Home Ownership And You!

VR3

You need to do something like this John, 8 inch thick insulation with a solid seal

polrbehr

Sort of a PSA for people:

So a couple of days ago the lights in my finished basement started flickering a little. OK, no big deal it's probably the dimmer switch they're on. But then I noticed our upright freezer started making odd noises, like the compressor was slowing down and speeding up. Now I start to get concerned, since the freezer is on it's own circuit and definitely not on with the lights. So I open up the cover on the sub-panel that feeds the basement, and check the breakers, but all is well. OK, take the cover off and do a VOM reading on the main lugs, sure enough, one leg was 121.2vac, but the other was 96.6vac. Not good, but my next thought was PSEG was having phase issues? So next I went around the house checking voltage in various places and basically got good readings everywhere. OK, good, now i'm pretty sure the problem is local to the 50A subpanel, and I can save myself a PSEG service call.
Next step is checking the main 200A panel for the house, the breakers seemed tight and no
obvious problems, so I take the cover off and sure enough, the 50A breaker that feeds the sub looks kinda corroded, so I changed it out with a new one. Checked voltage at the sub and got 238.5vac across red/black, all good. Until yesterday, it started all over again, only this time I figured it had to be the tabs on the main bus in the 200A panel, sure enough the first few were coated with oxidation. So I shut everything down, got some emery cloth, and cleaned up the top 8 tabs, and put some anti-oxidant paste on them before reattaching the breakers. So far, so good, though I am keeping a close eye on everything for awhile.

Now I am not suggesting that anyone go poking around in their main electrical panels unless you are absolutely confident in your abilities, but what I will advocate is, next time you have any electrical work that needs to be done, while the electrician is there anyway, have him check the breakers/tabs/grounding/neutral lugs and tighten them all up, and/or have him apply antioxidant to any connections, especially if your panel is in a damp location like near a garage door. It's better than waiting to have a problem at 3AM, or worse, risking damage
because of an under-volt condition.

Jstas

So I had some trees up against the house cut down.

mrbiron

That’ll teach’m to grow near your house. Bet they won’t do that again!

Jstas

This was before:


This was after:



Three trees cut down, a hemlock and two arbor vitae.

They were landscaped shrubs at one point...maybe 40-50 years ago. Captain Halfass moved in around mid-1995 and did no maintenance on them whatsoever. They were probably overgrown when he moved in according to historical aerials but he left them there and they certainly weren't as tall because he had the house resided in like 1997 and the trees would have had to have been severely cut back to do the siding. So we ended up with 60 foot tall shrubs that were so close to the house that when the wind blew, they would pinch and squish the gutters and cause the house to creak and those octagonal windows to pop open by themselves. The largest arbor vitae was hollow and rotten in the center with a MASSIVE colony of ants too.

I also had a massive brush pile from storm damage over the last 3 years that they shredded for me too. This picture has the tractor and yard vacuum in it. That yard vacuum and tractor are about 15 feet long and the brush pile can be seen in the background. That's only a third of the length of it. The pile was about 40-50 feet long, 7 feet high and about 9-10 feet deep and was made up of piles of broken branches and the bucking waste from the 14 trees that I had to take down from either bug damage or storm damage in the past 3 years. It got overwhelming very quick for me and my little 3 inch shredder. I still have 4 more trees I have to drop and cut up, maybe 7 more if the 3 poplars at the back of the property don't fall down themselves.



The brush pile is gone now.



That mulch pile is the result of all the shredding. All 3 trees, the entirety of the brush pile and a small pine tree they had cut down earlier in the day at another customer location are in that mulch pile. That is actually two piles of the same size right next to each other. They are about 8 feet tall and 10 feet wide. Probably 12 cubic yards worth of untreated mulch.

So I have to clean up a "stage" that Captain Halfass "built" on the island that is essentially just sheets of melamine that he staked down on the ground and then rented the island out to people for events. So I have to pull those sheets up and then I'll have bare ground because I have to suck up a TON of pine needles to get the sheets out. So to keep the bare ground from eroding away, I'll spread this mulch there to stabilize it.

