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This is continued from Part 1.

Evaporator Coil Inspection

This is a closeup of my evaporator coils before cleaning. The coils look very clean already because I service my system regularly. Of some concern is the rust on the ends of the frame. The unit is about 9 years old and rust is common in these areas. The greenish/whitish discoloration on the copper refrigerant lines is from dissolved copper deposits that have dried. The plastic drain pan looks in good condition with no cracking or leaks. Overall, not too bad for a 9 year old evaporator coil. I should expect to replace the coil and/or air handler in a season or two as it approaches the end of its expected life.

Air Conditioning Evaporator Coils

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In the early 1990’s, I bought a home in south Florida and did the usual routine of hiring a Home Inspection company. Home Inspectors are worth every penny and among the many items they examine, will check the heating and cooling operation of the air conditioning units – air temperatures and general condition of the unit. You should confirm in advance the Inspector will open up air handler to check the condition of the blower fan, evaporator coils, drain pan, etc.  The Home Inspector that I hired back then didn’t open up the air handler and I wasn’t knowledgeable enough back then to ask about it.

When buying that home in south Florida, I made the expensive mistake of not hiring an air conditioning technician to open up and inspect the air handler before I purchased that home in south Florida. Rather, I hired an A/C company to check the unit after I closed the deal and was moving into the home. When the A/C technician opened up the air handler he called me over and said the unit had never been serviced and was a mess. The evaporator coils were covered with mold, heavily rusted and leaking refrigerant. I had the A/C company replace the entire air handler that very day to the tune of $1,700.00.

This is the attic air handler in my current home.

Attic Air Handler - Furnace and Air Conditioner Evaporator Unit

Having learned my $$$ lesson, I always hired a Home Inspector and a HVAC technician to inspect a new home and the HVAC system.

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This repair is continued from Part 2.

Install the New Pipe Section

Now that the old leaky section of pipe is removed, I dried and cleaned the 45 degree street elbow on the “upstream” side as shown. I also deburred and cleaned the lower section of pipe that was cut with the handsaw. As you can see from this photo, the 45 degree elbow joint was never glued – a result of poor workmanship!

Cut Out Section of PVC Pipe

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This repair is continued from Part 1.

Marking the Cuts

The cardboard template made for the Fernco Qwik Ell is centered over the PVC elbow joint and the end positions for the cuts are marked with a blue marker (red arrows).

Marking the Cuts with the Cardboard Template

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Had another water stain on the basement ceiling, this time it was a leak in the washing machine PVC drain line. Two leaks on different sides of the room in the same month! Go figure!

Leaking PVC Drain Line from the Washing Machine

I was able to get access to the ceiling crawlspace by setting up a ladder in the closet. Access was awkward, but I was able to reach the pipe with an outstretched arm. I quickly located the leak, a slow drip at the PVC elbow joint in the washing machine drain. The solvent weld joint had partially failed, most likely because of poor workmanship – as I was to discover shortly.

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This tutorial is continued from Part 1.

6: Update ISY-99i Configuration on the Network Diagram

Update the ISY-99i entries on network diagram with your values for the following parameters:

ISY-99i

Static IP Address: 192.168.2.200
Netmask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.2.1 (IP address of the Linksys router)
DNS Server: 192.168.2.1 (IP address of the Linksys router)
HTTPS Port: 5275

Local LAN Access URL:

http://192.168.2.200

Secure Internet Access URL:

https://myisyhostname.homedns.org:5275

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This article is a step-by-step tutorial showing how to configure a static IP address and port forwarding for secure Internet access to the ISY-99i Home Automation Controller.

Problem with UPnP and Internet Access

The Linksys WRT-54G WiFi router supports Universal Plug-n-Play (UPnP), a feature that automatically detects and configures Internet access for the ISY-99i. However, I kept losing Internet access to the ISY-99i whenever my Internet Service Provider changed my DSL dynamic IP address – which happened every couple of days – even though I was using a DDNS service. I suspected a problem with UPnP and the recommendation from Universal Devices is to use a static IP address with port forwarding to bypass UPnP. Assigning a static IP address to the ISY-99i with port forwarding solved my Internet access reliability problem.

ISY-99i Static IP Address Network Diagram

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