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Youth Decay posted:I'm having a hard time figuring out this layout but there appears to be no fewer than three different death staircases. I think the pink and green rooms might be two side-by-side mirrors of one another, rather than one occupancy with two stairs. I don't know how (or if) they related to the place with the really janky staircase.
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May 8, 2020 11:11
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Youth Decay posted:I'm having a hard time figuring out this layout but there appears to be no fewer than three different death staircases. I'm the keyboard planning to murder the next person ascending.
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May 9, 2020 04:17
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I like to think they subdivided a rowhouse by literally walling up the middle of the stairs to create two mirrored units, as cheaply as possible. You can fit 3 college students into each half now.
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May 9, 2020 23:34
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peanut posted:I like to think they subdivided a rowhouse by literally walling up the middle of the stairs to create two mirrored units, as cheaply as possible. You can fit 3 college students into each half now. It's not a rowhouse, but yes, looking at the other images in the listing, that is precisely what they did. Magical.
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May 10, 2020 05:55
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May 10, 2020 11:40
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:I'm the keyboard planning to murder the next person ascending. I'm the solar panels
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May 10, 2020 12:11
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Maybe that will be Elon Musk’s new house, apparently he’s moving to Texas. Do you think the person who built it broke both their legs on the murder stairs? There’s a shower stool that suggests someone has mobility issues. Also why are there sectional couches in the kitchen?
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May 10, 2020 12:11
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:I'm the keyboard planning to murder the next person ascending. i'm the clear tape holding some stairs together.
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May 10, 2020 21:22
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Alright, here is a real crappy construction tale. It happened late last year and my boss wrote the consent for the developer. So the house is complete and the driveway is all boxed up and ready to go. The concrete truck arrives and they do the concrete pour. Unfortunately somehow a manhole lid gets shifted, possibly they just sat it on top of the manhole chamber and poured the drive concrete around it to fix it in place, I don't know exactly. Anyway, the upshot is that concrete pours down the manhole and fills up 20m of live sewer pipe. Instead of somehow clearing rock hard underground pipe, it's easier to just make a new one parallel to the blocked one. Now, being a live sewer line, you can't just let the 5 or so houses upstream have no sewage facilities. So Watercare has to come in and set up a divert that pumps the incoming sewage out of the line and into a holding tank out in the cul-de-sac. Every 2 or 3 days a honey wagon has to come in and pump out the tank. This is in place for the 2 weeks it takes to lay the new pipe. Of course all this comes at a price. Watercare sends in their bill for provision of emergency sewage services and the price of connecting to the sewer line goes from about $15,000 to $200,000. Much enjoyment was had by all. The end.
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May 10, 2020 22:56
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Who uhhh...how do they...is there like builder’s insurance for this sort of thing, or like, what Like who gets left with this bag of (metaphorical, thanks to actual) poo poo, here?
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May 11, 2020 03:50
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Absolutely, I have handled claims for this. It's really what liability insurance is for. VVV welll, yeah, that can happen *gleefully cuts check for the policy limits, closes claim* PainterofCrap fucked around with this message at 22:24 on May 11, 2020 |
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May 11, 2020 03:59
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PainterofCrap posted:Absolutely, I have handled claims for this. It's really what liability insurance is for. The contractors insurance covers the first $5k, they disappear and flee the country the very next morning.
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May 11, 2020 04:20
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Methylethylaldehyde posted:The contractors insurance covers the first $5k, they disappear and flee the country the very next morning. Without owners, Bob’s Building Business shuts down. A month later one county over, Cob’s Construction Company opens.
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May 11, 2020 05:23
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Bad Munki posted:Without owners, Bob’s Building Business shuts down. A month later one county over, Cob’s Construction Company opens. By an odd coincidence, the same truck with the same license plate is used by cob when he shows up to bid a job. Incidentally this is a huge issue for cities with a known bidding process. They know the assholes who underbid the job to win are useless, but they can't go with the people who can actually finish the job, because by statute they need to go with the lowest valid bid. Most of them now have a "in business for X years in the same area, with at least XX million in gross revenues in a 5 year period" to avoid the Bob's Builders' Cobs Constructions Dobs Demolition, Ethan's Excavation, Franks Foundation works, and Greg's Garage Construction Shop from wining bids.