I also have to fix a portion of the berm that makes up the south end of the lake. Captain Halfass, again, let lots of things go like fallen trees in the lake. The problem is that one of those trees was blocking the sluice and artificially raising the lake level. Not necessarily a big deal...until it rained a ton. Then there berm would get overwashed at a low point. So now there is a low spot in the levy where tree roots are exposed and I have to walk out to the dam regularly to clear the sluice so it doesn't overwash that section and erode and weaken it more.

So the next fix I'm going to do is to take some good old South Jersey orange clay and marl that I took from the previous house when I leveled out where the sewer line was replaced. I'll mix that with a bunch of the loamy sand that is all over South Jersey as well and add the mulch to it. That will end up making a fill that will harden almost like concrete. I'll fill in the low spot on the levy with that. Then I'll cover it with mulch so it doesn't wash away in the next rain before it had a chance to settle. By spring there should be enough weeds growing in it to stabilize it. I hope.

But having the untreated mulch means no chemicals or poisons leeching into the lake water and causing problems in the water shed ecosystem.

Oh, also, I fixed my trailer I broke. Instead of holding only 800 pounds, it now will handle about 2200 pounds.



It'll make moving mulch and dirt much simpler.

ken brydson

Nice job John. Your Capt Halfass name cracks me up every time

mrbiron

With all the work you’ll be doing in the coming years, have you ever thought of buying a tractor with a bucket, brush hog , backhoe, etc...?

Just trying to save your back and spend your money.

Looks good. Your spring pressure washing adventure is just around the corner. A tractor cannot help with pressure washing...

pitdogg2

ken brydson wrote: »

Nice job John. Your Capt Halfass name cracks me up every time

Yep agreed on both🤣😂

Jstas

mrbiron wrote: »

With all the work you’ll be doing in the coming years, have you ever thought of buying a tractor with a bucket, brush hog , backhoe, etc...?

Just trying to save your back and spend your money.

Looks good. Your spring pressure washing adventure is just around the corner. A tractor cannot help with pressure washing...

I only have a little under 4 acres. It's like 3.88-3.89 acres over two plots within the same property parcel. The parcel pre-dates both towns so it straddles two towns. I get to pay property taxes to two towns. Yay for me.

So one lot is 3.42 or so acres. The other plot is a bit under half an acre and is pretty much stream bed and the dam outwash.

The total property is 1/3rd lake, 1/3rd wooded and 1/3rd groomed yard.

So a bigger tractor is overkill and would be more of a hassle than a help, honestly.

My plan in the next couple months after I'm done paying down debt is to purchase a tow-behind backhoe. That will be far more useful to me than a massive tractor that's going to cost 5 figures.

For now I have two tractors. One is an Ariens and pretty much stays a lawnmower year round and can tow everything I have to tow. The other is the flamed tractor which is an old Craftsman deal and that handles the PTO stuff like the 42 inch snow thrower. But whenever I put a PTO attachment on, I can't use the mower deck. So I have the 2nd tractor so if we get early snow storms in fall or late snow storms in spring, I don't have to bust my butt swapping PTO attachments out for the mower deck.

I have a 3rd tractor I got for free and I'm in the process of beefing it up with a 3"x1.5" tube steel frame so I can put plates at the front and back to mount a winch and tow bars/balls/holes and that tractor will do nothing but be a tow pig to haul stuff like trees that fell in the lake, pull the drag for dredging the lake and towing the heavy stuff around like when the trailer is loaded heavy or the backhoe needs to be drug around.

mrbiron

Nice to see you have a plan in place!

I have an JD X350 and 1025r. I wanted the backhoe for the 1025 but didn’t want to fork out $7k just for the backhoe. the bucket, on the other hand works wonders.

Those towable backhoes still fetch a pretty penny unless you can find one used that isn’t bent to hell.

I always chuckle when I see the craftsman in pictures. I remember when you first posted the paint job and the fact that you still work it’s balls off yet it wakes up for work the next morning.

Keep up the good work and congrats on the 3rd tractor. A man can never have too many toys!

I only have 2acres which means, she would be perfect for your yard.
One day, I’ll put a pillow & blanket in the bucket, and sleep under the stars while whispering sweet nothings to her. One day...

mhardy6647

mrbiron wrote: »

...
One day, I’ll put a pillow & blanket in the bucket, and sleep under the stars while whispering sweet nothings to her. One day...

or, one day, you can throw caution to the wind, and like the Tom Cruise character in Risky Business, just say "what the f#$k!"



