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Buy a no contact tester to make 100% sure it's not hot and the PO didn't gently caress something up. Just because you think it's off doesn't ean it is. They are easy but a pain in the rear end too. Have a friend stand there and hand you poo poo you dropped so you don't need to climb down the ladder for the 6th time is worth 1-2 beers.
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Nov 27, 2021 15:46
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tater_salad posted:Have a friend stand there and hand you poo poo you dropped so you don't need to climb down the ladder for the 6th time is worth 1-2 beers. Sage advice from the wise.
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Nov 27, 2021 16:20
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floWenoL posted:One follow-up question. I used a PVC nut (the one that came with the PVC pipes) to attach to the sink drain on the right, but I read somewhere that one should use metal nuts (e.g. brass nuts) to attach to metal drains. Is this true, or does it not matter too much? What's the difference? Short answer: no, it doesn't matter. So long as the seal (either integrated with the PVC nut or slipped on after the nut is) is not loose - it should slide on, but move with some drag - it'll seal metal or plastic. Long answer: You can use either, so long as they thread & spin down properly, and that you have the proper seal/gasket installed at the union of the two.
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Nov 27, 2021 17:49
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Sump pump saga: who had plastic impeller snapped around the shaft on their bingo cards? Everything else looked good, I'll see if I can get an impeller from the manufacturer on Monday. Actually surprised by the lack of any real debris within the volute, it was really clean.
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Nov 27, 2021 18:41
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TrueChaos posted:Thankfully I do have a good understanding of pumps in general, I'm just not as familiar with the tiny ones. I'm a mechanical engineer designing wastewater treatment systems, the pumps I usually deal with are a tad larger: TrueChaos posted:Sump pump saga: who had plastic impeller snapped around the shaft on their bingo cards? melon cat fucked around with this message at 06:31 on Jan 10, 2024 |
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Nov 27, 2021 22:28
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I got locked out of my apartment yesterday. Took me 2 hours to get in and only made it through the backdoor after looking up how to bypass chain locks on youtube. I got curious as to how the lock broke and:  This is assumedly metal. How does it just snap in half like that? What the poo poo?Edit: also, total longshot - anybody recognize this deadbolt? Nothing at Home Depot even slightly resembles it. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Nov 28, 2021 |
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Nov 28, 2021 18:46
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Vertical deadbolts vary wildly in quality, and some are incredibly, terribly cheap. Odds are that unfortunately your landlord will pick another cheap one as a replacement.
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Nov 28, 2021 19:00
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Pollyanna posted:
My bet is on cheap as gently caress casting using the cheapest crap metal available
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Nov 28, 2021 19:07
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tetrapyloctomy posted:Vertical deadbolts vary wildly in quality, and some are incredibly, terribly cheap. Odds are that unfortunately your landlord will pick another cheap one as a replacement. Cool loving poo poo. Are they standard sizing, or will I have to get the exact same as a replacement?
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Nov 28, 2021 19:09
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Pollyanna posted:Cool loving poo poo. Are they standard sizing, or will I have to get the exact same as a replacement? Replacing locks is landlord territory. The answer is "whatever they decide to do." In your shoes I'd just phone them ASAP and tell them the lock's hosed and they need to put a new one on.
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Nov 28, 2021 19:15
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I did, yeah. Was just hoping for a better quick fix than “superglue the pieces back together” (just on the broken parts, it can still spin). It’ll probably break again 
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Nov 28, 2021 19:36
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Pollyanna posted:Cool loving poo poo. Are they standard sizing, or will I have to get the exact same as a replacement? There are many that are close enough to swap cylinders and such, but some that are a little bit incompatible (but you can mix and match parts to get them to work), and others that won't be any easier than a brand new install. Regardless: it's your landlord's problem.
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Nov 28, 2021 20:15
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TrueChaos posted:Thankfully I do have a good understanding of pumps in general, I'm just not as familiar with the tiny ones. I'm a mechanical engineer designing wastewater treatment systems, the pumps I usually deal with are a tad larger: Look the important thing is that there's a flared base, so whatever size you're more comfortable with is fine.
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Nov 28, 2021 21:15
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Pollyanna posted:I got locked out of my apartment yesterday. Took me 2 hours to get in and only made it through the backdoor after looking up how to bypass chain locks on youtube. I got curious as to how the lock broke and: Yep, that sure is broken.
