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One of the replies https://twitter.com/fletch38blues/status/1326457274492186624
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Nov 11, 2020 12:58
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Motronic posted:By the way....I actually need to find some cut nails for a reno project Here are two manufacturers. I've only had them come up on one or two projects max so I can't even remember where we actually bought them - I just have the manufacturers in my notes. https://www.tremontnail.com/ https://www.clous.eu/en/home/
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Nov 11, 2020 15:48
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I'm the sheathing nails that missed. No, you dingdong, you install the cleats correctly & bend the flaps over or around for additional nailing. Or, you could do what they did in my house: use 1x1 to hold up the run of joists! (my floor joists are entirely supported this way).
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Nov 11, 2020 15:48
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That entire thread is full of people who need to be rounded up and banned from even looking at houses, much less doing work on them.
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Nov 11, 2020 17:44
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BonerGhost posted:That entire thread is full of people who need to be rounded up and banned from even looking at houses, much less doing work on them. You talking about the content or the goons?
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Nov 11, 2020 17:57
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Friend of a friend is wrapping up a full renovation, like down to the studs and beyond in some places. Their master bathroom was a major piece, and the owner spent a TONNNNNN of time laying out the floor tiles just the way she wanted. Anyhow, the tiler came in and did a lot of prep and part of the job, but was apparently hard as hell to get to come back to finish the job, but eventually it was completed. And now, a month or two later, the grout between the floor tiles is dying like mad. Turns out, the tiler forgot one key step when building the floor.  No thinset under the underlayment. It's currently a loving floating tile floor. They stapled the underlayment down here and there. Literally step 1 from the manufacturer: https://www.schluter.com/schluter-us/en_US/Membranes/Uncoupling-(DITRA)/Schluter%AE-DITRA-&-DITRA-XL/p/DITRA
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Nov 11, 2020 17:59
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Bad Munki posted:Friend of a friend is wrapping up a full renovation, like down to the studs and beyond in some places. Their master bathroom was a major piece, and the owner spent a TONNNNNN of time laying out the floor tiles just the way she wanted. Anyhow, the tiler came in and did a lot of prep and part of the job, but was apparently hard as hell to get to come back to finish the job, but eventually it was completed. And now, a month or two later, the grout between the floor tiles is dying like mad. This is why I always strongly advise clients to be extremely wary of the lowest bids (they rarely listen). Holy poo poo.
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Nov 11, 2020 18:07
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PainterofCrap posted:Fazzio's in Glassboro has them: https://www.shopjfi.com/ Tezer posted:Here are two manufacturers. I've only had them come up on one or two projects max so I can't even remember where we actually bought them - I just have the manufacturers in my notes. Thank you both. I figured there would be somebody around here with them. I might even be able to find new old stock. This is for a "too cold to work outside" timeline project where I need to take an interior wall apart that is paneled with wood and cut nailed. It's not going to be fun, but it needs doing so I can run another lighting circuit and also properly strap the stack of plumbing back there.
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Nov 11, 2020 18:31
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 Guess what model stud finder the previous owner had!
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Nov 11, 2020 18:39
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A ball peen hammer?
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Nov 11, 2020 18:46
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He didn't?
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Nov 11, 2020 18:47
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Motronic posted:Thank you both. I figured there would be somebody around here with them. I might even be able to find new old stock. I didn't know what those things were called (besides 'old nails'). My attic is full of the goddamn things because something was taken apart/replaced up there and they just decided the thing to do was toss the things over their shoulder while working.
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Nov 11, 2020 19:22
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By popular demand posted:A ball peen hammer? I'm guessing by my harbor freight framing hammer, it may have been a harbor freight framing hammer. Bonus: my kitchen cabinets were hanging from these.
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Nov 11, 2020 20:30
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Wasabi the J posted:
Estwing
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Nov 12, 2020 00:46
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PainterofCrap posted:Estwing  E: gently caress this house. 
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Nov 12, 2020 01:45
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European wiring is weird. 