I mean, I don't know about you, but I think that Tom Cruise is a superb role model for life choices.

Interestingly, I think if you look at the manual for the front loaders, this photo is there, with another picture of Mr. T under it, pointin' at the camera and sayin'

Don't do this, fool!

Jstas

Yeah, see, the thing is if the yard was wide open and all dirt, I'd certainly get a tractor like that because I'd be farming half of it for sure.

But that thing is too big to get back to the tighter parts of the property and maneuvered around the trees plus it will not get over the dam bridge. The smaller tractors I have will go places that thing can't.

The biggest problem I have with them is the turf tires. They won't tear up the yard but when you want traction, they will slide and slip and spin.

So Tow Pig is going to get V-paddles front and rear like this:



Tow Pig also came sans engine and sans mower deck. Well, it had an engine but a friend had brought Tow Pig and another Troy-Bilt unit over. He wanted Tow Pig's engine in the Troy-Bilt because the Troy-Bilt turn it's Kohler engine into a planter with a nice, south face window. So I spent a Saturday stuffing a B&S engine into a spot designed for a Kohler engine for him. He said he was going to just take Tow Pig to the scrap yard and I asked if I could have it. So I saved Tow Pig from certain death.

So Tow Pig is going to get a B&S 24 HP Vanguard V-twin and probably a new Hydro-Gear 317-0510 transaxle to replace the weaksauce Peerless LTH2000 that is in there now.

The only other thing I want to get is a "snow" blade that I can mount on Tow Pig so I can easily spread dirt, mulch or compost. I'll have to reinforce the blade to handle stuff heavier than dirt but that's nothing some mild steel angle iron and an arc welder can't fix.

Also, we decided that Tow Pig was going to be bodied like Thomas the Tank Engine.

So I have a Thomas the Tank Engine face that is a little narrower than a 30 gallon oil drum.



So I will cover it in plastic wrap and then cut a wooden spacer to fit around it and sit flush with the face. It'll get a sheet of polyester fleece soaked in fiberglas resin laid down with all the nooks and crannies filled in with resin soaked fleece and left to cure solid to make a mold of the face.

Then I'll take the face and wooden mold spacer out, pull the plastic wrap out and coat the inside with acrylic to make a mold. Then I will remake the face with the wider ring and embed a steel mounting ring on the edge so it can be secured to the drum base and make a fiberglas Thomas face to paint and put on the front of the tractor. Then it's just bending some sheet metal up for a tank body and painting to match. Will likely bend up a custom exhaust to send the exhaust gases out the smoke stack. I might also mess with the eyes and turn them into headlights but my brother thinks I should make little lanterns to go on the front and rear towing plates to be the lights 'cause that's what Thomas has.



So I might do that.

mrbiron

Thomas the Tow Pig has a nice wring to it. Unfortunately, I think I saw a guy with that name tattooed on his forehead while scanning the bulletin board at the local USPS. You may have copyright infringement...

Look forward to that Franken tractor build thread!!

mhardy6647

I think a Thomas face on a tractor (or other ag-ish implement, in fact) would be -- as Henry or Gordon might themselves put it -- simply grand.

Tony M

For cleaning the siding...

Get some "30 second" cleaner. Lowe's home Improvement carries it.

It's GREAT on mold and mildew on sidings!!!!!
You can watch it disappear right before your eyes.

Jstas

No, I have a cleaner from Scotts that is biodegradable and not harmful to everything else. Where I live I'm in a watershed area and on the edge of the Pine Barrens. I'm not an environmentalist or anything like that but I do believe in conservation of resources. So anything I do, I do my best to make sure it isn't going to damage the ecosystem around me.

Besides, the pressure washer and a brush attachment will clean it all off just fine without any cleaners.

Tony M

10-4.

verb

Wow @jstas just got caught up on this thread! Nice work and you have tons off energy! Love it!

And since my project has started, I share in you're drive and enthusiasm!

pitdogg2

Okay where's Jimmy....

verb

pitdogg2 wrote: »

Okay where's Jimmy....

Getting me in trouble are ya Ivan? Lol

pitdogg2

Who me???? Surely you jest

mhardy6647

Jstas

So, another installment of "This Old **** House"

This is a legit, 100% Captain Halfass pile of excrement.

