As mentioned elsewhere, we recently bought a single story brick house
in Illinois, USA.  The most pressing issues are structural:-

  * A post in the crawlspace supports the main beam of the floor, but
    that post lacks a proper footing.

  * A piece of concrete footpath has sunk, tilting towards the house.

  * The roof requires a little reflashing work.

Then there are a few electrical issues:-

  * Every "grounded" outlet in the house, isn't.

  * Some important wires that should be in conduit, aren't.  They also
    happen to be just inches away from dubious-looking water pipes.

  * There is no 240V outlet for an electric clothes dryer.

Of course there's plumbing too:-

  * The brickwork around the well needs re-laying and some way must be
    found of locking or bolting the cover in place.

  * Did I mention that we have a well?  There has been some discussion
    about putting the house onto city water.  It's not clear yet
    whether there would be any cost or quality benefit.  It would be a
    big project.

  * The water heater is in the attached garage.  It needs to be raised
    by about 18" and to have its flue fixed.

Outdoor projects will mostly be discussed in the Gardening conf:-

  * A Mulberry (I'm told) tree has been planted too close to the house
    and is busy dropping leaves and blocking guttering.

  * Three HUGE connifers eliminate light from most of the back yard
    and take up quite a bit of space.  I'm thinking of having them
    professionally murdered.

This item is for the discussion and of the above projects and other
challenges that lurk undiscovered.

86 responses total.

Today I had to go out and buy incandescent bulbs for use with a
ceiling fan.  The magnetic field from its motor interacted badly with
the ballast built into compact-flourescent bulbs, causing an ominous
and obtrusive buzzing noise.

I finally got around to hooking up the ice maker on our fridge/freezer
only to discover that what looked like at first glance like a
convenient valve and connection point, turned out to be a vampire tap
with no obvious way of shutting off the water supply.  If I try to
disconnect the old, mangled semi-rigid fridge line, water squirts out
into the cupboard.  :-(

Mulberry trees plant themselves and grow fast.  Unless you really like
mulberries, it should probably get murdered too.  Have you considered a
clothesline instead of an electric dryer?  A sunporch dries clothing nicely
in the winter.  Have fun with the wiring and plumbing.  I think there is some
way to add grounding to an outlet if you have an appliance that really needs
it - I can ask if you want.

I would probably prefer my clothes dried on a washing line outdoors
than in a dryer.  I will suggest it, but ultimately that decision
rests with Mrs. Ball.

Somewhere I read that the next best thing to a grounded outlet is a
ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI), which may the American term
for a residual current circuit breaker.

Is something preventing you personally from putting up a clothesline and
hanging wet laundry on it?

What do you need to plug into a grounded outlet?

Lack of time and possibly the look on my wife's face.

Anything with a metal chassis and a three-pin plug should ordinarily
go into a grounded outlet.

I have GFCI outlets next to the bathroom sink, the kitchen sink, and on
all outlets accessible from the outside of the house.  Any outlet that
I'm likely to be standing on a damp or wet surface when I plug in the
appliance.  

Jim says to tie the ground to low.  You can use a 3 to 2 pin adaptor with a
ground on it that screws to the 'box' behind the outlet.  Ground is neutral.
The third wire does not carry current.  Maybe you should phone for details
because I cannot follow this enough to communicate it and it is late.  You
don't need to rewire the house, you can use one of the existing wires as the
ground (I think).

   "When there are separate wires for neutral and ground it is much
    less likely that a problem in electrical wiring causes a dangerous
    situation which will cause electrical shock or fire."
http://www.epanorama.net/documents/groundloop/neutral_ground_separate.htm
l

One side of the power to the house, the neutral wire, is grounded at or 
near the service panel (or should be). The separate ground wire, when 
present, is also grounded that way. Therefore either can be used as a 
"neutral". What is different is that the neutral wire is normally the one 
that carries the current. If, however, some current in a device leaks to 
the ground, because of bad insulation or otherwise, the GFI will detect 
that, and open the circuit.

Jim is right - the neutral wire can be used as the ground - but it is not 
recommended (and violates code). The purpose of the ground wire is to 
ground metal parts of appliances so that one cannot be shocked if a fault 
occurs in the device. If just the neutral wire were depended upon as the 
ground, one could get a shock as there will be a voltage drop in the 
neutral wire when it is carrying current.

Speaking of code violations.

Before you do any remodeling on the property, be sure you know what BOCA
codes your city/town/township requires you to follow, and what
inspections they will need to make.  You may also need a demolition or
building permit for various changes.  

Many of the things you're talking about are regulated by the local
government, and following some of the suggestions in this thread can get
you fines and penalties, along with much more intense scrutiny for every
inspection you ever go through.  

There are a few communities that ban clotheslines.

The very last time I used a clothesline I was living in rural 
Pennsylvania.  I had waited for a dry sunny day to wash a slew of 
blankets.  I draped them along the line to dry and felt so productive in 
an old world way when along came the neighbor's dog who proceeded to mark 
his territory along every single hem.

Yeah, it's funny now. ;-)

Are there still communities that allow dogs to roam around loose?
My warm-weather clothesline is under a roof in back of the apartment, and the
winter clotheline is heated by the furnace (which runs nearly 100% of the time
because the upstairs neighbor took off her storm windows and leaves a window
open and likes to go barefoot all winter).  Things dry in as little as 2 hours
in hot weather or mid-winter.

