We had the panel upgrade done at our previous house, along with a transfer switch and 30 amp outlet installed for our trailer, and I want to say that was like $3000. This was probably 10 or 12 years ago, so I wouldn’t expect to get that price now, but over double seems pretty hefty.
Finally got my new dryer vent installed!
Back story: The old vent was broken and letting air into the house. We bought a new vent several years ago, and painted it to better match the siding, and then it sat in the garage. That is, until last week, when we had a nice day, and I had time and inspiration to finally do it. It took like 20 minutes to install. Not sure why I kept putting it off.
The laundry room definitely doesn’t feel as cold as it used to! Success!
Those are the frustrating issues.
When we first moved to this house (different than the one I mentioned elsewhere in the comments), I had a breaker that would seemingly randomly trip, knocking out power for some lights in the basement and a pond in the back yard. A year or two later we removed the drop ceiling in the basement and discovered a wire that was not properly secured into a metal box…it had moved enough over time that it had worn through the insulation and the hot wire was occasionally touching the metal box, causing the trip. Sigh. Hopefully it’s not a situation like that!
Ever figure out what this was?
I always encourage people to do an audit of what is on every breaker when they get a new home (and make notes). It takes a little while, but when something like this happens, you know exactly where to look. It’s harder to diagnose if you don’t know what breaker the fixture is on.
Agree on the GFCI advice. I had that happen - the GFCI outside tripped and took out half of the lights in my kitchen. Whoever wired them put them electrically downstream of the GFCI. Took me days to figure out what was going on, because it didn’t occur to me that the outside GFCI would be protecting my kitchen lights. And I wasn’t trying to use the outside outlet for anything, so I didn’t notice it was out.
Welcome to the Dull Side.
She did a bit on Colbert that was a joint venture between her business and his spoof of her business. Either she’s extremely clueless and didn’t realize his fake store is mocking her real store, or she knows it’s snake oil and is continuing to sell it.
I can’t see what the problem would be, honestly. (I’m not an electrician, though.)
My house is wired that way, or at least the living room is. And that was done by the builders.
Yeah you’re probably right. Which reminds me, he was a bomb technician. And he had all of his fingers. So clearly he understood electricity for that purpose…
For the shed wiring job…
First, switch wiring. Normally when you wire a light switch, you have your 14-2 (or 12-2, or whatever, I’ll use 14-2 but the gauge isn’t really relevant) coming into the box, then another 14-2 wire leaving the box, and the two black (hot) wires are connected to the switch. A sequential setup, if you will: Power, switch, light. A simple diagram.
However, in certain situations, it’s more convenient to run only one 14-2 to the box. For example, you might do this if you have a supply of constant power at the light fixture, but no source of constant power near the light switch. So, you bring the supply 14-2 into the box, and then use a single 14-2 to run to the switch. The black wire is connected to the supply at the light and one terminal of the switch, and then you connect white to the other terminal of the switch, and back to the light in the first box. You are supposed to mark the white on both ends to indicate it is being used as hot rather than neutral. Here’s a diagram of the setup.
I think of it as a giant T - supply power comes in the top left, light is on the top right, and the vertical line is the wire to the switch that carries supply hot and switched hot on the “wrong” wire. It’s useful when there’s no power source near the switch, but there is power at the light fixture it controls.
Note that in the box at the light, you’d have three 14-2 wires coming in (6 conductors plus 3 grounds) - supply, power for the light, and the run for the switch.
Okay. It’s like the previous owner of our house learned this trick…and wanted to use it everywhere.
So, there’s a box in the shed that has:
So, I have 6 sets of wires coming into this box (hot, neutrals, and grounds). Oh and on at least one of them, he switched the neutrals, not the hots, so there are white wires serving as hot (unmarked, naturally) and who knows what else is going on. At the very least it’s a violation of the code for the amount of conductors in that size of box.
The worst part, though: It wasn’t necessary.
It’s insane. I’m going to redo it soon, and I don’t think I’ll need to buy ANY supplies to do that. In fact I bet I’ll have extra wire when I’m done (I may need smaller wire nuts, which I have already).
Thanks. My wife has an iPhone, but I’m an Android person.
What interface do you use? I have two of our Fire TVs connected to home assistant and can sort of control them (play, start, pause) but is there a way to open different apps and select programs?
The FireTV is great - we added it to a circa 2008 LCD TV (of the dumb variety) we have hanging in the bedroom and got rid of the cable box. Now we just stream whatever we plan to watch. Works great!
I will note the person that originally told me about FireTVs now recommends the Roku stick instead. I haven’t tried those, though.
This image, or one very much like it (different hair color), is now posted at least four times in this thread that I saw. Interesting that it keeps doing that.
On average, once a day. I had two today, one in the morning, and one after my evening workout, but I won’t take one tomorrow.
There are occasionally days where I end up taking two. It’s usually because of a long bike ride in the morning and showering, then going out for lunch or errands, then mowing the yard in the afternoon.
Yeah. It’s possible there’s also an element of “strength of exposure” - if we’re infected by someone who just happened by, compared to standing and talking to them for a while, there might be a difference in how long it takes to incubate.
Whatever happened, it’s a bummer. But, like I said before, we don’t have it nearly as bad as so many people did - for us, it’s like a severe cold, treatable with OTC medication.
Also, those services where we can order groceries or food and have them delivered to our car are great (we’re a bit far out for delivery to our house for things like that).
My wife and I are just getting over it. Not too severe for us, fortunately. She missed two days of work last week over it, and I would have missed Friday and Saturday if I hadn’t already been off. (We work from home.)
We’re not sure where we picked it up. 5 days before she started feeling it, we were at a restaurant that seemed like a potential candidate, but most of the comments here seem to be 2-3 days, so maybe it was something else. We weren’t really in close contact with other people during those times - even that restaurant wasn’t that busy. Maybe one of the servers there had it, or maybe it was something else.
I used to be, but I am aware of Adams more recent idiocy.
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I’ve done the ethernet thing in two houses now. The first one was a single floor model, so it was relatively easy to run the wires through the attic to the rooms I wanted.
Our current house is two stories, and I wanted it in my office on the second floor and at a closet along the way for an access point. That was a bit harder!
I might need to run it to my wife’s office at some point. That one might be harder based on where she’ll need it, compared to the stairs.