I forgot to include, we'd just had solar installed a few months ago. Calling their tech support had me power cycling the system, and that seems to have solved it. Everything is normal again, although the nice lady has no clue why the system would fail like this so she's running it up the chain. Thank you both anyway.
From the replies it sounds like a few different things can cause it. We had the exact same scenario a few years ago and replacing the very old electric meter (the connections were bad) and fixing the ground took care of it.
The screws that hold the mount for the hydraulic thing on our storm door pulled free once again. So I got a couple 1 1/2" long bolts, drilled out the holes through to the other side of the door, and then bolted the bastards on there. And somehow, it was oddly satisfying. Also, since no contractor has time to give me an estimate or return my call, I finally found a place to get a set of those precast cement steps and got them ordered for our back door. Until now I've had a couple cement blocks there which is funny for redneck jokes, but isn't really cutting it anymore. Plus our parents are getting older and need a hand rail there. So they'll arrive in a few weeks checking one more thing off of the "to-do" list around here. I also painted our entire living room in one day, to the surprise of all of us. I never intended to, it just sort of happened. Then it became like one of those home makeover shows with the boys and I scrambling to get the room put back together to surprise my wife ( we did it ). It helped that I had a 20 and 17 year old to move furniture and other stuff which helped me keep moving from wall to wall. It looks amazing and since I'm on a roll I'll keep going to other rooms.
Have a situation I'm not sure how to handle. A little background, our big dog is on meds that makes her need to pee and she did in the middle of the night on our hardwood floor. Came down in the morning to find a small lake of urine...cleaned it up and figured I'll steam clean the floor when I get a chance this week. I didn't think anything more of it until today when the smoke detector in the basement started chirping and wouldn't reset. It is mounted to the ceiling directly under where she peed. Sure enough, when I pulled it down, about 10ml of urine dripped out. The detectors are wired to the house electrical so I popped the breaker to be safe. I'm not sure if I should call an electrician, or call my homeowners insurance as I have a feeling in addition needing to open up the ceiling to inspect the wiring, the flooring will also need pulled up to fully remediate the urine. I thought about just calling my insurance and see what they say, but I'm concerned that just calling them will get us dinged. We're with USAA if that matters.
I'd be tempted to call in a hardwood floor specialist to pull up that area of the floor, and then just clean the exposed stuff with a proper urine-busting enzyme cleaner. The wiring won't be fucked, it'll just stink... you may have some insulation that might need replacing, etc. But yeah, get it open to the air, spray it all down with a proper urine cleaner, clean and dry it, re-assemble the floor. I tend to think I'd rather pay for it out of pocket, which might not be that much, as opposed to going through insurance... I really can't speak to that because insurance is a fucking black art that I don't pretend to understand.
In case any of you need to replace your submersible well pump, here's how it went. It's actually pretty easy, the exception being pulling the pump out of the well. Our pump is 200' deep, the pump itself isn't light and the pipe will likely be full of water unless the check valve failed. Remove the top... Hopefully you have a retrieval rope. I didn't and didn't have a pitless adapter tool, so I bent the garden hook to break loosed the pitless adapter and pull things up far enough to reach the pipe. Remove the old pump from the pipe, I cut the pipe so I was working with pipe that wasn't already deformed from being on the fitting. Tighten up the new fitting and install the pipe. A heat gun works great to get the pipe soften enough to get on the fitting and mold to the fitting making a good seal. Splice and heat shrink the wires with a kit sold near the pumps. Add a retrieval rope to make it easier for the next time, if there is one, and drop it back in. You just tie it thru the holes I had the screwdriver in above. Make sure the working weight for the rope is substantial enough to lift the pump and pipe. The pitless adapter slides into its mate on the wall of the well, the O-ring should make a goold seal. I tried to buy a new o-ring, just in case, but couldn't find one. I cleaned the old one and lubed it with a small amount of food grade silicone grease. Follow pump installation instructions, mine said open closest valve 1/3 and run until water is clear, then 2/3, and so on. I also changed the switch, provided instructions are adequate for that.
Finally decided to upgrade all of my light/fan switches in the house to be Apple Homekit compatible. I’m about halfway done doing the main light switches, and should finish off the rest tomorrow, including some smart outlets. Sure does make a bunch of things easier.
