Home Improvement: Questions for electricians: 1930's home, knob and tube wiring, safety questions, options. |
- Questions for electricians: 1930's home, knob and tube wiring, safety questions, options.
- Theoretically, could I zip tie 48inch x 8ft lattice wood panels to one side of my my 3ft tall chain link fence (like 40 feet total).
- This Stuff is Everywhere and I Want it Gone
- Floor absorbed 1 liter of coke zero
- What the hell is happening to my ceiling?
- Asbestos Panic
- Room of death
- UPDATE Garage door won't close.
- Is this the door jamb? I need to replace this ASAP and just need to know what the look for at Home Depot.
- Attempting to replace basement door - can I use the same hinges?
- How long to wait after staining a wooden deck before installing artificial turf?
- I am trying to figure out whether I should DIY install an attic ladder in a home I'm purchasing, or leave the small attic opening and have a pro reroute water heaters to be installed outside with me DIYing a small concrete pad adjacent to the house.
- Any painters here? Accidentally ripped up a lot of paint and drywall paper in my bedroom.
- Crack across balcony floor of new apartment
- How to clean this brick up ?
- Resources to improve my handyman skills?
- HOA not trying to deal with the water outside my condo
- Floors are all significantly angled at the edges of the room. How can I stop furniture from being at an angle?
- Ready to Assemble cabinets - What's your experience with them?
- Help: Patio Covering Ideas!
- Water Softener and Lawn Irrigation
- Baby Proofing: Anchoring on Plaster Walls Fail
- Need Advice for Building Custom Shelf in Kitchen Cabinet
- Installed outside outlet displaying solid green and red light indicators??
- Broken bathtub Jacuzzi air button -- is this a safe workaround?
| Questions for electricians: 1930's home, knob and tube wiring, safety questions, options. Posted: 14 Jun 2020 02:54 PM PDT TL:DR: old knob and tube, no ground, is it safe with a modern electrical load, computers, TV, etc.? My GF's home in Seattle is 1930's era with knob and tube wiring. She bought it in 1990 from a flipper. Most of the rooms have just one outlet for the entire room. They are generally three prong (have a ground prong) but I've found a couple that are only two prong, no ground. I recently added a UPS for our computers and it immediately threw up a fault. After looking at some youtubes and testing with a meter I don't believe any of the outlets are grounded. I believe the flipper put in three prong outlets but there's no ground connected to them. In one room we have three PCs, (desktops, not laptops, our two and a server for backups) with their associated monitors, a printer, router, lamps, etc. All off the one outlet in the room using power strips and extension cords. I'm now concerned about the safety of all this. Are my concerns warranted? Expecting the answer to be yes, short of having the entire house rewired what are my options? If the house (1 level 1,000 sqft living area plus a full basement, lath and plaster walls) does need to be rewired what kind of money are we talking about? I don't know if this is needed to answer the questions but here's a picture of her breaker box: https://imgur.com/a/F9na4bE The one modern line coming off the right side isn't connected to anything. It was run expecting to be used for power to the garage but was never connected. Edit: Thanks all that responded. I've talked to the GF and we're going to bring in an electrician to evaluate the situation and discuss options. Most likely it'll be rewiring selected outlets as a total rewire will most likely be way too much money. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 14 Jun 2020 05:29 PM PDT Why not just properly install a fence, you ask? We rent from an absent landlord and plan on moving before the end of the year. Our left neighbors have become unbearably annoying to the point we can't even use our backyard anymore. One summer of temporary relief from their constant stares would be amazing. Willing to spend a couple hundred bucks on this. Concerns: will the extra 5 feet of height topple over? [link] [comments] |
| This Stuff is Everywhere and I Want it Gone Posted: 14 Jun 2020 01:47 PM PDT Does anyone know the best way to get rid of these things? They come back year after year and my neighbors and I have been trying to fight it back. But now it overgrowns our lawns climbs up and around our fences fence is eating my AC units alive. Pulling these things out by the hand is laboring, so my older neighbors can't do much besides just cut it and spray RoundUp year after year, to no avail. [link] [comments] |
| Floor absorbed 1 liter of coke zero Posted: 14 Jun 2020 03:48 AM PDT |
