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Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

kastein posted:

I hope you kiln dried the wood you used for those new king studs, because otherwise... unless you got really lucky, the powderpost boring beetles are gonna love you!

Nope, they're straight from the barn where we dry our lumber. I don't know if Manitoulin Island is special, but I've never observed a single sign of them, and a lot of buildings are constructed from locally sawed and raw spruce. My dad's house was built from locally milled spruce and never kiln dried and there has been no sign of them in its 36 years. Our cottage has 2x10" floor joists and beams in the roof and it was built in 1999 and no signs, the garage is the same, and it was built in 2001. My uncle is renovating a 60 year old house and while there were a shitload of mice droppings, not a single beetle hole in the whole thing.

I think the most reassuring sign that beetles are not an issue is that all of the existing spruce in the addition is raw and untouched by beetles.

Thanks for the concern though, here is a picture of a doe I took this afternoon (the most common pest here).

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kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
Cool! Anything built before KD lumber was common around here generally looks like it got blasted with a 12ga full of birdshot.

kastein fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Feb 17, 2014

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

kastein posted:

Cool! Anything built before KD lumber was common around here generally looks like it got blasted with a 12ga full of birdshot.

Yes, I've seen your thread. . . stuff of nightmares! What percent of the structural lumber within 5' of the ground would you say was bug-eaten?

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
I'd say about the first foot to foot and a half or so, so ~20-25% of the first five feet?

It's worse where there were carpenter ant infestations due to the roof failing. Carpenter ants don't really like dry timber apparently, but they certainly enjoyed the damp/rotting wood in those areas. In most cases when I dig into the damaged area, the ant damage only goes as far as the water stains.

Uncle Enzo
Apr 28, 2008

I always wanted to be a Wizard
I thought I'd show a picture of some not-crappy construction. This was taken inside the Pearl Street Grill and Brewery of Buffalo NY. The building was built in 1841 and is a really cool place. I was up on the 4th floor for a party and the ceiling was all this:



By my measurement (That's a purpose-built photography scale card there) they're 3x10's, true dimension, 14 inch on center. Place is built like a tank and is still standing 173 years later.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

kastein posted:

I'd say about the first foot to foot and a half or so, so ~20-25% of the first five feet?

It's worse where there were carpenter ant infestations due to the roof failing. Carpenter ants don't really like dry timber apparently, but they certainly enjoyed the damp/rotting wood in those areas. In most cases when I dig into the damaged area, the ant damage only goes as far as the water stains.

I imagine all of the judgment calls you had to make were a nice little headache. "Do I cut 3' up or 5' up". Luckily all the calls I had to make were, "this has to be done or else I will have a bathtub in my dog's bedroom".


Uncle Enzo posted:

I thought I'd show a picture of some not-crappy construction. This was taken inside the Pearl Street Grill and Brewery of Buffalo NY. The building was built in 1841 and is a really cool place. I was up on the 4th floor for a party and the ceiling was all this:



By my measurement (That's a purpose-built photography scale card there) they're 3x10's, true dimension, 14 inch on center. Place is built like a tank and is still standing 173 years later.

Back when lumber was essentially free you'd see a lot of overkill like this because the difference between doing it right and doing it like it was expected to sustain the fists of an angry god were marginal. I've seen lots of buildings built locally that are getting close to 200 years old and if they were built today they would have been 2-3 times more expensive than what code calls for. Assuming that they are properly maintained, they will probably outlast anything built in the next 20 years.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.

Blistex posted:

I imagine all of the judgment calls you had to make were a nice little headache. "Do I cut 3' up or 5' up". Luckily all the calls I had to make were, "this has to be done or else I will have a bathtub in my dog's bedroom".

