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Mercury Ballistic posted:Wife and I are looking at houses right now. We live in the neighborhood we plan on buying in, and the houses are overall really good quality, just a little older, mostly built in the 1950s. Anyway we saw a nice one today, but in the kitchen near the sink I saw this interesting device: There's one of these screwed down to my grandfather's built-in workbench. In a house that was built in 1993. Fortunately it isn't live any more, but why would you bring one of those into a new house? There's a few similar electrical abominations in his box of Christmas light adapters as well.
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May 2, 2014 04:35
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Devor posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFRzmYPDoys Rural Russia seems like the sort of place where a big lifted 4x4 would be a sound investment. I can't imagine navigating infrastructure like that in a sedan.
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May 2, 2014 13:50
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General Specific posted:Rural Russia seems like the sort of place where a big lifted 4x4 would be a sound investment. I can't imagine navigating infrastructure like that in a sedan. I'm surprised that seemingly none of the cars seemed to hydro-lock or anything. I presume they switched off engines when they saw that thing coming.
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May 3, 2014 00:33
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Ferremit posted:Mostly because finding affordable land thats big enough for the house we want is a challenge and the new estate actually had quite a lot going for it- its in the area I grew up in which is a really nice part of the Adelaide Hills, its a fair distance from major roads- so you'll hear the occasional stock truck and theres a few busy weeks during the vintage where trucks full of grapes go flying about, but thats standard anywhere in the hills, its got reclaimed water for the gardens, fibre to the home internet and once we got through the bullshit of settlement and getting our house design rubber stamped for being suitable by the developer (which it passed no worries) they have pretty much nothing to do with us. Until the entire development sinks into the wetland one rainy night and you become a creepy urban legend and your ghost haunts grape shipments for decades to come.
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May 3, 2014 06:36
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:Until the entire development sinks into the wetland one rainy night and you become a creepy urban legend and your ghost haunts grape shipments for decades to come. Hey, after the first two sink into the swamp they will have a nice solid footing to build upon.
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May 3, 2014 11:33
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Baronjutter posted:Floating bridge! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgC6nivvlGE
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May 3, 2014 12:04
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Ferremit posted:fibre to the home internet FTTH is loving amazing. I would literally live next to a train yard if that was my only option to get FTTH.
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May 4, 2014 10:24
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I miss that fibre going right into the back of my modem in Korea. I'd set my bittorent settings to "infinite" and see who was faster, the internet or my HD.
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May 4, 2014 16:25
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some texas redneck posted:FTTH is loving amazing. I would literally live next to a train yard if that was my only option to get FTTH. Yeah, that looks OK I guess.   (Actually the UK isn't that great for internet speeds compared to Europe, particularly Eastern Europe. Still better than loving Germany though.)
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May 4, 2014 17:03
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Oh God please don't start the speedtest dick waving contest, is no thread immune?
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May 4, 2014 17:17
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some texas redneck posted:FTTH is loving amazing. I would literally live next to a train yard if that was my only option to get FTTH. Wolfsbane posted:Yeah, that looks OK I guess.  Dick waving goes here.
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May 4, 2014 17:32
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No one has any right to brag about speeds until they get the Google fiber that's going up in Kansas City right now. (not my picture, I don't have a right to brag either)
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May 4, 2014 19:12
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In a vague attempt to tie this back into construction stories - the estate I live on was built 15 years ago, and has fibre run to the outside of every house. Is that not normal in the states? I assumed all new houses would have access to decent broadband as standard, do your lovely cable companies really screw up that badly?
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May 4, 2014 19:46
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Wolfsbane posted:In a vague attempt to tie this back into construction stories - the estate I live on was built 15 years ago, and has fibre run to the outside of every house. Is that not normal in the states? I assumed all new houses would have access to decent broadband as standard, do your lovely cable companies really screw up that badly? Building a new house and laying fiber are two very different things.
