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 Saw that on imgur, with the caption that it was a plastic decorative wall that had melted in the AZ heat
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Jun 12, 2014 05:14
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| # ? May 13, 2024 22:38 |
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Yeah, that looks more like a car fire. See singeing on both sides of the path with a void in between. (sorry fire investigator sense kicking in)
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Jun 12, 2014 05:19
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Here's the bathroom I had to look at. Must be a goon nest.        Got that hoarder swag.
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Jun 12, 2014 07:25
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Tampon wrappers in the pile of garbage. It might breed. 
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Jun 12, 2014 10:08
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 Do people just never clean their toilet? And how hard is it to just take the empty loo roll with you when you leave the bathroom and toss it in the garbage?
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Jun 12, 2014 10:28
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If it a college dorm, loving impossible. How college kids don't die from a wide variety of diseases due to unsanitary living conditions, I have no idea.
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Jun 12, 2014 12:39
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Uhhh I feel a need to totally scrub my pretty clean bathroom now.
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Jun 12, 2014 13:29
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Indolent Bastard posted:If it a college dorm, loving impossible. How college kids don't die from a wide variety of diseases due to unsanitary living conditions, I have no idea. No, it's part of a 5 apartment building which is now my responsibility to maintain. Let me give you the stats on that one - 300sq. ft - 2 dogs, 2 cats, 2 people - $570 a month - built in the 20's I pretty much work for a slumlord. And there are more pictures that I'll put up later detailing this monstrosity.
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Jun 12, 2014 17:07
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That looks like a p standard "haven't cleaned in 2 years because we're lazy" bathroom if you're in a hard water area (a chum had one like that, I learned to hold it when I visited). Simple Green and a pumice scrubber, then flea bomb all your clothes afterwards.
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Jun 12, 2014 18:20
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Update on my house. My new landlord is notoriously cheap. While helping the cable guy setup my internet, I got a chance to look at the wiring for my house. Most of it appears to be some old style of romex, but one of the wires seemed odd. Upon closer inspection I realized it was a chopped off 2 conductor extension cord. Run to a grounded outlet in my kitchen. Another project. My air conditioner is an oversized wall unit that covers the whole house (it's a really small house). It stopped working the other day while I was working in another room. I walk into my living room to discover it was full of a haze of magical electrical smoke. I pulled the plug without thinking, and haven't touched it since.  Notice the shopping bag insulation surrounding the unit, and if you look close enough, you'll see charring where the cord was hanging under the plug. At least it's still pretty cool outside right now.
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Jun 12, 2014 18:38
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4lnk_gCvWU You can skip to about 1:40 for the moneyshot. Make sure your shoelaces are tied before you start walking around that thing 
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Jun 16, 2014 19:04
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Seems like if you replaced the trigger system with a foot pedal or something, and put a guard over the parts of the blade that you don't need, and did a better job of securing the saw to the jig (and the jig to something heavy), then it'd actually be reasonably safe. As it is, though, yeah, better not trip!
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Jun 16, 2014 20:14
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Last one's the best. "Let me just reach over this saw with my arm to toss this in the basket!"
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Jun 16, 2014 20:19
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Motronic posted:Yeah, that looks more like a car fire. Yep. Every day I drive by probably a dozen spots on the highway where there's been a car fire. It's unmistakable once you know what you're looking at. Clear spot in the middle, car shaped outline of charred/pitted asphalt (after a few months the fire damaged asphalt disintegrates leaving sorta pitted jagged areas around the outside of the ex vehicle) and if it really burned for a while before being put out, 4 charred spots from the tires and maybe an extra nasty spot front and rear from the bumpers, fuel tank, engine compartment, etc. A plastic decorative wall like that with a roughly 1.5-2x vehicle length melty section right next to a suspicious car fire mark on the ground? No question. kastein fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Jun 16, 2014 |
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Jun 16, 2014 22:37
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slap me silly posted:Last one's the best. "Let me just reach over this saw with my arm to toss this in the basket!" I don't understand German at all, so I thought that the wood went underneath and that throttle cable was a guard to keep you from hitting the blade from the top. After seeing it in action, it still seems like a pretty good idea overall.