Honestly, I just cut back till I run out of insect damage, then continue till I run out of water damage, then cut a little more for good measure and that's that.

or to the nearest convenient spot, whichever comes second. Lumber is cheap compared to having to do it all again. Hell, I only paid 27 bucks each for the new joists for the master bedroom floor, which really isn't much considering what it would have cost to have it done professionally.

e: that reminds me. I am doing a steel tension rod based cathedral ceiling in the master bedroom. To avoid it ending up in this thread, where do I buy the rods precut to the right lengths and prethreaded at the ends without breaking the bank? I'm thinking maybe mcmaster, but not sure. I don't know exactly what size I'm going to need, but keep in mind that the current rafters at the bottom of the A-frame are 1x6 or so and held onto the rafters for the sloped portion of the roof with maybe 4-5 medium old style stamped nails each. My SWAG is that 1/2" diameter should be fine, or maybe 3/4" just because 1/2" looks spindly.

Also, how would you go about attaching them to the rafters at each end? I'm sure a piece of 1/4" wall angle stock cut as an L-bracket at each end would work, but it doesn't make me comfortable, I'm thinking 1/4" or 3/8" plate bent into C-brackets that wrap around both sides of the rafters and have a hole in the middle of the "C" for the tension rod to go through would be better. Possibly with some gusseting to keep the middle of the C from pulling into more of a <= shape.

I'm sure I am way overthinking this, but I'm going for both aesthetics and overbuilt strength, so the bare minimum won't really fit. I'd consider something that involves the least welding and the most drilling/cutting for the most finished appearance to be the best design.

kastein fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Feb 17, 2014

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler
I don't know if I'm tired, or what, but I'm having trouble visualizing this. Could you do a quick drawing to give me a better idea? Personally, the rod situation might be better if you were to get straight rods, cut them to size and then thread them yourself. I don't have any idea where you'd get them in the US, but you might have some luck asking in the metalworking thread.

Tora! Tora! Tora!
Dec 28, 2008

Shake it baby

kastein posted:

Honestly, I just cut back till I run out of insect damage, then continue till I run out of water damage, then cut a little more for good measure and that's that.

or to the nearest convenient spot, whichever comes second. Lumber is cheap compared to having to do it all again. Hell, I only paid 27 bucks each for the new joists for the master bedroom floor, which really isn't much considering what it would have cost to have it done professionally.

e: that reminds me. I am doing a steel tension rod based cathedral ceiling in the master bedroom. To avoid it ending up in this thread, where do I buy the rods precut to the right lengths and prethreaded at the ends without breaking the bank? I'm thinking maybe mcmaster, but not sure. I don't know exactly what size I'm going to need, but keep in mind that the current rafters at the bottom of the A-frame are 1x6 or so and held onto the rafters for the sloped portion of the roof with maybe 4-5 medium old style stamped nails each. My SWAG is that 1/2" diameter should be fine, or maybe 3/4" just because 1/2" looks spindly.

Also, how would you go about attaching them to the rafters at each end? I'm sure a piece of 1/4" wall angle stock cut as an L-bracket at each end would work, but it doesn't make me comfortable, I'm thinking 1/4" or 3/8" plate bent into C-brackets that wrap around both sides of the rafters and have a hole in the middle of the "C" for the tension rod to go through would be better. Possibly with some gusseting to keep the middle of the C from pulling into more of a <= shape.

I'm sure I am way overthinking this, but I'm going for both aesthetics and overbuilt strength, so the bare minimum won't really fit. I'd consider something that involves the least welding and the most drilling/cutting for the most finished appearance to be the best design.

I'll just throw this out there, I was at a meeting hall that had this construction with some firefighters and they said they are scared to death of that type of construction. It tends to fail catastrophically in a fire, collapsing the roof and killing firefighters.

Dr. Despair
Nov 4, 2009


39 perfect posts with each roll.

Blistex posted:

I imagine all of the judgment calls you had to make were a nice little headache. "Do I cut 3' up or 5' up". Luckily all the calls I had to make were, "this has to be done or else I will have a bathtub in my dog's bedroom".


Back when lumber was essentially free you'd see a lot of overkill like this because the difference between doing it right and doing it like it was expected to sustain the fists of an angry god were marginal. I've seen lots of buildings built locally that are getting close to 200 years old and if they were built today they would have been 2-3 times more expensive than what code calls for. Assuming that they are properly maintained, they will probably outlast anything built in the next 20 years.

