Mike Soja just wired up his barn based on “a decade old How-To wiring book, and with a few websites…(electricity is pretty easy to understand with just a little study)”.
He has pictures of the sub-panels he wired up.
He did a neater job than most “professionally” wired boxes I’ve looked in to over the past twenty years or so. Some of those were outright horror shows.
Do-it-yourself doesn’t mean incompetent. State licensing doesn’t mean competent.
So, the Supreme Court gave the EPA an epic smackdown of their attempt to prevent the Sacketts from building their house on land zoned for residential use, despite proper permits and improvements (such as utilities) already in place.
In a sane world, the EPA would turn tail and never again darken the Sackett’s door. In a just world, the EPA bureaucrats who pursued this egregiously abusive case would be personally on the hook for the Sackett’s legal costs. They should also be up on criminal charges. (Ha! I’m dreaming, I know.)
Instead, I predict the EPA will effectively ignore the Supreme Court, in much the same way Chicago and Washington D.C. have ignored the Court in Second Amendment cases. Both cities have continued to place enormous burdens on citizens wishing to exercise their human right to keep and bear arms.
That’s what’s going to happen here. The EPA will make token changes in their demands, issue a raft of new regulations establishing courses of flaming hoops the Sacketts must jump through to obtain “variances” and “exemptions”, and continue to act as if the Sacketts want to manufacture nerve gas in the kitchen and enrich uranium in the garage.
Arm up, Mike and Chantell. The Reavers are still at your door, mark my words.
[update]
Oh, hey, never mind. “Epic Smackdown”? I should have glanced at the decision before posting.
From the slip opinion (10-1062):
Held: The Sacketts may bring a civil action under the APA to challenge the issuance of the EPA’s order.
Further:
Today we consider only whether the dispute may be brought to court by challenging the compliance order—we do not resolve the dispute on the merits.
That’s it. The Court didn’t tell EPA to eat Sackett shit and die. It didn’t void the $37,000 per day fines the Sacketts are racking up for non-compliance.
It just says the Sacketts can spend even more money they don’t have to defend their property in court. Up till now, their fight has been only and solely to get permission to be heard at all.
Go ahead, please. Try to explain to me why I should vote this fall. The more I see of shit like this, the more I understand: Voting isn’t a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. It isn’t even about choosing your next slave master.
The entire Federal government is illegitimate. All three branches, top to bottom, it’s rotten.
I will not accord it the respect of voting for its public faces.
Let’s review the Five Boxes, shall we?
Soap Box: Public exposure in the news did not stop the EPA.
Ballot Box: How are the Sacketts supposed to influence elections to the point where they receive justice? Which elections should they influence?
Jury Box and Witness Box: the Sacketts just won a long and exhausting fight to avail themselves of these Boxes. What do they have left to actually use them?
Hint: I’ve only accounted for four Boxes.
A Hundred Word Story.
Or maybe a One Thousand One Hundred word story, including the pic.
His toes gripped the smooth vine as he squeezed through the tunnel into the Temple. The priest waited at the entrance to the Alter; they bobbed to each other, dewlaps inflating in mutual respect.
He entered the impenetrable darkness.
There was a flash.
He found himself on a bony claw. Glancing back, he saw a black-hooded skull and froze in panic — but it only nodded and gently flicked its hand. He spread his wings to steady himself.
He had wings! Death forgotten, he launched into the air. He laughed, and a gout of flame burst from his mouth….
Click to see the Alter:
Show ▼
Submitted to Laurence Simon’s Hundred Word Story topic, It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.
I think these were supposed to be cautionary tales…but you know, sometimes it seems like a good idea, and it is!
So, the idiots at Ruud, manufacturers of my parents’ air conditioner, printed out the wiring diagram with what looks to be some primitive photocopy technology closely related to thermal printing. The effect is that, although the diagram is inside the cover, it has faded to illegibility over time.
Black ink on white paper, you jerks. Choose wisely, and the image will last for hundreds of years. I’ve never seen an appliance diagram faded this badly, including stuff exposed to the elements.
So, I go online to find a new diagram, and Ruud turns out to be one of those, ahem, rude, jerkface corporations that do not put their Holy Writ online. Their diagrams are only available to anointed Members of the Trade.
I do a search on the model number, UAKA-048JAZ, and find a forum post from someone asking for the schematic of a slightly different model from the same line.
To my complete non-amazement, I see a message sneering at the supplicant for being a “ho”.
Oh, wait. Or a “diy”. That is, a home owner or do-it-yourselfer.
Now this just makes my blood boil. I am sick of the contempt the pros have for those of us who try our best to take care of this stuff ourselves. And here’s why:
When I eventually tracked down the problem (hat tip to my sister, who had experienced a similar problem in her home), it wasn’t electrical. Instead, a *spit* Professional, Licensed, Anointed, Approved, Union slob had installed a cutout switch on the drip pan. The intent was good: if the pan filled, this switch keeps the water from soaking your ceiling.