So, the house has an extension that was built in the 1970's it seems from historic aerial shots from USGS surveys. That extension has the family room in it and the master suite as well. There's a crawlspace under it in the basement. Dunno why they did a crawl space and not a full basement, would have been easier to plumb and wire it if they went full basement. Whatever. Anyway.

So, the master suite was seriously dated in decor. Not a big deal, just requires a few weekends or maybe a week worth of work from a contractor. The biggest problem was the half-assed kludges done to "fix" stuff in this bathroom. Things like how the trim was barely installed or the fact that there is an ancient, wall mounted, electric heater in the bathroom and Captain Halfass, when he did his "refresh", did not take into account that the bottom left drawer only opens 1/4th of the way of it's travel because it impacts the heater. There's a laundry list of **** like that but the worst, by far, was the half-assing of the tile shower surround.

Now the ceiling in the living room is cedar shiplap. Not really sure why they chose that but I now know why it's there. There's likely extensive water damage to the ceiling that he didn't feel like fixing. So he just tacked shiplap up and forgot about it.

Wanna know how I know?

I was taking a shower one day and Jackie comes running up stairs and yells to me that there's lots of water coming from the ceiling.

**** me.

So I stop my shower, grab my towel and go to the other bathroom to finish getting the soap off me. When I get done I go and look. It's not apparent so I went spelunking in the wall cavity around the tub looking for where the water was coming from with flashlights, mirrors on sticks and inspection cameras. Thankfully, I did not see the plumbing leaking from the drains on the remote inspection camera.

What I did see was that it was dripping down the wall from the tub edge. What the hell? The reason why? Well, the tile grout was "repaired" using that grout in a tube you get for fixing a damaged tile. While that's fine and dandy in most cases, if you don't dig out the old grout before you make your repair, it will not stay, no way, no how. It's merely a matter of time before it fails.

Well, Captain Halfass was dealing with this leak for some time because....he "regrouted" the entire tile surround using this stuff instead of getting a grout saw to clean out the old grout and spending some time doing it right. Didn't help that he tiled and grouted with regular, old, gray sheetrock as a backer and not like Hardie board or cement backer panels. I mean, why do it the right way when good enough isn't good enough but WAY cheaper?

So, the tub was leaking because every time Jackie or I took a shower, chunks of grout would fall off. It never seemed like it was opening up, just exposing old grout that looked solid. So we kept going figuring we would get to it when we redid the bathroom.

Well, there was a craptacular repair on the back wall of the surround where there was once, like, a grab bar and soap dish tiled in or something. Captain Halfass moved it and half-assed filling in the space. He pretty much over filed the space with mastic so there was a 6 tile by 9 tile bump that stuck about 1/16th of an inch proud of the rest of the tile wall. That had the poor grout repair as well. He was also the idiot that originally did the tile in the bathroom, too, because he handed me boxes of extra tile for it when we took possession of the house.

That bump out was where the surround was leaking. It didn't run down the back of the sheetrock, it ran down between the tile and the sheet rock, got trapped behind the caulking at the base of the surround and tub and was spilling over the tile edge, behind the wall and dripping down the outside of the tub.

This had apparently been going on for some time. Wanna know how I know?

This was what I found when I took a putty knife, slid it behind the top row of tiles and they popped off down a line like I pulled a zipper.



Yes, that's black mold and just plain old rot. We wondered why the shower would get so funky so quick. Now I know. Here's the other side and a closeup of the rot around the faucet set. Also, the sheetrock panel around the faucet set was replaced and cut too small for the patch spot so there was a 1/4 inch gap all around it that was merely covered with tile and nothing else. I also had to put blocking in because the only place that repair panel was anchored was on the center stud that was cut about 24 inches up and didn't extend to the floor so that the faucet for the tub could come out. The center stud was attached at the ceiling and the only other thing holding it in place was the sheet rock. No blocking anywhere. So I fixed that framing while the wall was open too.





So that was fun. Next thing I did was get huge, clear, trash bags and opened them up into sheets. Then I saturated the walls in Lysol and taped the sheets up over the walls to kill the mold. Then I took a UV light my brother had, put it on a stool in the tub and left it on for like 24 hours. I don't have a picture of that because it was hurting my eyes to just look at it. I actually taped cardboard over the windows on the bi-fold bathroom door. The mold was gray powder by the end of Day 3 of the plastic sheets.