The lab I work in has some pretty heavy duty wood used in a few spots. You can see it going by in this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjl7YKUzujA#t=307

It was built in the early 1940's, and that shaft goes down a little over 4850'. Pretty smooth ride all things considered, although there is a lot of work involved in refurbishing everything to make sure it's holding up.

T.C.
Feb 10, 2004

Believe.

t_violet posted:

I'll just throw this out there, I was at a meeting hall that had this construction with some firefighters and they said they are scared to death of that type of construction. It tends to fail catastrophically in a fire, collapsing the roof and killing firefighters.

Yeah, you could certainly have an issue with fire rating depending on your code.

Anyway, this isn't standard wood construction so, at least in my jurisdiction, you'd need an engineer's stamp on it. I can think of a few ways you could realistically do the connection, but it would involve actually crunching numbers to verify which would work. If this is actually something you want to do, hire a local engineer to size the rod, detail the connection and make sure you meet fire requirements. If you can provide reasonable information and access to what's there, it's probably only a few hundred bucks.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
poo poo I completely forgot about fire rating. Thanks for the reality check, I'd hate for the tie rods to turn into linguini al dente in a fire.

(if I mention this to my dad he'll go off on a 911 truther rant about how the WTC was clearly demolished/an inside job because steel doesn't melt until :downswords: :ughh:)

e: drat, structural steel is down to 49% of its rated strength by 500C (932F.) That's an even more impressive dropoff than I was expecting, and I've melted aluminum (1200F, give or take) in a small campfire.

kastein fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Feb 17, 2014

Tora! Tora! Tora!
Dec 28, 2008

Shake it baby
Semi-relevant: I thought this video showing a burn test between a wood truss roof and a conventionally framed roof was pretty impressive. You can see how the truss fails catastrophically by coming apart when the gusset plates melt. By comparison, the stick framed roof doesn't fail until the members start to burn through.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo5ZtBXJiHo

Indolent Bastard
Oct 26, 2007

I WON THIS AMAZING AVATAR! I'M A WINNER! WOOOOO!

Mr. Despair posted:

The lab I work in has some pretty heavy duty wood used in a few spots. You can see it going by in this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjl7YKUzujA#t=307

It was built in the early 1940's, and that shaft goes down a little over 4850'. Pretty smooth ride all things considered, although there is a lot of work involved in refurbishing everything to make sure it's holding up.

Say hi to Freeman for me, if you see him.

Shame Boy
Mar 2, 2010

Mr. Despair posted:

The lab I work in has some pretty heavy duty wood used in a few spots. You can see it going by in this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjl7YKUzujA#t=307

It was built in the early 1940's, and that shaft goes down a little over 4850'. Pretty smooth ride all things considered, although there is a lot of work involved in refurbishing everything to make sure it's holding up.

Where the hell do you work, a neutrino detector?

Sagebrush
Feb 26, 2012

I looked up the key words from that video because I was curious too and yes that's exactly what it is. An old gold mine in South Dakota converted into a physics lab for interference-free particle observations.

Dr. Despair
Nov 4, 2009


39 perfect posts with each roll.

Parallel Paraplegic posted:

Where the hell do you work, a neutrino detector?

Dark matter actually, but yeah, it's the Sanford Underground Research Facility. The neutrino detectors haven't been built yet.

On a more thread related note, this is what happens when your roof starts to sag underground.


PB260217.jpg by MrDespair, on Flickr

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

kastein posted:

poo poo I completely forgot about fire rating. Thanks for the reality check, I'd hate for the tie rods to turn into linguini al dente in a fire.

(if I mention this to my dad he'll go off on a 911 truther rant about how the WTC was clearly demolished/an inside job because steel doesn't melt until :downswords: :ughh:)

e: drat, structural steel is down to 49% of its rated strength by 500C (932F.) That's an even more impressive dropoff than I was expecting, and I've melted aluminum (1200F, give or take) in a small campfire.

