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It really looks like it has one of the clear plastic cover panels installed, too, but I might be wrong.
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Mar 5, 2014 01:42
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I'm not sure I feel comfortable living in a world where people have to be told not to put breaker boxes in showers.
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Mar 5, 2014 23:09
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Think of how dumb the average person can be. Then understand that three and a half billion people are dumber than that.
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Mar 6, 2014 00:06
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Found another one!
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Mar 6, 2014 00:26
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He should be properly grounded, needs a few inches of water in the tub.
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Mar 6, 2014 00:27
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kid sinister posted:Found another one! A reverse GIS on this shows that This Old House's Home Inspection Nightmares has finally updated. Lots of great stuff there, like:  and  "This shower stall permanently covers a sump pump. They kept the electrical receptacle where it was and built the shower around it! That takes the cake, but the icing is that the receptacle is incorrectly wired, with hot and neutral reversed, and with no GFCI protection."
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Mar 6, 2014 00:59
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There isn't a big enough   quote:This is a car battery jumper cable attached to the main electric utility service line, wired to the electric panel for a house with no power. Why pay for electric service when you can do this?
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Mar 6, 2014 07:54
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Good thing his splice came after the transformer, I guess?
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Mar 6, 2014 07:55
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Gonna preface this with the fact that I am fairly ignorant of construction jargon, so bear with me. This one is fairly minor but it made my job suck more than it should have. I used to work at a car wash, and for some god awful reason the rear third of one of the walls was covered in this plastic textured paneling, in contrast to the smooth Plexiglas walls the made up the rest of that wall and a third of the other. (The other side opened up to the brick exterior wall). Now this doesn't sound like much of a problem until you realize that these walls are getting blasted with water all day every day, and are a breeding ground for mildew. So I had to scrub the everloving poo poo out of these textured portions with acid (seriously, it took as long to scrub this ten foot section of wall as it did to wipe down 40 feet of the other kind). And the reason why the whole wall isn't textured? The texture was too expensive to maintain and didn't really have a benefit. 
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Mar 6, 2014 10:31
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My house got flooded back in September, so I'm redoing the basement. I've found some stuff that is pretty 'off', but the main things that stick with me are that a previous owner thought that all the holes in corner bead needed a nail in them, the main gas pipe is unsupported for about 20', and that someone thought running coax through the foundation was a good idea.
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Mar 6, 2014 20:08
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I have learned, after 17 years in my current home, the absolute rule for purchasing a new-construction house. Never, under any circumstances, buy into the final phase of the neighborhood when the builder has already admitted that they are butting up against the deadline on their contract. Starting from the earliest problem, we had racist tenants in many of the homes in the adjoining phase. What this meant was that police were out at the sites every day because some asshat was reporting the largely Mexican building crew as if they were undocumented day laborers. All citizens, all licensed and bonded, all employees of the company, but after something like a week of being harassed by the equally-racist city cops, the GC/foreman/whatever you call him had to ask the company to send out white guys. The Mexican dudes were all awesome, got their poo poo done, master craftsmen, and were more than happy to explain any aspect of the construction to my mother when she'd ask. The white guys were primarily journeymen from what we could tell (at least, that's what we were hearing from the guy in charge of the site), didn't like answering questions (like why the banister for one staircase was nailed into drywall in such a way that it separates if you put any load on it going down along the rail), did a lot of slipshod work (see the aforementioned banister, among other things), and were constantly taking breaks. They tried to hide it, but the number of cans in their tip kind of gave away the fact that most of their breaks were beer breaks, and they drank a lot on the job. Next up in building order, but something we didn't find out about until years later, the siding. Anyone here remember the series of Georgia Pacific lawsuits in the late 90s? The one that involved a lot of people getting their siding replaced for free because of substandard materials? These guys used that siding. Not only while the suit was going on, but even after the settlement. There's literally no way they didn't know that they were using material that should have been scrapped, because it was huge news in the area at the time. The entire HVAC system is insane. They installed a 10 SEER A/C unit for what amounts to a three-story house, not long before the regs changed to require at least a 13 SEER be installed - and, again, this was a change that they knew was coming, at least according to the guy that replaced our A/C when the old one died. The furnace is in the attic, which of course provides the only blower fan for the entire house. The thermostat only doesn't receive full direct sunlight because we have blinds covering the French door that it faces, and it's directly over the sole intake for the system. The net effect of all of this and then some is that there is a temperature gradient of at least 