What did you do today?

[Ron Van]

So..... I tried to use my new outdoor outlet to hook my riding lawnmower battery up to the trickle charger..... and it doesn't work.
I plugged my receptacle tester in amd it says that it has an open hot..... so, I turned the breaker off and texted the electrician who wired it. Now my freezer is plugged into an extension cord (15amp/120 volt).
He's coming one day this week to look at it

It must have worked when the electrician was there...I wonder what happened?

 

[Ron Van]

Ron, obviously my issue with the drywall on water heater stands were:
1) This was in California
2} This was in a garage
3} Mine were all gas water heaters
4} You know inspectors, they change their minds when someone slips them a few bucks.

Yes, I think it being gas and in a garage had the most to do with it. Also, was this before 2003 when flammable vapor ignition resistant (FVIR) WaterHeaters started being sold? FVIR Water Heaters are exempt from the 18" stand rule.

This is still a mystery to me. Why Terry Love said in 2017 that

New metal stand is now code for water heaters. Wood is no good.​

Here

I can't find that code. There is code for gas appliances proximity to combustible material though. It's found in the International Residential Code section G2408.5. It leaves the clearance up to the manufacture.

As far as California regulations...I never really had a problem with them . . .mostly because I tried to avoid getting the government involved as much as possible. We had Solar panels installed on our Elk Grove House (SAC county) by Solar City (now Tesla). The project manager told me the inspector would fail the job if we weren't compliant with smoke detectors and CO detectors. I went out and bought new Smoke and CO detectors and installed them prior to inspection but the inspector never went in the house to check the detectors and never asked about them.

Before that, I had turned our garage into a music recording studio by building a wall in front of the roll up door. There was 6' from the roll up door to the wall. I used the 6' section to store my tools in. There was a door that went into the studio section which had carpeting and sound proofing. The water heater (that was on a wood stand but had no pan) leaked and got the carpet wet. I had a plumbing company replace our water heater and they pulled a permit. The plumber told me that, as a home owner, I could have done the install without a permit...Not sure about the legality of this but I for-sure wouldn't have got a permit. Anyway, the inspector came out and the only thing he said to me was, " Did you get a permit to build that wall?" I told him it wasn't a wall. It is a partition that can easily be removed. The inspector said Okay and left.

 

[Snoonyb]

Some folks are astute as to the permeability of changes, were it I, as a subcontract inspector, responsible to the engineering firm I was subcontracted from, I would have had a different take, because of liability issues, I wouldn't necessarily have preceived, were I a city employee.

 

[shan2themax]

It must have worked when the electrician was there...I wonder what happened?

Idk, unless he didn't check it. His brother was helping him (apprentice) so maybe it got over looked or something. Idk, hopefully it's an easy fix. Just glad the house hasn't burnt down or anything

 

[zannej]

I think it's likely the electrician forgot to check it.

I'm over here sweating and hoping that my friend will reply to messages to see if we can troubleshoot the AC. My brother pulled something in his leg so he's not going to help with anything.

Took my cat to the vet this morning and the lump had gotten smaller. Vet shaved the area, found bite marks and punctures, drained some of the pus with a syringe, gave her some antibiotics, and sent her home. Mom called while I was getting the printout on the visit, said she wanted McDonalds breakfast. She called when I was driving home to find out how soon we would be home, but she called my brother's phone instead (he had to help me carry the cat because I have arthritis in my wrist/hand and have trouble with the carrier).

I'm about to go see if the outside unit comes on at all when I turn the AC back on. Wish I had someone inside to turn it on while I'm outside, but bro isn't getting up and Mom can't follow simple instructions.

 

[zannej]

Outside unit didn't come on at first, but after shutting the breaker off and turning it back on, waiting for thermostat to restart, waiting for the thermostat to clear the "waiting for equipment" message, I heard the cooling sounds from the unit and went outside to confirm the outside unit was running, but the blower fan was still shutting off after a few seconds. Friend has a bad migraine so he can't help. I decided to see what happened if I just left it running on cool for a bit, took out trash, hauled some stuff to the burn pile, cleaned litterboxes, etc and then noticed that the internal AC wasn't making the cooling sounds anymore. Didn't check the outside unit. I just turned it back to Off.

 

[shan2themax]

@zannej I'm sorry that unit is giving you fits. Didn't it do something similar last year?

Work was decent today, 2 more days then days off. I am excited. I ABSOLUTELY love my days off..... I should win the lottery. I'd have to play to win it though lol.

