Rodeo and Fair weekend (5 days) in Kittitas County is probably near the worst time to have internet connection troubles. So Saturday morning my connection dropped out and the normal fixes I can do didn’t work. I called support and that didn’t solve the problem. I had already gone through the suggestions before I called –twice. So I got put on the list for a call from the actual technical group.
I cleaned in the kitchen and did a load of dishes. Near dusk I went outside and puttered around. This morning, Sunday, I finished that gravel-moving chore and picked a few plums and watered the trees. Then, with bacon and fried potatoes in hand, I turned the computer on to read a previously stored article and – surprise – the router had risen from the dead!
This got me to thinking – Did the Router over heat?
A quick enquiry on the web found “… one of the main issues of your router not working correctly is 
overheating.”
One of the things I noticed yesterday was that the router has little feet (ok. I knew this) that holds it a fraction of an inch above the surface on which it sits. What does it sit on? A board. Not just any board, but a short piece of tongue & groove knotty pine, acquired during the remodeling. Meant for a wall, the board has chamfer (beveled) edges {red stars} on the outward facing sided. The importance is that the board appears wider than its smooth flat surface actually is.
The width of the board is 5.25 inches but the flat surface is only 4.5 inches. The tiny feet on the router span the width with no room to spare. At some point the feet and the board became un-wacked, or out-of-whack.
I digress. [American word usage about President Lincoln’s time had the phrase “in fine whack”, meaning something was in good condition. In the early years of the twentieth century it started to refer to mechanisms. It might be that the sense was influenced by the idea that faulty mechanisms responded to a quick thwack. From ‘worldwidewords’]
With the feet of the router not properly adjusted the unit sits on the board without airflow to the under side where a large flat surface allows for heat dissipation. About 20% of the holes are there also – most of the holes are in the ends and sides.
I suppose a design engineer at the company made the choices that keep the router in a proper temperature range. Those choices likely didn’t include a piece of wood soaking up heat and interfering with the cooling process.
When a person calls about coming to get me back on-line, I’ll ask about that possibility. And tell them to postpone a visit.
Summer isn’t over. We have a mid-90s heat watch forecast for Tuesday through Thursday this coming week. Friday we drop into the 80s.
A headline this morning reported on the declining gas prices in the USA. Washington ($4.34/gal), Hawaii ($4.50), and California ($4.58) didn’t get the message.
Now I should get back to cleaning and other tasks.
Keeping Track
On the Naneum Fan
John