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BRISTOL PALINS BABY posted:I have a story from an old apartment I lived in: Wow, that's like unintentional gaslighting right there. I think that's even illegal to do to prisoners or something 
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Apr 2, 2013 00:20
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Bonk posted:
Those are old phone jacks actually. Before the world had the modern wonder of RJ-11 we had these: 
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Apr 2, 2013 00:33
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Liquid Communism posted:Get ahold of your local inspector and just bluntly ask for a referral? But this thread has also established that a lot of inspectors miss things all the time too. I'm now terrified of buying a house thanks to the Internet
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Apr 6, 2013 21:54
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My friend just bought a house that a bank had foreclosed on. The bank's inspector had found nothing wrong with it. He hired his own inspector, and his inspector found that the roof was literally sagging in two places from rot, and a bunch of other things were wrong with it. They called the bank's inspector back out, told him to go up on the roof and stand in the exact spot that was sagging that he said was fine. He put one foot on it and it sunk in almost an inch and he jumped back. "Oh, must have missed that  "
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Apr 10, 2013 23:13
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Helena Handbasket posted:Rusty pencil sharpener anchoring a long piece of plastic twine. You pull on the twine to turn on the exterior light on the corner of the house several yards away. The plastic knife is decorative. That pencil sharpener looks many many times older than that nice wooden railing you have there, meaning they pretty much went "How do I turn on a light far away? I've got just the thing!" 
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Apr 28, 2013 17:54
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Heresiarch posted:My wife from Brazil saw this post over my shoulder and apparently her parents have this exact model in their shower. For those wondering, it is installed the usual way in this photo, wires and all. So is it just that the houses don't have a dual set of pipes for both hot and cold water, or are electrical hazards just a cool thing that caught on with everyone so buildings just come like that?
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Apr 30, 2013 23:22
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Bad Munki posted:So put the CO2 bottle in the closet, and put your regulator at the bar? Either way you get the CO2 bottle out of the area, which is nice. I doubt those pipes could take the full pressure coming out of the bottle, especially if they're ancient and designed for regulated pressure - CO2 canisters can output upwards of 800 PSI.
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Jun 9, 2013 18:39
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Jerry Cotton posted:I just made sure not to touch two wires at the same time and I'm still alive. I don't even know where the fuse box is You probably already realize this, but "Just don't touch both wires at once!" is an excellent and easy way to get yourself killed, even if it didn't in this particular case. You don't even necessarily need to touch both wires to shock yourself if you happen to be touching anything else that's grounded, let alone the risk of your hand slipping or you dropping it.
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Jun 11, 2013 20:10
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(I'm renting an apartment in a three-apartment house)
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kastein posted:It's basically just plumbing for nerds, if you can do basic math and do a bit of reading on how it all works, it starts making a lot of sense. I basically had the same ideas for everything but the inductor. It really does fit incredibly well to think about it as a long pipe and a voltage spike as water hammer, I'm gonna use that one in the future 
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Jun 19, 2013 17:41
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evilnissan posted:This is another dad fix to control a leak in a wall. So instead of fixing the leak he built an elaborate drainage system to manage the leak, makes so much sense
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Jul 24, 2013 15:55
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DNova posted:Well, usually you're supposed to relieve the hydrostatic pressure on the wall by drilling holes in it to LET the water come in, and then let it flow through a small trench into a sump pump basin. Just sealing the wall without relieving the pressure isn't going to be a long-term solution. Although, neither is baking pan with a bunch of PVC piping coming out of it. Ah that makes sense, I live in coastal Florida and nobody here has a basement because they would basically all be underwater all the time no matter what you did due to the water table being RIGHT THERE and all the ground being made of sand. Thanks for the info in case I ever move
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Jul 25, 2013 00:56
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Blistex posted:I've seen houses with 4 sump-pump holes and pumps all working in unison to keep the place from floating away! Come on, you can't just mention that without providing pictures of this hilarious comedy sketch of a house.
