the way across my house.  THAT was my mistake.  Aldo asked me if I wanted to go ahead with that, and I should have said no, just as I said no to The Bearded Plumber.

I'd probably had that original drain leak for a couple decades before Chambliss fixed it.  The leak might be slightly worse now than it was before Chambliss repaired it, but it may still not be enough to justify all the work and potential foundation damage from trying to fix it again.

Though I do sometimes worry now that my house will one day collapse into a sinkhole because of drain leaks.  And I notice cracks and floor unevenness more than ever before.  And since The Bearded Plumber did their Hydrostatic Test, I'm even hearing creaks sometimes when I walk on certain parts of the flooring in my bedroom over 8 feet away from the washing machine plumbing but I'm thinking that is more likely caused by the weak 10 foot pier in the vicinity.

This is part of a larger story in which I spent over $30,000 last year to fix foundation and drain issues which were not actually causing me any serious trouble, and the issues have both returned in the year since they were supposedly fixed, along with more minor issues.  So far, there seems to be a lesson here, like "if it isn't badly broken, don't fix it."  And that's regardless of what plumbers, home inspectors, and others tell you that you absolutely "must" do, sooner or later.  I am sure I made the wrong choices last year, the trouble I faced was trivial and hadn't amounted to much in the 43 years since this house was built.  The $30,000 cost has set me back for a long time.  But the main question now is, did the repairs actually make things so much worse that my house won't last anything like that going forwards?  I now worry about my foundation splitting or collapsing into a sinkhole, which never happened before, but might happen now with a worse leak and less dense soil under my foundation.  

But since nothing seriously bad has happened in the first year since the faulty "repairs," I try not to worry about it much.

All the Trees in Back Yard

In the 14 years that have gone by since I planted them, I've often wondered what trees I planted in back yard.  I made lots of posts when I was planting them, but no one post shows a map of all the trees.  I made that today, currently missing just one tree that I haven't identified yet.

This is a rough picture as yet, but I feel a need to save it here for future reference until I make a better one.

Top of the diagram is the west.

The situation has dramatically changed since 2012.  The Monterrey Oak has grown very big and wonderful, but has a large branch encroaching on my two sheds which now needs to be cut down.  The yard is highly shaded on the north and south sides by neighbors trees, including a big Elm in the southern neighbor's back yard, and a row of hackberries along both southern and northern fences.  I'm having those hackberries trimmed back as much as possible to the property line, they shade and choke out my trees.  The tree trimmers basically never touch the Elm, they advise against doing so except where it comes too close to my house, it's now shading the southwest corner of my house from high up.  The northern neighbors hackberries have been encroaching on my house roof (I last had them trimmed them back 2 years ago, it needs to be an annual thing) and wrecked one of my two whip antennas and I'll have to get an insured ladder specialist to replace the broken whip antenna as it's too high for me to reach safely.  My own Vitex trees also need to be greatly cut back as they are encroaching on Lyndhurst Garden Shed.

The Viburnum next to southwest corner of house struggled to get through the Texas Deep Freeze in 2022, never fully recovered because of shading, and ultimately died as a tiny skeleton of it's onetime glory a few years earlier.   The once struggling olive tree has grown gigantic by growing away from the fence and capturing much of the southern back yard where it can still get sunlight, I trimmed it back to keep from smashing bedroom window in big storms.  My clumping palms have not spread but have gotten very big.  Even with all the trees I have a few privacy gaps, (1) near the unknown tree on the west next to the bamboo which has grown mostly away from the bamboo and was once erroneously trimmed by trimmers (so I don't have them trim there anymore) and has only slowly filled in that space because of shading from the bamboo (which I don't want to trim back because it also provides privacy), and (2) where the now missing viburnum was.  And in the winter because the olive loses its leaves.

Garden Hand Scoop with plastic handles

Eight years ago I bought a garden hand scoop in a fairly premium brand, with a heavy plastic handle.  I've kept it in my garden shed ("Oakhurst") with my other garden tools.  I used it very infrequently.

For the past 4 years, it has become unusable because the vinyl plastic handle has been oozing sticky plasticizers.  If I merely pick it up I then have to wash my hands about 3 times before I get the sticky material off.

Meanwhile, a wood handled trowel I bought a few years later, is just like new, but it doesn't "scoop" very much soil at a time.

Perhaps it was just this brand (I can't remember what it was) but I'm not going to be buying any more plastic handled tools if I can avoid them.  Perhaps if I stored them in the house they would be OK, but that's a lot of trouble and I don't like to bring dirty garden tools into the house.  

Sadly there are few alternatives anymore, especially in garden scoops.  Smaller trowels are easy to find with wood handles.

The manufacturers should understand that I normally use such tools with gloves anyway, so I don't need "padded plastic handles."  I may even end up getting an all metal "ice" scoop.

Endlessly Increasing Monthly Charges

 As time has gone on, modern life seems to require more and more things that involve monthly charges.  And even if you do nothing, those monthly charges will keep going up and up.  I hate them.

Back in 1998, I paid Ranger American security $1200 for a new security system.  I wanted to be sure I paid for the whole thing, and had a local monitoring company.

Back then I had a plain old telephone system which cost about $30/month.  I was still using it as my primary phone service then (and until 2009).  My new security monitoring with Ranger American cost about $25/mo.

About a year later, Ranger American was bought by ADT.  When ADT took over, the monitoring charges went up to $30/mo.

Now, in 2025, my plain old telephone system, which the security system still requires, costs $95.76.  I never make landline telephone calls, in fact because the security system telephone device is slightly broken, and won't let go of the phone line anymore, I can't.  I only need the landline for my security system, which normally uses it about once a month for testing only (unless there is an alarm event, which there hasn't been in 19 years).

My ADT monitoring service now costs $83.36.  I have a very basic system not unlike what I installed 27 years ago, but just a few more sensors and an extra keypad.  No cameras, home automation, or anything like that.  Just the basics.  The price I'm paying seems to have nothing with the "standard" ADT rates you may see published, for which basic monitoring might cost $40.