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Nov 12, 2020 02:43
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pygmy elephant’s foot
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Nov 12, 2020 02:45
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Nov 12, 2020 02:49
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Almost forgot:
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Nov 12, 2020 02:53
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I wanna roll marbles down that
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Nov 12, 2020 02:58
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Guarantee that radiator is being fed from another radiator's loop and not given its own place in the manifold.
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Nov 12, 2020 03:06
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Ah, the five-beer lunch strikes again!
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Nov 12, 2020 03:15
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Its also piped wrong and will never heat. they need a restrictor or valve on the vertical between the two tees.
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Nov 12, 2020 03:21
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The first of these images hurts my brain, the second one is like one of those optical illusion pictures. My eyes just won't parse it right.
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Nov 12, 2020 03:47
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I can dig it. The figure 4 deadfall trap. Except its the figure 4 electrical trap.
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Nov 12, 2020 12:24
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MRC48B posted:Its also piped wrong and will never heat. they need a restrictor or valve on the vertical between the two tees. Ideally yes, but I think the way the pipes are located you will see some circulation still. I'm more concerned about the choice of material here.
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Nov 12, 2020 12:43
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MRC48B posted:Its also piped wrong and will never heat. they need a restrictor or valve on the vertical between the two tees. Don't worry that part is clogged with hair
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Nov 12, 2020 15:26
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I should have taken a photo of the plumbing under my sink. I think they ran out of pipe so just screwed about 5 spacers together to do a vertical run, then fitted part of it backwards so that the drain from the washing machine was lower than the out side of the u bend. When I got the guy replacing the boiler to fix it he just stared at it for a bit and said "my guess is they just used whatever bits they had to hand because there's no reason anyone would do this".
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Nov 12, 2020 15:30
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So I have to tell you about the previous Home One: The Old Trailer My parents lived in Anchorage in the late 70s until the early 80s, after I was born. The trailer park they lived in shut down as part of the gentrification of the surrounding neighborhood, so they set about looking for new property, eventually taking advantage of a crash in property values (When a plan to move the state capitol to this area fell through) to snag an acre of land for pretty dang cheap. The lot had been a gravel pit used for surfacing the surrounding roads, although it had simply been a hill cut down to the depth of the roadway instead of being an actual huge hole in the ground. They hauled the trailer out from Anchorage, let a friend pile his junk on the lot (Possibly as payment for hauling the trailer), and set up. The lot had (and continues to have) no utilities, not even a well, so we lived by hauling water from a nearby spring, and with electricity eventually provided by a generator and car batteries. Light was provided at first by handmade candles made from ski wax, then propane lanterns, then finally 12-volt wiring and bulbs running off a pair of car batteries. For most of my childhood, light switches were an interesting toy that made neat sounds as I flipped them. This did lead to occasional trouble when I was somewhere where light switches actually did something. The trailer itself was from the 60s or 70s, used as a doghouse by the previous owners, and with one corner knocked outward from a heavy impact. When it was in place out here, my father knocked the corner back into place with a sledgehammer, clad and skirted it in scrap plywood, insulated it with a variety of fiberglass, styrofoam, and expanding foam, and added a second (technically third) roof over half of it. This roof was open at one end and let a lot of critters in, mostly feral cats. As a child I was adept at wriggling into the space between the roofs (and under the house, and into various voids in the junkpile) and catching litters of kittens to hand-tame and sell at local festivals. Even with the three layers of roof, it leaked. We solved this by hanging small buckets from the ceiling with screw hooks. My father also constructed, using more scrap lumber including a large real estate sign, an addition which we