5 to 10 degrees between the upper floor, where the bedrooms are, and the main floor with the kitchen and living room. I say "at least" because that's usually in the summer, when the living room is 5 to 10 degrees cooler than the bedrooms. In winter, it can be 10 to 20 degrees - we have to have the thermostat set in the low 60s for it not to get above 80 on the upper floor. There is a second temperature shelf between the main floor and the foyer/garage level - once you get down the first step of the staircase, you can feel the difference in temperature as a line across your legs. In the winter, it's colder in the foyer than outside; in summer, it's warmer. Speaking of staircases, I know it's a small townhouse and there's not a lot of room for stairs and such, but perhaps they could have designed the houses so that the treads on the stairs were long enough for an adult human foot to fit on them? I don't have particularly large feet (10 1/2 US sizing), and I literally cannot get my entire foot on the steps. It's only worse if I'm wearing shoes. Then there's the back deck, where they used cold-galvanized nails in pressure-treated wood. I'm fairly certain most of those nails are now 90% rust. The deck itself is fairly solid, but the stairs are a deathtrap that wobble under any load greater than 100 pounds, and the railing on the stairs is more or less falling off. There are "vents" that we're still not sure if they go anywhere in the house - we know for a fact that the kitchen vent hood isn't actually connected to any kind of duct. The wiring for all three ceiling fan boxes (there were supposed to be four, but they conveniently "forgot" that the third bedroom was supposed to have one) is covered in gobs of plaster. The wiring in most of the house is schizophrenic - in the third bedroom (the one that didn't get a fan box), there are I think four duplex outlets, and maybe two actual plugs aren't on a switch. The second bedroom has three switches that should nominally be for fan, overhead light, and outlets, but instead looks to be fan, overhead light/some outlets, rest of the outlets. Of course, that center switch controls the outlets where you'd put just about anything that you wouldn't want controlled by a switch (TV, alarm clock, computer), same as with the third bedroom. The master bedroom at least looks to be wired correctly. EDIT: Forgot about the range. My mother wanted an electric range, and told the builders she was having an electric range put in. One guess as to whether gas or electricity was run to that spot. Then there's the cable/phone installation. While the house was being built, we told them we wanted a cable jack in each of the bedrooms, and one in the living room. There was to be no phone jack in the living room, and the house was to be wired for two phone lines. What did they do? Phone jack in the living room, two cable jacks in the second bedroom, and the second line was run by running the phone line up through the laundry room (which is in the third floor hall) - actually in the laundry room, not in the wall - then up into the attic, across to the closet in the third bedroom (which was my computer/TV room at the time), down through the ceiling in the closet, around tucked between the carpet and baseboard, and terminated in an old-school clamped phone jack (I don't know what they're called - the type that had the little spring-loaded round "clamp" that held the line from the jack to the phone in place). They "fixed" the twin cable jacks by just drilling a hole through the opposing drywall and pushing the cable through that hole, then screwing a faceplate into the drywall with no anchors. The cable jack in the living room was run by running cable along the wall of the unfinished back half of the garage (which was fine), then up through the wall to a professionally-installed who am I kidding they just ran it outside through the siding, then back in at the living room level. Almost forgot - the third-floor hallway window has been replaced twice, and never actually installed correctly. I think the only reason it no longer leaks is that the wood has finally swollen shut. The fireplace has a really bad draft at the floor (as in, there is air coming into the house at the fireplace with no way to stop it, even when the fireplace is not in operation). And to top it all off, only one of the three bedroom doors shuts correctly. The master bedroom's door doesn't shut completely (that's an easy fix, just need to plane the top of the door down level with the jamb - I just never got around to getting the cheap tools to do it), and the second bedroom's latch is misaligned. This isn't even getting into the work they didn't do. The backyard was supposed to be graded and sodded. Instead, we got a dirt patch covered in pieces of drywall, lumber with nails in it, and sheet metal. The carpet was supposed to be the "premium" upgrade, and they only put in the regular crap. At least we got that replaced, but when they replaced the carpet, they decided that the best way to secure it was with roofing nails - the kind with the plastic washers. Did I mention that almost everyone on our part of the neighborhood is underwater on their mortgages, because the city assessed all the houses in the neighborhood based on the sale price of some of the first-phase houses? The ones that are built on different plans than the entire rest of the neighborhood, and are larger and better built? We would have only been ~$20K underwater had my mother not refinanced at some point, and her lender insisted that she had to refinance at the assessed value of the home. So now we're underwater about $70K. Which is how much the house is actually worth. At least we don't live in the house at the dead top of the hill our neighborhood is built on. That one had a stone facade. One day, one of the largest stones, the one right at the roof line, just decided it didn't want to live anymore, and didn't care that it was going to flatten the tenant's car during its suicide attempt. I still can't wait to get out of this house, if only because of those goddamn stairs. My mother has two metal knees, and I have a degenerating back injury, so neither of us can really handle going up and down the stairs multiple times a day. If my fiancee and her able-bodied son hadn't moved in with us, I have no idea how we would even be alive right now. There's probably no way we could get a stair lift installed, since the staircases are so narrow and have so little clearance at the landings. EDIT: In all that, I forgot my own "gently caress