Noticed the boards are a bit slow to respond lately.

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Molasses might be faster, that or snails..

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Savoir-Faire is everywhere!
The T1 Trust, T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, America's First HST

House I am in now is rented. Last house I owned. To run the 12 quads I had to upgrade to 200 amp service and installed 3 additional 100 amp service sub panels. One for the pool and it's heat pump. One in the garage to run my wood shop. And one in my office for the computers. I can still do my own electrical.

Upgraded here to 200 amp service many years ago.
Ran a 50a 240v subfeed box to the crunching den to properly power all of the crunchers, as the house wiring was not quite up to the task.
And luckily, I am an electrician, so I was able to do the work myself as well.
Just cost me the materials and my time. Otherwise it would have cost a tidy little sum.

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

Time for a post...post.

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The Kite Fliers

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Kite fliers: An imaginary club of solo members, those who don't yet
belong to a formal team so "fly their own kites" - as the saying goes.

Good morning win.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

Middle of the night post...

Back at the top, and WINNING!!!!! :-)

1:52 AM - PDT

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TimeLord04
Have TARDIS, will travel...
Come along K-9!
Join Calm Chaos

I must be winning.

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I must be winning.

I think you were!

Winning at work.

Only 4 hours til another 2 weeks vacation.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

I must be winning.

I think you were!

Spidey says, not anymore.

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Savoir-Faire is everywhere!
The T1 Trust, T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, America's First HST

House I am in now is rented. Last house I owned. To run the 12 quads I had to upgrade to 200 amp service and installed 3 additional 100 amp service sub panels. One for the pool and it's heat pump. One in the garage to run my wood shop. And one in my office for the computers. I can still do my own electrical.

In the UK any electrical work has to be carried out by a qualified electrician who gives a certificate of conformance for the installation. When you buy and sell a house any extra work as additions to the original property is fairly obvious and if carried out by yourself has to be inspected and checked by a qualified electrician and certificate obtained.

I remember the story some years ago of a guy I knew that was interested in buying a house. The solicitor found the rear extension hadn't had planning approval, and the surveyor discovered that the lighting and sockets in it weren't properly earthed. Apparently the seller had done all the work himself on a shoestring budget. The sale fell though.

I'm currently selling my late dad's place and we've also had to get an energy survey & certificate costing £100 because it is a 1960's place and never had to have one before.

These days over here any house you buy has by law to be safe to live in and ideally up to modern energy standards. Suffice it to say that if you haven't got double glazing, central heating, a modern condensing boiler, + energy and safety certificates you won't be selling. Or if you do the price you get will reflect the cost of that updating work.

Dunno what it's like in other countries.

I used to watch a home renovation show on TV. Holmes on Homes. He would go behind dodgy contractors F'ups and get the job done right. Anyways he was called in to fix a kitchen remodel. It was full of electrical no-no's. He had to gut the kitchen just to know it was going to be electrically safe. The biggest oops I remember was when they were removing the floor to the joists and found a energized romex line with bare ends. It was a electrocution waiting to happen if the floor was to be flooded. Mike Holmes electrical contractor was hot after finding it. He stated he wanted to know who did the shody work and get his licence revoked. Then have him kicked to the curb.

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House I am in now is rented. Last house I owned. To run the 12 quads I had to upgrade to 200 amp service and installed 3 additional 100 amp service sub panels. One for the pool and it's heat pump. One in the garage to run my wood shop. And one in my office for the computers. I can still do my own electrical.

In the UK any electrical work has to be carried out by a qualified electrician who gives a certificate of conformance for the installation. When you buy and sell a house any extra work as additions to the original property is fairly obvious and if carried out by yourself has to be inspected and checked by a qualified electrician and certificate obtained.

I remember the story some years ago of a guy I knew that was interested in buying a house. The solicitor found the rear extension hadn't had planning approval, and the surveyor discovered that the lighting and sockets in it weren't properly earthed. Apparently the seller had done all the work himself on a shoestring budget. The sale fell though.

I'm currently selling my late dad's place and we've also had to get an energy survey & certificate costing £100 because it is a 1960's place and never had to have one before.

These days over here any house you buy has by law to be safe to live in and ideally up to modern energy standards. Suffice it to say that if you haven't got double glazing, central heating, a modern condensing boiler, + energy and safety certificates you won't be selling. Or if you do the price you get will reflect the cost of that updating work.

Dunno what it's like in other countries.

I used to watch a home renovation show on TV. Holmes on Homes. He would go behind dodgy contractors F'ups and get the job done right. Anyways he was called in to fix a kitchen remodel. It was full of electrical no-no's. He had to gut the kitchen just to know it was going to be electrically safe. The biggest oops I remember was when they were removing the floor to the joists and found a energized romex line with bare ends. It was a electrocution waiting to happen if the floor was to be flooded. Mike Holmes electrical contractor was hot after finding it. He stated he wanted to know who did the shody work and get his licence revoked. Then have him kicked to the curb.