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May 11, 2020 07:10
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Rick’s Erections
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May 11, 2020 07:48
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Methylethylaldehyde posted:By an odd coincidence, the same truck with the same license plate is used by cob when he shows up to bid a job. At my county we've added language about "or other valid reason as approved by the commissioners" for not taking the lowest bid after the same company screwed us over 2 times in a row.
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May 11, 2020 12:57
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Methylethylaldehyde posted:By an odd coincidence, the same truck with the same license plate is used by cob when he shows up to bid a job. I've got a well-rehearsed speech and a plethora of examples for clients about why they should never take the low bid contractor. Maybe 50% listen. The bar for a contractor's license is way too low imo.
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May 11, 2020 15:18
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Those "protect the taxpayer's money!" laws that force acceptance of lowest bid backfire hilariously. The work is either incomplete/poorly done or they end up submitting tons of change orders.
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May 11, 2020 15:22
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Sloppy posted:I've got a well-rehearsed speech and a plethora of examples for clients about why they should never take the low bid contractor. Maybe 50% listen. The bar for a contractor's license is way too low imo. Tangentially, I remember watching some show about self-employed truckers wherein one of the characters would consistently under-bid everyone else to the point of making jobs unprofitable because he was a kid being bankrolled by his dad to pursue trucking as a hobby. He hosed up literally every single job he went on, 9 times out of 10 because his lovely box van was too small. He'd bid on stuff like moving a whole-rear end house saying "oh, it probably comes apart so I can ship it in pieces right?"
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May 11, 2020 15:40
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brugroffil posted:Those "protect the taxpayer's money!" laws that force acceptance of lowest bid backfire hilariously. The work is either incomplete/poorly done or they end up submitting tons of change orders. Half the point is to ensure that government stuff is shoddy and cheap, and projects are delayed and balloon in cost, since a large chunk of the people in charge don't want government providing useful services to the general populace and ultimately want the social provision of services to be discredited and gutted,
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May 11, 2020 18:58
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Munin posted:Half the point is to ensure that government stuff is shoddy and cheap, and projects are delayed and balloon in cost, since a large chunk of the people in charge don't want government providing useful services to the general populace and ultimately want the social provision of services to be discredited and gutted, To be more charitable, I'm sure the original intent is to prevent the government officials going with high-cost providers who then give them all kinds of difficult to trace kickbacks/bribes. Even just using a provider that happens to be the brother-in-law of the official. Going with the lowest cost bid neatly avoids, in theory, any corruption by leveling the competition to compete strictly on price. It's not like consumers do anything different most of the time. Most people, when obtaining 3+ bids for a construction project of which they have little knowledge to use for comparison, are going to go with the lowest bidder.
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May 11, 2020 20:15
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B-Nasty posted:To be more charitable, I'm sure the original intent is to prevent the government officials going with high-cost providers who then give them all kinds of difficult to trace kickbacks/bribes. Even just using a provider that happens to be the brother-in-law of the official. Going with the lowest cost bid neatly avoids, in theory, any corruption by leveling the competition to compete strictly on price. Except it doesn't stop that happening either. The general approach is to either tailor the requirements so that only the favored bidder can fulfill them, or quietly give the favored bidder a hint as to what price they need to place their bid to get the business. Or of course just ignore the rules, totally rig the process, don't even have open submissions etc and just count on the fact that no one will hold you to account anyway. It doesn't stop bad actors, who either don't give a drat or find a way around the rules, and hamstrings good actors who are forced to give business to shoddy companies. Is there anything in the US which has the equivalent of the "Rotten Boroughs" column in the Private Eye. That one is a real eye-opener if you keep reading it over the years. [edit] I agree it is sold as a sensible policy, and many of the proponents are pushing policies like that honestly, but many are not and the (un)intended consequences need to be highlighted. Munin fucked around with this message at 21:21 on May 11, 2020 |
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May 11, 2020 21:18
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Munin posted:[edit] I agree it is sold as a sensible policy, and many of the proponents are pushing policies like that honestly, but many are not and the (un)intended consequences need to be highlighted. It's this. Getting government to bid projects to private businesses, in a way that entirely avoids corruption, but also gives taxpayers good value for their money, and also gets projects done on time, is a Hard Problem and one for which there are no simple pat solutions. Particularly when you get into contracts of a type for which the selection of potential bidders is extremely low; this is exacerbated by localized monopolies on specialty services.