Comcast" story. A couple years ago, we bought our very first HDTV and decided we wanted HD cable for it. Well, we were getting all kinds of problems with channels not ever actually displaying - sometimes we'd get sound, sometimes not, but no video on certain channels at all. When the guy came out to install an amplifier for us, we told him that we had also been losing Internet connection multiple times a day, with a brand-new modem that was properly provisioned, and he decided to check the signal to the house. Turns out that the wiring in the house (even that one that was run outside) is fine and properly relaying the underpowered signal to the house. When we called Comcast to ask when they were going to do something about it, they lied to us and said that the tech said it was the wiring in the house. We had a copy of his notes that said very clearly that the signal to the house was low, and read his words off verbatim. Comcast continued to claim that the signal was fine and that it was a problem inside our house. We've already switched to Clear for internet (because there are no other options for our neighborhood) and as soon as we get the siding repaired, we're switching to Dish for TV. Kugyou no Tenshi fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Mar 6, 2014 |
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Mar 6, 2014 21:46
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Some of that should have been caught by you or your family during inspections. Didn't you guys have multiple inspections with the builder? I've used Ryland Homes and a custom builder in the past and both of them required homeowner inspections and certain phases of construction along with allowing me to come by the site whenever I wanted to look over things.
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Mar 6, 2014 23:24
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ShadowStalker posted:Some of that should have been caught by you or your family during inspections. Didn't you guys have multiple inspections with the builder? I've used Ryland Homes and a custom builder in the past and both of them required homeowner inspections and certain phases of construction along with allowing me to come by the site whenever I wanted to look over things. Just because the homeowner could/should have been more careful doesn't excuse that the builder did a lovely job.
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Mar 6, 2014 23:30
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Also, journeymen make up about 99% of the workforce. There are incredibly few "master" craftsmen that actually perform work. But that's neither here nor there. What state was this in?
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Mar 6, 2014 23:40
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ShadowStalker posted:Some of that should have been caught by you or your family during inspections. Didn't you guys have multiple inspections with the builder? I've used Ryland Homes and a custom builder in the past and both of them required homeowner inspections and certain phases of construction along with allowing me to come by the site whenever I wanted to look over things. No. We were trying to move out of our old house as quickly as possible because my parents were getting divorced, and the builder didn't really want us there. We didn't commission this house - it's a townhouse in a planned neighborhood - so we didn't get to pick the builder. Our mortgage broker (who, we later found out, was owned by the same company as the builder) tried to get us to close on the house before it was finished. So no, we didn't get any real conversation with the builders themselves between picking out the floor plan and "house is finished". We also found out too late that they didn't even use the floor plan we picked out. The building company has since dissolved and reformed under multiple new names. (Did you miss the parts where I mentioned it's a townhouse, in the last phase of a neighborhood?) Seriously, can I point out just how much of a douche move it is to pull the "well, you should have noticed that" before even asking the question as to whether or not we were even allowed on the lot most of the time? After framing, we were either too busy to be out there regularly, or we were being given every reason as to why it would be A Bad Idea to come out. Again, planned neighborhood. We didn't buy a lot and have a house built - we picked out a floor plan for a house that was being built come hell or high water. EDIT: Also, "me or my family" was me, who was 16 at the time, and my then 50-year-old mother, who was treated like an idiot by everyone but the original framing crew. It's not like we knew that half this poo poo was a problem until years later, and I only learned about some of the poo poo within the past few years (the siding issue only came to light in 2008). Loopyface posted:Also, journeymen make up about 99% of the workforce. There are incredibly few "master" craftsmen that actually perform work. But that's neither here nor there. Kugyou no Tenshi fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Mar 6, 2014 |
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Mar 6, 2014 23:51
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Just because it's a townhouse in the last phase of a neighborhood doesn't automatically mean that there shouldn't be inspections by the homeowner. And No, it's not a douche move to say some of those things (like outlet placement and correct number of phone lines) should have been noticed. The siding and other stuff you wouldn't have a clue about. Sure the builder screwed your mom over, but you have to do your homework whenever your purchasing a home/condo/townhouse/whatever. It's generally the largest purchase anybody will ever make in their life. I wouldn't purchase a car without doing research and sure as hell wouldn't spend house money without doing due diligence. The building company being dissolved and reforming is textbook shady house builders. It happens across the nation. Form company, build houses for a few years using cheapest labor and materials, and dissolve before any major issue crop up. Then just reform as a new company and start over without having to pay any warranty claims. ShadowStalker fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Mar 7, 2014 |
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Mar 7, 2014 00:16
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some amazing HVAC work at this complex I don't know what building inspector signs off on that.