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Nov 28, 2021 21:37
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tetrapyloctomy posted:There are many that are close enough to swap cylinders and such, but some that are a little bit incompatible (but you can mix and match parts to get them to work), and others that won't be any easier than a brand new install. Regardless: it's your landlord's problem. Hmph, we’ll see if they actually do anything about it. Regardless, thank you!
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Nov 29, 2021 00:37
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Pollyanna posted:Hmph, we’ll see if they actually do anything about it. Regardless, thank you! Sure thing. I've replaced these through my house as they've failed in various ways and there's always something a little annoying each time.
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Nov 29, 2021 00:45
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Well, to their credit, they did fix it just now. So at least that worked out. Replacement seems okay enough…
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Nov 29, 2021 18:07
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norton I posted:It depends, are you a personal injury attorney or not? A little late but this. The issue with Round-up isn't so much that it causes cancer, that has yet to be proven in any meaningful way. Some studies suggest that it raises your risk by a couple percentage points if you have a lot of exposure, so your individual risk depends greatly on what other risk factors you already have or are exposed to. IANAL so take this with the appropriate grain of salt, but the lawsuits and settlements are mainly due to California's law that requires everything to be labeled if it could be cancer causing. Monsanto followed the Federal rules for labeling herbicides which didn't require a cancer declaration, so anyone who used the product and got cancer, whether related or not, can successfully claim that Monsanto is liable as they were not properly warned of the risks per California law. Personal injury attorneys and people who dislike Monsanto or Big Agriculture point to this as "proof" that Round-up caused the cancer even though it actually has not been scientifically proven. Read the label, follow the directions for use of PPE. You'll be fine.
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Nov 29, 2021 21:50
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I have ducts in my ceiling inside a soffit. When I had some painting done, I opened some of them more where the painting was happening to help with ventilation. Ever since then I've noticed some weird noises - one is a very low tone (only hearable if nothing else is making noise), the other one was... hard to describe - but in that case the issue was the vent cover wasn't screwed on tightly enough I think. Anywa for that low tone, it goes away depending on how much I open or close a certain vent. Do I have ghosts in my vents?
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Nov 30, 2021 22:49
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Hi goons. I have a thing that happened, I wondered if you could help me decide what to do. I decided to buy a functioning washer and dryer. Hooked up the washer myself, no problem. It washes clothes. That’s nice! The dryer, on the other hand, has been kind of a nightmare. The dryer is meant to go in my garage/patio space. This space is all connected to the front yard. So the whole area is walled in, and there's floor and roof on 2/3 of it but 1/3 has no floor (just plants) and no roof. So it's more or less outside. There was a 220 volt outlet there (where my old dryer had been before it broke) but I realized it was a stove outlet instead of a dryer outlet.  (all outlets here are the old 3 prong version. Outside the US, a slightly less developed country. Lots of electrical work is out of date). I guess someone put a range cable on the old dryer, so it worked. Anyways, with the new dryer, I wanted it done right so I hired ‘an electrician’ to install a dryer outlet and a dryer cable on the dryer (they don’t come with a cable here, you buy that separately. Not sure how that is in the US). Instead what he does is he wires the dryer directly into the wall. https://i.imgur.com/4rXBFKE.mp4 So, that kind of sucks and also feels weird? Like I can’t ever move this thing again or sell it or whatever? Also 100% not what I asked the guy to do. But then there’s another thing. We have a rat problem. The vent doesn’t actually go anywhere since it’s basically outside anyways. Rats crawl into this area from the trees at night to steal dog food and poo poo all over my gym equipment. I don’t want rats crawling into the vent and dying or damaging the machine so I thought to protect the opening of the vent with a bit of chicken wire to prevent rats crawling up there. So, my question, should the foil tube vent have an electric current running through it? Cause I got a big ol’ zappy when I tried to put the chicken wire on the end. Obviously chicken wire is metal so it shouldn’t go where there’s a current… but I don’t think the vent tube should be electrified? Maybe I’m wrong there, just want a sanity check. I know that I’m very dumb so if this was just dumbness on my part please tell me. If it’s not supposed to be electrified (as I suspect) then what kind of tool can I use to test the current without just loving shocking myself again? A multimeter? Luckily there’s a breaker switch for the dryer and I currently have it turned off so it doesn’t electrocute my dog. Anyways thanks for helping me with my dumb problem.
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Nov 30, 2021 22:52
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Unfortunately that has been made worse. All that needs (needed?) doing was to swap the breaker from 50A to 30A (or whatever the plate on your dryer says) and replace the outlet or the cord with ones that fit together. What is under that cowling on the wall? Can you have them bring back your old outlet? I don't have an answer for your vent issue, I imagine there is some kind of screen you can put over it?