called the mud room, but it possibly had more square footage than the actual trailer and housed a loft bed, half the library, and the woodstove we used to heat the place. In winter we rarely left this room except to cook. This room also leaked until Dad built a steeper pitched roof over it. The propane situation was really the only other notable crap about the place. While we did have hundred-pound tanks outside, they were only plumbed to the kitchen range, the mud room light, and a light in my bedroom at the back of the trailer. In the kitchen and living room, we had Coleman camping lanterns, hooked to 25-pound propane tanks. The tank in the kitchen was two or three feet from the range. Please remember this Propane Fact for later in the post. It will get worse. Honestly I'm surprised the place didn't burn down, between those propane tanks, a possibly cavalier attitude towards wiring the 12-volt electrics, and a young, budding pyromaniac (me). Home Two: Dad's Cabin In the late 80s/early 90s, my mother remarried. My father moved about a mile away into a one-room-with-loft log cabin, and I went with him. The place was very badly chinked, and I could look out of cracks and holes to see daylight and watch birds. The roof was also uninsulated. Naturally, this was not the best situation for heat retention in an Alaska winter. It also had no utilities or well, and not even a generator to charge the car battery (I think Dad just borrowed one from a friend occasionally). Except for that and a ladder for loft access that was nearly vertical, the place was mostly unremarkable, although some kid with more enthusiasm than skill (  ) did draw this stupid mural on a bookshelf that you could see immediately when you came in the door. In my early teens I moved into a truckbed camper shell that was set up in the yard, until my father got drunk and abusive and I moved back in with my mother and stepfather. My father continued to live there, his alcoholism causing the place to deteriorate and his friends and family to abandon him, until a cigarette butt burnt the place down. He survived uninjured. In contrast to the old trailer, I'm surprised it took that long to burn down, because the last few times we went to check on him, he was using the burners on his range to heat the place, since his woodstove was surrounded with bags of trash and piles of vodka bottles.Home Three: Mark's Place We lived in the old trailer for a while, my stepfather buying a second trailer for himself to live and get drunk in on our property. In the mid-late 90s, a neighbor (named Mark, if that wasn't about to become obvious) semi-hired us to house sit his pets and take care of his place, so my mother moved over there, my stepfather (After a short period of living with us at Mark's) moved into a place known locally as Felony Flats, and I ostensibly lived in the old trailer, but mostly just to maintain it before I'd head across the highway to luxuriate in actual electric power at Mark's place, and eventually I just left the old trailer in neglect and moved into Mark's full-time. This place had a well, but an outhouse pit had been dug too close to it, and the area had two aquifers and the well only went down to the first, rust-laden one instead of the deeper, potable level. We boiled the water and only used it for gardening and dishes (A garden hose was used for both purposes, running through the kitchen window when needed). Eventually heavy snow load on the plywood-and-breeze-block well shelter snapped off some valves and we went back to using hauled spring water for all purposes. Mark's trailer was from the 70s, and had a modest shed positioned nearby. The roof of the shed was gabled, and one side was positioned such that snow sliding off the roof would hit the door of the trailer dead on. As the door opened inward (Which I later learned was a necessity in snow country), the latch strike plate and part of the doorframe had just been ripped right off the first time that happened. This was fixed by the installation of what looked like a piece of decorative molding to form an improvised strike plate, until some rear end in a top hat teenager ( ) used a cooler as a battering ram when bringing the groceries in. The door never latched after that, which created an amusing anecdote when I had a friend over to stay the night, he went out to use the outhouse, then woke me up by knocking on the window to say the door was locked. The doorknob was locked, but the door could still be pushed open.The trailer had a host of issues. The wiring was aluminum and in bad shape, so we tended to power things with chains of extension cords and multiplugs from the nearest usable outlet, eventually getting a local electrician to install romex and boxed outlets to our actual living areas. Even then, my bedroom was powered by an extension cord running from the kitchen. And that room shared a wall with the kitchen, in retrospect we could have just drilled a hole. Mark had been using the place as a grow op (A process my mother continued), the heat and moisture meant good times for fungus. There was mold/mildew two feet up the wall of the room that became my bedroom. We covered it up with contact paper. The furnace used oil, which caused horrible smells whenever it ran, and it leaked, which rotted out the floorboards