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Mar 7, 2014 02:18
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Wow, it totally blends in so well. How did you even notice it?
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Mar 7, 2014 03:11
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Kugyou no Tenshi posted:it's a townhouse in a planned neighborhood - so we didn't get to pick the builder... So no, we didn't get any real conversation with the builders themselves between picking out the floor plan and "house is finished". We also found out too late that they didn't even use the floor plan we picked out....we picked out a floor plan for a house that was being built come hell or high water. Do you mean like an option version of a specific floor plan, like instead of a master bedroom with a sitting area it has french doors into a den? Or a fully different floor plan that might have the kitchen on the OTHER side of the dining room and more bedrooms or an office down by the garage? If you mean the full floor plan, that was planned out before grading even began in the community. The civil engineers lay out the streets, drainage, electrical utilities, the way the yards are shaped, everything based on the footprint of the home plans. They built whatever was on the list and if it wasn't the one you guys wanted, you ended up buying the wrong site, not the builders built the wrong house.
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Mar 7, 2014 07:42
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Qwijib0 posted:some amazing HVAC work at this complex I've never seen that style RTU used for residential - but it's gotta be quieter than the typical apartment stuff I've had. I'm used to the "cram the furnace and air handler above the ceiling of the bathroom or bedroom, so you get to hear every squeak and rattle from the air handler - and stick a tiny 1/2 ton unit outside the bedroom window".That had to cost a fortune compared to what I'm used to seeing, but I bet it's also a bit quieter.
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Mar 7, 2014 10:16
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Is there anything actually wrong with this door? http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/photos/0,,20783377_30097062,00.html
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Mar 7, 2014 22:27
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Fire Storm posted:Is there anything actually wrong with this door? Nope, and it would be great for playing boatie time.
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Mar 7, 2014 22:33
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I had a friend who converted a normal door to the basement into a door like that. It wasn't actually metal, was all just foam, but he painted and detailed it super well and even hooked up a little wheel in the middle of the door that was hooked up to the standard door hardware, was a cool touch.
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Mar 7, 2014 22:58
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Sagebrush posted:Good thing his splice came after the transformer, I guess? Did someone say splice? Really bad 15kV splice - should handle way more than 15kV, begins to arc over at less than 800 volts. Bad construction isn't limited to low voltage.
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Mar 8, 2014 02:26
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So I have everything ready to get that bloody I hate looking at that room and seeing the exposed 2x4's and insulation taunting me every day! Leave me alone spirits!
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Mar 9, 2014 04:07
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So today I found out that the last time the guy next door had his driveway touched up, they paved over my lateral cleanout.
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Mar 9, 2014 21:19
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The Proc posted:So today I found out that the last time the guy next door had his driveway touched up, they paved over my lateral cleanout. Get a pickaxe and start swinging.
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Mar 11, 2014 19:28
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Doublecheck the property lines first. 
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Mar 12, 2014 05:53
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ColHannibal posted:Get a pickaxe and start swinging. Splizwarf posted:Doublecheck the property lines first. Or just, you know, talk to your neighbor like a big boy and say, "Hey man, I know it sucks, but your boys paved over my lateral cleanout and we need to figure something out here."