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Nov 30, 2021 23:00
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H110Hawk posted:Unfortunately that has been made worse. All that needs (needed?) doing was to swap the breaker from 50A to 30A (or whatever the plate on your dryer says) and replace the outlet or the cord with ones that fit together. What is under that cowling on the wall? Can you have them bring back your old outlet? Yeah, I don't know why this dude did that. It's hosed up and I want to hire a different guy to fix it. Under that cowling is just the same wire, it leads to a breaker box with all kind of electrical stuff in it I don't understand. I don't know if current runs through the whole back plate or just the vent. I'd imagine the whole back plate but I don't know how to test that without putting myself at risk.
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Nov 30, 2021 23:05
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Hellblazer187 posted:Yeah, I don't know why this dude did that. It's hosed up and I want to hire a different guy to fix it. Do you have a multimeter? I'd test that by turning off the breaker, sticking one probe in another outlet's or extension cord's ground pin and wedging the other probe against any bare metal on the case, putting the meter in AC volts mode, then turning on the breaker, reading the meter, and turning the breaker back off. The key here is not touching anything while the breaker is on and definitely not touching anything grounded at the same time as the dryer. This is an alarming situation and if it's reading high voltage on the case it's probably wired incorrectly. My guess is the electrician didn't connect the neutral correctly. No idea if a dryer would work with only the two hots but sounds like a way to make it shocky. Stack Machine fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Nov 30, 2021 |
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Nov 30, 2021 23:39
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E: quote isn't edit
Stack Machine fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Nov 30, 2021 |
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Nov 30, 2021 23:41
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It does work, he turned it on to test it before he left but yeah, I'm not doing the shocky dryer situation. Thank you for the assistance on how to use the multimeter to test this. When we messaged the 'electrician' he said "no there's no current on the back of the dryer" and I want to prove there is without either killing myself or him coming over and killing himself. I don't trust him to use a multimeter. Actually I don't want to involve the original install guy at all but my wife is weirdly insisting on it.
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Nov 30, 2021 23:44
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Hellblazer187 posted:It does work, he turned it on to test it before he left but yeah, I'm not doing the shocky dryer situation. Thank you for the assistance on how to use the multimeter to test this. When we messaged the 'electrician' he said "no there's no current on the back of the dryer" and I want to prove there is without either killing myself or him coming over and killing himself. I don't trust him to use a multimeter. Yeah, that person isn't an electrician. At least not in the USA/EU/etc sense of the word. That person is someone who has yet to kill themselves, I'm not willing to rule out others. If you had a way to "unpay" them I would pursue that, but I don't know how dangerous that could be to you personally.
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Dec 1, 2021 00:49
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H110Hawk posted:Yeah, that person isn't an electrician. At least not in the USA/EU/etc sense of the word. That person is someone who has yet to kill themselves, I'm not willing to rule out others. If you had a way to "unpay" them I would pursue that, but I don't know how dangerous that could be to you personally. I don't think he's a gangster or anything (although that poo poo does exist here) but I don't think there's any options there. It was a direct bank transfer for payment (which is standard here).
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Dec 1, 2021 01:09
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Bit of a puzzle for y'all: my bathroom shower has poor hot water pressure, but only when the cartridge is installed in the shower. Here's the flow with the cartridge removed; hot water is on the far side: The cartridge is this one. Here's a photo of the top:  I'm pretty sure I understand how it works: the metal plate on top blocks the hot and cold water inlets, but as it rotates, it allows first cold water, then hot water, to get through. What I don't understand is why I can have perfectly good cold water flow but bad hot water flow. What I really don't understand is that I had one day when the shower had really great hot water pressure like a month ago. Then it went back to lousy. I seem to remember hearing a "clunk" inside the wall when I turned the shower on that day. I was having issues with the hot water pressure gradually getting worse and worse; today I took everything apart, and while I couldn't find any problems, when I put it all back together, the hot water pressure is basically back to what I remember being baseline (i.e. kind of mediocre, but usable). So it's possible there was some debris stuck in the hot water inlet, that got cleared out when I took the above photo. I'd still like it to be better than it is, though.
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Dec 1, 2021 01:34
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Sounds like it could be an over-active anti-scald feature built into the valve.
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Dec 1, 2021 04:21
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IOwnCalculus posted:Sounds like it could be an over-active anti-scald feature built into the valve. That would be a neat trick, but unfortunately it happens well before hot water reaches the cartridge. That is, I get lousy water pressure from the water in the hot water pipe, even if that water has been sitting in the pipe for hours and is therefore cold.
