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Laminator posted:I was looking at houses down in Austin and one of them was an old lady special, ugly as hell but looked like it was well-maintained. Thanks to this thread I remembered that some breaker panels were bad, but I couldn't remember which, so I snapped a picture... I was living in an apartment complex where all the apartments had these... they weren't replaced until last year. There were like 300+ apartments, it's a wonder they weren't continuously on fire.
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Apr 11, 2015 03:26
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 This is what wiring is supposed to look like, right? There were wirenuts, they fell off when I touched them. Not pictured: The coil of abandoned live wire with some electrical tape on the end.
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Jan 3, 2016 21:47
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OSU_Matthew posted:I don't know what you're complaining about, at least they put a small modicum of effort into taping the live end I've decided it's all going to have to come out. The previous owner did all sorts of stupid stuff (we have one breaker labeled "girls room" which seems to control random fixtures throughout the house). I don't think it's rubbing going into the box, there's some kind of strain relief going on there. These junction boxes somehow set off my voltage detector (with the breaker off), but my multimeter didn't show any voltage. That magically stopped happening once I fixed everything... That transformer is safely in the garbage now (the doorbell button was *in* the garage, because they never moved it after they added the garage). House was built sometime in the 1960s, and has an odd mix of wiring. This is what it looks like now (before I added the cover plates)  Bonus picture from under the kitchen sink:  Obviously, when one saddle valve stops working, the only solution is to add another one (because you can't turn the water off; the main shutoff was a corroded gate valve and there's no shutoffs under the sink)
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Jan 4, 2016 04:06
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kid sinister posted:This is why you don't don't label bedrooms after who used them: it makes no sense to the next owner. Use cardinal directions and floors. Still, odd circuits running all over the house was much more common in the old days. They really liked to overextend them in the old days. The valve on the right goes to the garage spigot. It's gone now. I tried to replace it with a frost free one, but the hole wasn't big enough, and was surrounded with asbestos siding. There are now quarter turn ball valves *everywhere*, one on the supply coming out of the wall, then one immediately before each fixture. Dead center from which box? The small orange wire nuts are capping off the random red wires that were previously just flopping around in the box. I don't know if they're live at this point, I don't know where they all go. It's incremental improvements at this point, all the wires going to those boxes are going to get replaced.
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Jan 5, 2016 02:49
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kid sinister posted:It's yellow in the very center of the picture. Oh, haha didn't even see that. It's just one of the old wire nuts that fell off. I have to get back up there with the shop vac and clean up all the dirt and other debris.
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Jan 5, 2016 03:49
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Just pulled this out of my attic: What's that black part? Oh, that's just where someone had run the wire over some gas piping. Then they put a plywood board on top of the wire, so every time you walked around in the attic you rubbed the wire against the gas pipe.
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Jan 11, 2016 02:38
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baquerd posted:I'm trying to understand this, and I'm thinking step one was to wear away the coating through friction, then there was low enough resistance when under pressure to link the wire to the grounded gas pipe? Wouldn't that pop the breaker every time? It wasn't popping the breaker. Everything downstream of this was acting... funny. Outlet tester would randomly report hot and ground reversed... cycling the breaker somehow fixed it temporarily. That black isn't burned, it's rubbed off from the gas pipe.
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Jan 12, 2016 01:50
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 This was a fun surprise... I turned the water on to the outdoor spigot for the first time, and water began spraying everywhere in the attic. Apparently, this burst on one of the previous owners, and their solution was just to turn off the supply to the spigot. Home inspector missed it (he didn't even mention the outdoor spigot didn't work). Pulling out wet fiberglass insulation is even worse then dealing with dry fiberglass.
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Mar 25, 2016 17:29
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Previous owner decided connecting a new faucet to this disaster was a good idea: Predictably, it started leaking and needed to be replaced. I hate gate valves. There are only two remaining in my house, and they will go as soon as we replace the water heater. Every other gate valve has failed, and I've had to replace it (we've only owned the house for 4 months).
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Apr 26, 2016 02:38
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Sooo... replacing some cabinets in the kitchen (original cabinets from the 60's are no good). We pull down a bulkhead and realize that they've run the wiring for the bathroom through the bulkhead, rather then through the stud bay. Looking into the wall, I can see a junction box, so I'm thinking ok, just detach all the wires, drill holes in the top plate, reattach, no problem. So, I go into the bathroom and look for the junction box. It's about 6 inches below the light. I open the terrible cabinet...  Huh.. no junction box. Let's take that off the wall (not hard, only attached to the drywall with a couple screws and some caulk).  Uhhhh.. maybe it's under the wallpaper?  Gee that looks a lot like a box....  Surprisingly, there's a cover buried under all that mud! Fully dug out with the cover removed (those bare wires in the top left are grounds)  So best guess, at some point in the past the previous owners installed that monstrosity of a cabinet. Rather then move the box into the attic, they covered it in mud, wallpapered over it, and mounted a cabinet in front of it. I moved it into the attic, and it's now easily accessible next to the vent fan. The PO had the bathroom fan vented into the attic. Due to it's placement, it was blowing under the insulation and into the kitchen bulkhead. When we opened up the bulkhead, we discovered about half an inch of what can best be described as dryer lint.
