What home improvement work did you do today?

Thanks!

 

Yep, I've wired a few hospitals/clinics. All hospital grade IG outlets, ground up

 

Ground up: Hole (ground) pointing up, flats for neutral and load facing down. Anything that could fall on the ground line if the wall plug is pulled partially out won’t do anything, it’s liable to slide off.

Ground down: Hole (ground) pointing down, flat neutral and load pointing up parallel to one another. While the penny situation would probably never happen IRL, you can pull a plug out far enough to expose the neutral and load to being shorted by something metal, and that would be bad.

 

That's what he said

 

Thanks for posting the ground up/down pic. Seems a lot safer especially in office and bedrooms. One thing I’ve seen, not sure if it’s still done, is turning the outlet 180 for any outlets that have a wall switch for one of the receptacles, so that it’s easier to identify which wall outlets are normal vs. switched. I’ve seen that in a few houses anyway.

 

I’m back on a project that was on hold for a while. Getting this trim installed and now it’s a winter project. New baseboards and door casing. Setting up for some sanding and a little pre-painting. Window casing already installed, and we changed from 90’s oak veneer trim to this FJ pine. Upping the trim widths a bit as well.

 

You see that more in older houses that didn't have can lights or ceiling fans. You plug a lamp in and switch that. My bedroom is like that.

 

Our house was built a little over 20 years ago. Elec that wired our house used the shunt so one plug on the receptacle is switched, the other is not. They did this in the living/dining rooms, specifically. I think it's the top plug that's switched, either top or bottom, you get the idea, I hope.

I appreciate the flexibility of being able to rearrange the room anyway you want and have a switched outlet, but I'd be lying if I told you there weren't times when I've plugged something into the switched receptacle when I wanted it plugged into always-on one.

Anyway, if any of you guys reading this have NFC what I'm talking about, or you just want to learn potentially new stuff about electricity in general, watch this video. It should auto-jump to 1m38s to get to the meat of it, if not, manually jump it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D4itWGtTVQ#t=1m38s​

 

Our first house was that way in the living room.
“Never again” were the words I used when we were meeting with the electrician on wiring the house we built (that we still live in today). There’s still a few places where the way they ran the circuits leave me a bit perplexed, but none of those GD switched outlets.

 

I swapped a number of outlets in the house to undo it. While I appreciate it in general, there are some outlets which I knew, 100%, we would never in a million years need that functionality. But I left the wire intact and I think I still have several of the outlets I pulled in case I ever needed to restore things. I should probably toss them after 15+ years, but I tend to keep a lot of stuff I should probably toss because I know within a month or two of tossing it, something will come up where I needed that one thing again.

 

Tractor day...

Neighbor came over with the tractor and we hooked everything up.

Tines:





Quick attach. We are looking forward to seeing how this works. He is going to hook up his brush hog tomorrow and see if it is easier for him. I hope it is.

 

My living room has....had one. It's the outlet all my tv/xbox/pc/receiver plug into so I said nope. I opened the switch and just wired the switch leg into the hot. I don't need my shit being turned off and on, especially when there's a ceiling light in here.

 

The week after the garbage man takes the one you toss, you will need it…

 

I'm about 20 miles South but work in Erie. Luckily i was out of town during the storm. We had guys staying on campus to keep everything accessible.

A week after the storm piles at the intersection to campus were over the roof of my car. Piles in the lots are twice as tall as my work van.

Today I spent about 4 hours at my parents house with the blower widening out their 1/8 mile driveway.

 

Yeah this one time my dad was wiring up some gutter heat tape and he reconfigured an existing outlet to run power to the tape. He planned to break off the tabs but forgot to. Took him a while to figure out why the breaker kept tripping. Always better to keep it simple. Thanks for sharing.

 

My favorite sketchy wiring story was a house I bought in south Atlanta in the late 90’s a few blocks away from Perkerson Park. I bought the house for $45,000, lol. Anyway, I put in all new wiring. I’m up in the attic inspecting the nob-and-tube wiring (where the positive and negative wires are routed separately). Easy inspection because there was zero insulation batting. Found a squirrel skeleton straddling the wires, feet on one wire and jaw biting into the other wire.

 

Looks like I've got a slow leak on one of my hot water tanks.
It's not coming from the element threads, unfortunately.
8 year old Rheem classic series.

 

I went overhead for power and network to my desks. Preferable to on the floor but underneath the floor would be best of all.

 

what I always wonder on all the home remodel shows I watch and the open concept craze, how do people plug anything in if there's no F-ing walls.

 

Just did the same but added the top plate before use.

 

edited.. I see it now. Looks very useful!

 

Floor plugs? Doesn’t work well if you need a lamp or phone charger though and it’s in the middle of the room.

 

Had three cheapo LED bars leftover from when I first started modding, but then upgraded to higher quality ones. For the first bar, bought a 120v to 12v converter, and made a workbench light:
For the other LED bars, I always wanted to run power to the shed on my “back acre” so I could have lights and a security camera, and power for other things, so I installed a solar set-up today. Mostly Renogy stuff bought on Amazon’s Black Friday sale: two 100w panels in parallel, PWM charge controller with Bluetooth add-on unit, battery shunt, 100ah AGM battery, and a 1,000w inverter. Finished it off with some bus bars and fuse blocks all around (some from my teenage car audio days ). Probably more than I need, but allows for other stuff I might want to power, plus where the panels are does have shade for about an hour of the sun’s cycle. I had a lot of fun with this project!

 

Awesome update on that kitchen. It looked like a prison cell before.

 

Continuing to stufffff



Current WIP

 

Labels on the end of each bin, and labels on the side saying where they came from and any extra info I feel is necessary

 

Stained yesterday and installed the hot tub cover today.