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Dec 1, 2021 04:31
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:That would be a neat trick, but unfortunately it happens well before hot water reaches the cartridge. That is, I get lousy water pressure from the water in the hot water pipe, even if that water has been sitting in the pipe for hours and is therefore cold. The ones I've dealt with aren't actually temperature sensing, they just limit flow / force mixing so you can't ever get anywhere near "full hot".
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Dec 1, 2021 17:57
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I have 2 fireplaces, one in the finished basement and one upstairs. Their flues share a chimney. The chimney inspection was all good and he said the fireplace area to flue area ratio was well above board and such. But one problem he did not predict - with the proximity of the flues we are getting backdraft issues. A fire in the upper floor will backdraft into the basement's flue a bit and the basement will smell like smoke. I went up on the roof while having a fire and saw it happening. I did some reading online and found that this is a fairly common problem that can be solved by extending the upper floor's flue. (it can also be temporarily fixed by cracking a window near the fire). So I found flue stretchers online that fit my 13x17" flue cap. A 1-foot extender, on sale for $373 only 12 more hours  A 2-foot extender for $519 My question is, should I extend it 1 or 2 feet higher? Is there any guide or calculation for how much of a height difference they need to have? I sure wouldn't mind paying $150 less for the 1-footer, and the higher profile of the 2-footer worries me wrt wind, so my inclination is to do the 1-footer. But if the 1-footer doesn't solve my problem then it's wasted money. e: Some of the better info I found on this topic is this thread on hearth dot com, the premiere fireplace related forum on the world wide web alnilam fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Dec 1, 2021 |
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Dec 1, 2021 20:47
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Maybe this is a stupid question but can't you just close the flue in the basement when you're not using it?
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Dec 1, 2021 21:30
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The backdrafting occurs even with the downstairs damper closed. Dampers aren't perfectly sealed or anything, but yeah I'm surprised the damper gap is sufficient for backflow. The idea is the chimneying from the fire upstairs causes a negative pressure in the house, and i guess my house is so well sealed that the little gap in the damper downstairs is the preferred place for air to come back in. Apparently you can get a damper that goes on top of the flue and gets opened/closed by a pull chain, that is another solution for this problem but seems more complicated than sticking a longer chimney cap on.
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Dec 1, 2021 21:41
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Well, I found it cheaper: https://chimcarechimneycaps.com/product/8-x-13-x-1-tall-stainless-steel-flue-stretcher/#tab-reviews
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Dec 1, 2021 21:51
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kid sinister posted:Well, I found it cheaper: https://chimcarechimneycaps.com/product/8-x-13-x-1-tall-stainless-steel-flue-stretcher/#tab-reviews 
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Dec 1, 2021 21:52
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IOwnCalculus posted:The ones I've dealt with aren't actually temperature sensing, they just limit flow / force mixing so you can't ever get anywhere near "full hot". Any ideas how I could modify this cartridge to permit more hot water through?
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Dec 1, 2021 21:56
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Oops, that was the wrong size. Still cheaper: https://chimcarechimneycaps.com/product/13-x-17-x-1-tall-stainless-steel-flue-stretcher/#tab-reviews Instead of using 2 separate flue caps, you just get one bigger flue cap for the whole top, then add some sort of divider? I did that math and it would still be cheaper. The question is if it would work or not. Or would that divider gently caress with air flow? Those caps with pop up dampers are pretty cheap in comparison too, around $100. kid sinister fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Dec 1, 2021 |
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Dec 1, 2021 22:02
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  Combining them to one cap with a divider seems like it would bring their exhaust into even closer proximity, seems worse to me than how it is. I did think about just sticking a little 2 ft temporary dividing wall in between the caps, maybe some sheet metal or something, to see if that fixes it. But then if it works i now have the problem of building a permanent divider that withstands weather. And in any of these cases, it's a much more complicated and custom job that I'm not sure I'm qualified to do, whereas I'm totally comfortable sticking a new cap on a flue.
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Dec 1, 2021 22:10
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kid sinister posted:Those caps with pop up dampers are pretty cheap in comparison too, around $100. Also I'm not seeing any for less than 300... are you some kind of chimney parts deals wizard?? Either way I'm also not as confident in nicely and cleanly installing such a thing (mainly in routing the chain) vs a simple cap. Plus the mechanical parts seem more prone to failure.
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Dec 1, 2021 22:12
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