| What the hell is happening to my ceiling? Posted: 14 Jun 2020 01:29 PM PDT I've been living in this house for almost 5 years now and just noticed weird spots along the edges of the upstairs ceiling. Here's a bunch of pictures. . Is my ceiling collapsing? Or is this something easily fixable? [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 14 Jun 2020 08:36 PM PDT So I'm having a bit of a melt down. I live in a house that was built in the 60s and we're renovating the bathroom. I pulled off the some wood panel and underlying wall tile and began removing the leftover adhesive with a scraper and posted a picture to Instagram to show my progress. About 2 hours in a friend pointed out that it could be asbestos adhesive. I don't know why it didn't occur to me before, but now I'm panicking. I had a dust mask on, but I used a shop vac to clean up while I was working and I read that it could have potential made the scraped (likely asbestos) adhesive even more airborne. I'm having some serious panic here in bed reading all kinds of different opinions online. Assuming his did have asbestos in the mastic adhesive that I scraped off, is this sort of exposure level an imminent threat for me and/or my wife? Should even be in the house right now? I had the door shut to the bathroom while I was working and it's shut now with the window open, but our AC is on. Again, I realize this was a stupid thing to do in hindsight, but any advice would be appreciated. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 14 Jun 2020 12:09 PM PDT The guy who owned my house previously. Used a garage to clean deer. And didn't do a stellar job cleaning up his mess. From the last one. It now smells of absolute death. I've poured bleach on the blood stains. Scrubbed the floor with viniger. And ran an ozone generator in there for hours. It's better but it still smells like rotting animal. What in the world gets rid of the smell of absolute death? I'd like to use this space for a workshop so it needs to have no odor for me to even want to spend time in there. I've poured bleach around the corners of the room where water would stand.. this is also where the blood would end up sitting. I've also poured it down any cracks in the concrete floor. For the same reason. Last night I used a push broom and about a gallon of viniger to scrub the floors. And in between I alternate through letting the place air out and run an ozone generator to try and get anything the cleaners can't brake down. The smell is still pretty pungent. Help. I bought the house when it was still cold. So the smell want so bad. I saw the mess and saw the guy tried to clean it 2 or 3 times getting rid of the visible mess between walkthroughs and inspections. Yes it was definitely not a person that was cleaned here. I saw deer hair on the squeegee. And hunting accessories keep poping up around the house. Even found the old listing with 9 or so dear heads mounted on the wall. [link] [comments] |
| UPDATE Garage door won't close. Posted: 14 Jun 2020 12:10 PM PDT Ten days ago the garage door guy came. After assessing everything and oiling the chain, and changing the force knob, it still wouldn't shut. So, time to buy a new one..... $500 and two remotes. I said I have to talk it over with the wife. Well the oil must have done something because now the motor is quiet and it works fine. Wheeee! Saved a few beans. Thanks to all who helped. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 14 Jun 2020 04:00 PM PDT This piece of wood has finally gave away. I thought it could possibly last a bit longer but lo and behold. It finally gave way. I'm not really skilled at home improvement but this is my first condo and it does need some improvements. Most of the time I watch YouTube videos for fixing things and then give it a go on my own. Just wondering if this is an easy fix if I replace the whole piece of wood? [link] [comments] |
| Attempting to replace basement door - can I use the same hinges? Posted: 14 Jun 2020 05:05 PM PDT I've been fixing up my grandparents' old home from the early 1960's. My current project is replacing the basement door. It has a metal door frame that is encased in the concrete, so I don't think I'm able to remove the frame without doing some extensive work. My plan so far has been to just replace the door itself using the same frame. It measures at 80" x 36" which is pretty standard from my understanding. The main problem is that I cannot replace the hinges. While one side of the hinge goes into the door like normal, the other side that fits into the frame is covered by metal. I was hoping initially that the covering was just paint. But I've chiseled away some of it - nope, fully metal. So I've got no way of taking the hinge loose without tearing through the metal. I'm not even sure how they managed to do this when they installed the door however many decades ago. What are my options here? I'd Ideally like to start anew with the hinges since these are over 50 years old. But how hard would that be realistically? I'll attach an imgur link for reference. NOTE the chiseled away part where the screw should be. [link] [comments] |