in front of it. We covered the rotted section with plywood and a throw rug, stopped using the furnace and covered the heat registers, and in winter sealed off the back of the house with a curtain and used the woodstove to heat the front. Ordinarily I'd say a trailer having a woodstove along with a furnace was an affectation, but it served our purposes well. We had a small electrical fire in the bathroom and didn't thoroughly clean up after it, so for the rest of our habitance there we had charred walls and counter and dry-chemical fire extinguisher residue around the sink. Which I'll remind you had no water hookup, which was just as well, because the toilet had frozen, shattered, and been tossed out the back door before we'd even got there. The actual plumbing was mostly intact, but just emptied out into the backyard from underneath the end of the trailer, drainpipe didn't even extend beyond the wall. I'm not sure if this is better or worse than my friend's place, who had the graywater from their kitchen sink shoot out a two-inch-long pipe sticking out of the wall into what I can only describe as a small decorative wetland that butted right up against the wall of their house. It was mildly entertaining while we were playing in the yard, but there's a reason "graywater feature" isn't included in realtor listings. But I digress, mainly to avoid discussing Mark's roof. The roof had apparently been a nice, snow-appropriate curved roof sometime in the 70s. Heavy snow load and infrequent care had caused many of the roof members to crack and/or rot. When we got to it, the roof was mostly flat with some weird ribs sticking up and a few really concerning dips. We did what we could to keep the snow off, but the poor insulation worked against us by melting the snow, which would refreeze in low spots and at the edges, resulting in inch-thick ice running two feet from the edge. And as we discovered trying to deal with that, it was incredibly easy to knock holes in the sheet metal roofing. The upshot was that every room leaked, often through the ceiling fixtures. We did set up an ingenious gutter system to channel the bathroom leak into the hole in the floor where the toilet had been mounted, but otherwise we just learned to set dishpans and buckets up in a secure manner, and empty them regularly. Of course, that was just managing symptoms. How could we actually mitigate these leaks? The answer was tarps. And campaign signs. Every other year, usually as the autumn rains were beginning because we were bad at planning, we'd go up on the roof, make patches out of plastic campaign signs, plastic sheeting, and duct tape to cover the areas that had been leaking badly, then cover the whole shebang with two large woven plastic tarps, the edges and vent holes stuck down with rubber mastic, and the sides hanging off the roof tied to nails. Unsurprisingly, this did little to actually stop the leaks. We eventually had over half a dozen layers of tarps on the roof, but the water situation still got so bad that the living room ceiling bowed downward about a foot and a lake formed (But hey, the lake meant that the water wasn't all coming through!). We actually propped it up with a beam and some plywood to spread the load, and I'd thought about posting here to try and get some better ideas. Every time I brought up the need to do something a little more permanent (My main suggestion was essentially hiring someone to build a roof on columns over the entire trailer, very proper, concrete footers and trusses and everything), my mother would remind me we didn't actually own the land and so couldn't legally make changes to it. Mark had given us the deed to the trailer when he came back to pick up his dog, but the land was still in his name (Even though we had gotten the state to recognize that we could pay taxes on it. Funny how they're willing to be accommodating if you want to give them money), and with him being either in jail in Florida or on the run in Mexico, we'd be just as likely to get his next of kin who'd be well within their rights to say "Hey, we want that land now, get off it." Interdomicium (? I only have a modest grasp of Latin) We lived at Mark's place from before the turn of the millennium until August 17th, 2019. That was when the McKinley Fire started. We got out with a van full of essentials and most (  ) of our pets, but the fire burnt both Mark's place and the old trailer to the ground, which is why I have no photos of them. Have you ever tried to sleep on a cot, on an indoor soccer pitch, with 30 other evacuees in varying states of mental trauma? Do not recommend. We bounced around between evacuation shelters, spending a few nights in the van before getting put up in a local rental cabin gratis for a few days, then actually renting a room in another lodging for a week.Home Four: The Mold Trailer Eventually the great outpouring of support and charity in the wake of the fire got to us, and we got an offer from someone who had an old trailer home just sitting around. We could have it for the cost of moving it up here. Spoiler: We overpaid. The guy that had it spent a little time prepping it to move, but still had some work to be done on it once it got here. This trailer was from the early 60s. We don't know exactly when, the only date on it was an