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Jun 17, 2014 02:21
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SkunkDuster posted:I don't understand German at all, so I thought that the wood went underneath and that throttle cable was a guard to keep you from hitting the blade from the top. After seeing it in action, it still seems like a pretty good idea overall. If you put in a lot more safety features than this guy did and securely anchored it to something so it wouldn't fall off and go skittering away with its throttle held down then sure.
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Jun 17, 2014 02:30
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I need to take a picture of this, but the house next to my buddies decided to splice into the power line behind their house to not have to pay the power company. You can see the properly raised lines that run to the conduit to the meter...and then there's another set of lines that just dangle on the ground and run up to a junction box that sorta hangs out of one window and into the house. The worst thing is, it appears that it was done by a proper electrician (the splices are really well done), but it looks like someone just didn't give a gently caress. Like they went "gently caress it, I'm gonna tap the line for free power, but I'm going to do it as half assedly as possible" ...part of me wants to report it to the power company, especially since the lines just run straight through their backyard, and part of me is so impressed by the audacity that I don't want to.
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Jun 17, 2014 14:20
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AA is for Quitters posted:I need to take a picture of this, but the house next to my buddies decided to splice into the power line behind their house to not have to pay the power company. You can see the properly raised lines that run to the conduit to the meter...and then there's another set of lines that just dangle on the ground and run up to a junction box that sorta hangs out of one window and into the house. The worst thing is, it appears that it was done by a proper electrician (the splices are really well done), but it looks like someone just didn't give a gently caress. Like they went "gently caress it, I'm gonna tap the line for free power, but I'm going to do it as half assedly as possible" I would straight up report that to police. gently caress that noise.
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Jun 17, 2014 14:23
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couldcareless posted:I would straight up report that to police. gently caress that noise. Definitely the power company. They'll bring the pain a lot harder than the police will.
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Jun 17, 2014 15:44
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AA is for Quitters posted:...part of me wants to report it to the power company You'll be glad you did when the fire doesn't start. drat that's amazing though
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Jun 17, 2014 15:51
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You need to report it just so you can give us a trip report.
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Jun 17, 2014 15:54
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Don't grow-ops tend to steal power so they don't have electric bills in the thousands, which is a huge red flag for the cops?
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Jun 17, 2014 15:58
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AA is for Quitters posted:I need to take a picture of this, but the house next to my buddies decided to splice into the power line behind their house to not have to pay the power company. You can see the properly raised lines that run to the conduit to the meter...and then there's another set of lines that just dangle on the ground and run up to a junction box that sorta hangs out of one window and into the house. The worst thing is, it appears that it was done by a proper electrician (the splices are really well done), but it looks like someone just didn't give a gently caress. Like they went "gently caress it, I'm gonna tap the line for free power, but I'm going to do it as half assedly as possible" Best report that poo poo before the inevitable fire that may eat your buddy's place too.
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Jun 17, 2014 16:47
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Wiring up grow ops is a huge side job for a lot of electricians around here. Most I've talked to have either done it or been asked to do it. Generally it's always just "hey can you wire up this container buried in the woods" or something like that. One guy told me of a dude who buried an old school bus near some power lines in the middle of nowhere. Paid a dude to dig the hole and another dude to wire it up, they all got paid big money to do it too. Another guy told me a story about a guy who worked at a big warehouse/industrial complex that was only half occupied and had an unfinished basement area. Ran power from a couple of the tenant spaces down into the abandoned basement and ran a grow op without any individual tenant noticing their power bills go up too significantly. Never actually got caught because they only found it all later when they went to finish the building/basement and found the remnants of the grow-op.
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Jun 17, 2014 17:22
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Indolent Bastard posted:Don't grow-ops tend to steal power so they don't have electric bills in the thousands, which is a huge red flag for the cops? Yes. My city has a big issue with grow houses right now. We've discovered 35 houses this year alone in a city of about 50k residents. We're a big target because we have big houses (4k sq. ft.+) and a population that drops 80% during the day due to people commuting out of the city. We've also got a large amount of rental units with landlords not in the community and are willing to look a blind eye when a renter wants to pay a year of rent up front. http://abclocal.go.com/story?section=news/local/inland_empire&id=9475732 The common theme is that they usually cut the power to the house below the meter and then feed the wiring into the house via the garage. Then they can use as much power as they want without any immediate flags. The utility will find out something in the neighborhood is amiss, but these guys are usually eating up about $5k per month in electricity charges without payment. We've had about 5 or 6 house fires this year as a result as well.