Since I need both, the total monthly charges I am paying for security system monitoring is $179.12.  If that rate were to continue, I'd be paying $21,494.40 for the next 10 years of monitoring.  But it wouldn't continue at the same prices even if I let it continue, instead it would likely be increasing, just like before, so I'd be paying more like $50,000 for the next ten years of monitoring.

I'm beginning to feel like I felt when I summarily emptied my first storage building after ten years of storage.  After paying thousands of dollars for storage, all the stuff I stored went straight into the trash, since at most it would be worth about $100 at resale and I didn't have the time to bother with that.  I said "never again" but indeed, I rented another storage room a decade later for a few years until I built my own storage building (and don't ask how much that cost).

My phone system has never needed "service" in 27 years (and if it did, and if it were past my entry point, I'd have to pay for it).  I have called ADT for telephone help about ten times (in 27 years) and gotten repair service (included) twice.  I've had ADT installers out 4 times to add new sensors.  For that, and monitoring which has called police twice in 27 years, I've paid many thousands of dollars in monitoring fees.

ADT has simply raised the price every year, and tacked on a new monthly charge for each extra sensor added to the system, even if I pay for the sensor as completely as they allow me to do.

In truth there is no standard basic monitoring rate at ADT.  It's all negotiable and under a unique contract (or not) for each person.  If you want to keep your rates low, what you have got to do is call ADT every year, and ask for a lower rate.  You can only do this once a year.  Then, ADT will at most knock down the price at most about 15% so long as you sign a 1 year contract.  That's how you get the lowest rate they will choose to offer you.  You must stay "in contract" to get the lowest increases, otherwise they increase rates with a vengeance.   That's what it means whenever you have a service that has contracts that may expire.

If you don't continually negotiate the rates down, your rates will go up as much as 15% a year.  By continually negotiating the rates, they'll still go up, but not as much.  If you have failed to negotiate the price down every year, you'll be stuck with a higher price because they simply won't negotiate it down very much at any one time.  You have baked in a permanently higher price than new customers and there is nothing you can do about it except move to a different company.

With AT&T, I actually have no idea what they are charging me "for."  I haven't seen a paper bill in 25 years (I rue the day I told them they could send me bills electronically) because, it seems, it goes to an expired email.  But generally what happens is that they add new fees and pricing tiers and if you do nothing your tier continues to rise in the stack of pricing tiers as they add new ones.  I've been told I need to keep calling them to ensure I'm on the lowest service level tier I need.

It's this opaque pricing and lack of real standard rates, not to mention sky high prices for basic service that hasn't changed in decades, that has made me incredibly angry at both ADT and AT&T.  

(I'm equally if not more infuriated at cable TV companies like Spectrum but that's another long and sad story.  Cable companies are infamous for all their tricks, including promotional pricing, contracts, tiers, and bundling (programs you detest are always included with programs you want), which keep your monthly charges endlessly increasing.  Combined with endlessly needing repairs, replacements, and mandatory upgrades.  Meanwhile, they're constantly trolling at your home and elsewhere for new suckers with the pitch, "who is providing your service now"?  And, I have discovered, they may endlessly send you bills for service you never ordered and they refuse to read their returned mail no matter how many times you try to tell them, "not at this address."  Would I ever chose to do business with a company like that again?  Never.)

It seems like most of the service here is the service of requiring you to call the service company annually to keep the service charges from spiraling through the roof.  IOW, the lower cost service might cost them more, as it includes handling the required incoming phone call to get the lowest cost service.  (This reminds me of how computer systems are often dumbed down for the lower performance levels, thus the lower performance levels actually cost them more because of the required dumbing.)

I could have upgraded my ADT system so it doesn't require a landline anymore but uses cellular service.  That costs $250 for the equipment (when I asked) and would add at least $12  to the monthly charges.  And, of course, a new 1 year contract.

I did not do that because I've been planning to get out of these spiraling costs altogether for some time.  I just couldn't figure out how to do it.  I might have stayed with ADT if there really were a "Basic" rate around $40.  I told them I only had basic security, but they refused to lower my monitoring cost more than 15% from $83.36, and that would only be for 1 year.

Today I purchased a SimpliSafe system online.  There, too, people complain that the monthly charges have kept going up, and the "core" plan (virtually required for the first month of a new system) is $31.99.  There is a $21.99 plan...but guess what...you have to call them on the phone to get them to change it to that.  (It seems more and more stuff works this way, you have to call to get lower charges, and of course some telemarketer on the other side will try to convince you not to, if you can even get through to them.  I've had lots of trouble with such things in the past, it took a month to get ahold of XM radio by phone to get my XM radio service canceled, and there was no other way to do it)

Anyway, I put together a system virtually identical to my ADT system, with quite a few motion detectors and even glass break detectors.  It doesn't need a second keypad because it has a dongle.  The cost of all the parts was $800 which was reduced to $400 if I accepted a "free month" of core monitoring (and then $31.99 per month after that).

I had figured those sensors and other parts would come to about $3000 based on my experience of buying security system parts for my current system, and looking at name brand parts.

SimpliSafe parts are cheap enough that if they break you wouldn't feel too bad about just getting another one.  But they're supposed to be good, I've seen reviews that rate them #2 or even #1.

(SimpliSafe gets a higher score than ADT in these test, but they still rate ADT higher.)

Even with having to make a phone call to get the lowest rate, the SimpliSafe approach is far more transparent than ADT.  And if you need to, you can run the system you purchased with no monitoring and no monitoring charges at all.

**** Update

Have been using new SimpliSafe system for 5 days.  I have tested and re-tested every important feature.  It normally uses my Wifi to communicate with the monitoring center, but I tested cellular backup communications by unplugging modem, and still got an automated call when I entered test mode.  Success!  (I will have more to say, the good and the bad of SimpliSafe, in a review I am writing on my ComputerCritical blog.)