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May 12, 2016 02:33
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Manslaughter posted:The dining table with extremely inconvenient cuts taken out of the edges. I'm pretty sure it's an old pool table.
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Sep 8, 2016 23:33
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Javid posted:What are these things and why do they seem to be all over the outside of every new commercial building that gets built near me lately? It's this stuff. You apparently get a tax credit for having a 'green wall', and mounting the mesh is really all you need to do. Most likely, whoever added it to the spec didn't communicate with the landscapers that some kind of climbing plant was necessary.
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Sep 13, 2016 01:27
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Effective-Disorder posted:That is frighteningly expensive. There are plenty of vines that will grow up the side of almost any wall without laser-cut plasma-welded powder-coated steel. Yea, and you're only seeing the pricing for the stock panel. That's not getting into the custom panels that every architect wants...
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Sep 14, 2016 02:22
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baquerd posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFJd_VjqTu0&t=145s Epoxy is pretty awesome. I'd do it everywhere, if it would not be utterly freezing in the winter due to a slab foundation.
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Sep 29, 2016 00:53
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Rockin Orthodontist posted:Wouldn't a concrete (or marble) countertop need to be sealed somehow? It's vulnerable to acid, and over time is going to come into contact with a lot of mildly acid foods and drinks. Not enough for structural damage, but surely over the years there is a danger of etching and staining. Yea, you really should seal them. On ours, we poured about a quarter inch of epoxy, which worked pretty well.
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Oct 4, 2016 01:26
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 This is what junction boxes are supposed to look like, right? It's been like this since we purchased the house. The home inspector noted it needed a cover, but failed to mentions things like the red wire sticking out of the bottom, or the missing fitting on the bottom of the box. It's also covered in dust, because we're pretty sure the previous owners vented their (gas) dryer into the attic.
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Oct 22, 2016 23:52
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kid sinister posted:I didn't feel like counting, but that would probably fail the wire fill rules too. Still, you can fudge that rule pretty easily with extension rings. Mostly correct! The red wire is detached on both ends, though it goes through a hidden junction in one of the walls first. Nothing was stapled, it was all run across the joists, with plywood on top of it (so whenever you walked on the plywood, you rubbed the wire) My solution was to rip it off the wall and replace it with all new wire and a new junction box.
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Oct 23, 2016 17:31
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kid sinister posted:That's a no-no. Did you fix that too? Yea. That was actually something I had moved to a box long ago... but I ran new wire anyway, because I wasn't happy with it. Given that I found one hidden junction, who knows how many more I didn't know about. This is what it looks like now (cover removed for photo): 
devicenull fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Oct 24, 2016 |
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Oct 24, 2016 00:26
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kid sinister posted:Did you ground the box? I can't tell if you looped that green screw or not. Yea, box is grounded. It's very annoying to me the boxes don't come with the ground screw.
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Oct 25, 2016 00:32
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Super Waffle posted:So turns out the two outlets in my parents master bath are in series with the GFCI in the garage on the other side of the house GFCIs are expensive!
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Nov 7, 2016 00:14
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The condensate line from our AC had been leaking for quite some time (it looks like for years... well before we bought the house). We discovered it when water was dripping out of our electrical panel over the summer. Well, today we ripped down the drywall on that wall... we're preparing to have the panel replaced, and wanted to see what kind of damage the water had caused. The first thing we noticed is all the insulation appeared to be dated 03-09-2015... so someone had apparently torn this wall down shortly before we bought the house. They didn't actually fix the leak though, just replaced all the insulation and drywall. The "new" insulation already had a bunch of mold growing on the bottom. I found some terrifying things looking at the wiring that was hiding in the wall. This is the feed to my AC compressor:  Note the nail through the wire, on top of all the rust. I have no idea how my house hasn't burned down yet (breaker's off now until that's all replaced)  Apparently, wire clamps are expensive, and you should definitely double up wires.  The home inspector claimed this panel was "ok" and that the rust was probably just from condensation. The neutral bar is completely corroded, none of the screws actually turn... devicenull fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Nov 12, 2016 |
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Nov 12, 2016 23:15
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Leperflesh posted:I didn't see any sort of vapor barrier, just cement board with tile adhered directly to it. And an old section of roof on the other side of that uninsulated wall. No idea what that's going to do. I think that was my favorite part. Shove a bunch of insulation under the tub, but don't bother to put any in the wall leading to the roof.