I have a general contractor's license. I have developed and built over 2,000 homes. I pulled permits for my work and it was inspected. Power company would not connect the larger box unless it was permitted and inspected. Here a homeowner can do his/her own work but to pull a permit you need to submit plans, including details on planned load, wire gauge, thermal protection, insulation, type of conduit and even brand of breakers.
My motivation was the quality of the existing power lines. While up to code, the contractor who built the house cut more corners than I felt comfortable with.

Weekend winning!

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Member of the People Encouraging Niceness In Society club.

After an errand of mercy, helping two friends, I'm back..
[

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Savoir-Faire is everywhere!
The T1 Trust, T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, America's First HST

Friday morning win.

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Donald
Infernal Optimist / Submariner, retired

I used to watch a home renovation show on TV. Holmes on Homes. He would go behind dodgy contractors F'ups and get the job done right. Anyways he was called in to fix a kitchen remodel. It was full of electrical no-no's. He had to gut the kitchen just to know it was going to be electrically safe. The biggest oops I remember was when they were removing the floor to the joists and found a energized romex line with bare ends. It was a electrocution waiting to happen if the floor was to be flooded. Mike Holmes electrical contractor was hot after finding it. He stated he wanted to know who did the shody work and get his licence revoked. Then have him kicked to the curb.

Holmes on Homes, and now Mike Makes it Right, is produced in Canada. One of my favorites was the one where a lady had been renting out a house, and the tenants were using it to grow marijuana. They had made big holes in the walls, run ventilation ducts all over (blowing the smell of the weed up the fireplace chimney so the neighbors wouldn't notice), electric lines all over for lighting, and had bored a big hole in the basement wall to tap into the hydro (Canadian for electric utility) before the meter. They told the owner it was a good thing the service had been in the tenant's name; if it had been in her name, she would have had to pay the $40-50,000 fine.

Then there was the one where the lady's balcony collapsed under her and a friend or two. The local media got all over her about it, accusingly saying that she wasn't answering their phone calls to her home. Of course she wasn't answering her home phone: she was in the hospital! And it wasn't like she had done the work herself, she'd been ripped off by a shady contractor.

He made a couple of forays into the US, one to New Orleans after Katrina. His son and daughter work on the crew, and she couldn't handle the heat and had to go home.

Another Canadian show is Income Property with Scott McGillivray. It used to be a half hour where he would go in and fix up an apartment so it would be legal to rent out, but now it's an hour with the first half spent showing the people three properties they can buy and presenting them with options for fixing up each of them, with all the costs and potential rental income. Usually, after the purchase is made and they start tearing into it, they find some hidden problem that blows the budget. More than once, he has found where a previous owner or electrician has installed small amounts of modern wiring to fool the inspector, but just out of sight it's tied into the old knob and tube.

There was also a show with a guy named Brian Baumler(sp?). He started off as just another half hour fix it show (once, he was surprised to find out that the client was his assistant's girlfriend's mother), but then they made a season-long series out of him and his wife tearing down their own house and building a new one. A few years later, they built a huge cabin on an island, where all the construction materials had to be brought in by boat. This included the tools, even the skid-steer tractors. The first thing they had to do was build a dock so they could unload everything else.

Probably the best-looking show hosts on DIY Network are Nicole Curtis of Rehab Addict, who buys old houses in either Detroit or Minneapolis cheap and, rather than just doing a quick flip, restores as much as she can of their original appearance; and Allison something of Kitchen Crashers, who usually works in Chicago.

Ping!

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Nicole Curtis is a fox.
And she does some very fine restoration work as well.
Lori has that on the telly rather often when I am there.

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

Nicole Curtis is a fox.
And she does some very fine restoration work as well.
Lori has that on the telly rather often when I am there.

That She is and Her show rocks, I love it that older houses get fixed up, rather than torn down.

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Savoir-Faire is everywhere!
The T1 Trust, T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, America's First HST

Why are we looking for Godot? If that bum wants to talk to us, he knows where we are.

Humph Ping!

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Nicole Curtis is a fox.
And she does some very fine restoration work as well.
Lori has that on the telly rather often when I am there.

That She is and Her show rocks, I love it that older houses get fixed up, rather than torn down.

Yeah, and I like the way she recycles things....
She can take a look at some piece of junk and figure out how to make it fresh and new again in a different setting. She is very creative.
I have seen a couple of her shows where the property in question seemed like the best solution would be to bulldoze it and start over.
But she sees something worth saving, goes to work, puts in the time and effort, and voila!

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."