Home Handyman

Every 3-year-old in the neighborhood will love you. Trust me on this one.
Your backyard just became *the* place for the little ones to hang out.

Been there, done that, bought that t-shirt. :)

And he bounced on the trampoline

I guess it isn't a good idea to pour a box of thumbtacks on the trampoline.

Probablu not. Sharpened stakes in the ground below aren't considered to be cool either.

Hmm... aluminium isn't magnetic, so that kills one idea...

And you're responsible for it even as a renter?

Hope he gets to take it off of his rent.

Over the weekend I helped out some friends who have a 100+ year old house with a project to adapt existing wiring to handle a ceiling fan with separate controls for the fan and its included light fixture.

I was expecting the worst: old cable, perhaps cloth wrapped, with crumbling insulation, inaccessible junction boxes, really bad stuff.

It turned out that the house had been completely rewired in the 1980's. Romex cable and new boxes everywhere, and all of the wiring for the second floor was completely and easily accessible from the attic.

Sometimes you win.

Befoe our son was born, we decided to install a combo ceiling fan and light into his room. It replaced an existing in-ceiling light fixture. I wasn't thrilled about the idea of having to pull new wire as there weren't any conduits and I wasn't about to pull off drywall. We found a very clever solution, though. It's a combo fan and light control with a two-piece setup. One piece is the wall switch with two on/off buttons and two sliding adjustors. The other piece fits into the bell of the fan housing. It only needs a single power feed, but provides two feeds to the fan and light, so no need to run new wiring. The wall switch sends commands--I can't remember if it's wireless, or uses the power-lines--to the remote unit in the fan. It works great and haven't had any issues with it at all.

The hardest part of the install was the bracket for the fan. I got one of those brackets that telescopes out and squeezes between thw ceiling rafters. The instructions say that you can just slip it up through a hole in the ceiling to set it in place, but this room's ceiling is accessible through the attic, so I installed it from the top. Not a huge deal except that where the light fixture is, only has a foot or two of clearance between the ceiling and the roof.
Spell

That's what I installed too, but if they hadn't already purchased it I would have suggested a hardwire setup since the wiring was so easily accessible from the attic.

The fixture is accessible from the attic too, so instead of the spring loaded bracket I told them to put a piece of 2x4 screwed directly into the rafters and then mount the box onto that (with another piece underneath it if needed for reach). It's going to be so much more stable than any bracket could possibly be, and with a fan turning underneath it that's a Good Thing (tm).

so I finally got a plumber to show up and install a water supply line to my fancy schmancy water powered water pump.
The thing is AWESOME.
It pumps water almost as quickly as the massive electric pump, and I daresay, the water is probably cheaper than the electricity.

it's a water powered water pump.
you pump water out of the ground, then use that water to pump water out of the ground

nope, I think. I don't get what you're saying, but it's really not that complicated.

It's just a water pump that uses the pressure from a municipal water supply to pump other water out of the way. Yes, it's incredibly wasteful, but it's the only way to bail his basement out when there is no electricity.

We had another outage last night when a tree fell down on the main road and took out the 13kv lines. I think it may be time for a generator.

On another subject:

My lawnmower has suddenly developed a terrible knocking sound. What are some easy things I can do to try to fix it to try to avoid bringing it to a service place?

* I changed the spark plug
* I changed the oil
* ...what's next?