| How long to wait after staining a wooden deck before installing artificial turf? Posted: 14 Jun 2020 04:25 PM PDT The stain was applied today. I asked the google and it recommends 24-48 hours before moving the furniture back. Do I need to wait longer for turf? [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 14 Jun 2020 02:21 PM PDT The reason I have to make this choice is although the water heaters are still working they are 10+ years old and not in the best condition. They installed them in the attic during a major remodel in which they replaced the roof. The current attic access is one of those small closet access which is barely big enough for a person let along water heaters. It doesn't need to be done right away but I rather do it now then wait til they break and risk weeks without hot water. I'm trying to figure out the most cost effective long-term solution. I got a quote just to re-route the plumbing outside, $1,200. Another was $2500 to drain old water heaters and re-route and with two new 40gal water heaters. I would also need to install a concrete pad, two 240v outlets there for each, and have coverings (home depot lowes has some cheap $140 galvanized steel coverings for outdoor W/H vs building one to match the house, they will both be a rental eventually so I don't care much about the look). All in cost would probably be between 3-3500k My alternative was installing an attic ladder. The low-boy water heaters im looking at would be between 22.5-24inch wide so I would guess I need a 30inch attic opening ladder which is about $450. This would be a lot cheaper however here is a picture of the attic https://imgur.com/a/vx1n3T4 These are two 20 gallon GE 120V water heaters. Now 20gal is pretty small and the current tenants I talked to complain about the small capacity. If you look at the pic these two water heaters are already right up against the ceiling and don't even have a 220-240v electrical so I would imagine I couldn't install a bigger one if I wanted to. In addition I haven't been able to tell structurally how feasible it would be to put a ladder in terms of placement, plus I would have to clear out a lot of that cellulose insulation. Trying to get some opinions here. I would go with the ladder installation but I feel like the attic is too small for water heaters already and the electrical isn't even 240v so I might as well bite the bullet and do the full re-route. [link] [comments] |
| Any painters here? Accidentally ripped up a lot of paint and drywall paper in my bedroom. Posted: 14 Jun 2020 05:51 PM PDT Working from my bedroom for the past 3 months convinced me to convert my room into a home office. To improve productivity, I thought it would be a good idea to buy a dry erase white board on Amazon. I opted to buying a white board sticker: One that you can just peel off and stick onto your wall, as opposed to ones you had to nail into the wall. I thought it would be easier to remove once I started working in the office again, and that it would cause less damage to the wall. Anyways, when I initially applied it to the wall, it was a bit crooked. When attempting to re-adjust it, I noticed multiple layers of the wall were coming up with it (the paint, a light grey layer, and this cardboard paper like material). I read online that this happens a lot when removing really old and dry wallpaper. In this case, I couldn't wet it since it a dry erase board and basically waterproof. The damage was already done, so I just ripped it off the wall. I just need to know the proper steps to fix this issue. I found out that if the drywall is removed, then this repair gets a lot more complicated. The videos I've seen on this had conflicting advise, so I wanted another opinion before buying more supplies. Picture of the damage is posted below. [link] [comments] |
| Crack across balcony floor of new apartment Posted: 14 Jun 2020 02:27 PM PDT I just moved into my place a couple days ago and have been out on the balcony potting plants. Today I noticed a crack across the concrete that runs all the way from the door to the edge of the balcony, and the crack is centered. I don't know if it's new or I just now noticed it, but I'm wondering if you can tell me if I should be concerned? Or does this look benign? I emailed the building. Hoping it's safe to be out there and have multiple (kinda heavy) plants, but wanted to get the input of others in the meantime. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 14 Jun 2020 07:24 PM PDT Here I have some brick with what seems to be overspray all along the wall. How hard would it be for me to remove this myself ? Also along my. Chummy walls there is a lot of grow on it . Is there a easy way to get rid of this also ? [link] [comments] |
| Resources to improve my handyman skills? Posted: 14 Jun 2020 10:13 AM PDT I recently moved into a new apartment. I love it, but the building is over 100 years old, so it has shifted and absolutely nothing is level. This means all sorts of little things need to be repaired-- doors scrape against their doorframe, cupboard doors won't close properly, etc. I never learned any handyman skills growing up, and now I'm in my 30s and will be screaming profanities because I can't do something as simple as screwing in a screw without it falling 5000 times. I feel totally useless and INCREDIBLY frustrated. When I look up "how to's" I don't understand half of the terms being used, or my specific situation will involve 3 unexpected old building problems that aren't mentioned in the youtube video/article. How do I get a basic knowledge of this kind of stuff? I'm an intelligent person, I have a university degree, but I feel like an absolute idiot trying to do even the simplest home improvement things. Any books or anything that any of you'd recommend? I really want to be able to do these kinds of things myself. [link] [comments] |