So I called 1-800-ADT-ASAP to cancel my ADT monitoring service.  This took 28 minutes on the phone.  The first agent verified my identity, location, phone number, and password, then I was to wait for second agent, who picked up 5 minutes later.  Second agent also verified address and passcode.  Both thanked me for my 27 years.  Second agent first offered $58/mo, then $29/mo.  I declined both offers and was told cancellation on June 14 (30 days).  I was warned my system would no longer work and would not dial emergency numbers.  (Of course, and btw I have never used those anyway.)

Both offers to extend current system were worthless because I'd immediately have to update my connection from landline to cellular, costing $250 and raising monthly price at least $12/mo, in order to cut out the now $95/mo landline charge from AT&T.  But I didn't discuss that issue.  I like the greater transparency of my new SimpliSafe system and my ability to add more devices and control them.  ADT could have offered me a lower price in January, which might have retained my business for another few years, but they only offered to knock down the price by 15% then, down to about $70, which itself would only get raised up again by the cellular device monthly charges.  Now it's too late, and I'm tired of their "negotiable" prices anyway.  It's clear you have to be very insistent on leaving to get their "best" price.

I was happy they didn't ask me if I was switching to another service and how much I was paying for it.  (Cable sellers typically do that).  ADT has the Olympian view that nothing else is comparable.  Fine, I can and will be the judge of that.

A few days later I canceled my AT&T landline service.   Despite making me very tense (getting rid of the now useless $95.76 monthly charges being on the line) it only lasted 12 minutes (seemed more like 40).  First I answered questions to the automated system, then I answered mostly the same questions again to a human agent.  They asked me the 3 digit account code on my bill.  But here's the rub: I haven't seen my AT&T bill for over 25 years, ever since I opted for electronic billing.  It must have been going to a defunct email address or spam filtered.  The fact that I was being charged $95 for a landline, and not knowing exactly what I was being charged for, has made me very very angry at AT&T.  As with ADT, I will likely avoid doing business with them in the future because of this unhappy era.

I rue the day I opted for electronic billing for ADT and AT&T.  DO NOT OPT FOR ELECTRONIC AND "AUTOMATIC" PAPERLESS BILLING, ONLY FOR ACCOUNTS YOU ACTUALLY PAY ONLINE AND THEREFORE CONTINUE READING THEIR BILLS (like credit cards).  The online AT&T agent was able to take the last 4 digits of my social security number in lieu of the 3 digit account code on my "bill" which I've never seen.  So they canceled my account as of today.  I got a confirmation code.  I hope this is the end of that (btw, 35 years of service at the phone number).

In theory, since SimpliSafe has only monthly contracts, pricing is transparent because everyone should be paying the same rate for the same service.  There aren't some people getting lower "rates" while their equipment is being paid off, then suddenly much higher rates afterwards, the usual trick which makes you think your long term costs will be low despite high initial charges.

The only way to go is to buy your own equipment, and get month to month service at a published rate.

New Era Has Dawned: New Dishwasher

OOPS?

I'd been expecting my Kenmore dishwasher, purchased in 1999, to fail any year since about 2006.

By that time, if not nearly since the beginning, it routinely made a loud grinding and squealing sound during draining especially but also mostly during regular operation.  You wouldn't want to talk over it.  I'm sure it wasn't as bad as an actual sawmill, but it did bring that to mind.

I was giving it up for goners by 2006 but then a friend told me about Lemi-Shine Machine cleaner.  I used it infrequently but enough to keep the machine going for 25 years until I had a major leak across the kitchen floor.  I figured the grinding had finally cut through the pump housing, or the plastic tub had cracked.  It would certainly not be worth fixing.

But just after my replacement machine was installed in November 2024, I noticed a tiny cut out part was left behind, which seemed to be a portion of the drain hose which had ruptured right next to the machine (inside the cabinet made for the dishwasher, so I couldn't see the problem).

So it's now looking like I didn't need to replace my Kenmore dishwasher at all.  If I had only thought about the possibility that it could be just a busted drain hose!

I had looked at the hose under the sink...but it probably busted right next to the machine where I couldn't see it.

But what if I had thought of that possibility (I should have just asked google what could cause a dishwasher leak) what could I have done?  It might have been hard to get appliance repair to even look at it.  Sears isn't around anymore, so I couldn't call Sears.  Independent repair people would say it's too old to get replacement parts, etc.  If I had gotten an appliance repair guy out here, it might have taken weeks for them to get around to it (appliance repair still hadn't come out in 3 weeks for my 13 year old Whirlpool washing machine before I finally decided to buy a new LG machine) they have a minimum charge for coming out and for doing an estimate.  You'd be lucky if that initial charge were only $200, I think it's usually more like $300.  The cost of the repair would probably be $250, for which they'd knock off $150 of the original $300 charge, leaving you with a $400 bill for replacing the hose.

If you knew that a busted hose was the issue, you could do it yourself, or just call a plumber who might fix it for around $250.  But normally a plumber would tell you they don't know anything about dishwashers.  And it might cost as much as $400 too.

So I don't know.  If I had known it was just the hose, I probably would have replaced the hose if I could get that done for $250.  But the dishwasher was long due for replacement anyway.  Besides the incredible noise it made, it didn't work at all with the new wash packs, it didn't clean very well even with liquid Cascade sometimes, and occasionally even left stuff that looked like plastic pieces dried to the glasses (I noticed that on a few pieces just before the leak).  I imagined it was falling apart internally.  I was wondering how much dishwasher micro plastic I'd consumed over the years.  It would be nice to have new dishwasher with stainless steel interior instead and newer parts that aren't deteriorating.  It might fail at some inconvenient time, such as over the holidays when I have a party scheduled.  I often thought about replacing it just for reasons such as those.  So it was probably a good thing to have it not just "fixed" with a new hose but completely replaced, using the $250-$400 repair cost going towards a long overdue new unit.

Deciding, or Lusting?