Re #10: I have thought about that.  One concern I have is that the
  moment an inspector looks at the wiring here (and possibly also the
  plumbing, paving etc.) he or she is likely to demand that it all be
  ripped out and re-done.  It's a safe bet that the previous owner of
  the house never got things inspected, or he would not have been able
  to cause these problems in the first place!  I suppose I'll wander
  over to the village hall to see what my options are.

This evening: two blocked toilets (plunged), one broken bathtub drain
mechanism (not sure whether to attempt repair or call in a plumber)
and a sudden influx of houseflies (swatted, pesticide "fogger" in
reserve as an all-else-fails last resort).

The houseflies may have hatched in the warm weather.  Try flypaper.

If the tub drains OK - get a rubber stopper for it to take a tub bath. 
Hardware stores carry them.

Re #16: flypaper was my first thought too, but I couldn't find any in
  the shop that I went to.  Thankfully the majority of them were dealt
  with courtessy of a simple flyswatter.  Looking at the box, the
  insecticide "fogger" things kill anything within a four mile radius:
  flies, bugs, pets, children, adults, oxen, rhinoceri, mammoths and
  so on.

Re #17: It doesn't.  I could buy a new drain assembly, but I don't
  have the tools, skills or inclination to fit it.  I'm going to make
  a plumber quite rich.

Our tub drain malfunctions in the same way - i.e., the drain stop no longer
is held up properly. We have managed to make it stay up by jamming a piece
of wire into the mechanism (well, actually, a safety pin - it was handy). 
We don't want to fiddle with it to take tub baths, so only take showers.

Do you have access to under the tub where it drains?

We don't.

Sometimes there is a removable panel in the adjoining room.  You could try
putting in some washing soda for a while to dissolve any hair buildup, or even
baking soda.  

The problem is holding it up. It drops (closes) by itself. Besides, the
mechanism is entirely inside the overflow piping. 

There is an access panel in a closet in an adjoining room.  It's not a
question of disolving a blockage, but as rcurl suggests replacing a
mechanism that is sealed inside the kind of pipes that I'm not
equipped or inclined to do battle with.

Today I bought an 8' ladder and an axe, which enabled me to remove
more Mulberry branches that overhung the house roof. I cleared out the
length of guttering under the tree.

More useful than an axe for general pruning, of even some hefty branches, is
a saw. In fact, a foldable saw, such as a Sven saw. See, for example,
http://www.rei.com/search?vcat=REI_SEARCH&query=saws&x=23&y=9

I have a bow saw, which I used on anything too large for the
hatchet to easily handle.

To obtain a building permit for concrete work at the rear of the house
I have to submit a drawing, detailing the position of the slab in
relation to the property line.  Today I bought a drawing board, set
squares, T-square, a 6H pencil and some paper. U.S. paper sizes baffle
me, but for the purposes of this simple diagram I bought a pad of 12"x
9" (305x229mm) drawing paper, which I subsequently found out coincides
with "Architectural A" size.  I plan to tweak the margins so that the
drawing proper lives in a 283x200mm box, which will photocopy 1:1 onto
ISO A4 (297x210) paper and enlarge smoothly to other ISO sizes.

I need to find a builder's long tape measure and a friend to hold the
other end of it.

Why not use a CAD program instead?  We stopped using paper for this a long
time ago.  Microcad for DOS is about $35 shareware and bug-free.

The only computer that I have set up at present is a 300 MHz Apple
iBook.  It's in the kitchen, so I don't have a printer attached.

You don't need precise drawings. Use graph paper and a straight edge: no need
for T-square. (I say this, being experienced in "real" mechanical drawing of
objects for machine shop production - but that's not the kind of drawing you
need.)

You're at the early stages of this.  How about documenting "now" and do
the in-progress shots to share?  

Re #30: The drawing isn't a big problem for me, having survived
  "Technical Drawing" class in (the British equivalent of) high
  school.  I just had to stop and think for a minute about the
  peculiar American paper size.  A drawing board, T-square etc. have
  been on my list of things to buy for a while, the permit drawing
  just provided the extra impetus for me to actually go out and get
  them.  It's not an engineering or architectural drawing and
  although I hope to make it approximately to scale, I don't expect
  anyone to be taking measurements from it.  I would use larger paper
  for that kind of work anyway.

Re #31: I'll see what I can do.  I don't have a tripod or a wide-angle
  lens.

I didn't get to take the "before" photograph or to make the drawing.
While I was mostly out of town the builders obtained a permit and
commenced work.  I think it has rained every day since the concrete
was poured.  Hopefully it had time to skin over before the first rain.

I should start work on the well, or at least start to identify some of
the "3D Pipes screensaver" plumbing.

Are you enclosing the concrete to make a sunporch?

Not this year, although I suppose it's a possibility for the future.

It would have helped to put styrofoam insulation under it to retain any heat.
But you can use rugs on top instead and not have the heat go into the slab.

I have been giving some thought over the last few days to the furnace,
which someone decided should live in the crawlspace.  I can't help
wondering how much money I will spend each year heating the ground
under the house.  I should seal and perhaps insulate the ducting, but
I honestly doubt that I will fit into the crawlspace.  :-(

I once installed a horizontal gas furnace in a crawlspace. I didn't think 
it wasted any significant energy "heating the ground". It wasn't a 
high-efficiency furnace so some heat was wasted, but if it is a 
high-efficiency furnace nothing external gets very hot. 

Well that's some consolation.  I will have to try squeezing myself
into the crawlspace somehow to seel and insulate the ducts, insulate
(and identify) the water pipes, to install new television coax cable
and perhaps some new electrical wiring.  None of these are jobs that
I'm looking forward to.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss