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razz posted:Is that PEX? Reminds me of one from back when I did some plumbing with my dad. We got called in to fix up some leaks in a bathroom in a lovely apartment building expecting an easy job. Turns out the supply lines in the entire 4/5 unit building had been plumbed using garden hoses and splitters! It was run through the walls just like copper pipe should have been. Walked away from that one. Who farted? Another one we were called out by the wife to investigate sewer odors in a house where the husband had recently redone all the plumbing himself. So we were 99% expecting to find a missing P-trap or improper venting into the attic which DIYs almost never do right. Instead, we find that every sanitary tee in the drain system was installed backwards!  For those of you unfamiliar with drains, sanitary tees are installed to join two wastes line to point the flow of "waste materials" in the correct direction to flow downstream away from the house. In this case all the poo poo was trying to flow uphill and clogging up. We basically had to rip a ton of PVC out and redo it including snaking the hell out of a vent that was so caked up with TP and poo poo it was nearly solid. The moral of the story is that poo poo must roll downhill.
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Aug 22, 2011 19:55
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It's remarkable that the latch on the basement door held that much pressure.
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Sep 12, 2011 19:26
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The latch on a residential door is usually held in with two or three #8 wood screws to a pine door jamb. It is remarkable it held 1900lbs.
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Sep 15, 2011 18:01
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PromethiumX posted:And so should the GC. Yeah, that should all the way up to the ME who stamped an upside down plan and the city inspector who reviewed it, and whoever inspected it before they started pouring slab. Granted the plumber isn't completely faultless, but I can totally see how it happened. Showing up to a jobsite like that to start the rough subterranean work -- there are no landmarks except a few surveying stakes amongst literally acres of flattened earth. You can't even tell where the building, parking lot, garden center and loading dock is because it's all flat. At least once the erection is done you know where the building is, but it's still just a giant rectangle with no landmarks inside. ibpooks fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Sep 15, 2011 |
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Sep 15, 2011 18:05
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Iskariot posted:Praesil - you don't have something like buyer or sellers insurance? Here we can file complaints on the previous owner if there are hidden damages like that. Generally no, property is sold as-is in the USA. At the time of sale the previous owner must fill out a disclosure sheet which lists known problems, and you could sue for damages if that disclosure is inaccurate; however it isn't worth going after them unless there is some huge expensive problem. It is common for the buyer to hire an independent inspector prior to sale to check the property for possible problems, but stuff can be hidden of course.
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Sep 23, 2011 18:11
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GD_American posted:Knob and tube is basically kill on sight now for code, isn't it? It's legal to leave as-is, but cannot be extended, reworked, or covered in thermal insulation. GFCI can be legally added for safety. Switches and receptacles on K&T circuits can be replaced. Light fixtures can be replaced only if they are certified for use on 60°C wiring, but most modern fixtures will require 90°C wiring.
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Oct 21, 2011 19:25
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Blistex posted:I have a question about house proportions? Should an addition to an existing structure be 3x or 4x larger than the existing structure? Also how much of the addition should be dedicated to garage space? 80 or 90%? I don't want my house looking silly. You laugh! My (dickhead) neighbor just build a 50' x 70' garage/barn on his 63' wide city lot right behind the 860 square foot house. So yeah, the garage is 4x the size of the house; and now instead of seeing a field with deer and woodland creatures and poo poo out my back window, I can see about 50 square of brown shingles. He apparently went to the code office and determined what the minimum setbacks were for all his lot lines and sized the garage to that, essentially a "maximize button" for the waaaaay out-of-place structure. Also he has obviously-used bedsheets hanging in the front windows instead of curtains: priorities? If only the foreclosure crisis was a little more targeted. ibpooks fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Oct 25, 2011 |
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Oct 25, 2011 17:20
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I think he's into "muscle cars", although from what I've seen any of his prized treasures are no nicer than what you could find at an average car auction / junk yard. You know the kind: scoop poked up through the hood with tin snips, obviously homemade body work, paint job with over spray, spoilers and other aftermarket accessories with cheap fabrication / exposed rivots. A poorly rendered flashback to an era when his wiener still worked without medical intervention. I'll try to get a picture next time I'm home during daylight hours.
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Oct 25, 2011 18:35
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I'll see what I can do, but the cars haven't been outside since the garage was built; just the usual collection of pickup trucks with NASCAR + NRA themed decals that muscle car enthusiasts drive. Although to be fair I live in a semi-rural area so these are not all that uncommon in general.