 

[Ron Van]

Outside unit didn't come on at first, but after shutting the breaker off and turning it back on, waiting for thermostat to restart, waiting for the thermostat to clear the "waiting for equipment" message, I heard the cooling sounds from the unit and went outside to confirm the outside unit was running, but the blower fan was still shutting off after a few seconds. Friend has a bad migraine so he can't help. I decided to see what happened if I just left it running on cool for a bit, took out trash, hauled some stuff to the burn pile, cleaned litterboxes, etc and then noticed that the internal AC wasn't making the cooling sounds anymore. Didn't check the outside unit. I just turned it back to Off.

I don’t really know what kind of AC you have but if there is a condenser unit outside, can you see the condenser fan spinning when the compressor is trying to work? If the condenser fan isn’t working, the compressor will heat up real fast and have a thermal shutdown. We had this happen to one of our units last year. I could take a long screwdriver and push the condenser fan and it would start working. After it cycled off, I would have to give it a push next time the thermostat called for cooling. It turned out to be a bad start capacitor for the condenser fan. Inexpensive part.

 

[zannej]

Shan, I hope you get more days off in the near future. The kind of work you do has to be mentally and physically exhausting. The problems I had with the AC before was that it wasn't cooling. The old unit had a bad part and had to be replaced. The new one had a loose wire in a molex connector that was easily fixed. There was some valve that wasn't switching over from heat to cold so it was heating instead of cooling. This time it is trying to cool, but the inside fan won't come on to distribute the air.

Ron, I have a Trane system. I checked and the outside unit was on and the fan was turning while the fan inside kept shutting off. Paul responded to my thread in the hvac section and said it could be a bad run capacitor for the inside fan. I've also posted on a forum specifically for HVAC and someone with the username "eggs" has been responding and trying to help me troubleshoot. I don't even know how to take the panel off the AC though. LOL. And I'm reluctant to dick around with anything electrical after over a year recovering from electrocution injury. On that front, arm is 98% healed. Can't reach up quite as high as the right arm and I feel strain when I do (but no strain with the right arm) but I can use it and it doesn't hurt constantly anymore.

I cleaned litterboxes and took out all of the full trash bags in the house. Even hauled some stuff out to the burn pile. Saw an anole on the soap dispenser near the kitchen sink. Think its a female. She was working on eating some of the little flies.

 

[shan2themax]

I am so annoyed with myself. I forgot where I parked and just searched the entire campus of the hospital for my car, for 20 minutes. It's the equivalent of 2 1/4ish city blocks long and 3/4 block wide and we have 2 parking garages 4 to 5 floors a piece. Of c[urse I was on the roof of the one at the opposite end of where I started out

WHAT A DAY!

 

[Ron Van]

I am so annoyed with myself. I forgot where I parked and just searched the entire campus of the hospital for my car, for 20 minutes. It's the equivalent of 2 1/4ish city blocks long and 3/4 block wide and we have 2 parking garages 4 to 5 floors a piece. Of c[urse I was on the roof of the one at the opposite end of where I started out

WHAT A DAY!

Yeah, that sucks but everyone has done it!

 

[zannej]

Shan, I hate when I can't remember where I parked. I sometimes spam the lock button on my key to see if I can hear my truck honk.

Didn't get as much done as I wanted today, but made some progress. Mom kept griping that she couldn't open her H&R block software and couldn't login to her credit card and bank sites. So I logged in to the accounts and had to get a phonecall for a confirmation number for a couple of them. Then I found where I downloaded the H&R block software, opened it, found application, ran it and it wanted to extract, and then ran the exrtraced app & installed it for her. She also complained that she couldn't find her file where she made note of when she paid her bills. Said it was a white thing. Sounded like Notepad to me. She opened a new instance of Notepad and whined that it didn't have the info. I kept explaining she must have saved it to a text file. I checked her second m.2 SSD but it didn't have it. So I plugged in her 2.5" SSD and searched it. Found the file. Copied all the files from that SSD to her main one so now she has her files.

Cooked for her. Researched replacement windows for the bathrooms & replacement flooring. Found a decent lvp for the hallway but walmart doesn't have enough boxes of it. Bummer. Only had 2 and I need 7. Went to walmart for groceries and unloaded, then cooked again.

 

[Spicoli43]

I am so annoyed with myself. I forgot where I parked and just searched the entire campus of the hospital for my car, for 20 minutes. It's the equivalent of 2 1/4ish city blocks long and 3/4 block wide and we have 2 parking garages 4 to 5 floors a piece. Of c[urse I was on the roof of the one at the opposite end of where I started out

WHAT A DAY!

That's like biting your lip 4 times. The only reason I remember where I park is by parking in the same exact row at every shopping center there is... Granted, there's only 32 or so Horse and Buggy spots and that thing called "Gas Cars" might not get here before "Electric Cars", so maybe that's why it's easier to park here.

 

[Ron Van]

that thing called "Gas Cars" might not get here before "Electric Cars", so maybe that's why it's easier to park here.

