Home Projects (upkeep/repair/mods/cool sh*t/advice/question)

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Sat Jul 23, 2022 4:46 pm

I need to replace the light switch in the back bathroom. Only problem is it's not marked on the circuit breaker panel. I've opened them all except the A/C & the heater double switches. I do have some blank ones below but I'm scared to flip them. The walls may collapse or something.
I'm wondering if I'm careful if I can replace without turning off the circuit. Wear rubber gloves?

em2nought · Post by **em2nought** » Sat Jul 23, 2022 9:09 pm

dbt1949 wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 4:46 pm I'm wondering if I'm careful if I can replace without turning off the circuit. Wear rubber gloves?

Um no, don't do that. You're gonna have to figure out which unlabeled breaker it is. Either that or flip the main breaker if you've got a flashlight to work in the dark.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Sat Jul 23, 2022 9:58 pm

em2nought wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 9:09 pm
dbt1949 wrote: ↑Sat Jul 23, 2022 4:46 pm I'm wondering if I'm careful if I can replace without turning off the circuit. Wear rubber gloves?
Um no, don't do that. You're gonna have to figure out which unlabeled breaker it is. Either that or flip the main breaker if you've got a flashlight to work in the dark.

Yeah, I learned the hard way that our fuse box's labels, where they exist, are more like hints than rules. When forced to deal with wiring, I shut the whole house down.

disarm · Post by **disarm** » Sat Jul 23, 2022 10:05 pm

The labels in my box are correct, but I'm stuck with the electrician's horrible handwriting and spelling mistakes. Apparently, my house has a "pinning room" for eating, and a "foier" when you enter through the front door

YellowKing · Post by **YellowKing** » Sat Jul 23, 2022 10:27 pm

I'm so terrified of electrocution (thanks to my complete lack of faith in my handyman abilities), that I'm the same. Whether I'm rewiring a doorbell or changing out a thermostat, the entire house is coming off the grid.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Sun Jul 24, 2022 12:09 am

I'm a level 0 electrician so I don't roll against that skill unless I have to. I *think* the fuse labeled "Julie's room" is Wife's office, but Julie has probably died of old age by now, if she wasn't electrocuted. And I know for a fact that "Kitchen outlets" is not to be trusted.

A few years ago we got a quote to upgrade our fuse box to a breaker panel for $2,500, but then a couple of things (BIL's death followed by a pandemic) precluded following through. Probably going to make that our next improvement project, and I reckon it will cost a lot more now. We might still have some knob-and-tube wiring, and I'm sure that the circuit that my friend wired to my dope room isn't code-friendly. It does have its own (unlabeled!) fuse, though.

RMC · Post by **RMC** » Sun Jul 24, 2022 10:28 am

I bought this cool device, that you can plug into an outlet and then go to the breaker and it will "alert" you with lights and a little beep on which breaker it is that the other end is plugged into. You can do it with lights as well, just get one of those little converter things that you can screw into a lightbulb that turns it into an outlet, and then you can sound those as well.

It has saved me tons of time, and it was very inexpensive, like 20 bucks or so. I mean that was a long time ago, but still not 100's of dollars. And the trick with the light bulb was shown to me by a home depot employee, as there is a tool to do that as well, but it costs a lot more than the buck for the converter. <shrug> I am sure there are reasons to not do that, but it works for my purposes.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/TRIPLETT-Br ... /314133474

Not the exact one I have, and 50 bucks now insteadd of the 20 I spent. But I bet Harbour Frieght or Amazon would have it for less. Handy for us home repair newbies.

Madmarcus · Post by **Madmarcus** » Sun Jul 24, 2022 10:47 am

Thanks for reminding me about those gadgets. Now that I'm setting up a mini-workshop it might be nice to actually map out which outlets in the room are on which circuit.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Sun Jul 24, 2022 2:12 pm

This house was built in the 20s or 30s I think. It has a screw in fuse box in the bathroom which was a later addition and a smaller screw in fuse box in the bedroom just around the wall. Stuff is not labeled. I went through with a sharpie and me and my wife labeled it all best we could. I still have fuses screwed in to what I dont know where. I leave them alone.....unscrewing them seems to change nothing but they are there for some reason or other.

RMC · Post by **RMC** » Sun Jul 24, 2022 2:31 pm

Daehawk wrote: ↑Sun Jul 24, 2022 2:12 pm This house was built in the 20s or 30s I think. It has a screw in fuse box in the bathroom which was a later addition and a smaller screw in fuse box in the bedroom just around the wall. Stuff is not labeled. I went through with a sharpie and me and my wife labeled it all best we could. I still have fuses screwed in to what I dont know where. I leave them alone.....unscrewing them seems to change nothing but they are there for some reason or other.