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Jul 26, 2013 16:56
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Splizwarf posted:Drains straight to the basement, calling it right now. Via a pie tin fashioned into a crude funnel that leads into a series of ever more elaborate pipes which wind up just dumping it on the floor 3 feet away from a drain.
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Jul 26, 2013 17:50
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Sagebrush posted:They're called barnstars and are supposed to be placed on your barn as decoration: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnstar I like how the wikipedia page mentions barnstar "enthusiasts" 
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Jul 28, 2013 19:48
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FCKGW posted:That reminds me that my parents just signed a contract to get new windows installed. Some guy just came up to their door and offered to install some windows. Initially they passed but they left their contact info with the guy. He called back a couple days later and knocked 50% off if they agreed to put signs up on their house and do a YouTube testimonial for the company. They mentioned they also do a variety of work such as tiling, painting, solar install and sprinkler repair. Oh boy, my dad got conned into buying $3000 worth of lovely fill dirt for the driveway by some guy walking around door to door just like that. And like $400 worth of really bad low-quality meat. Who the hell buys meat from some guy who just drives a meat truck to your house and asks if you want any? What the hell dad 
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Aug 30, 2013 17:03
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I have no idea how this works, do houses have to be certified as a fit dwelling, or does it only work the other way (where the city/town/whatever can say a dwelling is unfit and dangerous to live in)? Because I don't see why a structure (or construction on a different structure) that's unfinished that you don't have to pay taxes on would be signed off as a-okay to occupy.
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Oct 28, 2013 21:51
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There was a segment about those beams on How It's Made if anyone wants to see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK_v01nqWTc VV Absolutely VV Shame Boy fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Feb 5, 2014 |
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Feb 5, 2014 18:22
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I think it was just "someone realized that a bunch of tiny compartmentalized rooms was a hell of a lot less convenient than more open spaces, built a few houses like that, then everyone else wanted one."
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Feb 6, 2014 21:54
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Mr. Despair posted:The lab I work in has some pretty heavy duty wood used in a few spots. You can see it going by in this video Where the hell do you work, a neutrino detector?
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Feb 17, 2014 18:43
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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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Sagebrush posted:A proper splice, soldered with good techniques to high standards (NASA writes a spec that will make your head spin) is indeed a great connection. It's not the best connection for every situation, though. You need to balance conductivity, stress relief, shock tolerance, mechanical strength, reworkability, heat limits, and on and on. A properly made cold-weld between copper conductors (as you'd get in a crimp, wire-nut or wire-wrap connection) is actually stronger and has lower resistance than a comparable solder joint between the same two wires. My dad is an electrical engineer working for NASA at KSC and holy gently caress every single connection everywhere in my parents' house is up to the goddamn NASA spec in one way or another because he's insane, I can attest to them being loving indestructible connections.
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Mar 14, 2014 06:53
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Given the situation of that column (i.e. outdoors, next to a poor), Do you wear a tophat and monocle? 
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Mar 21, 2014 15:18
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Delivery McGee posted:So '90s though. You could make a double-sided drawer and share it with one of the bedrooms on the other side of the wall so they can both store things in it at once 
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Mar 31, 2014 05:37
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Mine dumps the air back out directly into your face while you're cooking without filtering it at all it seems, which is really pleasant when cooking onions 
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Apr 9, 2014 02:29
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Hey Motronic/others, I think these fire safety tips are really cool and want to ask a bunch about my own apartment's system but I don't really want to derail the thread further, could you start a thread / is there already a thread about home safety I could ask in? Thanks
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Apr 17, 2014 22:31
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SkunkDuster posted:I worked in a sensitive military facility that had a halon system. They told us when it goes off, it unloads Halon so fast that it blows poo poo everywhere like a hurricane and we may or may not get out of the building alive. Not sure if any of that was actually true or if it was just a way to scare us from pulling the fire alarm. Were the incendiary grenades there for any reason in particular or just for shits and giggles? VV I was thinking that at first, but wouldn't the halon put it out VV
Shame Boy fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Apr 19, 2014 |
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Apr 19, 2014 04:57
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I was kinda thinking that the grenades would cause the halon to automatically deploy, but now that you mention it yeah the grenades probably wouldn't give a gently caress about the halon and just keep on truckin' right through to the floor.