After I took the plastic off and pitched it, I went and found where the damage stopped up the wall and scored a level line all around, cleared everything below it down to the tub. That left me with this.





I ended up clearing all the way to the ceiling to make my life easier with drywall hanging.

Jstas

So, now that I have full access to that service panel, I decided that this was going to take longer than I thought, on purpose. The reason being is one I don't have pictures of because I didn't think to take them.

The biggest problem with the master bath was it would run out of hot water 10 minutes in to your shower. It's not plumbed into the hot water for the rest of the house 'cause...I don't know why. All I know is that there is a dangling feed line in the wall that isn't connected to anything and another feed line that supplies cold water to the bathroom. The way Captain Halfass had hot water coming in was a 30 gallon electric hot water tank in the walk-in closet.

The problem with that was that he had it hooked up backwards. The in-flow was at the top of the tank and the outflow was at the bottom of the tank. So as long as the tank had the time to recover completely, you'd get hot water. But it took about 45 minutes to an hour to recover which, for a unit with 3 elements, was pretty insane. Additionally, he had no safety valves on it and the overflow/overpressure release system just drain right on to the carpeted floor. At one point it or the previous unit had done so because there's water damage to the subfloor under the carpet. So, in addition to all that, the water heater was new in 2016.

But I decided to replace it with a tankless water heater. I'll get to that fun in a little bit. When the plumber was here and pulled the old unit out, he drained it in the tub first and it stunk to high heaven. The reason? One of the three elements was shot, the coating that goes on the electrode was kinda burned off and because of the hard water we have, there was a corrosion and calcification mass on it that shorted it out. The smell was that burned coating. So, because Captain Halfass **** it all up on the install, a water heater that was new in 2016 was pretty much useless in 2019.

So, tankless deal, went with a Rheem 18kW unit:

https://www.rheem.com/product/professional-classic-tankless-electric-rtex-18-electric-water-heater-with-5-year-limited-warranty-rtex-18

To do this, we needed two, 40 amp breakers and a 90 amp line. The current service panel that you can see the back of in the pictures above...it was unclear what the load rating was on it. It was quite old and while there's nothing wrong with it the standard markings on the jacketing said it should be an 80 amp service. But it was installed before the current markings standards were in place. Research showed me that despite the markings, it was a 90 amp line, but we weren't taking a chance. So we ran a new line and new service panel.



You can actually see the old water heater in the left side of this picture. Anyhoo, we fished a new, 100 amp service line all the way up from the basement, to the attic and across to the new service panel. It got stuck on a wall switch and we kinda messed that up 'cause it ripped the switch box out of the sheetrock, had to fix it. DOH!



But the supply line for the water heater goes up in the attic and down through the wall where the shower is. We did this because we used existing holes.



Here's the full installation with the service panel cover off.



So the thing is, at 18 kW at 240 volts, they have it spread out over 2 elements, each 9000W. So they spec a 40 amp breaker for each element circuit. Total draw is 75 amps. So a 100 amp service line is plenty big for this 'cause it's running at about 75% or so of capacity. Well within operational limits. So when we fire it up for the first time, there's a whole lot of buzzing and groaning that lessens after a minute or two but it's still a loud buzzing. You can walk out of the bedroom, close the door and still hear it. So I shut it down and called my electrician friend to come help me troubleshoot and make sure we got it right with the wiring. We did. But Jackie was nervous about the buzzing. Especially since it got louder as the hot water level was turned up.

So I called the plumber and talked to him and he said he did have some folks complaining about the buzzing but he had it all checked out and found no problems either. Said it's probably just the design.

Well that wasn't good enough for me. I started testing and I noticed that when it was running, the lights in the kitchen that were LED bulbs and on a dimmer switch were flickering badly. They aren't even on the same service panel. So I was wondering why would there be such a level of feedback on the line? Well, two things I figured out.