To be prepared for the decision I knew I'd soon need to make, I started looking at dishwashers in the Sears store at Ingram Park Mall around 2006.  Or perhaps it was as early as 2003.  I many many minutes looking at the dishwashers at that Sears store until it closed in 2017.   It was a convenient detour on my lunchtime stroll from the parking lot to the Luby's Cafeteria next door to Sears.  

I noticed how most dishwashers were converging on the very minimalist stainless steel look of the Bosch dishwashers, though Bosch is still among the most minimalist of them all in appearance (in the general lack of any control or displays visible on front).

And I often read and sometimes even clipped the Consumer Reports columns on dishwashers, at least to be prepared for the moment, any day now, when I might need to buy a new one.  I saw the Bosch dishwashers were, year after year, either at or adjacent to the top in Consumer Reports.

(Nowadays I am very frustrated that the Consumer Reports magazine only has limited content, most often in a kind of "top 5 summary", with the detailed reporting and complete lists only being online.  And since my email address has changed, I haven't been able to access my online account in decades.   Now it's associated t's associated my latest email with a freebee account, so I get none of the benefits of my 40 year full subscription, and I can't seem to change it to anything else.  Fortunately for me, and this seems to have been the case before, I was able to get a full listing of all Consumer Reports tested models, with summary ratings in each category, from Bosch themselves on their website.)

But other than taking a quick scan sometimes of the Consumer Reports summary info when an issue listed Dishwashers on the cover, I hadn't really been keeping up with dishwashers that much recently.  It's always been on the short list of things that might need replacement at any time.

But as I figured I'd probably do anyway, on the day after the dishwasher broke, I looked at all the information I could find, in the past copies of Consumer Reports, and elsewhere.  Finally I tracked down the complete list of Consumer Reports recommendations at the Bosch site, which was the most useful bit of information of all.

And Bosch are all the top winners, for their various Benchmark, 500, and 800 series machines for starters.

Now this is misleading as Consumer Reports often is.  The Benchmark model is shown with identical scores in all the major categories to the 800.  And the 500 series which is shown before the 800 series has a lower drying score, but Consumer Reports lets that fly because it's slightly cheaper and puts the 500 series ahead of the 800 series but the Benchmark highest of all, even though the Benchmark is basically a glorified 800.

If you want the top performance in all major categories, you want either the Benchmark or the 800 series, which both have Crystal Dry, the latest in Bosch drying innovations (which they've needed, since other goals like energy efficiency have reduced drying performance).

The main thing extra that the Benchmark has is the water softener, so if you don't need that, there's not much to justify the significantly higher price (though I've come to miss the readout time on the floor feature...it's a crying shame Bosch does not show remaining time otherwise, even the numbers on top turn off after awhile).

I'm leery of using a water softener because basically what it's doing is adding salt, which is not good for either people or metals.  (Some may have to, and it's probably ok.)

It turned out there was a "front controls" model, temporarily imported from Europe, of the 800 series but WITH the "water softener."  Getting those would be additional wait time, higher price, and Lowe's didn't even list them I'd need to go to Best Buy.  Lowe's had their own "exclusive model" but it seemed so different it could have been an earlier model, and I think it didn't have the front controls either.

If I had really wanted the water softener, I'd have gotten the Benchmark with time on the floor and everything.  But I felt I could live without all of that.

Delivery and Installation

When I was checking out the various Bosch 800 models available at Lowe's on Wednesday afternoon, the Lowe's website predicted Monday delivery of the model I had decided on, having the "pocket" handle (which has a flush face) rather than the model with a handle bar that sticks out, because the bar model was more expensive, and I worried about the bar coming down and decapitating a cat...but it turns out the Bosch doors do not "fall" down like the Kenmore door did, they need to be gently pushed down, and the Bosch door is so much lower than the Kenmore door that no cat could be even under the flat door, though being hit by the handle would still be worse...it nearly touches the floor).  The bar model also means you are more separated from the countertop above, which is where I do many cooking things including cutting and oiling.  The flush front is ideal for using the countertop above, and it's nicer to be working above or just looking at the flat stainless front of the Bosch than my old bulgy gaudy beige Kenmore.

Lowe's had an 'exclusive' Bosch 800 model which was cheapest of all, but it didn't seem to have the latest options (perhaps I didn't check everything carefully enough to be sure it wasn't the European model that had the "water softener", from the comparison chart it actually looked like it lacked the "water filter" that the regular Bosch pocket and bar models had, and there didn't seem to be a row for "water softener" because none of the models had it, and the exclusive model also did not have the front controls that the European model had...I'm completely fine with the top controls, maybe I even like them better because you don't have to stoop to see which options you are enabling, but I only wish they kept the time remaining visible).

I could have ordered Wednesday night, but there was a special offer that said you could get a full rebate of "basic" installation (that would not include the fee for disposal of the old unit, I presume) but only if you ordered the installation at a Lowe's store.  (Ordering installation at the store might be required anyway, but it certainly was required for this special offer.)  So I decided I would go down to Lowe's first thing after breakfast on Thursday morning and order the specific model I had decided on.

I started looking at some display models and the salesman came up.  I forgot to bring the card on which I had written down the exact model number I wanted.  No problem, he said, I'll just look it up for you.  He started flipping through the models on his tablet.  He usually seemed to focus on the Lowe's exclusive 800 model which was the cheapest of all.  I told him I had not seen the correct model, which I was pretty sure was selling for $1167.  He said it would be better on his main terminal.  So we went there, and once again he flipped through the models, and they didn't seem to match.  Except I noticed that as he was flipping through the 800 models, he started flipping immediately after it came up with the first page, which was only visible for a few seconds.  I asked him to let me try and flipped right to it, as I thought, it was the first one listed when you searched for Bosch 800 Dishwasher.

Whereas Lowe's Online had said they had over 100 units in stock, the salesman said they had 68 in stock.  (But that must be at some warehouse!)  But it would take until Wednesday for pickup at the store.

