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[#] Thu Jun 06 2019 11:48:36 EDT from Freakdog

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Wed Jun 05 2019 11:48:56 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored
Interesting. I thought Halogen didn't make the cut for "energy efficient" bulbs. I know that GU10 halogens are all over the place, as that's the standard fitting for halogen track lights, but I've never seen a GU24 halogen.

I'm thinking the government will probably eventually kill gasoline-powered cars the same way they killed incandescent light bulbs -- simply by making the energy efficiency requirements so strict that they simply cannot be met with the conventional technology.

Don't get me wrong -- I *like* the GU24 fitting. It works well, has a satisfying snap-in and snap-out, and the bulbs can be manufactured using a lot less extra material. But we live in an E26 world and no one wants to replace all of their fixtures or keep two kinds of bulbs on hand. I suppose adapters would work (the "legal" kind, that fit GU24 bulbs into E26 fixtures) but with LED bulbs available with E26 base, no one is motivated to change, so now we're stuck. 

You're right...my bad...I saw a pic of GU24 and thought it was what I had...then you mentioned GU10 and I looked up a comparison and realized that what I had was GU10.



[#] Thu Jun 06 2019 13:09:43 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

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The number after GU is the spacing between the pins, in millimeters.

[#] Thu Jun 06 2019 14:07:39 EDT from zooer

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Damn metric system.



[#] Tue Jul 09 2019 09:44:43 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

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Next chapter of the story of my lovely neighbor.  I found a waterproof version of "Great Stuff" expanding foam, and ordered two cans online (I'm sooooo jazzed that a Lowe's opened in our town this year, but they don't stock it) and shot an entire can into each of the "abandoned pipes" that were still discharging into my yard.  That seems to have taken care of most of it, but there's still a wet trench running roughly east-west along what I thought was the property boundary.

I pulled up the 2018 county GIS map and discovered that the trench is actually a few feet inside my yard, and that the pipe outfalls are even farther inside than I thought they were.  In the photo below, the tips of the red arrows are the locations of the ends of the three pipes (the rightmost one is the one I removed completely; the other two are now capped and sealed).   There's a garden supply place right up the street that sells bulk topsoil, and I'm planning on bringing some home in my new truck to fill up the ditches.  I was worried that the neighbor might get upset about me doing that to a trench running along the property line, but now I know it's so far away from the property line, that he really has no say in the matter.  If you look at the yellow line, though, you can also see that he's been landscaping a bunch of my yard as if it were his.

There might also be a fence (blocked by the trees in this photo) in the wrong place.  However, I did a bunch of reading and determined that a fence sitting there for many years does not constitute a prescriptive easement, because an easement cannot deny access to the true owner of the land.



[#] Wed Jul 10 2019 11:20:40 EDT from Haven

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If your property has had a survey done on it, there should be some metal rods at the corners of your property.  You should be able to find them using a metal detector.  Using some stakes you should be able to verify where everything is at ground level.  

 



[#] Wed Jul 10 2019 14:08:26 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

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I found a survey rod midway through the south line of the property (bottom of the yellow box in the photo, near the neighbor's shed). So you're probably correct, and there may very well be more rods at the corners. I don't have a metal detector but I want to find them.

I had to have a survey done when we bought the property five years ago, because the seller didn't supply one. And then a couple of months later they mailed us a survey with a note saying "found this and sending it in case you need it". So there's a few hundred bucks I spent unnecessarily.

Any rod I find is going to get spray painted bright orange.

[#] Thu Jul 25 2019 10:18:41 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

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I got a call from my dad first thing in the morning yesterday. He had two problems in his house, and as hard as I tried, I couldn't figure out why they happened at the same time. I'm still too suspicious to just say it was a coincidence.

The ice maker in their refrigerator broke, leaking water all over the freezer side and creating a lovely shell of ice all over everything. Fine, he said, it's old and they wanted a new fridge anyway, but when he went to turn off the water supply, it was on a saddle valve in a utility closet, and it wouldn't close. So he went to turn off the next valve upstream from that, and it wouldn't close either. So he shut off the water to the whole house.

I cut out the whole line, and soldered in a new quarter-turn valve to the main line in the closet, and added a tee, another valve, and a capped stub-out to add a proper ice maker connection when they get a new refrigerator.

The other problem is that the blower fan for their HVAC system came on and wouldn't shut off. I brought along my auto-ranging multimeter, which I own primarily so I don't throw batteries at fleeb's upstairs neighbor, but it also does other things. I took apart the whole thermostat chain, tested the wires, measured the voltages across each terminal, couldn't find anything wrong. Then I suspected the relay was stuck, so I disconnected the HV wire between the relay and the blower. The blower kept running, and I found 120 volts on the *load* side.