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May 11, 2020 21:26
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Some pics of the solar setup at a homestead I'm visiting for another thread. They belong here, though. Pardon the lovely photos, I was in a hurry and didn't realize how gross that lens was The whole setup in the solar shed:  The entire battery "array"  That feeds this inverter which feeds the house (white plug)  The white plug's wire is cut and wire nutted onto romex under the bench:  The Romex goes into PVC which runs underground to the "cabin" where it feeds a tiny panel with like 4 breakers. The cabin is basically the grade of prefab shed sold in home depot's parking lot, with some insulation stuffed into the 2x3 framing (lmao) and covered with quarter inch plywood, but that disaster is beyond the scope of this post The panels outside:   The framing horrifies me but it's never fallen over even in the ridiculous wind they get here, so I guess it's good enough? They flog those poor batteries to death every night, which is a vicious cycle of reduced capacities. I don't know how they function on this poo poo.
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May 11, 2020 21:39
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Bad Munki posted:Without owners, Bob’s Building Business shuts down. A month later one county over, Cob’s Construction Company opens. This was why, when I was hiring someone in 1997 to waterproof my basement in my 100-YO home built in a drained swamp and with no footings, I had to go deep through A Waterprooofing - AAAAA Waterproofing until I actually found someone willing to show me their dec sheet with their agents information so I could call & verify that they had an active policy at the limits printed thereon. The contractor showed up with a 1976 telephone book to prove that the name hadn't changed in (what was) 20-years. They did a hell of a job. Brought ten guys, undercut the foundation 3' at a time to lay the pipe, had it all done in six hours.
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May 11, 2020 22:23
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PainterofCrap posted:This was why, when I was hiring someone in 1997 to waterproof my basement in my 100-YO home built in a drained swamp and with no footings, I had to go deep through A Waterprooofing - AAAAA Waterproofing until I actually found someone willing to show me their dec sheet with their agents information so I could call & verify that they had an active policy at the limits printed thereon. Yeah I made the mistake of asking for incorporation papers and insurance certs from my builder and then letting it slide when they never appeared. Not a mistake I'll make again.
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May 11, 2020 22:50
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One of my favorite things I've ever seen in a bid document was one put out by ASU. It had clause that took any donations to the booster club made by the bidder and deducted it from the bid price. So if your bid was $300,000 and you donated $100,000 to the booster club, your bid was treated as $200,000. I gave it to our legal counsel to look to see if I was crazy. I was not. Outside of that, the generally corrupt bid poo poo I saw was often small towns.
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May 12, 2020 05:21
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PainterofCrap posted:This was why, when I was hiring someone in 1997 to waterproof my basement in my 100-YO home built in a drained swamp and with no footings, I had to go deep through A Waterprooofing - AAAAA Waterproofing until I actually found someone willing to show me their dec sheet with their agents information so I could call & verify that they had an active policy at the limits printed thereon. :3 It's a relief to hear some success stories.
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May 12, 2020 05:43
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGaFnnscj0g
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May 12, 2020 15:21
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so many favorite parts.. backdrafting water heaters, the breaker shocking the poor guy trying to flip it.. So many Ahhh W T F
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May 12, 2020 15:40
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It’s giving me cold sweats but also making me feel better that the issues I’ve run into with my own house are MOSTLY cosmetic. The disposal leaking was great because mine was leaking and had to be replaced just like a week ago, but it was a drip not a spray, so that was nice to see. Same disposal and everything.
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May 12, 2020 15:49
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That breaker panel was the biggest yikes moment, but I'm glad they included the voice over for "and the furnace is doing it's job."
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May 12, 2020 17:54
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I like to assume these are all in the same house
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May 12, 2020 18:50
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opengl128 posted:I like to assume these are all in the same house Nah, Grover inspected his own house.
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May 12, 2020 21:09
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I thought Grover got a pe license so he could stamp his own drawings? City or county or w/e is still going to be AHJ with final permit sign offs, unless Virginia does things very stupidly
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May 12, 2020 22:47
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May 12, 2020 23:17
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Mc Escher is that you.
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May 12, 2020 23:43
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Hey, maybe he got it cheap from the factory. It still does its job.
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May 13, 2020 01:22
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 from https://www.hs.fi/kaupunki/helsinki/art-2000006505331.html where the residents of a new house describe how opening the oven turns off electricity in bathroom and other fun (in Finnish)
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May 13, 2020 04:31
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Mother of God. It’s the Loch Ness Monster.
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May 13, 2020 04:38
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