The salesman asked if I'd like to use my plumber.  Actually, I had not even though of that, but I told him I wanted the Lowe's Installation.  He told me I could possibly get it installed as soon as Friday next week, because Lowe's installers don't get paid until the work is done and so they are anxious to complete it.  (Lowe's doing fast installation is contrary to other stories I have heard, where people have had delays and issues going on for months.  But I hoped he was right and made the sale.)

He told me I should call some number on Monday to confirm I was on the list.  I thought he circled the number on the receipt, but when I checked the receipt on Wednesday the following week (because I had been to busy to call Lowe's until then, and I knew it wasn't getting done until Friday anyway) there was no circled number, in  fact I didn't see a number at all, just the store number.  So I called that and they told me to call the Lowe's Installation number (or perhaps I just figured that out myself from the website).

The Lowe's Installation number sounded like it was a national number not local, and the information was very disturbing.  For one thing the dishwasher had not yet arrived in store and would only be "available" on Thursday.  After it arrived, then I would get a call and arrange for installation.  I asked when I should get that call and they said by Friday.  Well, in that case, it didn't sound like I was going to be getting Friday installation.  I asked and they said probably not.

I was pretty downtrodden.  But it didn't last long.  It was just after 1pm on Thursday afternoon that I got a call from the actual installation contractor.  They left both a phone message AND a text.  Not expecting a phone call until Friday, I wasn't even looking at my phone, and didn't even notice I had both phone and text messages until around 4:45.  Now it looked like Friday had been possible after all, but I probably missed my Friday slot by not being on the ball, again.  Now it might have to wait until after Thanksgiving.  Damned!

In a state of panic, I ended up leaving the phone message first, and getting confused about the time (saying 1-3PM when actually they had said 12-3, which was better actually but at the time I was leaving the message I couldn't remember exactly what had been said I was so nervous about losing my slot).  Then I left a responsive text too, and simply saying "afternooon."  (I should have checked what they said first so no ambiguity.)

In about 15 minutes my text was answered, and I was given the afternoon slot, just as I had asked.  I was jubilant.

The installer actually arrived at 1:30, and took a look at the situation and determined I needed to have a new supply valve because the old one was broken.  I should have a plumber fix that then call him back.

So I immediately called my usual plumber, Primo Plumbing, and they first promised Monday but then called me back 15 minutes later with an available slot at 4pm, which I accepted.  So before 5pm, my plumbing was fixed and I then left a message at the contractor office and then after that I called the actual installer, who answered and said he'd make sure they got the message.

By 11am Saturday morning I got a text from the contractor saying that Monday would be available.  I did not notice that text until 11pm and then texted back that anytime Monday was fine and Tuesday afternoon also.  Once again I was worried I'd lost my first available slot.  So I was uneasy.  But by Sunday morning I got the reply that Monday was possible and they'd let me know the time later.  By 4pm on Sunday afternoon my appointment for 11-2pm was offered and confirmed.

The installer arrived around noon and was finished by 1:15, including the 15-minute "test clean."

Now that the plumbing was fixed, it was a piece of cake.  The plumber had replaced the dual valve with a single valve and T connection.  That's probably the usual thing nowadays and the installer said nothing about it.

The dishwasher was installed about as quickly as it could possibly have been installed!  It was almost a miracle I got my usual plumber to come out 90 minutes after the Lowe's installer determined a new cutoff valve was needed and so I got it done that very day.  Then it was another miracle I got the dishwasher installed on the very next business day.

I told the installer I had been worried this would take months.

I only noticed later that while I was doing all this messaging with the actual installer, a contractor, I was also getting calls and texts from Lowe's Installation, which I had (perhaps fortuitously) ignored.

Despite the installer saying it wasn't necessary, I ran a full empty cycle with the Normal cycle and Sanitary in the owners manual (which I dug up online, because strangely it wasn't included with the actual dishwasher--only the multi-language installation manual).

I should have chosen the Heavy Duty cycle with Sanitary option but the manual only said "with the highest water temperature and doesn't specify the Heavy Duty cycle as such, which made it confusing, I figured Sanitary would be the highest regardless but Heavy Duty Sanitary is just a bit higher.

This machine is so quiet, I wondered at first if it was even running.  The refrigerator makes far more noise.  Even the water filling is nearly silent.  I didn't expect that at all.  This is not just different and better than before, it's way better, it's like a miracle.

I ran my dishes which had in many cases been waiting for a wash for days on the Heavy Duty cycle, and I have never seen dishes come out so clean with my old dishwasher.

So perhaps I could have avoided it, but a new era has dawned, probably long overdue.

A Way Better Dishwasher

The Bosch Dishwasher is fantastic in many ways.  It's actually quiet (unlike all previous dishwashers I've had which were as noisy as hell).  It seems completely sealed so that no moisture or smells are emitted during washing or otherwise.  That means I can run it while I'm in the kitchen doing other things and not be bothered by Dishwasher Fog as with the old Kenmore, despite the Kenmore claiming automatic sealing as a feature right on the front panel.  It's like the Kenmore was only "virtually" sealed, whereas the Bosch is actually sealed.  I'm sure this helps make the Bosch quieter too.

The Kenmore had an active vent system that supposedly closed during operation but never did close very well.  The kitchen would always get more humid when the dishwasher was running, and I'd worry about all the chemicals in the detergent getting into the air too so I'd open the outdoor vent (my motorized kitchen vent) or run it late at night.

It seems to get the dishes cleaner, and possibly even dryer than the Kenmore did.  (I always used the Kenmore on no-heat drying, the Bosch never uses electric heat in drying, just the optional patented CrystalDry if you select it, which I do.)

It looks very very nice in all stainless steel (which is lacquer coated so dirt just wipes off...and use of an abrasive stainless steel cleaner would ruin it).

I was worried that the racks would work as well as the Kenmore did for my quirky set of dishes, but I was wrong, the racks work just fine, maybe even better.

