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So, I just moved into a 1970's built (so, ancient by Phoenix/Mesa standards) apartment. The floors all dip a foot past any wall, popcorn ceilings, the usual. That's no biggie. All of the outlets were super loose, and were all ancient. The outlet faces were flat, without any chamfering to guide the prongs of a plug into the slots. Didn't matter, though, because even a phone charger would fall out. Some of the outlets were a bit scorched, for probably the same reason (loose prongs). I went to the local home improvement store and bought a 10-pack of new outlets and matching nylon faceplates, and went to town. One thing I've noticed is that the apartment uses the old style metal outlet boxes, with clearly aftermarket ground wires added (you can spot drill marks in the boxes where the bare ground wires are run through), and the ground wires are grounded to the metal conduit instead of run through it. Also, instead of white and black it's white and red, with red for the hot side.  whatever, it's $700/month.One outlet by the front door, though, is switched with a light switch also by the front door. I went to swap that one out, when I noticed the entire outlet receptacle was wrapped with electrical tape, and there was no ground wire attached. Huh, weird. After unwrapping the electrical tape, I see that the hot side on the unswitched half is wired red, but the switched outlet is wired with an orange stranded wire. And also the neutral side is the bare, normally ground, wire, with a wire-nut-capped white wire hanging out in the back of the box. Where the "ground" wire runs through the box, they've slipped a bit of wire insulation from the clipped white wire onto it, and wrapped it with electrical tape as a grommet. I refuse to take a photo of the innards and implicate myself, but I went back to the store and bought a plastic junction box, some toggle bolts, and a slightly oversized faceplate. I took out the (unattached to anything) metal box, ran some high-temp fiberglass insulation sheathing I had on hand down the unshielded "neutral" wire as far as it would go, and affixed the plastic electrical box in a few places to the drywall near the hole (as there are no studs anywhere near this outlet) with the toggle bolts. After putting a meter on it, I discovered the capped white wire is actually connected to ground, so I wired that in. I printed some labels with my little handheld dymo and put them on each wire for the next fool, and put it all together. Doesn't look like anything out of the ordinary, but I won't be plugging anything valuable in here, and maybe I'll update the renter's insurance policy just in case. 
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Mar 5, 2018 20:38
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Atticus_1354 posted:Going to make those for my kitchen corner. I hate the drat spinner in the corner that is so popular. We got around having a spinner corner cabinet by not having any corners in our galley kitchen.
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Mar 5, 2018 20:39
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Apt that your sockets look permanently worried.
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Mar 5, 2018 20:52
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Metal Geir Skogul posted:So, I just moved into a 1970's built (so, ancient by Phoenix/Mesa standards) apartment. The floors all dip a foot past any wall, popcorn ceilings, the usual. That's no biggie. That's cool and all but why are you doing electrical work in a place you don't own?
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Mar 5, 2018 21:16
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Because it was maybe $20 all in, and this is kind of a slumlord area/price. I'm literally across the street from the school I'm going to, for [only] $700ish/month, which is less than half of everywhere else. The outlets didn't work/were a fire hazard, and it was cheap and quick to do it all in one day vs possible months of waiting plus bad blood with my new landlord.
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Mar 5, 2018 21:24
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Metal Geir Skogul posted:Because it was maybe $20 all in, and this is kind of a slumlord area/price. I'm literally across the street from the school I'm going to, for [only] $700ish/month, which is less than half of everywhere else. The outlets didn't work/were a fire hazard, and it was cheap and quick to do it all in one day vs possible months of waiting plus bad blood with my new landlord. That's cool and all, but now if there's a fire, you will be blamed and possibly sued, instead of your landlord.
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Mar 5, 2018 21:28
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Yeah, you're right. If there is a fire that originates from the outlets, and they can show that the outlets were installed by me, then I'm hosed. I am aware of that. However, based on the scorch marks that were on some of the old ones, and the general lack of enthusiasm about repairing anything the new landlords gave, I bet there is now a 99.5% reduction in chance of a fire based on the outlets, so that's a risk I took, just like driving or living alone with no easily-reachable landline or 911 service. The old outlets were mismatched enough (spanning decades, I'd bet - they were not identical) that, again, whatever. The crappy construction [ethics] are coming from inside the thread, and it is me If you want better crappy construction, take a look at the walkway to the doors. I'm aligning the phone camera with the ground/horizon:  And, in this bottom one, the camera is tilted a bit I'll admit, but it shows how it feels to walk.  Edit VVVVV: if that's what you want to focus on then, thanks for helping by quoting it  . Or, let slumlords be slumlords.