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May 4, 2014 19:49
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There are still large swaths of the country that only have access to DSL at best. Only the competitive markets get actual good broadband and those are shrinking every day. Hell my friend runs an ISP that specializes in delivering broadband to places where the other ISP's won't go because there's not enough profit to be made to offset the cost of deploying. He uses wireless links so its way cheaper (and often faster than DSL would be). Don't you Europeans (or at least Australians) have weird infrastructure laws that says everyone has to have fiber by the next decade or something? All we have are grants that line Comcast's pocket and do little else.
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May 4, 2014 19:54
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The government gave all those companies tons of money long ago to update their infrastructure across the nation. They took the money, bought a couple solid gold boats and gave the finger to the US. Which is why I am on 1.5 Megabits DSL.
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May 4, 2014 21:38
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There are lots of places that don't even have reliable PHONE service, so you can imagine how bad it can be trying to run DSL across those same lines.
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May 4, 2014 22:20
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Also Comcast, since they have a monopoly over a good chunk of the entire country, has been pretty instrumental at keeping broadband back. They claim that they can't give faster speeds or lower prices with their current infrastructure, but whenever a new competitor challenges their markets (like google) suddenly faster speeds are just magically available without any sort of infrastructure upgrades. Sorry I encouraged the broadband derail it's just that Comcast pisses me (and everyone) off
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May 4, 2014 22:24
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Don't forget that they're also incapable of upgrading said infrastructure for ~reasons~. I can't even get DSL at my place because our phone switching systems are from the 70's and start to cut out if it rains. :\
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May 4, 2014 23:26
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Liquid Communism posted:Don't forget that they're also incapable of upgrading said infrastructure for ~reasons~. They'd need some sort of government grant to improve their infrastructure with or something.
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May 5, 2014 00:08
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I interpreted the question as being more of "why in the hell do they keep installing crappy old telephone wiring in brand new developments where no previous infrastructure existed?" I mean isn't the majority of the buildout cost the physical labor, not the transmission media? So why not put fiber down instead of already outdated copper pairs (or soon-to-be-outdated copper coax)? They don't necessarily need to immediately offer services that can utilize the extra capacity of the fiber, but installing infrastructure that was obsolete before it entered the ground just strikes me as stupid.
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May 5, 2014 14:46
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wolrah posted:I mean isn't the majority of the buildout cost the physical labor, not the transmission media? So why not put fiber down instead of already outdated copper pairs (or soon-to-be-outdated copper coax)? Because there's no fiber to the point where they'd have to attach the new development's fiber to, so it would be essentially useless and they'd have to put in coax/UTP anyway to have any connectivity.
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May 5, 2014 15:07
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 Insulation is expensive. Carpet squares, remarkably affordable!
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May 5, 2014 15:17
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Even if you laid in fiber or whatever, are we at the point where it's even standardized enough to know what to put in? Genuinely curious, I bought a house recently and one of our options was new construction and I looked into structured wiring.
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May 5, 2014 15:18
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uwaeve posted:Even if you laid in fiber or whatever, are we at the point where it's even standardized enough to know what to put in? Genuinely curious, I bought a house recently and one of our options was new construction and I looked into structured wiring. Fiber in the ground and fiber in your home are going to be two different things. The biggest difference being that fiber in the ground or on poles is going to be single mode and a huge freaking bundle of it with take offs every so far to avoid the need for switch gear on poles. Fiber in your home would probably be unnecessary, but if you can find anything to use it with said thing would likely be expecting multi mode. I'm just not sure what anyone will be running in their home in the foreseeable future that would need more than 10 GB of bandwidth, which is easily achievable on common Cat 6 over the distances encountered in a typical home.
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May 5, 2014 15:53
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uwaeve posted:Even if you laid in fiber or whatever, are we at the point where it's even standardized enough to know what to put in? Genuinely curious, I bought a house recently and one of our options was new construction and I looked into structured wiring. This is why I put 4 11/16" boxes with dual gang mud rings on every wall of every room with a 1" EMT run to either the attic or the basement while I have the walls down. Plus a pair of 2" PVC conduit runs from the basement to the attic. Unless I want a data port in a very specific location I will never have to open the walls again.