Downsides.  As might be expected, the basic German Engineering is wonderful but the user interface features are crap.  (I feel similar dissatisfaction with the user interface of asian products.  US manufacturers don't have perfect interfaces either, but often they are better.  My Whirlpool washer had very intuitive controls, and I replaced it with an LG which is at least as good, will hopefully last longer, but has overcomplicated and unintuitive controls, which I recall is typical with Samsung as well.)

1) There is no built-in time delay feature.  With the Kenmore I simply pressed the "delay" button once for each hour of delay I wanted, and it showed up on the time indicator.  I'd think any dishwasher above the base metal level should have this feature.

But with the Bosch, to use a time delay or scheduled start you must use the Bosch smart device app known as Home Connect.  This is much more complicated and inconvenient.    

You have to go through all the usual crapola to install the app on your phone.  Then the app will decide your dishwasher needs a firmware update, and you need to wait for that too.  Then finally you have to agree to let the app Start your dishwasher by enabling the permanent remote start mode.  The app advises you that there may be risks, but you need to do this for the optimum experience.  Basically that means doing time delay starts and time starts.  You must either give the app permission each time or enabling permanent remote start.  I wouldn't have wanted to give the app this permission, but I ultimately had to.

I tried to use the app time delay without enabling permanent remote start and nothing happened.  I got no notifications, no button appeared telling me I needed to enable remote start.  It simply didn't start.

I'm not giving Bosch any extra credit for having an app.  Sure it enables controlling the a few complicated features that would be more difficult to control on the device itself.  But dealing with an app makes everything more complicated.  I'd be much happier if Bosch simply made the regular controls easier to use.

And all Bosch would have had to do is add one more button for the same kind of time delay convenience I used to have with my Kenmore.  And then I might never need or use the app at all.  The default settings (which can also be controlled on the dishwasher itself) are fine.

It looks like at one time they did have such a button, but on the most current generations of Bosch dishwashers the time delay button has become the Home Control App button.  The Home Control App button could have been some kind of menu item instead.  Or just have another button, but that might have required an expensive redesign like the one Boeing failed to do for it's Max planes, but probably not quite that expensive.

2.  There is no built-in indication of the time remaining before the wash is complete.  Almost all dishwashers have this, but it would deviate from the austere minimalism of the Bosch exterior design.  Now in many ways, I like the Bosch exterior design.  But I'd like it better if instead of giving me a little light telling me the dishes are being washed, it gave me a readout of the estimated time remaining.

Now Bosch does have a digital time readout, but it's on the top edge of the door where it's normally hidden by the countertop when the door is closed.  I could still read it anyway because the gap between the dishwasher door and the countertop is just wide enough for me to see it at a steep angle but still readable.  But that digital time readout simply stops when the dishwasher is running, so even though I could have read it, I can't.  And there is no option to keep that display going when the dishwasher is running.

Instead, you can read the estimated time remaining in the app.  Once again, that's a lot more inconvenient that just reading it on the dishwasher itself.  Also in the Home Page of the app, the display time doesn't show continuously, it flashes very sporadically like 1 second every 30 seconds.  You have to press on the big blue option block to get to the page where it shows the percentage completed, finish time, and time remaining (that's nice, but just time remaining would have been sufficient).

Now, it the much more expensive Benchmark model you do get a time remaining indication from the actual dishwasher.  But even that is not on the dishwasher itself.  It's projected onto the floor and called TimeLight.

The back story here is ridiculous.  Since the dawn of electrical devices, they have had lights that indicate when they are running.

But, incredibly, Bosch was so into their minimalist aesthetic that they did not bother with such things.  Instead, for the pricier models, they invented InfoLight which projects a dot of red light onto the floor when the dishwasher is running.  Integral to InfoLight is that you can turn it off with a setting option, if you didn't happen to want a dot of light projected on the floor (I'd rather not call any more attention to my worn out floor personally).

I thought I'd rather have a light on the unit itself, and it turns out that the particular 800 model that I purchased, the InfoLight is actually just a light on the door.  Even within the 800 series, there are some models that project InfoLight on the floor and some that just have it as a light on the door.  But it is still called InfoLight and you can turn it on or off with the same setting used for other Bosch models.

Ok, I'm fine with a light on the door telling me that the dishwasher is running.  I don't even have a compelling reason to turn it off.  I find it very amusing that a "light on the door" has a trademarked name.  I love to enunciate InfoLight in a deep radio announcer voice.  What a concept!

But on the pricier Benchmark models, InfoLight is replaced by TimeLight where it projects the remaining time, in digital clock format, onto the floor.  (I don't think there is a Benchmark model where they have the TimeLight on the door, where it would be just like the remaining time indicator on my old Kenmore and probably most dishwashers.)

You can call it whatever you want, but a small digital readout of the elapsed time on the door would be nice.  Or just don't turn off the indicator that is on the top edge of the door.

And I have one other complaint, though I think it's part of the deal of having a better dishwasher:

3.  The dishes get as dry as they did with the Kenmore.  But the inside of the dishwasher has condensed water on the sidewalls.  I think this is because water condenses more easily on stainless steel than on the plastic liner of my old Kenmore.  And it is much better sealed.  Also because of the better sealing, if you keep dirty dishes inside the Bosch for very long, it begins to stink when you open the door,  more than the Kenmore did.

One More Thing

In every way, my installer seemed competent and professional.  I'm not going to fault him for what I am about to describe at all.

But I don't think an electrician would be very fond of the way the dishwasher is wired into my electrical system.  It uses, I think as installed by the original home builder in 1982, a "floating electrical box." An electrician would tell me that it's against electrical code, even though builders built a lot of homes that way.  The wires come out from under the wall and go into a sealed electric box resting on the floor.  Current electrical code requires all electrical boxes to be "permanently attached to the structure."  Well, actually, by this time the "floating box" is essentially permanently attached to the structure, via debris left by generations of carpenter ants.  I bet you'd have to pry it off the floor.