| HOA not trying to deal with the water outside my condo Posted: 14 Jun 2020 08:35 PM PDT Location: Michigan Outside my condo is a low elevation area where water is just trapped there and it's making the backyard almost unusable and it's causing some leaks into my basement. I sent them emails but they never really tried to get it fixed. Can I actually threaten legal action? It's just a bluff obviously [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 14 Jun 2020 01:45 PM PDT We just moved into a new rental house. It wasn't noticeable when we were looking at the place (nor would it really have mattered) but the floors, especially at the edges of the room, are angled significantly downwards. For example we have this bookshelf against the wall and it is leaning to the right significantly (though it is flat against the back wall, otherwise we wouldn't have filled it with books). I tried to wedge it up with cardboard, and that helped a bit but as you can see in the photo it is still leaning a lot (the photo was taken with the cardboard wedge in.) I've seen furniture shims at hardware stores but they seem to mostly be like a quarter inch in height. I'd say the drop from one end of the floor to where the other end of the bookshelf is is over an inch and a half, and it's more in some other rooms. What would be the best thing to use to securely level furniture? My other fear is the shims slipping out and something falling over, and while I would like to secure tall furniture like this bookshelf to the wall I also don't want the majority of the weight of the filled shelf hanging off a couple screws that are normally intended just to stop it from falling forward, should a shim fail or slip out from underneath. Thanks for any help! [link] [comments] |
| Ready to Assemble cabinets - What's your experience with them? Posted: 14 Jun 2020 05:21 PM PDT I'm looking to do some major remodeling and one of the projects will be new cabinets. I'm not afraid of some assembly as I'm pretty handy. My location is Nebraska, USA. My questions are:
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| Posted: 14 Jun 2020 04:20 PM PDT Hi all, My condo came with a metal frame around the back patio and a tarp that covered it. The tarp broke after a year, and I replaced it with another tarp...which after a week started to show signs of tearing. https://imgur.com/gallery/77Mg3g3 Using tarps is clearly not a long term solution, so do you have any budget friendly ideas? I would like the patio to be covered when it rains, so my dog can poop where it's dry LOL. Thanks! [link] [comments] |
| Water Softener and Lawn Irrigation Posted: 14 Jun 2020 02:42 PM PDT I am planning to put in a water softener system and the contractor told me that I need to run a separate water line from the front to the back just for the lawn. Anyone has experience with water softener and their lawn? Is this necessary or can I just use the same house water line for the lawn when the water softener is in? Thanks in advance! [link] [comments] |
| Baby Proofing: Anchoring on Plaster Walls Fail Posted: 14 Jun 2020 06:08 AM PDT I'm trying to baby-proof my bookshelf by anchoring it to the wall. My understanding is that I just need to use some strong magnets to find the nails that connect the lath to the stud. So I did exactly that. When I drilled out the pilot holes (small than the diameter of the threads of the screw), at no point did it feel like the bit "grabbed" any wood. All plaster. I screwed a screw in just to see what would happen and same story - no "grabbing" of any sort. So I went down to Lowes and grabbed some longer, 2" screws, thinking that I just didn't go deep enough. However, I got exactly the same result. In the following photo, you can see two magnets stuck to the wall; one above and below the drill points for my anchor. I think it's pretty clear that I should be on the stud. What am I doing wrong here? [link] [comments] |
| Need Advice for Building Custom Shelf in Kitchen Cabinet Posted: 14 Jun 2020 01:47 PM PDT Hi all, Looking for some advice on what the best/easiest way you think would be to put a middle shelf inside of my kitchen cabinet. IT is above the refrigerator so no studs or or wall around it. Any advice or constructive feedback would be much appreciated. THANKS! [link] [comments] |
| Installed outside outlet displaying solid green and red light indicators?? Posted: 14 Jun 2020 01:42 PM PDT I just had it installed and power turned to it It says replace gfci if red light is blinking. Can't find anything online about a solid red and green light Is something wrong with it? Internet was no help [link] [comments] |
| Broken bathtub Jacuzzi air button -- is this a safe workaround? Posted: 14 Jun 2020 07:34 PM PDT Hi there, Just moved into a new apartment with a bathtub Jacuzzi. The jets work fine but the pump doesn't shut off using the air button. You have to use the circuit breaker. Landlord couldn't care less about it, just said not to use it. Did my research and doesn't seem that hard to replace the air button but is far from the access panel and it wouldn't be fun digging out the button and hose. While I was looking, I saw that the pump's GFCI outlet is much more accessible -- would it be safe to plug the pump (labeled 110V/7A) into a smart outlet such as this plugged into the GFCI and turn the pump on/off via wifi? Would this interfere with the circuit interrupter? Thank you. [link] [comments] |
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