But the idiot had simply placed the pan on top of the joists, and ran a flexible drain line on top of the joist as well — and it had bowed up so that at one point it was higher than the top of the pan.
Fix: put 2 x 4 blocks under the pan to raise it up a bit.
Now, the A/C has been running for several years with this (it was a retrofit). Last time I was up in the attic (trying to do a one hour job that turned into a long weekend fixing a rat’s nest of wiring problems and oversights), that pan was dry as a bone. I don’t know why it’s ever worked, and I don’t know why it suddenly stopped working, and that scares me. It’s even likely that I myself jostled the drain line while I was up last time, upsetting some magic equilibrium because the damn drain line wasn’t fastened down — but that was weeks ago, and it’s been working fine up till yesterday.
(Oh, and another pet peeve: the drain line was exactly long enough to just barely make it outside the wall. It had pulled out of its hole, and was instead draining inside the wall. Come on, you jerks. Leave an inch or two of slack. Yes, I understand doing a neat job, which means not having loose coils laying around. But you know what? Don’t whine to me about doing a neat job when every other aspect of your work is slob-ugly and often out of code.)
But here’s the deal: Every. Single. Time. I’ve ever fixed a home problem like this, it’s either been caused by an incompetent “professional” installation, or I’ve found other problems that had to be fixed along with the main problem.
Looking back, I’ve made my share of mistakes, due to inexperience. But all of my stuff works, and as far as I know, none of my stuff will ever cause problems for the guys that come after me.
Do not ever sneer at me for being a DIY, or a HO — I cannot describe how offended I was to stumble across that last. There’s dozens of reasons I didn’t call one of you unionized twits to do the work, and price is last on the list.
Do your jobs right, and poor ignorant hos like me won’t have to spend an afternoon in a sweltering attic, or a weekend under a stinking sink, fixing your crap.
“ho”. Damn, that pisses me off.
===
Update:
I’ve had to close comments on this entry due to a spam storm.
So, my sister wants new blinds hung in her bedroom. Going by the Big Orange Box instructions, I measure top and bottom width (to check parallelism), diagonals (to check squareness), and height in the middle.
The openings are neither parallel nor square, although they’re not out by much; I’ve seen much worse.
I set about trying to find the widest blind that will fit in each opening. I can’t find an on-line calculator, and when I try to figure out an algorithm myself (while trying to chip the rust off my Python skills), it turns out to be surprisingly difficult. Any given case is straightforward, using Pythagoras, but there seems to be no general solution. And that’s assuming that the top and bottom are parallel and level.
I mention this at the dinner table.
“Why not just measure the old blinds?”
Good question, Mom. Good question.
I’m still piddling about with writing a calculator, just as an exercise. And I’d like to find an online calculator.
Note: the math might be a bit easier if you measure width of the opening top and bottom, length of both sides, true plumb height at both sides, and both diagonals. But I think you can do it with the usual top and bottom width, overall height (assume level), and the diags, and given that those are the measurements most window blinds sites ask for, that would be best.
Inputs and results to the nearest eighth of an inch, please. If you round, round down — a blind that is too large by the height of the drywall texturing, a sixteenth of an inch or less, will not work. Piss off with your sissy millimeters.
A command line calculator is fine by me, but it must work under Windows as well as Unix.
A brilliant synergy between the weighted foundation and the light tensile structure, this project impressed us with its attenuation of structure and bright interior spaces. The courtyard and formal entry are also well thought-out and provide a clear means of way-finding. Grade A+
More here.
[Leak update below]
My in-her-eighties Mom, who doesn’t limp so much as she just takes one step at a time and gets settled in before taking the next one, painting her new garden shed:
Yes, of course I set the ladder and scaffold up for her. Yes, of course, I put the garden seat up there, unasked, even. Yes, of course, I stirred and poured the paint, handed her the bucket and brush, watched her climb the ladder. No, I happened not to be there when she climbed down.
Hi, Mom!
The shed will get its own post, by and by, as much for the mistakes it embodies as the successes, but note how bright it is inside. Yes, it has a roof. Palram SunTuf in Solar Gray is the hot schnitzel, although it’s a bloody finicky pain to install. Waiting for predicted weekend thunderstorms to check for leaks, and if they don’t come, I’m going to have to put a sprinkler up there.
[UPDATE]
It did rain, and the roof does leak, which caused me considerable anguish. I really like the brightness of the shed in day time, but the installation must be perfect. Fixing the leaks will be a pain, because I’ll have to fabricate a couple of platforms so I crawl across the roof to get to the leaking screws.
On the other hand: out of more than 560 screws, only half a dozen or so leak, which I guess isn’t too bad, particularly for a first time user.
But read the instructions, follow them scrupulously, take your time, and fix suspected problems right away. I recommend flooding each panel with a hose to test it before moving on to the next panel.
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