I was wondering about this floating electrical box and asked the installer.  He said that he found such a "floating box" about 70% of the time, and it was perfectly fine and legal for him to plug the dishwasher into it.  He said I could return the interconnection box that Bosch had provided in the event there was no plug for him to plug into, but only a bare wire from the wall.  Since I already had "a box" I didn't need it, I could use my Bosch Dishwasher with the attached electrical cord plugged into the outlet that was already there, atop the floating box.

This setup is still a concern, which I now feel is best addressed by changing the dishwasher breaker to a GFCI.  That is not currently the case in my house.  It is also currently required by electrical code.

If I live to see this dishwasher replaced, I will consider putting in an actual wall outlet behind it.

New Dishwasher and Rinse Aid

I'd been expecting my 1999 Kenmore dishwasher to fail any day now since about 2006.  It was then that Debby, a nice lady at work, told me about Lemi-Shine Machine Cleaner.  Thanks to Lemi-Shine machine cleaner, my Kenmore dishwasher kept running for 25 years.  Whenever it was getting super noisy, I'd run a cleaning cycle and it would be back to normal.

I had also bought some of the Lemi-Shine Power Booster (which can also be used as machine cleaner) and I was using that up (the combination of Power Booster and Cascade was leaving crud on my glasses even after one cleaning cycle, so I'm not going to do that again).

Perhaps it was coincidence, but on about the 3rd day in a row I used Power Booster, the motor was sounding as quiet as brand new...but it started leaking.  Water ran down the kitchen floor towards the sliding glass door (because it slopes slightly that way).  I mopped it up right way with towels, this could have wrecked my 30 year old kitchen run under the kitchen table.  (I can see why dishwasher leaking is such a big concern now.)

Researching dishwashers, I decided to get a Bosch 800, is among the most highly rated at Consumer Reports and Elsewhere.  Actually CR rates the Bosch Benchmark series the highest, then lists the Bosch 500 series because it is cheaper even though it doesn't have the rated drying performance of the 800 (that's the key difference, because the 800 has CrystalDry) and it's not better in any other way either.  So basically, if you want the best (and don't care much that you could save a couple hundred bucks) it's between the 800 and Benchmark models.

The benchmark models are a lot more expensive.  That gives you quieter (probably just more insulation), the "on" light reflected on the floor shows the time remaining (which you could also read on top), a

lighted interior, and one actual performance feature: water softener.

Strangely the addition of the water softener made no difference in the CR rated washing or drying performance of the Benchmark vs 800 models.  Sometimes water softening agents (salts) are included in cleaning pods, might be included in rinse aids, and rinse aids already virtually eliminate spotting.

What I see is a lot greater complexity here, with potential downside risks.  Always mixing in salt (which might be redundant anyway given your rinse aid) would not be good, I would think, for all the metal parts (even if stainless).  I suppose we're not talking about 10 years, but what about 25 years?

I even worry that the reduced sound level might be achieved while trapping greater heat in the motor, causing it not to last 25 years either.

Now these sorts of estimates could always be wrong.  Sometimes the most deluxe models are not just the same stuff with a bit added on, but better basic parts, or perhaps built on a different line where more care is taken.  The cheaper models may include the parts that didn't make the grade for the top.  Etc.  One never knows.

But I decided I could do without the extra Benchmark features and costs.  Also, there was an 800 model that was temporarily imported from Europe because US production was lagging demand.  That model takes longer to get from any source.  I don't recall seeing them listed at Lowes at all but at Best Buy,

and the soonest delivery was almost a month away.  You had to really dig to find the info on that model.

One unquestionable advantage of the imported 800 was that it also included the "water softener" (which is basically just a dispenser that dispenses salt in the water).   I would have to pay slightly more and wait a month longer for a feature I have concerns about and don't really need.

Lowes also had an "exclusive" model of the 800, which didn't seem to have any different features at

all, simply a lower price.  I wanted to go with the standard 800 as rated in Consumer Reports.

Along with all this, I did notice in another Consumer Reports article that Miele is the brand most highly rated for reliability of all (though this was for all products, not just dishwashers).  But Miele didn't actually rate very well in CR's tests, and they didn't get good ratings from Lowes customers either--who often complained about installation issues.  It seems to me if you're getting a superpremium luxury product like Miele, you should get it from an elevated dealer, like Ferguson for example, and have it installed by certified plumbers.  And not even buy such a product if your city doesn't have Miele service (which San Antonio does).  This is probably going to add $500 to the cost, but if you're buying Miele you shouldn't be fretting about that.  (Yes, the Miele does have a water softening system too.)

There's a general principle and that's to stick with the main line.  The further off the main line you go, the greater issues and risks.  At Lowes, the Bosch 800 is the upper part of the main line, but still the main line.  They stock as many (or nearly so) as all the other models.  They were shown as having 68 in stock.  Miele is nearly a special order for Lowes, not something every installer is necessarily going to be familiar with.

But all this about dishwashers and water softeners got me thinking about rinse aids.  I haven't been 100% in keeping my rinse aid dispenser full, more like 5% maybe, but I think it does help a lot.

For the fancy energy saving dry (I've always used no-heat dry as I think it saves wear on the machine) the rinse aid is more important than ever.

Bosch is known for recommending Finish rinse aid, which may well be the one I've usually bought.

By many accounts, Bosch recommends that brand not because others would be harmful, but because Finish pays them for that endorsement.

Anyway, now that I'm paying more attention to ingredients, and based on reviews, availability, and cost I've purchased Ecover rinse aid.   It's in the "better" group that has excellent performance as well as not having toxic ingredients.  The "best" group has the safest ingredients of all, but doesn't work as well and pricey/hard to find.

The actual dishwasher detergent stuff is rinsed off.  But the rinse aid is part of the rinse water, and some eventually dries on your dishes (even though the whole point of rinse aid is that as little dries on your dishes as possible).

Sliding glass door "lubrication" with pure dimethicone

In October 2023 I shattered the stationary part of my sliding glass door by trying to drill out the pin hole larger.  Apparently this drilling hit the glass envelope (so that's why the pin was so hard to get in) and shattered it.