Queen_Combat fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Mar 5, 2018 |
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Mar 5, 2018 21:44
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Metal Geir Skogul posted:Yeah, you're right. If there is a fire that originates from the outlets, and they can show that the outlets were installed by me, then I'm hosed. I am aware of that. However, based on the scorch marks that were on some of the old ones, and the general lack of enthusiasm about repairing anything the new landlords gave, I bet there is now a 99.5% reduction in chance of a fire based on the outlets, so that's a risk I took, just like driving or living alone with no easily-reachable landline or 911 service. That's only true if they can prove it. Like if you meticulously documented what you did on the internet or something.
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Mar 5, 2018 21:47
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I'm more curious why you used toggle bolts instead of an old work box.
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Mar 5, 2018 22:03
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For two of the tabs I did use the included blue flag bolts, yeah. The opposite corners I added the small toggles because wew this is old drywall and everything was flopping around all the place anyway and even the tabs on the box sunk in a bit. And, if you want to have your loving mind blown, I am running a homemade 3D printer, a device with two intentional heaters that sometimes runs [mostly] unattended, and I have also replaced the plugs, myself, on a heavy-duty extension cord that is running a desk fan. Oh no!  I'm also using a non-UL listed wifi plug to control my nightstand lamp, and a $15 audio amplifier direct-from-aliexpress to listen to some tunes on some old PSB speakers I picked up out of a dumpster. Call the insurance adjuster! And for further crappy construction, here's the AC condensate line outside  (I did not do that) Queen_Combat fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Mar 5, 2018 |
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Mar 5, 2018 22:12
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In the US hot wire will usually be black, red, and blue for 120/208/240, especially in commercial or larger multi-tenant construction where romex is less common. Conduit or MC wire with metal boxes is normal in all that. The taped switch probably isn't a problem since often switches and outlets are self-grounding to metal boxes and sometimes folks tape over the terminals in crowded boxes to prevent shorts to a bare ground wire. Some people tape every outlet regardless. Make certain you know exactly what is going on in these boxes before you assume you're fixing a problem / not creating new ones.
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Mar 5, 2018 23:43
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I think you're cool and fixing the outlets was a good thing.
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Mar 5, 2018 23:48
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Yes the red wire as hot going to a 120 is fine (the US code only specifies neutral and ground, actually), it's just a little odd and where I grew up I only used to see that in old buildings (dad's an electrician and we restored a now-120 year old house together). The house (and where I grew up) is right on the Canadian border so I'd also sometimes see red as one leg of three phase to barns/shops. The taped switch had the bare copper wire acting as neutral however with nothing as ground, and stranded orange as the switched hot from the switch. I 100% know that is not OK. About half a roll of electrical tape was wrapped around the outlet to do two things: shield the neutral (again, bare copper wire), and actually locate and center the box to the hole in the wall. The faceplate was taking the majority of the load keeping the outlet and box there. I replaced it with a work box and added a few extra toggles to help secure it, which is nothing unusual. peanut posted:I think you're cool and fixing the outlets was a good thing. 
Queen_Combat fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Mar 5, 2018 |
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Mar 5, 2018 23:49
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Yeah it really sounds like it was totally fine and you've done nothing but make it worse  wtf thread.
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Mar 5, 2018 23:56
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Metal Geir Skogul posted:The taped switch had the bare copper wire acting as neutral however with nothing as ground, and stranded orange as the switched hot from the switch. I 100% know that is not OK. About half a roll of electrical tape was wrapped around the outlet to do two things: shield the neutral (again, bare copper wire), and actually locate and center the box to the hole in the wall. The faceplate was taking the majority of the load keeping the outlet and box there. I replaced it with a work box and added a few extra toggles to help secure it, which is nothing unusual. I would have called the management about this. It sounds like a serious enough problem to be worried about and you don't want responsibility for it if you know the circuit is run wrong. Or, you know, dying in your sleep of smoke inhalation. And yeah, the outlet replacement seems fine, but again I wouldn't have done it myself. I work in commercial maintenance and the first thing anyone does in a fuckup is put the blame somewhere cheap for themselves.
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Mar 6, 2018 00:17
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Metal Geir Skogul posted:
Only a matter of time till those things start breaking off the building and falling off in chunks. Had a previous apartment do that with both its stairs and walkways, was interesting getting up to third floor for a while.
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Mar 6, 2018 00:23
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Hey it could be worse. At least it's not like the last place I has that not only had ungrounded outlets, but all the wiring was done via J-cord. And said outlets were also like original 1960s bakelite stuff, all wired up to an extremely old and loose breaker box. I was not thrilled about that to say the least. All the outlets are GFIs there now though. Trying to explain why they should be changed to the landlord was interesting. Old houses that get rented out are fun.