I've done a little bit of amateur blacksmithing, and the idea of supporting a wooden structure with steel cables or rods under tension scares me.

Steel stretches with any heat, so as soon as they're exposed to significant heat, the rods or cables will get longer (or sag if they're not actually under tension). At 500 degrees Fahrenheit, tempered carbon steel starts to lose its temper - which means it becomes more malleable but less brittle. At 600, the temper is almost gone. You can still have very strong structures depending on what kind of alloy you're using - cast iron is very brittle but will hold its shape easily at this temperature, for example, which is why they make disk brake rotors out of it - but for any application that uses ordinary, tempered carbon steel, above 500F or so, the temper may be compromised (permanently, until it's re-headed to austinitic temperature, re-quenched, and then re-tempered).

As an example of why the above is important; you sometimes see guys trying to free up seized bolts on a car by heating them with a torch. This could be OK if it's just mild steel, but high-strength bolts and high-strength steel members could be compromised by doing this, potentially a safety issue that could be invisible to the naked eye during inspection of the parts at a later date.

At 500 degrees C (932 F), steel is just barely visibly glowing. You can bend it with hand pressure, shape it with heavy blows form a hammer, and at that point you should not be relying on it structurally unless you are a serious professional metallurgist/engineer kind of guy with an advanced degree in high-temperature structural application engineering type things. There's specialists who design things like combustion chambers and engine blocks and oil refineries and so forth who routinely deal with those kinds of applications, but you don't want to be trying to figure it out by yourself if you're not one of those specialists, and if the result of failure could involve someone's life or limb.

Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Feb 17, 2014

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
Yeah, once I've put a torch on a bolt, it's done. New one goes in, old one goes in the scrapmetal pile. I see people casually replace grade 8s and ISO PC 10.9/12.9 with grade 5s and 8.8s all the time, and even say that 8.8s are as strong as grade 8s, which all scares the poo poo out of me.

I knew steel lost its strength once it started glowing but had no idea it was half gone by 500C. Goddamn.

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

Yeah, that's a generally good rule of thumb for basic carbon steels, and of course for mild steel (in terms of structural integrity - not in terms of changing the metal's properties after it's re-cooled).

Mild steel is not tempered though, and annealing it does nothing. You can reheat rebar all you want, and when it cools (assuming it hasn't overly scaled from accelerated oxidization) it retains the same strength it had before you heated it up.

And some steels are specifically designed for high-temp applications, retaining strength even while red hot. Example: gun barrels on high-speed gatling guns are designed to continue to perform while getting very hot indeed, and to have reasonable longevity even with hundreds of heating/cooling cycles.

Your basic carbon steel has somewhere between .1 and maybe 4% carbon, alloyed with iron, with some insignificant trace elements in there. Stuff like 1080 spring steel, for example: it has .8% carbon, and you might see it used in leaf springs on a truck.

Most of the car is still mild steel - body panels, for example - and that stuff you can freely weld on without worrying about altering structural strength. That stuff is commonly 1020,

And then there's much more complicated alloys. There's probably hundreds of different bolt specifications in use, varying in alloyed metals... stainless steel has at least 10.5% chromium, for example, but there's tons of different stainless steel alloys. CrMo "chromoly" is chromium molybdenum steel, commonly used in cheap bicycle frames and such, with SAE numbers like 41xx. It's got varying amounts of carbon, some manganese, and you can case-harden it with a carburizing treatment.

4118 has only about .18% carbon, so I think it's un-temperable (assuming it's not carburized), whereas 4161 has .61% carbon and I would assume can be tempered.

I do know though that you have to pre- and post-heat chromoly when welding it, though, so my best guess is, it's one of the steels you'd throw away if you had to torch it to get a bolt off of, unless you knew what you were doing (like, you're welding up bicycle frames, and you know how to properly pre- and post-heat it, and you know you're not using a carburized metal, etc.)

That's just one example, but the point is, when guys are torching pieces of a car they sometimes know exactly what it's made of (an exhaust pipe hanger or a lug nut) and they sometimes have no idea. In the latter case, the smart thing is to assume anything you heated to 500F or higher is now trash.

Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Feb 17, 2014

bongwizzard
May 19, 2005

Then one day I meet a man,
He came to me and said,
"Hard work good and hard work fine,
but first take care of head"
Grimey Drawer
Man, I have never had to heat a nut to glowing to get it loose. At that point I think I would just carefully cut into it enough to break it.

I did once have to unthread/break a 5/8 grade 8 bolt that some idiot managed to bend a little. It was holding two pieces of theatrical truss together and we were 80' up in a ceiling and didn't realize the truss was trashed so didn't want to just cut it.

It took a 300lb dude working a 6' breaker bar to turn it off. And by "turn it off" I mean that the nut ripped every thread off with it. And I was dumb enough to pick the loving nut up after it came off. Had an awesome Indiana Jones burn for a few days.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler
So I crawled under the addition today and it took about 2 minutes to squeeze through the tiny opening in my basement which is 5' off the ground and partially obstructed by a drain pipe. I hauled 6 8" cement blocks, 2 8'-5x5" cedar beams, two bottle jacks, a level, a light, and a host of wood scraps and shims. I started at one end of the room (only about 18" of space under there) and jacked up the one side and inserted the cedar beam in there with 4 cement blocks under it (one side of the crawlspace was almost 2.5' deep. I jacked it up and supported and shimmed it until I was happy and the level said it was good (measured from the bottom of the 2x6 floor joists which were spaced 24" apart). I then crawled out, went upstairs and saw that there was still a bit of a bow and still a slope to the room. I'm going to put things on hold until my mom can come over and use the 4' level upstairs to tell me how things look, because I obviously can't tell by sight or trust the measurements on the bottom of the joists. Also I don't want to have to crawl in and out every time I want to check if things are looking good.

Once I have this finished I can drywall the ceiling. . . but I have to wait a while to put the vapour barrier on the walls as I am still waiting for Home Depot to ship two windows I ordered. I can only dream what it would be like to hop in the car and be at a Home Depot in under 2 hours. I'm getting pretty good at installing windows and can usually do one by myself in an hour (removing the old, prepping the opening, installing, shimming, screwing, spray foam, and finally caulking the outside. Luckily these are pretty small slider and not the 3x5' ones I did in the fall.

I really can't wait to install the rescued counter tops and cabinets that my school had removed back in September. They were one their way to the dumpster, but I managed to intercept them and stored them in my garage. There are two sections of laminate topped counter both about 10-12' long and 5 cabinets to go under them. Two are just open shelves and three are cabinets with doors. This room is going to be transformed from a drafty dog's bedroom to a warm and pleasant crafting room with lost of storage space and a huge work area for arts, crafts, drafting, and possibly room for a sewing machine. Even though it's a north facing room, there will be plenty of light getting in since it has 4 windows in it (two large ones facing north, and the other two facing east and west respectively).

apatite
Dec 2, 2006

Got yer back, Jack

kastein posted:

I'd say about the first foot to foot and a half or so, so ~20-25% of the first five feet?

It's worse where there were carpenter ant infestations due to the roof failing. Carpenter ants don't really like dry timber apparently, but they certainly enjoyed the damp/rotting wood in those areas. In most cases when I dig into the damaged area, the ant damage only goes as far as the water stains.

Carpenter ants actually don't eat wood (was just reading a random article about this) so they need wet wood which will decay/break down some, whereas the boring beetles actually just chew right through and have a grand old time.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler
Mom came over today and we jacked up 3/4 of the addition with one of three (on top of a 5x5" beam) and one single on two 8" blocks to go. I left that one single until the end because it's going right in front of the entrance and would be a massive pain to try and squeeze around in an already tight fit.

Next step after this is to put in the ceiling. I'm going to price check drop ceiling for an 8x16' room and see if it will be cost prohibitive. It would be nice to have there since the plumbing to the bathroom is right overhead, and having access to that would be nice. If not, it's going to be drywall and I already have a crapload of free strapping that my dad had left over from the metal roofing bundles (a bunch of 12' and 16' 1x4" spruce that they used to bundle the metal roofing together during delivery). Personally, I'm hoping for the drop-ceiling option.