Wouldn't it be something if sometime in the future there are so many electric cars that they make special parking spots for gas cars and have a little gas pump for each spot? You know, kinda like what they have for electric cars now?

 

[Spicoli43]

Wouldn't it be something if sometime in the future there are so many electric cars that they make special parking spots for gas cars and have a little gas pump for each spot? You know, kinda like what they have for electric cars now?

That probably does exist... In The Twilight Zone.

 

[Snoonyb]

That probably does exist... In The Twilight Zone.

I always it interesting, all these mandated policies that, "supposedly" will result in fewer of this or that, which is adversely affecting the health, of all of us, where is the mandated reduction in health insurance costs?

I mean, with the elimination of the causes, why are those costs not going down?

 

[slownsteady]

they make special parking spots for gas cars and have a little gas pump for each spot?

We have those now. Each spot has it's own pump. But since gas cars fill up so quickly, no one stays parked there very long. It's called a gas station.

 

[shan2themax]

I think I mentioned I bought some used furniture to will be a project.

The 2 3 drawer bedside tables will be the "legs" to a desk I believe. One of the 4 drawer chest of drawers is for my son. The other is mine. Idk if I will do anything to his, but I want to redo mine to go with the bedside table I did and posted about a couple of months ago.
Those suckers are super heavy!


Going in the morning to buy that minivan (I think I mentioned it?) If not I'll tell the story another day.
Had a dr appt today, didn't lose my car

 

[zannej]

Wouldn't it be something if sometime in the future there are so many electric cars that they make special parking spots for gas cars and have a little gas pump for each spot? You know, kinda like what they have for electric cars now?

That actually exists for electric cars? We don't even have charging stations at a single gas station within 100 miles of me. I'm sure there must be at least one in the state, but I've never seen one.

So, Mom is in bind on her taxes. She had all her forms and info to fill out the taxes in an envelope that she wrote TAXES 2023 on. But she took it off the usual spot next to the printer before I cleaned her desk. She was having a fit about not being able to find it and was mad at me. Then she found it, but its empty. No idea what happened to the stuff inside. It was empty when I picked it up and put it in the cubby. There's a chance the papers from it might be in the wrong envelope or might be in a plastic bin where I put stuff to keep it safe while cleaning her desk. But if she can't find it, we'll have to find a way to get the stuff re-sent to her. That involves her banks, DOD, and OPM and who knows what else. She has to pay taxes on the interest from her savings account, income from dad's death benefits from federal govt and military, and I think SSI is taxed but am not sure. I need to learn how to do the taxes for her. I don't even know for sure how to go about contacting to request the stuff, much less get it in time for her taxes to be done/sent in. Last time she requested something from OPM they never sent it. Last time I requested something from DOD it took them over a year to send it. I wonder if a tax preparing agency could request the stuff and get it all together for her. Might be worth it to pay a professional tax person to do it if they can get all the info for her, but not sure on the competence of people here.

AC is still broken. It's been cold instead of hot so that isn't so bad for me. I'm Rupert's best friend right now because he's curled up on me and partway under the covers.

Mom has an appointment with the diabetes specialist this afternoon but she hasn't received her insulin pump yet.

 

[Snoonyb]

That actually exists for electric cars? We don't even have charging stations at a single gas station within 100 miles of me. I'm sure there must be at least one in the state, but I've never seen one.

So, Mom is in bind on her taxes. She had all her forms and info to fill out the taxes in an envelope that she wrote TAXES 2023 on. But she took it off the usual spot next to the printer before I cleaned her desk. She was having a fit about not being able to find it and was mad at me. Then she found it, but its empty. No idea what happened to the stuff inside. It was empty when I picked it up and put it in the cubby. There's a chance the papers from it might be in the wrong envelope or might be in a plastic bin where I put stuff to keep it safe while cleaning her desk. But if she can't find it, we'll have to find a way to get the stuff re-sent to her. That involves her banks, DOD, and OPM and who knows what else. She has to pay taxes on the interest from her savings account, income from dad's death benefits from federal govt and military, and I think SSI is taxed but am not sure. I need to learn how to do the taxes for her. I don't even know for sure how to go about contacting to request the stuff, much less get it in time for her taxes to be done/sent in. Last time she requested something from OPM they never sent it. Last time I requested something from DOD it took them over a year to send it. I wonder if a tax preparing agency could request the stuff and get it all together for her. Might be worth it to pay a professional tax person to do it if they can get all the info for her, but not sure on the competence of people here.

AC is still broken. It's been cold instead of hot so that isn't so bad for me. I'm Rupert's best friend right now because he's curled up on me and partway under the covers.

Mom has an appointment with the diabetes specialist this afternoon but she hasn't received her insulin pump yet.

Are you sure that the death benefits are taxable, because I was advised that death benefits from insurance affect Medicaid/medicare, proportional payments, only.