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Oct 25, 2011 19:58
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Blistex posted:Shiiiiiiiit! We are going to need some photos of this asap! As promised, Garagezilla with sensitive info and good neighbors redacted. There's another roll-up door that's covered up by the house in the first picture. In the second picture the garage goes several more feet to the back that got cut off on my phone camera.  
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Oct 26, 2011 01:00
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Chickenbisket posted:I don't really get the hate on these big garages. The guys enjoy a hobby that requires a lot of space. Then he really shouldn't have chosen to live in a compact residential neighborhood. It's disrespectful to the neighbors to build something that is so out-of-place in the neighborhood; and then do no decoration, landscaping, architecture to at least make it somewhat visually appealing. It's a huge utilitarian building, larger in height, width, and depth than any house on the block. quote:He isn't bothering anybody and it's his own property. The garages presumably follow all the local zoning laws and construction code. He is bothering people who don't really want to look out their windows at an acre of shingles and siding. Yes it is within his legal right to do so, but it's rude. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. ibpooks fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Oct 31, 2011 |
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Oct 31, 2011 21:16
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Sedgr posted:Moral of the story is that just because you have a neighbor that is essentially giving you something for free, that neighbor is under no obligation to give it to you forever. Be it the backyard you thought you were entitled to, or just the view of the lake you really liked. No, the moral of the story is that people who do inconsiderate things, even if they're legally entitled to, are assholes. No one is arguing about the legality of building a large garage -- we all know it's allowed. I could mow my lawn 10' from my neighbor's bedroom window at 7:01 on Sunday morning because that's when the noise law stops. I don't because that would make me an rear end in a top hat. And yes I agree that living in an HOA would be much worse than occasionally dealing with something I don't like. I don't believe that people should be disallowed from using their property, but they should show some respect to their neighbors out of courtesy and weigh their own desires against the desires of the community around them. For example, a builder of a garagezilla could take a small portion of the budget he was going to use for a few more square feet of brown metal siding and instead buy some landscaping or hedgerow to at least somewhat decorate his eyesore. ibpooks fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Nov 2, 2011 |
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Nov 2, 2011 17:41
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ming-the-mazdaless posted:drill holes in the boundary wall to alleviate pooling on his side and impolitely gently caress the PO of my home in the taint with a broken bottle. We live in a river valley. Maintaining a proper flow of run off, and collecting it where possible is critical since we get 28 inches of rainfall on average per annum. In many areas improper discharge of storm water drainage is actually grounds for legal action against a neighbor. The PO probably could have sued or at least involved the city enforcement department to force the neighbor to deal with his drainage problem correctly.
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Nov 2, 2011 19:11
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Leperflesh posted:OK I'm not a contractor or a lawyer or whatever, so this is just my understanding. But basically there's kind of a rule where you can leave horrible old wiring in place as long as you don't touch it at all. But if you modify any of it you have to bring all of it up to code. Pulling out the old breaker box would presumably involve touching the ends of all of the wiring connected to it, so I assume that could mean replacing all of it. That rule does not apply to replacing the panel box. Everywhere that I know of you can replace a panel without triggering the upgrade requirement on all the connected branch circuits. The most I have ever seen is that one (expensive suburb) city near me requires when a panel replacement is done that all the kitchens and baths get GFCI receptacles and the house has at least one modern hard-wired smoke detector per floor installed.
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Jun 11, 2013 05:12
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quote:Man now I want to learn all about the history of sump-pumps. The change in storm water vs. sanitary water was basically driven by the clean water act of 1972. Prior to this time dumping storm water drain tiles directly into the sanitary sewer system was common practice. This of course leads to the public sewer system overflowing after every large rain storm and tons of untreated sewage escaping the processing plant. After the CWA, building codes evolved to require progressively greater levels of separation between natural water sources and sewer water. A house constructed today will essentially have no water going into the public sewer that hasn't been soiled by use, thus the need for sump pumps to remove ground water, rain water, run-off, etc, which is no longer legal to discharge into the public sewer. Many cities around the country have expensive "combined sewer overflow" or similar named public works projects underway which are a massive undertaking of digging up all the roads one-by-one and replacing the single shared sewer with separate systems for storm water and sewer water.
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Jul 26, 2013 04:20
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