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Jan 11, 2017 02:25
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kid sinister posted:That actually used to be a thing in kitchens. There would be a single recessed outlet mounted in the soffit above the kitchen cabinets. You win a cookie if you can figure out what it was for. Clock?
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Jan 11, 2017 02:27
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Pigsfeet on Rye posted:Some strikingly beauitful illustrations of why one should hire a good home inspector. That guy's blog is pretty entertaining: http://structuretech1.com/blog/
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Jan 18, 2017 00:48
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It's just missing a spotlight aimed at the solar panel...
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Jan 22, 2017 23:53
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I'm no plumber, but I suspect the way they hooked up the sink drain to the sewer line would be prone to leaking; the only thing stopping water from leaking out is a hose clamp. It's a legit thing http://www.homedepot.com/b/Plumbing-Pipes-Fittings/Fernco/N-5yc1vZbqpfZ4hs
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Mar 6, 2017 18:04
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Psycho Donut Killer posted:Good luck changing out the air conditioner. You usually install them from the inside, so shouldn't be a problem (assuming the new one fits)
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Apr 21, 2017 01:49
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Facebook Aunt posted:Not exactly. You missed the best part there! quote:You can have the option of being released from your lease without any penalty," the letter read. Good luck moving all of your possessions down the broken/removed stairs!
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Jun 6, 2017 23:13
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I just went to switch the switch in the laundry room with a nice motion sensor. Three wires, thought it would go nice and easy. Figure out which is which, wire it all up. Nothing. Pull out the meter, check some things, everything seems ok. Pull the light fixture off to see WTF: * Wirenuts? What are those? We'll just twist and electrical tape it. * They used 14/3, and cut off the ends of the red wire (on the run to the switch) * Why switch the hot when you can switch the neutral! Redid all the wiring, it works fine now. The best part is our old washing machine which dimmed all the lights whenever it spun up the motor used to be running off this junction.
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Jun 7, 2017 02:23
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Leperflesh posted:Should we be concerned about these joists maybe? How else are they supposed to fit the bathtub?
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Jul 20, 2017 00:35
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PainterofCrap posted:*shills* Is that a showerhead mounted to the front?
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Jul 28, 2017 02:57
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HERAK posted:stayed in similar one in shanghai, and an even more blatant one in beijing. I've been in one where it was lightly frosted glass instead. Not really what I'm after in bathroom walls.
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Aug 7, 2017 02:20
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MrOnBicycle posted:Might have been posted earlier but holy poo poo... Is the entire front of that house plastic? It looks terrible.
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Aug 18, 2017 01:55
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peanut posted:and dumped the kitty litter between the two 8-foot cinderblock walls between our place and the grocery store alley. What?
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Aug 30, 2017 13:42
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Obsoletely Fabulous posted:Slightly related to crappy construction and trying to save it: if you have a kidde fire extinguisher you may want to check out the recall of over 40 million of them: https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2017/kidde-recalls-fire-extinguishers-with-plastic-handles-due-to-failure-to-discharge-and . Yea, I just finished filling that out.. getting 3 new ones shipped to me.
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Nov 3, 2017 23:31
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Volmarias posted:Jersey house haver (well, former) here: your bill is hosed up, something is wrong. Do you leave the TV on all day? Is your computer just always chugging 750W 24/7? Is your fridge from the 50s? Yea, I agree your power bills are massively high. Do you have a smart meter? https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr + $25 "RTL-SDR" device from amazon will let you record your power meter data every 30s or so. Toss it into excel or something and you'll get graphs. Don't have a smart meter? Call PSEG, tell them you think your meter is reading incorrectly. They'll come replace it for free with a shiny new one (which will likely be a smart meter!) Once you have fairly realtime data on it, you can start shutting poo poo off and see what happens.
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Nov 15, 2017 01:33
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I cannot wait until this fad is over. These are the worst doors ever (even if this one were functional) Facebook Aunt posted:What was the order of operations here? Did they install a barn door, realize it was crap for sound control, and then install the glass door? Or was the glass door there first, and the barn door is purely ornamental? Given the card reader and the fact the track wouldn't allow it to cover the full opening, I imagine it was purely ornamental.
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Dec 20, 2017 01:46
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~Coxy posted:I've got it: roll-up doors with the roller embedded above the ceiling. Tons of places in Germany had this type of thing over the windows. It was pretty handy actually, solid metal is way better then the curtains you usually find in AirBNBs.
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Dec 22, 2017 02:26
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therobit posted:Just route the exhaust to the vent pipe. Bingo bogo so simple! That's what I was expecting to see.
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Dec 31, 2017 16:43
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FogHelmut posted:Find all of the issues he doesn't point out. I noticed some similar techniques as seen in an infamous bathroom remodeling thread. I like how the pex that supposedly goes under the floor changes color at some point.
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Jan 10, 2018 02:58
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