I had to seal up the back with plastic sheeting until I could get repaired, which I did pretty quickly.  I also complained about the sliding part dragging and advanced that I needed new rollers (and so they also replaced them).  The rollers were the originals, now 40 years old.  (I wasn't sure afterwards if that was really necessary, perhaps cleaning and lubrication would have been sufficient, the original rollers looked like they might have been better made.)

The door worked great for awhile, and I am convinced now that the pin locking method, combined with some house settling, forced the wheels down into a lower position where they started dragging.  So possibly you should not use pin locks for windows with rollers, and especially not where there is known house shifting.

But without regular cleaning (and "lubrication" ?) a year later the door was getting increasingly difficult.  I tried vaccuming and olive oil (which oxidized right away) and then I tried adjusting to make it better.  I tried to adjust the opening gap as you are supposed to, but it was hard to get there.  Then for awhile I was simply cleaning the track with isopropyl alcohol, which seemingly needed doing each time.  Finally, after a last bit of adjusting, the door completely froze up.  I called the sliding door company again.  For nearly a week I couldn't use the back door at all, which meant I didn't go to the backyard or to Lyndhurst.  I didn't refill the birdbath.  Oh, sure I could use the side gate, but I'd have to get dressed and bring my Zap cane in case of dogs (there have been dogs on the street and walking by my house these past few months).

The sliding glass door company came out and fixed it for free (apparently there was a warranty of some kind for a year or so, I didn't even know).  Two strong guys lifted the door out of the track (it was not easy and I don't think I could do it myself as I had been planning to before) and found that one of the rollers had been adjusted too far so it came out of it's thread and was now just dragging.  They adjusted the opening (but in the end, I think they simply had to adjust the back up all the way and the opening wasn't really any better than before).  I did some more track cleaning while they were busy.  It wasn't clear if they used some kind of lubricant (but I'm thinking they did on the door wheels axles themselves, which is where it really counts).

They told me I should keep the track clean and lubricated with Silicone Spray.  My friend Noelia is always telling me I should "just use Vaseline and that will fix it).  Some experts say track lubrication isn't really necessary, it's the wheels that need lubrication and the track is supposed to stick just a little so the wheels turn--and that was my go-to opinion until now.

I continue to believe now my biggest failing was not keeping the track clean.  When I started working on the door, and prematurely adjusting the wheels first, I found the rack was full of cat hair and dirt which took multiple cleanings to get off.

But I decided to research the lubrication question.  Silicone Spray is indeed what most manufacturers and installers recommend.  Some recommend graphite.  Just a few recommend Vaseline or oils, but Vaseline and oils are more often criticized for attracting dirt.

I began to wonder, "What if I could do the cleaning and lubrication in one go, that would make sense."  And indeed there is a product just like that, recommended by more than Vaseline.  You may have heard of it.  Pledge.

Now some picky furniture people say to NEVER use Pledge and the stuff should be taken off the market.  It seems some fancy wood finishes (and not bog standard Urethane) are made cloudy by repeated use of Pledge.  (Actually, many commercial polishes also contain a bit of silicone too, for a smoother finish.)

But on Urethane coated wood, which is essentially sealed in plastic, you can use anything, even water (if there are no gaps...).  So Pledge should be fine with that, Pledge will make it nice and slick.

It turns out (and I knew this before) that the old fashioned Pledge formulations contain silicone!  That's what gives the smoothness and shine--silicone in the form of Dimethicone.  This is the same stuff that's in silicone spray.

Now you should never use standard WD-40 for any lubricating purpose (it's a protectant and water displacer) but the same company, under the label "WD-40 Professional" makes a Silicone Spray which is "perfect" for sliding glass doors.  If you go to Lowes looking for a Silicone Spray, that's what you will find.

Now that's what the installer might recommend (and maybe what they used on the wheels, but I didn't see them use anything) but I got to thinking Pledge would be better, as I could do the cleaning and "lubricating" in one go, every week or so.

If you ask google AI, it will tell you Pledge is a fine way to lubricate your sliding door track, but there are other options.  (In a long thread I read, some manufacturer recommends Endust, which has no silicone but another kind of polishing ingredient.)

I had a new liquid pledge on hand but it turns out it's a "cleaner" only with no silicone (Everyday Clean Multisurface PH Balanced cleaner).  SC Johnson has now bifurcated the Pledge products into two kinds, the cleaners and the polishes, and only the polishes contain Dimethicone, so that way you can easily avoid it (though I see no reason to).

Then I started looking at the ingredients in these products.  I quickly came to the conclusion that the Dimethicone (which is used in many personal care products and cosmetics) may well be the safest ingredient there.  Dimethicone is used in drugs too, and it's the core ingredient in stomach gas relief products.

It's the other stuff in the Pledge products I have more concerns about.  In future, I see no reason not to use HEB Field & Future cleaner, which seems to have the safest list of ingredients of all, be non-acidic, available without fragrances or dies (why can't we get those out of everything!).  The Pledge multipurpose cleaner is better than many previous generations of cleaners, just not quite as good as as Field & Future in terms of ingredients, in my judgement.  But no reason not to use it up either.

Then I looked at the WD-40 Professional Silicone Spray, but it's worse.  Sure the Dimethicone is there and it's safe, but the rest of the stuff is a pile of awful petroleum based propellants.

I then decided on an all new approach (still not tried as I've been sick for a few weeks and haven't actually cleaned the sliding door track weekly as hoped or even monthly yet--it's just about a month since the repair and the door still slides like glass).  First I'll do the cleaning, with any cleaner safe on aluminum and steel (even that Pledge multisurface cleaner, or the HEB "Field & Future" brand household cleaner (which, btw, is excellent and about the safest cleaner you can get, even safer than the Lemishine cleaner I used to get because the latter contained a chemical now banned in EU).  Then, after the cleaning, I'll lubricate by rubbing in a few drops of dimethicone spaced along the track.

It turns out you can simply buy pure "Cosmetic Grade" Dimethicone in a bottle, and I also got a dropper for it.