The load side wire disappears into a part of the furnace that I was unwilling to mess with, because it has all sorts of safety interlocks that I don't understand.
If I spent a couple of evenings studying how gas furnaces are wired, I'd probably figure it out. The wires inside went to parts that I didn't recognize and had safety warnings on them. I suspect there's some sort of sensor that activates the blower when it gets too hot, so the excess heat is blown out even if the system isn't calling for heat, and that sensor is stuck. I wrote up my troubleshooting notes and will hopefully save an hour of someone else's time.

Still no sense of why these problems both happened at the same time. I figured that maybe the failed icemaker leaked water onto wires and shorted them out or something, but I couldn't find any evidence of that.

[#] Thu Jul 25 2019 11:23:55 EDT from Ragnar Danneskjold

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We've had a number of brownouts recently. I measured voltage at my parents place of 97v at the main.

[#] Thu Jul 25 2019 13:58:14 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

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Ironically, while we were out at the hardware store buying valves and connectors, Con Ed showed up and slapped a smart meter on the house. They left a door-hanger note.

[#] Thu Jul 25 2019 14:14:16 EDT from zooer

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Thu Jul 25 2019 10:18:41 AM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored
Fine, he said, it's old and they wanted a new fridge anyway,

A word of warning if you have not purchased the new refrigerator as of yet.   The government imposed energy efficient regulations on refrigerators.  While this is fine it means refrigerators have to be better insulated, better insulation means less usable space for the same size unit.  If your old unit was 19 cubic foot a new 19 cubic foot unit's size will be much larger.  You might have to purchase a 15 cubic foot unit to fit in that same space.

If you have a space for a refrigerator in the kitchen you will find you need to buy a smaller cubic foot unit to fit in that same space.  

 

Thu Jul 25 2019 01:58:14 PM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored
Ironically, while we were out at the hardware store buying valves and connectors, Con Ed showed up and slapped a smart meter on the house. They left a door-hanger note.

 Welcome, eventually everything will be controlled by someone else. 



[#] Thu Jul 25 2019 14:32:08 EDT from LoanShark

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Yes, starting tomorrow I'll be controlling zooer's posts.

[#] Thu Jul 25 2019 15:55:46 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

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 Welcome, eventually everything will be controlled by someone
else. 

Theoretically, if one were to EMP-blast the electronics in a smart meter, it would stop working completely, but it would still pass power through. They're still CT-based and don't have transfer switches in them.

I'm still looking for someone to let me borrow a spectrum analyzer, so I can make a video debunking smart meter hysteria and get a bajillion views.

[#] Fri Jul 26 2019 06:32:28 EDT from zooer

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LoanShark is a fantastic person, handsome and intelligent. 

*[This message last edited by LoanShark on Fri Jul 26 2019 06:45:28 AM EDT]

 



[#] Fri Jul 26 2019 13:45:41 EDT from LoanShark

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I made this!

[#] Sat Jul 27 2019 12:47:28 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

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I just brought home a big pile of cinder blocks, concrete, and rebar in my favorite pickup truck. I feel so rugged! :)

It's time to finish the retaining wall I'm building to keep my driveway from collapsing into the creek.

[#] Fri Sep 13 2019 19:21:59 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

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Observation of the day:

I'm the only one in our household without long hair, and yet I'm the one who always ends up unclogging the hair-plugged drains.

It's probably time to buy some drain strainers, and mandate their use for anyone whose hair is longer than 1/8"

[#] Fri Sep 13 2019 22:57:53 EDT from wizard of aahz

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That is so very very true.

[#] Tue Oct 22 2019 16:57:07 EDT from wizard of aahz

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I think this guy went to the IG school of pest control.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=29&v=OIVopwfP6t4

[#] Sat Oct 26 2019 00:23:33 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

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+1 for the explosion, but minus several million for not making sure the dogs were safely outside the blast zone. Looks like they were ok but that could have been a bad day.

By the way, my plan to buy a drain strainer may or may not have been cut short by my sister-in-law who, while managing bathtime for her kids in our tub, couldn't figure out that the pop-up stopper is disengaged by simply tapping it again ... and she somehow managed to rip the entire assembly out of the drain. Even the little crosspiece at the bottom, that the stopper screws into, was ripped out. As anyone who has ever changed a drain knows, you need that crosspiece to unscrew the drain from the pipe underneath it. So I'm just going to just leave it wide open now, because there is literally nowhere for hair to get hung up.

[#] Mon Oct 28 2019 10:19:01 EDT from pandora

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I shouldn't be laughing, but I am.

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