First off, two 40 amp breakers for a 75 amp load means it's running at about 94% load on the service panel. It's only 37.5 amps per 40 amp breaker but that's still a 90%+ load. The buzzing is because the breakers are on the verge of popping, pretty much constantly. The second issue is, and it took a while to figure this out and I still don't have 100% confirmation on it but the way Rheem is handling the load on the heating elements is via a Silicon Controlled Rectifier (SCR).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_controlled_rectifier

The reason that is causing the flickering is because of the amperage draw and the overload situation on the breakers in the panel. You shouldn't be running a breaker at more than 75% load, 80% at most. But the flickering is cause by how an SCR operates. At anything under a certain load level, say 70%, the SCR will cycle the power on and off rapidly to control the amount of power getting to the heating element. The control unit does this as a way to vary the current in a system that doesn't have a way to vary the current. This lets the element operate at 50% of capacity without having an elaborate system of capacitors, rectifiers and diodes that let the control unit control the temps of the elements through direct current level manipulation. The SCR basically sends full current and then cycles off rapidly and manage the element temperature by managing the cool down periods between the power cycling periods. When you get a load higher than 70% of capacity, the SCR either hits a bypass mode and you get full power to the elements or the SCR just cycles the power on and leaves it on until demand drops below 70% again.

But, because electricity flows, it can "hammer" like water in your water pipes can when an open valve is rapidly shut off. The hammering is when the mass of water moving in the pipe is carrying momentum and hits the wall of the closed valve. It can makes your pipes clunk and bang as the water hits that wall hard. The backwave running into the still moving water collides and causes cavitation in the pipe which vibrates the whole thing. Well the same thing can happen to electricity and when it "hammers", it sends a voltage wave back down the line. This causes a surge in the line elsewhere that can cause something sensitive like an LED to get momentarily brighter. Significantly enough that to your eye it seems like it's flickering off. This isn't apparent in incandescent or florescent bulbs because the surge isn't strong enough for it's short duration to create a noticeable brightness difference. These surges are why we have line conditioners and UPS systems on our stereos or even why there are those magnetic cans on power tool power cords that are called chokes. They either stop, dampen or absorb those surges to protect your sensitive equipment in the rest of the house. Dimmer switches can exacerbate this surge because they are varistors and can get easily overwhelmed by the surging when there is a load on the switch.

Jstas

So first thing I did was verify with Rheem that the internals were rated at 8 gauge wire to handle a 50 amp load. The guy I talked to on the phone told me that they use the same assembly for pool heaters and they are installed with 50 amp breakers so the heater internals would handle it fine. I about lost my **** at that point because I spent weeks chasing this around when all it amounts to is Rheem under-spec'ed the 40 amp breakers. So I changed to 50 amp breakers and now all there is coming from the service panel is a quiet, high current hum that is to be expected. The flickering also lessened. I still haven't figured that out yet and wondering if there is a way to put a choke on a service panel. Nobody seems to know. I did let my plumber guy know what I figured out and why. He was intrigued and a week later he called me up and told me he had a particularly contrarian customer complaining about the buzzing as well and he had an electrician go over with new 50 amp breakers and check the line. He said it made such a huge difference that she thanked him for fixing it. His electrician even commented about how dumb it was to put 40 amp breakers on a 75 amp draw.

So anyway, all that sorted, I finally got back to finishing the bathroom because I wasn't going to button it all up and have to tear it all down again. So the plumber replaced the valve body on the faucet for me too. We also replaced the copper going to the shower head. Then I hung drywall. Of course none of the walls are framed straight 'cause why the hell not? And I mean like, not a couple of fractions off. I mean there is a 4 inch difference in room width from the bathroom door to the opposite end of the room where the window is.









So this all happened when I was not financially prepared for it. It was one of the reason why I had to wait to get the trees cut down from earlier in the thread. This whole mess cost me about $3200 in parts, equipment and labor when I was done.

So once that was done, I got an inexpensive surround kit from Home Depot. I had to tape up the sections, cut my holes for the plumbing and then fit the corner pieces.






Then the panels got glued into place with copious amounts of Loctite Waterproof Construction Adhesive. All seams got caulked except for anywhere that needed to wait for paint.




Then I painted.