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Jun 17, 2014 21:50
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It seems like it ought to be possible to detect this kind of thing somehow. The only solution I can think of is to have some kind of meta-meter that tracks power consumption for a group of houses, and which would be in a physically protected location (like, up a pole, in a lockbox) which gets inspected on a periodic basis. If power consumption for that meter spikes drastically, then you've greatly narrowed down your search area (from "the entire city" to "just this block/subdivision/whatever") and can start doing more manual investigation.
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Jun 17, 2014 22:21
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Well the houses themselves put off a ton of heat due to all the lamps so cops can fly around in helicopters with thermal imaging and check out which homes are glowing. The growers have started hauling 3ton a/c units into the attics now to blanket the whole thing with a freezing cold cover to prevent being spotted.
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Jun 17, 2014 22:41
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:It seems like it ought to be possible to detect this kind of thing somehow. The only solution I can think of is to have some kind of meta-meter that tracks power consumption for a group of houses, and which would be in a physically protected location (like, up a pole, in a lockbox) which gets inspected on a periodic basis. If power consumption for that meter spikes drastically, then you've greatly narrowed down your search area (from "the entire city" to "just this block/subdivision/whatever") and can start doing more manual investigation. A lot of newer areas will have a KVA meter on the secondary side of the transformer, which then feeds 10-12 houses. If you average the KVA readings over a month, then compare the meter reads for the 12 houses it fed, you can pretty trivially see who is stealing power. Most modernized systems do this auto-magically, and then the sheriff, utility rep, electrician, and potentially SWAT show up to remove that illegal splice.
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Jun 17, 2014 22:44
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FCKGW posted:Well the houses themselves put off a ton of heat due to all the lamps so cops can fly around in helicopters with thermal imaging and check out which homes are glowing. How would A/C help? The heat still has to exit somewhere. Wouldn't LEDs be a good alternative? Low power consumption and heat output, and you can narrow the light output bandwith to only the colors that plants need, so there is very little waste energy going to heat or unused colors.
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Jun 18, 2014 01:30
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SkunkDuster posted:How would A/C help? The heat still has to exit somewhere.
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Jun 18, 2014 01:55
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I'm sorry for this. But the out of control elevator makes me think of this bit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20lcB9c-Qa0 I'm going to hell.
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Jun 18, 2014 03:57
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FCKGW posted:Well the houses themselves put off a ton of heat due to all the lamps so cops can fly around in helicopters with thermal imaging and check out which homes are glowing. That's illegal without a warrant. Cops still do it though, leading to hilarity like this: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Raw_footage_from_KopBusters_first_sting_1207.html
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Jun 20, 2014 10:30
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Found on German local news, where they like to be protective of their images so I had to manually screenshot these, apologies for the quality: a houseowner has a damp basement, wants to put in an external moisture barrier and hires the dwarves of Moria to dig up around the foundation. They dig too greedily and too deep and an entire corner of the house just sags.   Another theory is that the foundation was faulty in the first place. Article's a bit inconclusive but does quote a structural engineer saying it's very possibly a complete loss.
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Jun 20, 2014 23:14
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And that's why you don't dig below the footings, or dig at all before underpinning from inside if there is structural damage. Also external waterproofing is just delaying the inevitable without proper drainage (i.e. weeping tile).