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Mar 6, 2018 02:36
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You said Phoenix/Mesa so I'll assume you're East Valley, but holy gently caress this looks *exactly* like an apartment building I used to live in at 27th ave and Camelback near GCU. I have enough horror stories about that place for an entire loving thread of its own. During the monsoons we'd get brown drip marks on the interior walls, all the windows were single pane and the one on my bedroom was installed wrong and always had an 1/8" gap to let in freeway noise (I was 200 feet from I-17). And I know for sure the ground wiring didn't actually run to the panel. Had the exact same style walkway as in your pics - the roof line over it was sagging a good 6+ inches just a few feet from my front door. I hope you're in a better neighborhood, anyway - I wouldn't walk to the QT in flip-flops because of all the broken glass and used needles lying around.
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Mar 6, 2018 05:48
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The last rental house I lived in was built during the East Texas oil boom and had Romex spliced into the original knob amd tube wiring. No, I didn't check to see if that circuit was still live, instead I made sure the smoke detector batterries were still good. The house itself was solid as gently caress, though -- the unfinished walls in the closets were planked with 1x4s.
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Mar 6, 2018 05:57
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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I think assuming the
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Mar 6, 2018 05:58
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glynnenstein posted:I work in commercial maintenance and the first thing anyone does in a fuckup is put the blame somewhere cheap for themselves. No loving kidding! At work, we changed out some sliding glass doors for a customer a while back. A few months in (supposedly), she starts noticing a leak (but never calls). Here we are, a year and change later, and she's blaming us for WAY more than a year and a half's worth of water damage. I'm talking rotted baseboards, probably rotted sills in the wall, rotted studs, stucco damage, etc...but this way,  doesn't have to pay the thousands in repair work! She can just pin it on us.
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Mar 6, 2018 15:07
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D34THROW posted:No loving kidding! At work, we changed out some sliding glass doors for a customer a while back. A few months in (supposedly), she starts noticing a leak (but never calls). Here we are, a year and change later, and she's blaming us for WAY more than a year and a half's worth of water damage. I'm talking rotted baseboards, probably rotted sills in the wall, rotted studs, stucco damage, etc...but this way, That's what we call losing a small claims case, on her side.
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Mar 6, 2018 15:14
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The house I moved out of was used by a trust fund baby that blew her entire trust on meth for the last 9-10 months before she was evicted. The floors in the dining room were that click-clack snap together flooring, but due to water damage an entire corner was swollen and split and separated at the seams between each board. The house had been repainted, but they didn't clean well before repainting so even before we moved in some stains were soaking through the paint. There were a myriad of other issues like cabinet doors falling off, cracks in tiles in the kitchen, holes in walls that were poorly patched over, etc. The walkthrough write-up I did at move-in was two pages of typed notes total for the line items, and I have proof of acceptance by the landlord. Of course I meticulously clean the place before moveout, and we have put absolutely zero wear on the carpets (only unused bedrooms were carpeted, the master was wood), and I actually replaced the busted, yellowed shower heads with detachable stainless wands (we were planning on living in that house for years before the relationship fell apart, hence the minor upgrades). I even replaced the wax rings on the toilets (both were leaky and letting sewer gas in) with neoprene/rubber rings. Now the landlord, who after our move-out is retiring and selling the house, is fighting tooth and loving nail on the security deposit  . In the end the security deposit is only $400 and I saved way more than that on reduced rent for half the year I lived there: she reduced one month's rent by $400 for the toilet seal replacements alone because that was the estimated plumber bill savings, and those two $20 shower heads got $150 off of another month's rent, things like that. I pressure washed the driveway at move-in (prior tenant had a leaky car) instead of having the HOA-approved cleaners come out, and she took $80 off that month's rent for that, etc. But I'm still bitter.Farmdizzle posted:You said Phoenix/Mesa so I'll assume you're East Valley, but holy gently caress this looks *exactly* like an apartment building I used to live in at 27th ave and Camelback near GCU. I have enough horror stories about that place for an entire loving thread of its own. During the monsoons we'd get brown drip marks on the interior walls, all the windows were single pane and the one on my bedroom was installed wrong and always had an 1/8" gap to let in freeway noise (I was 200 feet from I-17). And I know for sure the ground wiring didn't actually run to the panel. Had the exact same style walkway as in your pics - the roof line over it was sagging a good 6+ inches just a few feet from my front door. I'm in an area near Banner Desert hospital in Mesa, but I wouldn't doubt them being the same builders/plan. I see this style of apartment all over the city. The windows are all also single pane, but at least the roof line is straight on this one.
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Mar 6, 2018 15:25
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D34THROW posted:No loving kidding! At work, we changed out some sliding glass doors for a customer a while back. A few months in (supposedly), she starts noticing a leak (but never calls). Here we are, a year and change later, and she's blaming us for WAY more than a year and a half's worth of water damage. I'm talking rotted baseboards, probably rotted sills in the wall, rotted studs, stucco damage, etc...but this way, Welcome to the fun part of the job as a property claims adjuster!