The biggest pain in the but was this tile edge. Originially it was an extension of the tile surround but I had to tear all that out and I certainly wasn't putting it back in. But I couldn't leave bare tile hanging out like that. The real problem was how not flat and uneven the wall was there. I had hung the drywall correctly and it was all level. The problem was the very not-square or plumb framing for the wall with the faucet on it. The only way to fix it was to reframe it all but that was way outside of scope and three times the budget that I didn't have to do what I was already doing. So, the replacement edge tiles I got were sitting proud of the edge tiles that were on the other side of the intersecting corner. It looked like hell and there was no way I was going to keep water out without **** it all up and making it look worse. So I took a bench sander with 40 grit paper and an angle grinder with a concrete sanding wheel and proceeded to sand the backs of the tiles down until I got them to the thickness that allowed them to mate well with very uneven wall but still line up with the opposing tile edge. This picture is the finished result after gluing the tiles up and grouting them in with the "grout in a tube".



The reason for the block trim at the bottom is because the tile floor is newer than the tile work on the wall. So the tile extended down to the original floor below the floor tile. God knows what's under the floor tile, probably the original linoleum with underlayment nailed down over it or something. So when I pulled the bad tile down, I was left with a 3/8ths inch gap that I could not fill with tile or regular baseboard trim. So a block of wood painted white it is for now.

I'm still not done, I have to replace the doors on the master bath and closet. They are chintzy bi-folds that are falling apart but the master bath had no ventilation in it and since the only heat is non-functioning baseboard heaters, a hot shower when the weather turned cold turned the bathroom into a rainforest. So bad that there'd be mold growing in the drip streaks if we didn't keep up with cleaning every week. I needed to replace the exhaust fan that was in the ceiling before I could put real doors on. I gotta get more pictures of that but that's another story. It's been replaced already and now I have to fix the hole around it because the new fan wasn't the same size as the 1960's vintage pile of crap that was literally falling out of the ceiling. It also wasn't venting outside, it just pumped humid air into the attic. So I had a ton of work to do to get a new fan in, wired up correctly (imagine that!) and get the fan vent actually venting outside. But that's all done now so I get to hang new, ACTUAL doors on one of my vacation weeks I took off between now and the end of the year.

This is all temporary, though, as we plan to redo the bathroom completely, there's just other, greater costs we need to deal with first. So if I have to do this crap, I'm going to get stuff done like fix plumbing and electrical now so I won't have to factor it into the cost of redoing the bathroom later. I mean, what's the point of opening a wall to fix a problem, see another one staring you in the face and not fixing it so you just have to rip down all your hard work you did later to fix it right the second time? I mean, I know it's a novel idea but...maybe I just expect too much?

pitdogg2

dang seemed to be quite a bit of current behind that wall that water could have met...I'm guessing none was ground fault limited.

mrbiron

This house is shaving years off your life by the minute.

Nice work. Sounds like you have a long way to go.

Jstas

Pfft!

What?

Why would you do that?!?!

C'mon, man!


The only place there's GFCI is the outlet in the bathroom next to the sink. That's sufficient for code. The water heater itself has a GFCI circuit in it so all you have to do is give it power as per the wiring diagram and you're good. Everything else is just standard wiring.

Service lines really aren't that big of a problem, though. Especially since the water is at the other end of the bathtub from where the panel is. As long as it's not leaking like it was, there really shouldn't be an issue.

Jstas

mrbiron wrote: »

This house is shaving years off your life by the minute.

Nice work. Sounds like you have a long way to go.

I don't mind doing this stuff, I just hate doing it when it's not in my plan and/or due to someone else's ineptitude.

Like, there's a spot in the office that has water damage on the ceiling and I know that if I open it up there will be a fresh new hell of Captain Halfassery awaiting me. So I've been slacking on moving forward with it.

motorstereo

Don't despair........it's looking good what you've done so far and a vast improvement over "capt halfass's" craftsmanship. I can certainly relate. In my case of owning a 100+ year old house I look at these projects as a learning experience of ripping out someone else's lousy workmanship and doing it right. Heck when I first moved here 30+ years ago I couldn't sweat a joint, wire an outlet, or anything except the very basics.
There's nothing like the joy of tearing out rooms of horsehair plaster walls to teach a young fellow of what not to do in the building trade. You see some terrible workmanship from the old days when there were no building inspectors or codes. Thankfully now my learning process is complete, tuition has been paid and I'm even starting to remodel some of my less than stellar work from a couple decades ago. Good luck to you.