inspection tag on the breaker box saying 1964. We had it hauled in and placed on the lot the old trailer had occupied (Since, of course, we didn't own Mark's lot). Not to put too fine a point on it, the trailer was a piece of poo poo. The guy that gave it to us said he'd cleared out some moldy carpet. I got to watch over the winter as mold/mildew grew up the walls to a height of two feet and infilitrated every drawer (We lost a few socks and some dried beans). He said he was going to replace a broken window. He got as far as leaving us with a sheet of plywood over a gaping hole in the wall, which he did actually fill with insulation and cover with plastic sheeting before leaving for the winter, but we did eventually have to cover it with blankets too to keep it from sucking all the heat out of the room. He did also leave us the window he intended to install, which we used for our later cabin. He said he was working on getting the furnace converted to propane. Turns out, you can't get the parts to fix a loving early 60s furnace, much less convert it to propane, and we were stuck using a ventless propane heater. But we weren't in danger of suffocating, because none of the windows closed completely! We knew we weren't in danger, because we'd had a CO detector donated, and it went off when the guy absent-mindedly left the generator he gave us up against the trailer with the exhaust pointing directly underneath! At least I hope it was absent-minded, I texted him about it after I fixed it and his reply was more "Oops, my bad" than "Oh poo poo, I nearly killed you." The roof leaked, because why would it not, and somewhere in the chain of previous ownership the wall between the main room and one of the small bedrooms had been removed entirely, which didn't look load-bearing based on the appearance of the floor and ceiling, but couldn't have been good for structural integrity anyway. The bathroom was mostly rotted floor and hole, the guy patched it with one sheet of plywood. The shower door was fastened to the shower/tub surround with random 2x4s and caulk. And one of the kitchen walls was painted the most horrific shade of pea-soup green. The guy replaced the front door with an interior door, which swelled up with the moisture and eventually would not close. The guy donated a range and hardware that could be frankensteined together to hook it to a tank, but the first leak test revealed a leak inside the range, and after much searching it was discovered the parts for that model range were no longer available, so we cooked on a Coleman camp stove. Indoors. It was fine, the range vent was right next to it and only covered with an ill-fitting sheet of scrap metal. Also, did you know that propane gels in small tanks at subzero temperatures? I didn't! Cue a -20 cold snap (That's in America units, like -30 in logicalville), waking to find none of our propane would flow, and having to huddle around a kerosene heater as neighbors scrambled to get us a warm place to stay. We went back after a day (Mostly driven by the cats, we'd been put up at the rental cabin again and they didn't allow pets. So we could only have them in there in the carrier, and they just cried and cried all night) and worked out a system. I set up three propane tanks inside: One by the door and two about three feet away from the open-flame heater. When the tank outside froze, the noise of the heater going out or drop in temperature would wake my mother (We later acquired a fridge thermometer with an alarm to do this), who would wake me, and I would carry the warmest tank outside, swap tanks, bring the frozen one in, place it by the door, and move the tank that had been by the door over to the heater to continue warming up. Then I'd go back to bed and sleep for two or three hours until it happened again. Home Five: Tiny House Everyone that saw that trailer told us "We're not gonna let you stay here any longer than absolutely necessary." Early in September, we were asked if we'd like to have a cabin built, which of course we said yes. It took two months to get the builder sorted out, and as the first serious snowfall was coming down we signed a contract and handed over a check for $4500 for materials. The recovery group would handle labor and provide either fund-matching or just a set amount for other fixtures. Once they were ready to get the materials out, there was a foot of snow on the ground and they had to get a guy out with a bulldozer to clear the area. So you can already tell something's gonna be fucky with this place because they're building on snow. Then the builder showed up and started working out what could be built for 4500 dollarydoos. Interior structure was going to be to our specifications, but the building was going to be 12 x 25', shed roofed (I knew that style as "half gable" from the Sims and maybe it's just a matter of pitch?), framed with 2x6s and mounted on a pair of 4x4 skids. We talked it over with him and did some planning for how we wanted our windows and interior walls, and he got to work. He and his partner seemed to do good work, I didn't notice any major defects in the framing. He got the exterior walls and roof up in subzero weather, only stopping work when the compressor for the nailgun started developing its own weather sytem. At this point it all goes