I know the feeling, my house has parts that were built pre 1900's. And I actually have tree trunks with the bark still on them as the supports for about 1/2 my house. But we had the house rewired back in the 70's. I say we, but my parents did, I was a kid back then, and we have had a few additions put on, so we actually had them rewire the old box as a secondary box off the newest one wit hteh addition. We kind of had too, as we added Geothermal heating/cooling and that takes a lot of power to run.

But when we moved in, we actually had Knob and Tube wiring in parts of the house. All gone now, and all the "fuses" are gone as well, only circuit breakers remain.

TheMix · Post by **TheMix** » Sun Jul 24, 2022 4:26 pm

BTW, DBT, do you have a GFI in your bathroom that you can trip? That might show you which breaker is for the bathroom.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Sun Jul 24, 2022 4:51 pm

GFI is not Goat Fucking Insurance.

YellowKing · Post by **YellowKing** » Sun Jul 24, 2022 7:24 pm

Speaking of GFI, we had an issue when we first moved in. We had asked for an outlet in the garage to put a second refrigerator, which was done. However, it was a GFI as we were told a non-GFI was not allowed per code. And that sucker tripped constantly. The fridge was literally unusable because plugging it in would cause it to trip within 10 minutes.

We at first thought the fridge was pulling too much power, so we had the electrician come out and he immediately dismissed the idea. Apparently newer fridges (particularly the small LG one we had) are very efficient, and the outlet was more than capable of handling it.

Credit to this electrician - he remembered a similar situation months back in which an LG washer was incompatible with a particular brand of GCI outlet. He came back with a new outlet and we haven't had an issue since.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Sun Jul 24, 2022 8:28 pm

Cool.

The Meal · Post by **The Meal** » Mon Jul 25, 2022 6:40 am

We've got a GFI outlet connected to the garage fridge as well. But the remainder of that particular GFI circuit goes into our basement services closet, so if the garage trips, it takes down the cable modem and router. Took me a long time to troubleshoot that one, as there are entire circuits in the portions of the house in between and no logical reason why that GFI would also include that seemingly random room

But our circuit breaker mapping is an absolute nightmare. I've got a couple of those circuit trackers, as I can't do anything requiring turning off a circuit without first triple confirming I've got the right one open.

YellowKing · Post by **YellowKing** » Thu Jul 28, 2022 8:02 am

Behold the victory fountain (see previous HOA battle posts), in all its glory! I was actually very surprised they put in this large a fountain - it dwarfs the previous one.

Carpet_pissr · Post by **Carpet_pissr** » Thu Jul 28, 2022 8:18 am

One thing I’ve learned after several head scratching outlet issues that mysteriously stopped working - check EVERY GFI outlet in your entire house and garage. I’ve had non-GFI outlets just stop working, so I go to breaker box and nothing is tripped. Culprit? GFI outlet trip in a small bathroom on a different floor, about as far away from the non-working outlet as you can get.

Took me quite a while to figure that one out.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Thu Jul 28, 2022 8:39 am

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Thu Jul 28, 2022 8:18 am One thing I’ve learned after several head scratching outlet issues that mysteriously stopped working - check EVERY GFI outlet in your entire house and garage. I’ve had non-GFI outlets just stop working, so I go to breaker box and nothing is tripped. Culprit? GFI outlet trip in a small bathroom on a different floor, about as far away from the non-working outlet as you can get.

Took me quite a while to figure that one out.

I believe this reveals some improper wiring (or faulty outlet). An outlet with a tripped GFI shouldn't take out the rest of the circuit.

YellowKing · Post by **YellowKing** » Thu Jul 28, 2022 8:59 am

I had a devil of a time figuring out why my porch outlets were getting tripped when we first moved in. I ran around looking everywhere for about half an hour.

Turns out we had a GFCI outlet on the side of the house next to our sprinkler system.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Thu Jul 28, 2022 10:34 am

Unagi wrote: ↑Thu Jul 28, 2022 8:39 am An outlet with a tripped GFI shouldn't take out the rest of the circuit.

When I moved into my last apartment and complained about the lack of ones by the kitchen sink, I was told only ne per circuit was needed.

https://www.protoolreviews.com/what-is-a-gfci-outlet/

The most common GFCI in residential homes comes in a GFCI receptacle. This inexpensive device replaces a standard receptacle (outlet). Completely compatible with any standard outlet, it can protect other outlets “downstream” (any outlet receiving power from the GFCI outlet). This also explains the change from GFI to GFCI—to reference the protected “circuits”.

So, you're right, but I think GFCI is more common.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Thu Jul 28, 2022 10:37 am

I just looked them up out of curiosity - to prevent water shock. Huh. I always thought those were to prevent blowing a fuse, and wondered why they bothered in the post-fuse era.