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May 5, 2014 15:59
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Thanks for the posts. As I recall I got frustrated and my conclusion was "insert conduit," then we wound up buying a not-new house anyhow so it became moot. Does laying conduit have fire considerations? I know when we had our radon system put in they required fire collars, but that was between the garage and house, and a much larger PVC pipe. Since I am pretty behind the times is there HD video over cat6 equipment, or is HDMI with repeaters for long runs still the standard? I don't know, maybe everyone just buys lots of receivers/DVRs/game consoles now for their houses.
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May 5, 2014 16:09
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uwaeve posted:Thanks for the posts. As I recall I got frustrated and my conclusion was "insert conduit," then we wound up buying a not-new house anyhow so it became moot. Does laying conduit have fire considerations? I know when we had our radon system put in they required fire collars, but that was between the garage and house, and a much larger PVC pipe. Since I am pretty behind the times is there HD video over cat6 equipment, or is HDMI with repeaters for long runs still the standard? I don't know, maybe everyone just buys lots of receivers/DVRs/game consoles now for their houses. If you want to have a long run of HDMI, get one of these and run ethernet: http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=104&cp_id=10425&cs_id=1042501&p_id=8009&seq=1&format=2 We do it at work and they are awesome.
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May 5, 2014 16:17
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uwaeve posted:Does laying conduit have fire considerations? Depending on from where to where it can. But simple firestopping can take care of that, whether it expanding foam or as simple as a chunk of rock wool jammed into whatever is left of each opening. uwaeve posted:I don't know, maybe everyone just buys lots of receivers/DVRs/game consoles now for their houses. For the most part, this is cheaper than the alternative. Because you're not just extending HDMI, but dealing with IR extenders too when you're trying to centralize that stuff. It's a "ohhh cool" kinda thing to do, but rarely works out in your favor in regards to costs.
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May 5, 2014 16:37
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Cross-posted from AI's off topic thread: So when my dad passed away last year my brother and I inherited his house. It had been last renovated in the 70's or early 80's, by the previous owners... I don't have before pictures of the bathroom, it was bad--tiles falling off the walls, and tons of black mold bad. Just look at these pictures of the wiring we pulled out of the bathroom when we gutted it (the are phone pics, sorry about the quality--click for HUGE):      Yes the GFCI outlet shorted itself in the box:   This is as far out as we could pull the switch there is supposed to be a bit more wire in box):  Look at how it is secured, right next to the water pipes for the upstairs half bath:   Speaking of the bathroom upstairs, I need to take a pic of how they got the outlet in the bathroom to fit. They just cut the back half of the box off. And Bonus of the electrical wiring running to the entire upstairs through the hall closet:  And another bonus of of the front room where the wiring was smoldering in the walls for a while, my dad left it this way for about 10 years:  Yes they cut the boxes, have live unsecured wiring everywhere, and use a lot of electrical tape. Yes that switch box that was cut, was secured to the cast iron drainage pipe by a piece of copper wire. My brother wrote that on the wall when he was removing that horseshit & running the new wire. I still have more pictures of the moldy insulation and patched together subfloor on the floor above.
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May 6, 2014 16:39
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Motronic is probably going to need a drink and a sit-down after that post. I know the smoldering wiring pic certainly raised my heart rate for a moment, good lord.
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May 6, 2014 19:50
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Kilersquirrel posted:Motronic is probably going to need a drink and a sit-down after that post. I wish that was even in the same ballpark of the worst things I've seen. SO many old (like 1700s) houses around here are just plain terrifying between gas piping being put wherever they feel like it, 1920s electrical that has been added onto over the years and leaking piping to wellxtrol tanks next to fuse boxes. All with a balloon construction kicker.
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May 6, 2014 20:03
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Motronic posted:All with a balloon construction kicker. I thought the only problem with balloon construction was that it required you to have lots of really long timbers which are too expensive to be practical in this day and age. Is there something actually structurally problematic with this design approach?