pear-shaped. Having volunteered to build this house especially for us on a rush schedule through the winter, the builder proceeded to demonstrate his complete ignorance of the definition of "volunteer" and complain that he wasn't getting paid. To us, and to the recovery group, who eventually decided to pay him. He proceeded to complain further about lack of pay, and the group just handed him some more money. He did not return to work. This was completely unprecedented behavior, the builder had been well-regarded with a solid reputation, if a bit bad with investments. His partner did show up again to put insulation between the studs and finish framing the windows. So our new cabin languished until spring, as the one dude on the recovery group that was trying to light fires and kick asses tried putting together volunteer teams to finish the cabin and get us out of this drafty, leaky mold farm. Then COVID hit, and it became even harder to get someone willing to go out and maybe come into contact with another human being, even up here. Eventually enough people came around in dribs and drabs to get the windows installed (Which had not initially been framed for the windows we had available) and interior panels on (Insulation needed to be added as well). The initial builder had left the roof partially unfinished, since the roof metal had been damaged in transit, and we were living in the cabin for a while before a crew cut usable sections off the damaged metal and cobbled together the remainder of the roof. So that's something to watch. The interior walls are OSB with a single coat of off-white paint, lotsa little voids. The OSB sheets are also all anywhere from a millimeter to half an inch off flush (The half-inch gap is at least filled with caulk). It was also still sitting on the skids on bare ground. A porch got installed (Though not attached to the house) before we got a crew out to jack up the house and put pier blocks under it. The electric system is a bit wonky. We're running a solar panel setup, which has the batteries powering an inverter, some LED lights, a refrigerator, and a porch light. The porch light is a motion-sensing yard light, which may be fine if we ever need to come home at night, but absolutely useless for doing any outside work like, say, fueling the generator (I have discovered that twerking alone will not trigger the motion detector, and more vigorous dance moves risk spilling gas). The generator hooks into a completely distinct set of cables and outlets that culminates at a charger for the 12v batteries. There's no way to have the inverter power the AC outlets unless I cobble together a male-male cord (Which I know better than to try, and honestly never even thought was a possibility until I saw it in this thread. I thought electricity had directionality). It works out, because the AC outlets power the microwave (Too much wattage for the inverter) and electric ignition on the range. Speaking of the range, remember that Propane Fact from earlier? Before we got the house plumbed for propane, the tank for the range was sitting right next to it. We also had a mounted vented heater which we had trouble getting started once fall arrived (Faulty piezo? Clogged jet? Took the front panel off and found no user-serviceable parts and not even a backup hole to shove a lit stick through), so for a while we were using the same ventless heater we had in the mold trailer, with the tank for it six feet away under a table. Everyone who saw that setup told us it was dangerous. We know it's dangerous, you weenie non fire likers, we'd prefer not freezing to death. We have the place plumbed properly now, with 3/4" black iron pipe that should be capable of maintaining usable pressure at 30 below (I don't understand the physics of it, but those more knowledgeable than I say it'll work). We also have a pickle barrel tank, which is a lot better than having to swap 25-pounders every few days at best and every 2 hours at worst. So, by obvious comparison, this place is miles better than any place I've lived previously. Mostly because it doesn't leak (yet). My mother watched a few episodes of a tiny house show and commented that what they were showing off were at least twice the size of our place. I do have a few questions regarding DIY projects I have planned or desired, as well as a tale of building inadvisable sheds, but those can wait for another post.
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Nov 12, 2020 15:55
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jesus fcuking christ
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Nov 12, 2020 19:25
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Yeah. gently caress?
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Nov 12, 2020 19:31
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What the gently caress
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Nov 12, 2020 19:39
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I feel bad because you wrote an effort post and are getting very...brief replies, but, uh, do you have any insight into how common your experiences were? I live on the east coast and I've seen homes along those lines out in bandits backwoods appalachia or between towns in Alabama, but it's tough to imagine dealing with that in Alaska weather.