After that I'm going to have to wait for the windows to be delivered (~March 3rd) and then do the vapour barrier, drywalls, then finally install the cabinets and finish this pain in the rear end room.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
All I am saying is that I am drat near fed up with rotten sills. gently caress this noise.

Just redid the foundation top (again, mortar froze the first time, that's what happens when you do masonry work in single digits) and I can drop 8 feet of new sill beam in on Monday night probably.

Only another 8 feet left to go in this weight bearing wall, followed by a 4-5 foot section next to it, a 4 foot section that's under a doorway to the porch, oh, and a 16 foot section that's all hosed and will involve tearing off my entire back porch to get at the drat thing.

:suicide:

I wish to meet the fuckhead who scabbed 2x8s onto the side of the rotten sills when they reframed the (also previously rotten) living room floor in a dark alley. Those new beams looked like the sill from the basement when I did my prepurchase inspection and were solid, so I figured everything was fine, not realizing 6x6 worth of rotten hell was lurking behind them.

Then I get to fix the extensive rot damage to the frame in the two weight bearing wall corners below the valleys in the previously-failed roof.

At that point, the structure will all be solid and I'll be able to go back to "normal" (aka strip it to the loving studs, then clean the Agean stables over lunch) demolition and remodeling work.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler
Overall, what "percent worse" would you say your house is, than what you expected when doing the initial inspection? Like, what percent more time and materials have you put into it?

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
I have no idea on percentage.

I bought the place thinking it had a solid frame, foundation, and utilities.

I got utilities right. Frame I'd say about 80% solid, but the worst parts were in the worst spots to repair.

Foundation, I'd say about 70-80% solid. It needs repointing to be up to my standards, but it will stand for another 50+ years as it is now, no problem.

The sills were really the kick in the balls for me. It's exactly the kind of repair I did NOT want to be doing... I'll do drat near anything else willingly.

kid sinister
Nov 16, 2002

kastein posted:

All I am saying is that I am drat near fed up with rotten sills. gently caress this noise.

Mine aren't rotten per se, but it seems a water leak and a couple freezing winters times 58 years destroyed the plaster and mortar in one corner of my tiled kitchen window sill. Now I have a hole big enough to stick my finger all the way inside. I seriously need to go around and fix the caulk on all my windows outside.

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler
I bought mine knowing it would need complete cosmetic renovations inside (refinishing floors and wood, painting, drywalling ceiling in the bedrooms) but I was also quite aware that the roof had less than ten year in it, and all but 6 windows were coming out. Also figured the siding would be replaced as soon as the mortgage was paid off (6 more years). Never expected that the addition would need the kind of work I've put into it. I'm 90% sure I'm getting laid off at the end of March, so I have to watch my pennies until I get hired on again in Sept.

Times like this I'm pretty tempted to try my luck at the idiot tax (Lottery).

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
I bought one ticket for the powerball Wednesday drawing ($2 for a few days of dreaming about winning 400 million? Sure, gently caress it) but then some rear end in a top hat from California won :argh:

The sad thing is, all I'd do with that is ask for a bit more time off from work, then finish my projects faster. I'm happy with what I have, just not the time restrictions I have.

And you'll never hear about me winning the lottery, either, because I live a stone's throw from CT, where an LLC or trust can claim lottery winnings. I buy my tickets there for that reason alone, usually if it hits 300 or 400 million :v:

Thread related content: what kind of moron thought it would be OK to have the (untreated) sills of my house literally 2" above grade on one wall, formerly 2" above grade and currently 6" below grade on the wall below my back porch?

gently caress, that poo poo is gonna be so god drat rotted out. I can't wait. :suicide:

And the corner I'm working on right now has such shite drainage that during snowmelt and heavy rainstorms there's an inch or two of water sitting on the surface... right up to the foundation.