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Mar 12, 2014 15:04
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Bought a new house this month. It's a foreclosure, so it needs some TLC, and was clearly owned by a budding amateur electrician in the recent past. Many, many WTFs, but my favorite so far has been the great mystery of the kitchen lights. When I was checking out the house I noticed both didn't work, but I assumed it was just another blown bulb (fully half of the lights either had bad bulbs or just plain no bulbs). So I changed them all, but no dice. They're those tit-shaped fittings with a circular base that screws to the ceiling and holds an upside-down glass dome. So I unscrew the first one and start pulling out the wires. The white one comes out in my hands. Instead of using the wire nuts that EVERY GODDAMN TITFIXTURE I'VE EVER INSTALLED comes with, the PO had used one of these to join the two wires:  Unsurprisingly, it had fallen off at some point. I was expecting the second light to spring to life once the first was fixed, but no, it remained resolutely dark despite having new bulbs. So I unscrewed that one from the ceiling...at which point it just fell off. There was a fixture (which even contained bulbs before I moved in), a hole in the ceiling, but no evidence of any other wires other than those that came attached to the fixture, nor any evidence that there ever had been any. It was just a hole in the ceiling, covered by an unconnected light fixture. Sigh. Next challenge: why does energizing the 220v run to heat pump #2 cause the breaker to kick off immediately, regardless of whether or not the heat pump is actually connected to the run? Presumably a dead short somewhere, but seeing as the wire is in the wall rather than in the PERFECTLY GOOD CRAWLSPACE I think I'm just going to run another cable and leave it at that.
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Mar 12, 2014 16:04
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Bad Munki posted:
Preferably while holding the pickaxe 
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Mar 12, 2014 16:10
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saint gerald posted:Presumably a dead short somewhere, but seeing as the wire is in the wall rather than in the PERFECTLY GOOD CRAWLSPACE I think I'm just going to run another cable and leave it at that. Before you tear through the walls, see if they tried to bypass the fuses in the disconnect box (that should exist, but who knows based on tit-lamp-used-as-ceiling-hole-patch) next to the heat pump, and shorted it. That's a hallmark of "creative" electrical.
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Mar 12, 2014 16:18
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Qwijib0 posted:Before you tear through the walls, see if they tried to bypass the fuses in the disconnect box (that should exist, but who knows based on tit-lamp-used-as-ceiling-hole-patch) next to the heat pump, and shorted it. That's a hallmark of "creative" electrical. It's an unfused disconnect.
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Mar 12, 2014 16:22
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The Proc posted:So today I found out that the last time the guy next door had his driveway touched up, they paved over my lateral cleanout. Just have him pay for it to be located, then have it chipped out. Might cost 300-400, due to minimums. The locator will send a traceable push camera down a pulled toilet till he sees the clean out. Then marks the spot. It's fairly common work for the private locators. Some plumbers also have the equipment.
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Mar 12, 2014 16:52
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My office's air conditioner just broke, so I figured I'd take a picture of the amazing install job they did when they put it in a year or so ago: The hole goes all the way outside, but the cable just goes off into the wall somewhere  
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Mar 12, 2014 18:14
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Bad Munki posted:Or just, you know, talk to your neighbor like a big boy and say, "Hey man, I know it sucks, but your boys paved over my lateral cleanout and we need to figure something out here." I agree with you but that kind of approach is outside the scope of this thread.
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Mar 12, 2014 18:25
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In that case, be sure to attack the cement with your pick around 3AM or when said neighbor is known to be out of town. Do not, under any circumstances, determine the location of the cleanout beforehand.
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Mar 12, 2014 18:35
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Just send dynamite down with the camera, two birds with one stone. 
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Mar 12, 2014 18:45
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Splizwarf posted:Just send dynamite down with the camera, two turds with one stone. Those stupid pinch-on splice things (scotchloks, iirc) are the absolute worst thing ever. If I see them I know someone with a penchant for as-seen-on-tv low quality gizmos has preceded me and that I will have to fix everything they touched and more.
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Mar 12, 2014 21:23
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| # ? May 14, 2024 20:05 |
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gently caress those things forever. The guy who did my job before me used a bunch of those in 12 volt applications and they work like poo poo. I can't even imagine using them for 110.
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Mar 12, 2014 21:42
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