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Forgot about these stories until today.. About 4 years ago I was demoing a small addition off the back of a house . The addition was built sometime in the 50s by my best guess. When I had the roof and walls off and it was time to rip the floor out and I found out that the addition was built over an old brick and granite lined well. I later checked and it was over 50 feet deep and about 4 foot in diameter. I also found out that the washing machine and the sink were draining into the well, and not into the regular sewer system of the house. 50 years of detergent and skidmark residue had been draining into the well from the washing machine and into the local water table. It was obvious that it had always been this way. I found many other gems in this house including dozens of mummified squirrels and rats in the walls and the rat-den to trump all rat-dens. I was digging in the crawl space because the homeowner had seen the rat holes and wanted to pour concrete over the dirt to prevent the rats from ever tunneling in there again so I had to remove several inches of dirt. What I found was a maze of tunnels leading to one central "cavern" that I could fit my entire body inside. I am 6'6" and about 245 pounds if that gives you an idea of the size of this cavern. The cavern was filled with scraps of cardboard, plastic, and a childs raincoat, as well as tons of what were the bones of rats, chickens, other rodents. Hopefully they weren't the bones of the owner of that raincoat!
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Nov 4, 2011 03:25
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 01:39 |
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I was doing some electrical work today and ripped out a feed for an electric stove. It had been moved at some point so there was a 1900 box with a splice to extend the wire over about 5 feet. The "electrician" who spliced the 8 gauge wires decided to strip them about 2 inches long and wrap them with bare 14 gauge copper wire to hold them together, then covered them with a big hunk of duct seal and taped the piss out of it. I haven't seen something that hosed up in a while... The inside of the duct seal was crispy from the wires arcing. Didn't think to take a pic but I'll see if I can dig it out of the trash tomorrow.
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Mar 6, 2013 07:10
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I'm currently working on a house remodel and I have found a TON of hosed up things in this house. Here is a short list of what I found so far... On the dormer over the front picture window the idiot roofer flashed where the roof meets a rock wall but the flashing stopped about 5 inches from each side, so there is an opening for water to get in. I pulled it open a little bit and a lot the wood in there is roached. I will have to rip the shingles/sheathing off the dormer and replace wood, then flash it properly and re-shingle. loving morons... Probably 25% of the 2-wire outlets were hooked up backwards. Someone decided to ground the bathroom outlet, so they ran a wire from behind the wall plate and down the wall to the cold water pipe. I wish I got a pic of this one! Automotive radiator hose used to connect a sink to the pipe in the wall. No trap so that bathroom probably always smelled like rear end. At some point, the shower door needed to be re-hung so instead of patching+redrilling holes or using larger anchors in the tile, someone jammed a couple finishing nails into the hole to "tighten" it up and screwed the shower door back up to the wall. When I took the shower door off it drat near fell out of my hands because I wasn't expecting it to fall apart after 2 turns of a screw. Caulk. I started scraping some cracked paint and the wall was squishy underneath. Someone loving used caulk in place of drywall compound/plaster on a bunch of repairs around the house. I can understand using it sparingly or on a spot that needs a little bit of flexibility, but not for large sections of wall! I spent the next 2 hours running a scraper over every wall to find all the caulk repairs I could. It really isn't that hard to mix up some plaster and do the loving job right. Hell, plaster is probably easier to skim than caulk! Whoever installed the heavy rear end cast-iron tub in the house when it was built cut 90% of the way through (2) true-dimensional 2X8 joists to get the plumbing in. The kitchen ceiling was sagging and cracked so I ripped it out and found this mess. I jacked them up with lolly-columns and bolted 2x8 PT lumber to them every 8 inches staggering top and bottom. On the plus side, the client has plenty of funds and is adamant about fixing everything and putting things back together properly, so the cost and scope of repairs isn't an issue.
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Apr 5, 2013 01:53
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drat, I hope there are WORKING smoke detectors in every room of your apartment, and that you have a nice soft spot to land when you inevitably have to jump out of a window to escape the flames. Invest in a few smoke detectors if there aren't any there, and possibly consider a safer place to live. gently caress STAB-LOK panels. gently caress them HARD.
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May 10, 2013 21:08
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I caught a buddy of mine doing some tree work a couple months ago. Company name has been removed from his sweatshirt to protect the guilty. Screw the innocent.
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May 12, 2013 17:38
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I was more interested in the fact that its an aluminum ladder tied to the cables with rope while he cuts a branch within 6 inches of the power lines with a hand saw. Utilities use fiberglass ladders with special hooks on them. The rope is also tied around his thighs. Sure, the power lines aren't primaries but still... I had a fiberglass ladder with cable hooks on my roof rack he could have used.
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May 12, 2013 18:17
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you ate my cat posted:Being on a ladder mid-strand is pretty common. With a fiberglass ladder. And hooks that go around the support strand so that the ladder won't slide off. Not to mention the fact that he's leaning way back toward some trees rather than working on the strand in front of him, so swaying is a much bigger issue. He was swaying pretty good, but not nearly enough for the ladder to go fully upright, or lean backwards. Still, I prefer my fiberglass ladder with cable hooks and my line belt with pole strap. When I am working on a ladder for an extended period of time I will don my belt and hook the pole strap round the rails and one rung so that I can lean back and have both hands free while I work.
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May 15, 2013 00:31
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DNova posted:Then I don't see any problem with the wiring other than the terminal block, which I don't think is normal. This looks like that terminal block and the website shows it rated for A/C. I still would change it out for wirenuts, we used to use them when i used to do commercial fire alarm and they had a habit of coming loose on their own. iForge fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Jun 11, 2013 |
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Jun 11, 2013 22:03
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At work today I was on the roof bringing material up and the roofing guys were flying big bundles of foam insulation boards up with a crane nearby. The crane set it on their cart and they broke down the bundle from there. This guy was in charge of keeping the other half of the bundle from falling off the cart while the others unloaded the other side, except his coworkers decided to stand around and talk for a good 10 minutes while this poor fella held it up. Windy as poo poo and he was clearly struggling to keep it on the cart.
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Apr 23, 2014 22:36
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Baronjutter posted:I take it they got the mechanism from one of those motion activated sinks but didn't have the motion detector so wired it up to a lightswitch? If they wired it correctly it should be ok. Other than soaking wet hands fiddling with a light switch. The solenoids in these run on batteries. Most I see are 4x "C" batteries. Not really an electrocution hazard.
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Jul 23, 2014 00:01
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Was doing some electrical in a house today and came across this gem of a repair under the basement stairs. Yes that is a cracked stringer. Yes that is pipe strapping and a ton of self sealing sheet metal screws.
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Aug 23, 2014 02:12
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 01:39 |
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A friend is flipping a house and asked me to come by and fix up some wiring. I found many many things, these are just the pictures I took today. I will be rewiring so much of this house it hurts to think about it. This exhaust fan made the bathroom smell like smoke when it was running, I removed it and it will be replaced with a new one.  Some of the wiring for the aforementioned exhaust fan.  Found this behind drywall in the bathroom. This fed power to the switch that controlled the exhaust fan. The hot lead was barely hanging on under that wirenut.  Yep, a little tape and its good as new...  More to come... iForge fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Sep 17, 2014 |
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Sep 17, 2014 05:44
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