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Apr 19, 2014 21:04
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Atmus posted:My dad worked at a base that had the same sort of set up. They eventually replaced the thermite grenades with sledgehammers (albeit very, very nice ones) because the grenades kept disappearing due to boredom/mischief. Were they like... automatic sledgehammers? Or was one poor guy just supposed to stay behind while the building is under siege and whack all the servers out of the racks, hoping he hits the hard drives?
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Apr 21, 2014 17:07
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Oh huh, I just remembered my grandparents' ancient house had one of those screwed to the wall in the kitchen. Directly above the sink. Well at least they both died of not-electrical reasons I guess
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Apr 30, 2014 23:46
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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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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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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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Baronjutter posted:What's a condensation line? Like I can assume what it does by the name, it's taking moisture from somewhere and dumping it in the sink, but what's it for? When your AC chills air, a side effect is all the moisture condenses out of that air onto the cold AC bits like dew condensing in the morning. The AC needs to get rid of that somehow or it will just keep pooling up until it pours out all over your house. Normally this would be done by a pipe that goes outside or to a proper drain but this guy was in a hurry it seems.
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May 15, 2014 02:26
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Doccers posted:The fun thing is they tried to get me to sign off on the "ok we're done here" by waiting in a van across the street until my parents left for work - I was 13 at the time. Creepy guys idling in a van across the street until your parents left before approaching you, shoulda called the cops  Didn't you have to watch all those 90's stranger danger PSA's too?
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May 16, 2014 01:57
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kizudarake posted:Well, gently caress yeah. What kind of rear end in a top hat do you take me for? An rear end in a top hat who takes the caulk, probably
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May 17, 2014 00:30
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Crotch Fruit posted:Apartments suck balls, ask me about living next to a Crips den, in a "luxury" apartment complex. Is your apartment in a city? Because my apartment outside a city is just lovely and only has millions of ants instead of roaches 
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May 17, 2014 19:54
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SocketSeven posted:Roaches can be kinda cute; when you compare roaches to bed bugs. Those little fuckers nearly drove me insane when they infested my apartment. Management couldn't kill them. They would come through the walls, then crawl up the walls at night, while I watched them as they plotted to dive bomb me and suck my blood the moment I closed my eyes. At my current apartment, the rental agreement (and apparently Florida law) says that if I get bed bugs and the exterminator can't eliminate them because I wasn't "cooperative" enough (IE I didn't immediately burn all my belongings) I would then be liable for the cost of exterminating all the bed bugs from the entire building.
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May 18, 2014 04:20
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I took all the cheapass 10 cent incandescent bulbs out of all the fixtures when I moved in and stored them away in the closet for when I move out and replaced them all with fancy and efficient LED's  At my last apartment plumbing costs ate the entire deposit plus another $600 because there was a clog in the shower that we didn't know about until move-out day.
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May 29, 2014 05:01
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Crotch Fruit posted:That was The Floyds, watch the episode at spike.com. I forgot how much Adam Carolla annoys me, but it does seem like a fun idea for a show.
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May 30, 2014 04:03
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some texas redneck posted:Flipping Vegas. Oh jeez, I caught like two episodes of that once when nothing else was on and I was bored and I almost instantly developed a seething hatred of that power-tripping rich jackass. Yeah let's scream and throw a tantrum because the tile installers aren't installing tile as fast as you want. Oh no you went over budget by $500, you'll only make $19,500 instead of $20,000, time to yell at and beat your wife!
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Jun 3, 2014 17:28
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