I had an eventful day yesterday, nearly had an electrical fire. Our shop lost all power. I figured the supply line broke from not being buried deep enough by the previous owner, from cars and boats driving over it. I got some 2awg wire to run a new supply from the breaker box on the house to the breaker box on the shop. I simply replaced in kind, the wire between the breaker boxes. Obviously I have something else going on, because as soon as I turned on the breaker, a ground wire for a satellite TV dish went up in smoke. From the splitter in the crawlspace, all the way to the dish. Funny thing is, that ground wire should be entirely electrically isolated from any shop wiring that could potentially carry current, with the exception of it being run along the framing of the metal carport that touches the metal siding of the shop. See the picture. You can see the coax/ground for the dish running along the far wall of the carport. This oughta be fun to figure out.
we've decided to add on. Our master bedroom will become out kids' playroom, and we are going to build (have built) a roughly 1k sq/ft master suite off the other side of the house. Master bedroom with fireplace, large bathroom and closet, dedicated additional storage closet where the gun safe will go, a sitting/dad napping area, as well as a yet-to-be-designed rock outdoor area with a propane fire pit, mini fridge, that kinda thing. In addition, we are also putting in new interior/exterior doors and windows to the existing house, new trim, as well as re-doing the laundry room. The house was built in the 60s and the windows fucking suck. I'm coming here for ideas and to see where my blind spots are. We have a long list of great people to do the work that needs to be done, with whom we've worked with in the past, so I'm not concerned about the logistics of the build itself. However, since this is the home we're gonna be in forever, we wanna get this right, and the design phase is where it's easiest to make changes. What amenities would you want or avoid? And yes, the shitter is positioned to where I can open the door and watch tv while I'm taking a dump.
My idea is that if you're dropping that kind of cash on a remodel and addition, is that it would probably be a good idea to hire a professional to do, at minimum, a walkthrough of your property and discuss with them your plans to find your blind spots.
As a family we've built multiple schools and more than a few houses, workshops, etc. At a certain point, we are the professionals lol but our mindset is also that it never hurts to get input from different perspectives, and this board certainly has a broad range of experience from a bunch of smart people
Have you designated a space for a medical bed for when you're inevitably in traction for a few months?
I DO NOT fuck with electricity. That shit scares me to death. Sure, I "understand" how it works, and in theory could do a lot of small projects myself. But all it takes is one mistake to be your last mistake. I'm more comfortable doing projects where there's a margin for error, and the worst case scenario is you're in the hospital, not DOA.
I used to be that way - if it wasn’t 12 or 24 volt DC I wasn’t fucking with it - call an electrician. However after meeting the electricians that our contractor used for our kitchen remodel, if functioning drug addicts can figure out how not to die while wiring then I figured I’d be able to as well. Turns out regular house wiring isn’t a big deal - I’m doing wafer lights right now in a few rooms and replacing old two wire with Romex.
In your case I’d think about making at least one of the exterior doorways extra wide to accommodate the EMT’s gurney. I’ve got a couple of LED light fixtures I’m going to use to replace some fluorescent light fixtures in the garage. I thought it would be fairly simple but there are way more wires and connections between the fluorescent fixtures and a variety of junction boxes and switches than makes any sense. It looks like one of the prior owners jury rigged alot of shit together. I may need to bring in a semi professional and a few beers.
So I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was doing an outdoor plumbing project; the project was running about 600 feet of pipe with faucets along the way. This is on the piece of land I bought a few years ago. I didn't WANT to run that much pipe, but the fucking water district wouldn't let me tap into the water lines that were only FIFTY FUCKING FEET AWAY, because the registered address of the property wasn't right. I pleaded with those shitheels at the county office, and they wouldn't budge. So I had to rent a backhoe and a mini excavator (on different dates, and yes, I did it myself) to dig an 800 foot long trench, three feet deep. Then I had to buy 600 feet of 2" Schedule 40 pipe and 100 feet of 1" copper pipe, plus all the fittings. This cost me thousands, when it could have been done for less than $1K. So I added 8 1/2 faucets along the 600 feet (one pipe has two faucets on it, so technically, nine faucets). 3/4" copper pipes coming out of the ground. I did the leak check today, and there was ONE leak: a plastic fitting that cracked near the water meter. No problem. Not one other leak from any of the copper or plastic joints. For the record, this is the first plumbing leak I've ever had in over twenty years. If y'all want more pictures, I can give them, but they will just be pictures of pipe in the ground. And by the way, the water pressure with that 2" main line is FUCKING AMAZING.
After watching a few of those videos showing how much dryer lint DOESN’T get caught in the appliance screen, but instead is shot up the dryer’s rear heat outlet I decided to replace the entire exhaust tube and outdoor outlet on our own home dryer, and while at it put a secondary lint filter on the wall above the dryer. There are also second optional attachable wall elements that will direct the heat back into your house during the winter months instead of outside. This we didn’t need. … and after removing the old dryer exhaust…GOOD FUCKING LORD. Our dryer is against the inner wall of our semi-detached so the exhaust travels up the wall then through the basement’s drop-ceiling above the tiles. I discovered that the people before us didn’t use an aluminum heat exhaust but a cheap plastic one for bathroom fans. It’s entire exterior was caked with lint to a point you could barely get a straw through it. Gross as fuck and a bonifide fire hazard with it being an exhaust for heat. . After instss asking a new proper exhaust hose and screwing the new lint filter into the wall, The very first cycle of using the dryer it filled the secondary filter (OUSIDE the dryer) with completely with lint. Get this done if you haven’t, guys. It’s a very easy DIY (as easy as it gets) you can do it for $100 in parts yourself and not pay a thieving HVAC dude $750 for the same job.