It pours out of cracks and eroded mortar joints into the basement. When I throw this all back together, I need to dig down a foot or two and put in a lot of gravel and french drains.

kastein fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Feb 23, 2014

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler

kastein posted:

And the corner I'm working on right now has such shite drainage that during snowmelt and heavy rainstorms there's an inch or two of water sitting on the surface... right up to the foundation.

It pours out of cracks and eroded mortar joints into the basement. When I throw this all back together, I need to dig down a foot or two and put in a lot of gravel and french drains.

I think it would be worth it to parge the foundation and then put on some manner of waterproofing membrane, or at the least tar it so you can skip the in-basement pool.

Zopotantor
Feb 24, 2013

...und ist er drin dann lassen wir ihn niemals wieder raus...
From the gif funny pictures thread.


e: original post was moved

Zopotantor fucked around with this message at 10:45 on Mar 4, 2014

Jusupov
May 24, 2007
only text

Zopotantor posted:

From the gif funny pictures thread.


e: original post was moved

The electrical box is a photoshop. Reverse gis for source

kid sinister
Nov 16, 2002

Jusupov posted:

The electrical box is a photoshop. Reverse gis for source

You'd be surprised how common this is.





Papercut
Aug 24, 2005

kid sinister posted:

You'd be surprised how common this is.







It was common enough that they had to specifically add a section to the NEC to say "stop putting panels in bathrooms you idiots" (NEC 240.24(E)).

Remulak
Jun 8, 2001
I can't count to four.
Yams Fan
Ha, I had a unused bathtub with a box over it, and I only used it to wash the dogs.

Then my other bathroom was out of service during renovation so I put in a temp shower....

High Lord Elbow
Jun 21, 2013

"You can sit next to Elvira."
I don't see the problem. If you're in the tub getting electrocuted, the breaker is right there!

Sagebrush
Feb 26, 2012

When I lived in China my apartment shower had an electrical outlet in it. I guess it was for a shaver or something? It was on the far side of the stall from the showerhead, which was a good try at making it safe I guess, but if you angled the showerhead up you could make the water hit the outlet itself so no points.

Also the water heater was one of the on-demand gas (propane bottle, actually) types and it had no temperature setting that I could find, and it was pressure controlled, so it wouldn't actually ignite unless there was a certain amount of water flowing through it. The shower, on the other hand, had one of the handles that simultaneously controls pressure and temperature. Combined, it meant you had two settings:

- anywhere below about 70% of the handle travel, where there wasn't enough water flow through the heater to turn it on, so both pipes were cold and the shower was also cold
- anywhere above 70%, where there was enough water flow to turn the heater on, but now the ratio of hot:cold was too high and the water from the head was scalding hot

Depending on how you were feeling that day, you could either turn it to the lowest setting that would actually turn the heater on, point the showerhead up as far as it could go (hitting the electrical outlet on the far wall), and crouch down in the back (below the electrical outlet) and the water would have cooled enough by the time it hit you that it was tolerable; or you could flip it back and forth around the 70% setting every 30 seconds and try and keep it in the transitional point long enough to get clean. Or just shower in the cold.

:china:

Blistex
Oct 30, 2003

Macho Business
Donkey Wrestler
I had an outlet in my bathroom in China right the gently caress below the showerhead. It had one of those little flip up lids that you sometime see on exterior ground fault outlets. First thing I did was buy some duct tape and sealed that sucker with a ziplock bag I cut open. In Korea there was a light right above the shower head sticking out of the wall. I'm talking the holes drilled for the light fixture and the showerhead were less than 2" apart. Also the washing machine in my second korean apartment would shock you if you didn't wear good insulated shoes/slippers.

Best part about sketchy plumbing/electrical work in China, Korea. . . basically the rest of the world apart from North America is that it's 220V instead of 120, so you'd probably have a 50% greater chance of dying should something go wrong.

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nmfree
Aug 15, 2001

The Greater Goon: Breaking Hearts and Chains since 2006


Yes, that meter socket is energized.

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