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Mar 7, 2018 02:44
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My fiance and I bought a Victorian (still working on a project thread OP) and while the house is generally rock solid, there's some superficial poo poo that just pisses me off. Let's do some multiple choice: If I were the previous owner of a fine Victorian and I wanted to remove some main floor doors in favor of open walkways between rooms, what would I do with the unsightly notches in the door jambs leftover from the hinges? Would I.. A) Do nothing? B) Glue in wooden shims and stain them to match the woodwork? C) Smear crusty gray putty everywhere? If you guessed C, you are correct:  I seriously don't get why this was done instead of nothing - it looks so much worse than just having the visible notches and screw holes. Now not only do I need to find additional solid wood five panel doors to replace the missing ones (also replace all the antique brass hardware that was on those doors), I have to chisel all this poo poo out and fix the crusted up woodwork so I can hang the new doors.
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Mar 7, 2018 05:21
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Queen Victorian posted:My fiance and I bought a Victorian (still working on a project thread OP) and while the house is generally rock solid, there's some superficial poo poo that just pisses me off. Let's do some multiple choice: Probably the same reason my house looks like poo poo “I’ll start patching this up now, finish it next weekend, and when we’re ready get a builder in to rip this entire wall out in a few months” then that becomes the weekend after. Then someone gets pregnant. Then that weekend becomes next month, Then a baby is born and you just don’t want to do anything more than necessary.
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Mar 7, 2018 09:59
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Horse Clocks posted:Probably the same reason my house looks like poo poo “I’ll start patching this up now, finish it next weekend, and when we’re ready get a builder in to rip this entire wall out in a few months” This is where I am. I have everything to redo our half bath except the energy. There is a softball sized patch in the wall that they did a terrible job fixing. It is the mesh is visible, unpainted, and has developed another quarter sized hole in the same spot because the prior owner didn't believe in door stops. We weren't concerned when we bought the house because we planned to redo the bathrooms but other issues took priority and then our daughter was born. Bonus Baby Pic: 
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Mar 7, 2018 13:19
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Obsoletely Fabulous posted:This is where I am. I have everything to redo our half bath except the energy. There is a softball sized patch in the wall that they did a terrible job fixing. It is the mesh is visible, unpainted, and has developed another quarter sized hole in the same spot because the prior owner didn't believe in door stops. We weren't concerned when we bought the house because we planned to redo the bathrooms but other issues took priority and then our daughter was born. Why this baby look like it pay taxes?
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Mar 7, 2018 14:14
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Wasabi the J posted:Why this baby look like it pay taxes? drat, that baby seen some poo poo.
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Mar 7, 2018 15:37
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If you think you don't have time to work on things with a baby, wait until they start walking. Now everything is even more of a one man job because they have to be actively wrangled.
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Mar 7, 2018 16:21
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Wasabi the J posted:Why this baby look like it pay taxes?
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Mar 7, 2018 16:23
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FogHelmut posted:If you think you don't have time to work on things with a baby, wait until they start walking. Now everything is even more of a one man job because they have to be actively wrangled. You just have to train them to bring you tools and parts. Replace those block-in-hole toys with screws and bolts, they'll learn quick.
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Mar 7, 2018 16:28
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FogHelmut posted:If you think you don't have time to work on things with a baby, wait until they start walking. Now everything is even more of a one man job because they have to be actively wrangled. You can get a Border Collie to assist.
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Mar 7, 2018 16:30
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Wasabi the J posted:Why this baby look like it pay taxes? They turned Bob Odenkirk into a baby!
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Mar 7, 2018 16:34
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FogHelmut posted:If you think you don't have time to work on things with a baby, wait until they start walking. Now everything is even more of a one man job because they have to be actively wrangled. I know but hopefully by then she can be distracted by toys and stuff. Right now she cries if she is set down for more than a minute. Wasabi the J posted:Why this baby look like it pay taxes? The kid took after the wrong parent in the looks department. I feel bad for her.
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Mar 7, 2018 17:34
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Obsoletely Fabulous posted:I know but hopefully by then she can be distracted by toys and stuff. Right now she cries if she is set down for more than a minute. It's a cute baby. All babies just look goofy with their weird hairlines and smushed skulls.
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Mar 7, 2018 17:37
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Obsoletely Fabulous posted:I know but hopefully by then she can be distracted by toys and stuff. Right now she cries if she is set down for more than a minute. This if actually a better time to accomplish things than once she gets moving. Get a baby carrier, strap that baby in, and start working with her on your back. Make sure she has a helmet and some steel-toed booties.
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Mar 7, 2018 17:46
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 Only $4500/mo in SF. Not mine.
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Mar 7, 2018 18:08
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Pretty sure we saw that one earlier; definitely saw something like that.
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Mar 7, 2018 18:11
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Ah dang, probably. A lot of that sort of thing in Asian countries.
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Mar 7, 2018 18:13
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