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May 6, 2014 20:09
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I thought the only problem with balloon construction was that it required you to have lots of really long timbers which are too expensive to be practical in this day and age. Is there something actually structurally problematic with this design approach? There is no fire stopping between floors. The typical balloon construction basement fire I pull up to is also an attic fire, with all the floors in between seemingly fine for the time being. Then we have to pull down most of the walls of the in-between floors to mop up hot spots. And those walls are nearly always horse hair plaster with newspaper or maybe rockwool for insulation (if there was any insulation at all). At least we have thermal imaging cameras now so we don't have to guess and/or rip down EVERYTHING to be sure we got it all.
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May 6, 2014 20:27
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Yup! They're great that way. I'm fully firestopping mine as I go. gently caress losing a whole house over a minor fire that could have been contained by 50 bucks in fireblocking. Oh, and that electrical barely elicited a chuckle. poo poo I've found in my house: knob and tube everywhere. Sometimes spliced, sometimes bodged, mostly hosed. None of the wires in the porch ceiling had any insulation left due to bushy tailed tree rats. Romex spliced onto knob and tube, grounds cut off, spliced midair, no regard for hot/neutral. Unrated speaker wire used as line cord. Used in walls, too. Extension cords permanently built into walls, through walls, etc. Coffee cans used as electrical boxes, with holes haphazardly stabbed through the sides, chafing the Romex. Charred spots on the chafed romex, too!  Corroded terminals. Water damaged breakers. Massively corroded neutral lug in the breaker box from water intrusion and improper torque spec on the lug. Cable not secured properly, cable secured too well (pinched insulation), no GFCIs, no AFCIs. A stack of paper plates painted black used as an electrical box cover. Knob and tube spliced to romex (inside the wall, no box, no wire nuts, just e-tape and hopes/dreams holding it together) spliced to unrated speaker wire spliced to romex used to power a ceiling light. The list goes on, that's just the poo poo I could remember off the top of my head. All in one house. And that's just the electrical. The plumbing and natural gas lines were about the same, if not worse! The roof, chimney, and framing have similar issues in a few places too... this is why I'm 100% gutting the house.
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May 6, 2014 20:40
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Motronic posted:There is no fire stopping between floors. The typical balloon construction basement fire I pull up to is also an attic fire, with all the floors in between seemingly fine for the time being. Ahh, okay. I mean, that sounds like an eminently fixable problem, just one that historically nobody bothered to actually fix, so the vast majority of balloon-construction houses are deathtraps. Hooray!
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May 6, 2014 20:44
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Also just to make things more safe they'd often do a primitive insulation attempt out of old newspapers or straw or other super fire-safe materials. Doing some reno's we pulled out bales and bales of awesome old turn of the century newspaper, blankets, basically like someone was told "go find anything soft and flammable!" to stuff in the walls. Fixing the problem generally means totally gutting the house down to the frame so that's pretty drat expensive so unless it's historic designated it's usually a tear-down. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 20:50 on May 6, 2014 |
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May 6, 2014 20:46
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Talking of fire, I had some shingle offcuts left over from a project and threw them in the burn pile. drat, but they burn well. Surprisingly so, considering they'd presumably be exposed to a lot of heat in the case of a house fire. It seems strange to me that something so happy to burn would have become the standard roofing method. Is it the case that by the time the roof catches you might as well write off the house, so it doesn't matter if it goes up like the space shuttle?
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May 6, 2014 20:53
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It's mostly because asphalt is cheap, works great as a roof, and is cheap. Also, you're breaking all kinds of laws by burning that poo poo. Notice how it looks like an oil rig on fire? Yeah, that's a lot of pollution.
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May 6, 2014 20:55
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Oh God, in the 1970s my Dad used to burn EVERYTHING from our summer cottage up in the middle of nowhere VT. Like, the entire old roll-roof when it was replaced. Imagine two piles, 10' high of roll roofing, tar and some trees he cut down "for fuel" ON FIRE in the front yard. There was no road to the place, it was walk in or boat in so I can understand why, but jeez. The Fire Dept came by (across the lake where the road was) and he waved to them from across the lake, they waved back and drove home. The 70s were a different time.
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