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Nov 12, 2020 19:45
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That was harrowing to read I can't even imagine living it. The brief replies are evidence of the power of the post. Splicer fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Nov 12, 2020 |
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Nov 12, 2020 19:50
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I have no words. Just, um, wow. You have access to the internet, obviously. Maybe study up on homebuilding techniques and methods and do what you can to fix the situation yourself? I mean, I feel like you'd have to work to do worse. It pains me to be reminded yet again that folks have to live like that in one of the richest nations on Earth.
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Nov 12, 2020 20:03
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 Pretty sure you could do better with a YouTube video on building model homes and just winging it from there. I uh... guess I forgot that Alaska is something like 50 years behind the rest of the continental states on rural development or something.
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Nov 12, 2020 20:11
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Uh first of all I grew up poor but we were never "campaign signs as a roof" poor so congrats on still being alive, OP. I lost my poo poo laughing at "twerking alone will not trigger the motion light" imagining you out there in your front yard trying to refill the genny, the light goes out midstream, and you standing there booty poppin trying to turn it back on. Mission accomplished, friend.
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Nov 12, 2020 20:42
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Yeah sorry it's hard to absorb all that and come up with a wordy flippant reply, that's horrific.
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Nov 12, 2020 20:49
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Warmachine posted:I uh... guess I forgot that Alaska is something like 50 years behind the rest of the continental states on rural development or something. Rural lower-48 is nothing like rural AK, that's a fact. And it sounds like this guy's not even, like, out in the great unknown, he's near the highway. I mean, close enough to. But it's such a HARD CUTOFF going from civilization to the middle of nowhere in AK, it's crazy. I feel like OP should get a special pass in this thread for any "how can I make this work, yes I know it's not correct and unsafe, I just need it to work and the baseline here is actively trying to kill me" type requests.
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Nov 12, 2020 20:55
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Blue Footed Booby posted:I feel bad because you wrote an effort post and are getting very...brief replies, but, uh, do you have any insight into how common your experiences were? I live on the east coast and I've seen homes along those lines out in bandits backwoods appalachia or between towns in Alabama, but it's tough to imagine dealing with that in Alaska weather. I absolutely expected a storm of very brief jesus christs (A christeor shower?), it's even hard for me to accept how bad some of these places were, and I lived in them. You tend to develop coping mechanisms, like when I'm in town or otherwise in an actual pocket of civilization, I try not to leave before I've had the opportunity to use an actual working toilet. And like, I've been living in lovely trailers since I was old enough to remember, I've gotten used to some of the stopgap bullshit. I don't have a huge representative sample of how common my situation is, but out of the 20 people I know or knew in the area, at least 8 of them were in similar situations with old trailers and scrap-built homes. One guy had his walls made entirely of large political signs with no insulation. When he moved out and someone else bought the property, they just pushed the house off a cliff with a bulldozer, probably because it couldn't be demoed safely otherwise. A local motel was condemned and demoed because it had a meth lab in one of the rooms. When a river flooded, the regulars at a riverside bar continued to drink as water swirled around their barstools and the flood lifted the entire bar off the foundations and floated it away (I feel like that story has probably grown in the retelling). We didn't quite get the short end of the stick as far as fire recovery charity went, either. One of my neighbors had a double-wide trailer moved onto their property in two pieces, and I have to imagine that was the draftiest thing this side of a tent. At least we could heat the moldy trailer well enough. Darchangel posted:I have no words. Just, um, wow. You have access to the internet, obviously. Maybe study up on homebuilding techniques and methods and do what you can to fix the situation yourself? I mean, I feel like you'd have to work to do worse. Warmachine posted:
Oh, yeah, I know enough about building techniques that I can frame up decently solid structures. Like, just from that I can tell that this place is decently built. The walls are solid and well-insulated, the roof doesn't leak (yet), the only real problems are historical and aesthetic. And it's small. And has no utilities. That's what's on my next really big project list, get a well dug down to the potable aquifer, maybe set up a pressure tank and water heater in an external shed and plumb the sink (It currently drains into a 2-gallon bucket underneath ).I will be making regular checks for some of the problems I've seen pointed out in this thread, like water infiltration. Now that I've got this decent house, I'm not about to let it fall to ruin if I can help it.
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Nov 12, 2020 21:12
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