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Jun 20, 2014 23:17
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:It seems like it ought to be possible to detect this kind of thing somehow. The only solution I can think of is to have some kind of meta-meter that tracks power consumption for a group of houses, and which would be in a physically protected location (like, up a pole, in a lockbox) which gets inspected on a periodic basis. If power consumption for that meter spikes drastically, then you've greatly narrowed down your search area (from "the entire city" to "just this block/subdivision/whatever") and can start doing more manual investigation. I was involved in a case recently where PG&E discovered there were multiple huge buildings (I'm talking 20+ unit apartment buildings) where previous owners had just spliced ahead of the meter to feed all of the apartments. Like literally 99% of building power was being stolen for years and PG&E had no idea. The only reason it was discovered is because the buildings were sold during the mortgage crisis and the new owners had to come in and deal with it. SkunkDuster posted:How would A/C help? The heat still has to exit somewhere. I've been trying to convince my (totally legal, permitted) grower friends for years to go to LED for exactly these reasons. Even when we were kids doing this stuff, we knew that blue light was best for the growth stage and red was best for flowering, and a MASSIVE amount of labor and equipment was devoted to dealing with heat/ventilation issues in the room. I'm sure a large part of it is just inertia and lack of flexibility for experimentation. I would also be concerned about LEDs having too narrow of a spectrum; even if the plants do better with slightly tilted color balances, they're still getting a really broad range from the sun.
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Jun 21, 2014 00:21
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I'd be the kind of person to do that with like, tomatoes, and before I know it I'm getting hauled out of bed at 3 am buck rear end naked on a no knock warrant due to my energy consumption.
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Jun 21, 2014 00:54
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Papercut posted:I would also be concerned about LEDs having too narrow of a spectrum; even if the plants do better with slightly tilted color balances, they're still getting a really broad range from the sun. I'm not a molecular biologist, but I work with them regularly. Most photosensitive molecules have fairly narrow absorption bands (on the order of 10-20nm, if I recall correctly), so unless photosynthesis uses multiple such molecules, you shouldn't need broad-spectrum light. Even if there were multiple different absorption bands to worry about, directly targeting those bands with multiple LEDs would probably still be more efficient than a broad-spectrum bulb.
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Jun 21, 2014 00:58
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My Lovely Horse posted:Found on German local news, where they like to be protective of their images so I had to manually screenshot these Protip: turn off Javascript to disable most disablers.
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Jun 21, 2014 00:59
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I'm not a molecular biologist, but I work with them regularly. Most photosensitive molecules have fairly narrow absorption bands (on the order of 10-20nm, if I recall correctly), so unless photosynthesis uses multiple such molecules, you shouldn't need broad-spectrum light. Even if there were multiple different absorption bands to worry about, directly targeting those bands with multiple LEDs would probably still be more efficient than a broad-spectrum bulb. The issue is that while Chlorophyll A and B suck up a very narrow spectrum of light, a lot of yellow and green light is absorbed through side reaction processes. There have been a couple studies done with greenhouse lettuces grown in natural light vs. equivalent PAR LEDs that are a red/blue mix (what the Chlorophyll only idea would support), and the natural light ended up doing about 30% better due to that reason. That and the transpiration seen on natural light is what the plants were originally evolved to use, the lower transpiration rates on the cooler LEDs cause issues with sap flow and nutrient uptake. I ended up learning all this after an incredibly aggressive sales guy tried to sell me on a complete LED solution for a greenhouse I was gonna put in my back yard for strawberries and peppers. I ended up not purchasing one at all after figuring out how many thousands of pounds of delicious jalapenos and strawberries I'd need to haul out of the thing before buying them from the local Whole Foods was the losing choice. Turns out it's like 1000 pounds of them. Methylethylaldehyde fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Jun 21, 2014 |
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Jun 21, 2014 01:42
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| # ? May 13, 2024 22:38 |
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My Lovely Horse posted:Found on German local news, where they like to be protective of their images so I had to manually screenshot these, apologies for the quality: a houseowner has a damp basement, wants to put in an external moisture barrier and hires the dwarves of Moria to dig up around the foundation. They dig too greedily and too deep and an entire corner of the house just sags. I handled a claim for this the next town over (Mantua NJ) a number of years ago. 100-YO house, rubble & mortar foundation walls - and no footing (my house was built in 1930 with a cinderblock basement and also, no footing). Contractor with a Bobcat kept digging below the wall, looking for the footer. The entire rear wall fell over in a piece, leaving the very large, 3-story frame house hanging in the air at the rear wall, popping & creaking away. Fortunately some crazy gently caress got into the basement and set up a shitload of tiger posts to keep a bad day from getting worse. The engineer figured that it was 8,000 pieces of oak lath behind the plaster walls that kept the whole thing together just long enough.
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Jun 21, 2014 02:30
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