Home Projects

[bracconiere]

Truly, really, only meet GFCI near possible water (think bathroom).

i try not to! i had a plug in my bathroom, it stopped working, tore the damn thing out tested it nothing, replaced it....just to find out it's wired to a GFCI breaker on the other side of the house! (i'm new to GFCI stuff!) lol

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

i try not to! i had a plug in my bathroom, it stopped working, tore the damn thing out tested it nothing, replaced it....just to find out it's wired to a GFCI breaker on the other side of the house! (i'm new to GFCI stuff!) lol

Apparently, the bathroom is on the same circuit. No reason for 2 GFCI on the same circuit.

2 years ago a receptacle (outlet) in my garage stopped working. OK, put it on my "To Do" list. Weeks later I'm working in the backyard. I plug in the leaf sucker (this is a great invention. Sucks up leaves and chops them into small pieces. Great for mulching the garden. mulching hops, etc). The leaf sucker stops running. Hmm... I've only had this item for, maybe, 15 years, but I guess it's dead?

I plug the leaf sucker into a different receptacle and it works fine. Interesting...

I finally get to working on the dead garage receptacle. However, something tells me to work on/examine/ analyze the receptacle at the back of the house first. I pull off the cover and it's filled, absolutely filled with ants! I spray the h*ll out of the receptacle with bug spray. I wait a while and remove the receptacle. It's rusted and filled with dead ants. Some of the wires going to the receptacle are rusted. I snip off of the rusted wire and wire up a new receptacle. I go over board caulking where the receptacle box meets the siding of the house. Test the receptacle. Tests fine. Now, onto the garage receptacle. Something tells me to check the receptacle. It is now working fine. What sort of ret*rd wires a circuit from the back of the house to the garage? Apparently, this ret*rd wired my house.

 

[bracconiere]

Apparently, the bathroom is on the same circuit. No reason for 2 GFCI on the same circuit.

yeah well, i try not to think about it...and now have lurking fear of what the little buttons on the GFCI plug actually do....apparently the plug in the kitchen also control the plug outside.....who knows what more creative ways they're wired...

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

See my edited post above...

 

[bracconiere]

See my edited post above...

ants on a wire, instead of a log huh? lol

 

[Beernik]

I will.

I know the circuit in my panel. It should be easy access for the wire on the north side of my house. (It’s a hunched walk on the north side. It’s a crawl on the south side.)

I can shine a light down the hole in the wall box to help me locate it and I have a non-contact detector to verify I’ve found the right wire.

I’m hoping I can tie the new 12 gauge wire to the relay when I find it and pull the new wire that way.

My main concern is if I’ll have to dig around in the floor insulation to find the low voltage relay.

@Beernik Be careful! 240V will kill you.

 

[Beernik]

I got under the house today and it is definitely into the ‘crawl’ area of my crawl space. Which for a guy my size with claustrophobic panic attacks, it isn’t a great idea for me to get back there.

So I’ll be calling the handyman again to do this thermostat project for me.

I also discovered a bathroom has leaking plumbing. So I’ll be calling a plumber first. I can’t tell if it’s a leaky seal on the toilet or a crack in the drain line.

 

[marc1]

Lots of stuff going on. Redoing part of the bathroom, and the contractor says I should check out the vent fan (they were doing window removal/replacement). When the house was built, the workers ran the vent duct through the ceiling to the wall and left it there, venting into the ceiling (no attic in that part of the house) for 30ish years.** I bought a new fan, new duct, a soffit vent, etc. and ran it out properly to the soffit. The contractors were able to easily fix the drywall in the ceiling where I had to tear everything out to fix it because they were drywalling/mudding already.

Also was able to run an electric line over to the shower so that there's a light over it now. The new LED "can" lights are amazing! Tiny and bright and don't heat up too much.

**Maybe this is why there's been ice damming issues there? While I had the soffit torn apart, I opened it up more to get more airflow under the roof, so that should help, too.

 

[Beernik]

Best news possible from the plumber:

the toilet is leaking around the top of the pipe connection. So hopefully, a new flange connector & wax seal will fix it.

 

[Beernik]

Lots of stuff going on. Redoing part of the bathroom, and the contractor says I should check out the vent fan (they were doing window removal/replacement). When the house was built, the workers ran the vent duct through the ceiling to the wall and left it there, venting into the ceiling (no attic in that part of the house) for 30ish years.** I bought a new fan, new duct, a soffit vent, etc. and ran it out properly to the soffit. The contractors were able to easily fix the drywall in the ceiling where I had to tear everything out to fix it because they were drywalling/mudding already.

My wife had her tattoo shop / art studio in a building that had something similar. They vented the bathroom fan into the attic space. The result was any time someone took a dump & turned on the fan, half the upper floor could smell it coming back through the ceiling tile.

 

[Beernik]

By the way, smart thermostats are awesome. I’ve only got reports in one bedroom. I need a zigbee range extender to pick up the den and then buy 3 more.

That will have to wait a couple more weeks.

 

[Beernik]

I’m already at least $400 into it. I might drop a couple grand and fix several plumbing issues at once: a too flat pipe (I already knew about), a couple incorrect Ts (not angled connections), & maybe a missing vent.

UPDATE: I can’t fix all the problems today inside my budget, but I can fix half of the problems. The other half will wait for my spring bonus.