Smoove_B · Post by **Smoove_B** » Thu Jul 28, 2022 10:49 am

It's amazing what you can do with housing/construction regulations when people don't demand the freedom to get electrocuted.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Wed Mar 01, 2023 1:46 pm

So the previous owners put up their own trim around the garage and the wood underneath is rotting and the nails are popping out. Squirrels and water can now get in the garage.

I don't work so I can do the work myself and I don't work so I don't have a ton of money laying around to pay someone.

I'm not a carpenter and not even particularly handy. Any advice on where to begin?

Also, gotta say it's nice to have gotten out there and surveyed the damage, thinking I might be able to fix the problems on the first day of March.

RMC · Post by **RMC** » Wed Mar 01, 2023 1:55 pm

LordMortis wrote: ↑Wed Mar 01, 2023 1:46 pm So the previous owners put up their own trim around the garage and the wood underneath is rotting and the nails are popping out. Squirrels and water can now get in the garage.

I don't work so I can do the work myself and I don't work so I don't have a ton of money laying around to pay someone.

I'm not a carpenter and not even particularly handy. Any advice on where to begin?

Also, gotta say it's nice to have gotten out there and surveyed the damage, thinking I might be able to fix the problems on the first day of March.

You tube my friend. And actually This Old House has a ton of great episodes on how to repair rotten wood. Sometimes it is very easy to do depending on the extent, etc.. But you need to also repair the source of the water penetration as well.

I have used This Old House videos to learn how to do tons of repairs like this, and there are tons of good fix it ytourself YouTube videos.

The people at the big box stores are a toss up, a little mom and pop lumber yard might be able to give you some direction as well on what products that they have and how they would suggest you fix it.

Sorry, wish I had more, but those are my go to's.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:03 pm

youtube was going to be my next go to.

RMC · Post by **RMC** » Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:05 pm

LordMortis wrote: ↑Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:03 pm youtube was going to be my next go to.

Don't overlook This Old House, they tend to overdo things, but they do it right, and give some good directions with excellent filming.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:08 pm

RMC wrote: ↑Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:05 pm
LordMortis wrote: ↑Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:03 pm youtube was going to be my next go to.
Don't overlook This Old House, they tend to overdo things, but they do it right, and give some good directions with excellent filming.

I would have no idea how to find repairs on This Old House nor even find old show.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:09 pm

https://www.thisoldhouse.com/woodworkin ... tting-wood

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:10 pm

I went to This Old House and directed me to PBS.

TheMix · Post by **TheMix** » Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:11 pm

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:09 pm https://www.thisoldhouse.com/woodworkin ... tting-wood

Heh... That was the exact link I was coming to post.

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:15 pm

Nails are the easy way....wood screws are the lasting way. And be sure its all painted or sealed.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:16 pm

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:19 pm

I now at least know the terminology for what I need to do. I need to replace some or all of the garage Fascia and the put the Fascia covering back on. Then I need to figure out what do about roof that the squirrels got in to.

RMC · Post by **RMC** » Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:30 pm

LordMortis wrote: ↑Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:19 pm I now at least know the terminology for what I need to do. I need to replace some or all of the garage Fascia and the put the Fascia covering back on. Then I need to figure out what do about roof that the squirrels got in to.

Lol, you guys rock. I am working so couldn't look up the links. But I am almost sure that This Old House covers those roof and animals. If not, I listen to a radio show called At home with Gary Sullivan. And he has some shows where they talk about that.

https://garysullivan.iheart.com/

Hope that helps.

Found a recent episode on this: https://garysullivan.iheart.com/featur ... your-home/

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:42 pm

LordMortis wrote: ↑Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:19 pm I now at least know the terminology for what I need to do. I need to replace some or all of the garage Fascia and the put the Fascia covering back on.

Ah, well then - you just need to ask a fascist.

Default · Post by **Default** » Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:49 pm

If the wood is within 8 inches of the ground, use pressure treated wood and galvanized nails. Pressure treated won't be devoured by termites and carpenter ants, and the galvanized nails won't be prematurely rusted away by the chemicals in the wood.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:57 pm

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:42 pm
LordMortis wrote: ↑Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:19 pm I now at least know the terminology for what I need to do. I need to replace some or all of the garage Fascia and the put the Fascia covering back on.
Ah, well then - you just need to ask a fascist.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:59 pm

See? I understood that one.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Wed Mar 01, 2023 3:02 pm

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Wed Mar 01, 2023 3:02 pm

Default wrote: ↑Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:49 pm If the wood is within 8 inches of the ground, use pressure treated wood and galvanized nails. Pressure treated won't be devoured by termites and carpenter ants, and the galvanized nails won't be prematurely rusted away by the chemicals in the wood.

Nope. It's the trim around the garage under the roof. I suspect it was a problem when I bough the house and they just put plating over it. Now it's years later and once a little is exposed, a whole lot of problem is exposed.