repairing things

i love repairing things. here is a list of things i have recently repaired. post here when you repair something.

laptop:
replaced faulty dc port
replaced thermal paste

microwave:
replaced motor that turns plate

shirt:
repaired various tears and worn areas in favourite denim shirt (with linen patches and japanese sashiko stitching)

I enjoy undertaking light electronic repairs, i.e. replacing laptop batteries, brackets, hard drives and the like, but I've recently had to remap the 'o' key on my old Macbook due to an irreversible short circuit and it turns out the sole proper solution is replacing the entire keyboard outright. Merely scrolling through this guide is enough to give me a headache:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Retina+Display+Late+2013+Keyboard+Replacement/77657

i fixed my toilet - cistern was taking literally hours to refill. i think there's a limescale buildup on the inlet valve so it was sticking shut.

the toilet was also my most recent repair. the little rubber thing that sits at the top of the vertical tube thing had gotten all messed up, and as a result it was doing the thing where the toilet is always "filling up", because it couldn't detect when it had hit the upper water limit. very annoying! fixed it with twine tbh

i also recently repaired my toilet. it had been making noise for longer than i care to admit.

I fixed and painted my garden gate, I am happy with it but wish it could earn me money some day. Guess I won't have to pay for a new gate now?

my 14' telescoping pole saw was stuck at full extension, but I fixed it by C-clamping it to our deck rail, spraying the locked-up part with WD-40, and wrestling it loose with channel-lock pliers

any day I repair a thing is a good day

14 feet? holy crap!

now I have no excuse for not pruning some trees

you could cut off a basketball net from the free throw line!

or wait...no you can't. sorry, that's 15 feet away (plus 10 feet up). gonna need a longer pole saw, 14' just won't _cut_ it

I can't fix shit and even without a quarantine I don't like to go anywhere, so if I can't mail it in I'm gonna order a new one, alas.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ENhudYfU4AAgN4o?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

When my Simplyhuman pedal bin stopped working (the plastic hinges broke through wear and tear) rather than buying a new one I sliced some wine bottle cork and superglued it into the hinge. it worked a treat and the hinge is good as new.

omg great repair!

i need to repair my sheepskin slippers that i have had for probably around 12 years, there is a hole coming through from my big toenail. i think some kindof linen thread darning, but it will have to look nice, and i don't have any linen thread, although I was wondering if a weft from some line fabric would work. probably not, but possibly if I wound three together?

Stevolende to thread!

Man I love "fixing" things (or modifying, I guess, for things that aren't technically broken). I've rebuilt every bicycle and rewired every single guitar I've owned to some degree, swapped out a fried diode on guitar amp, switched out resistors on a 1979 Princeton Reverb to make the tremolo crazier and swapped out a potentiometer while I was in there, fixed laptops and chairs and cars and parts of houses and so on. I'm not necessarily great at it but it's so incredibly satisfying.

Our dryer stopped heating a few weeks ago and I got a new heating element and set of thermal fuses and thermostats to fix it, as well as a new belt and belt roller to replace while I'm in there. I've been sick so I haven't gotten around to it yet but for like $50 and maybe two hours of work it'll work again vs. several hundred dollars to have it repaired.

how would you rerepair an acoustic guitar where the bridge is starting to peel away from the body of the guitar? is there a correct glue to use, does it need to be properly peeled off and glued all together?

Luthiers tend to use animal glues, IIRC. There are repair kits available online, that have a purpose-made clamp. Do check underneath to see if there are loose fittings - it might not be simply a glue issue.

THought I'd messed up my sewing machine for a while a coupl eof days ago. Wound up taking part so fi t apart that I hadn't done before.
Wound up with the handwheel getting really stiff which had me wthinking I'd damaged something nastily.
Had another go at it the next day and got it back working and it seems to be working pretty smoothly.
& now I know there is a section under the bobbin case/needleplate area that I have access to and had a lot of lint in and bent pins and things and gear wheels and things taht had a load of gunk on them.

Probably needs a service, probably has done fora while . Could do with learning how to do that .
Especially if thisicurrent situation drags out.
Have wanted to for a while anyway.

BUt now hjave 2 new pairs of trousers. & I think I need to learn to actually draft rather than just customise clones.
SDhould be doing real bespoke jeans in like one go instead of several fittngs.

& now I know there is a section under the bobbin case/needleplate area that I have access to and had a lot of lint in and bent pins and things and gear wheels and things taht had a load of gunk on them.

yes! that section! removing the gunk from that area is often the problem w/r/t sewing machine problems.

re: plax's slippers -- my thought would be to pad/patch from the inside with sturdy materials privileged over aesthetic, and then join that to the exterior to make that look nice -- could maybe do a double layer to reinforce?

Thinking about doing my first oil change -- OOH, my honda is approaching the needs service mark, OTOH I'm barely driving it so it could be a while before it actually gets there

guess that's not technically a "repair" though

i made my dad teach me when i was like 19. i like doing things myself but he tried to convince me it wasn't worth it and he was right. you have to have a place to take the oil to, also, don't you?

I used to change the oil myself, but then I bought a new car (my current VW Golf) that requires expensive synthetic oil in a weight so rare that Pep Boys didn't stock it until recently. Since buying my own oil + filter cost almost as much as paying someone else to do it, it became pointless DIYing this. I've done only the most basic of maintenance on this car myself - rotating the tires, changing the wipers, adding fluids, changing light bulbs.

I’ve never learned what the oil does, or why you need to change it.

When you have a big long shaft-like thing repeatedly sliding in & out of a receptacle sleeve, you need proper lubrication to prevent discomfort and damage.

Why does the gasoline explode but not the oil

Why they hide the bodies under my garage

Tombot explain cars to me

just put oil in your gas tank too it's fine and cool

it's all made of carbon, it's the same

I mean, right?? Why not put fullerenes in the tank

That's how I changed the oil in my first car. Enough of it would leak through the dry-rotted gaskets (from sitting in my grampa's garage too long), burning out the tail pipe. I just had to dump a quart of it in every month or so.

But yeah, I don't change the oil in my cars anymore myself either.

But I did fix these nice vertical blinds we have the other day! One of the little plastic rider/worm screw assemblies got jammed. I pulled it all apart and fixed it. Feels nice.

Mostly I appreciate that my previous house owner was a completely crazy fixer, making a giant welded cast-iron i-beam workbench I still use. He was also a dangerously incompetent electrician, but the house is still standing,

That's how you changed the oil in old "foreign" cars with two-stroke engines - just pour a small amount of oil in with the gasoline/petrol. Some small engines that power lawn mowers or chainsaws still work like that.

stevolende, dm me yr email and i will send you the best trouser draft I have ever found online. alternatively you can find it on the cutterandtailor.com forum which i highly recommend checking out regardless

sarahell, that sounds much smarter than my plan. and now that you mention it i could probably do something with a fairly large patch....

I replaced the igniter in our old clothes dryer when someone wanted $300 to fix it. My wife told me it was such a turn on, lol.

I am good at electrics but wish I could do plumbing. I don’t know if it counts as repairs but I am pretty pleased with myself for putting a sensor and timer on the hall light so it comes on when we come through the front door.

Embarrassed that I had to get a guy out to fix the dishwasher and it turned out to be a blocked waste pipe.

Not a sparky, but I’ve been doing electrical stuff for years at work ( I even had a guy working for me for a bit that sat on the committee that writes the wiring rules for Australia). I get electricity and I can stay safe with electricity, with plumbing and water I just don’t have the same intuition. I really want to put an outdoor tap on the deck on the water line that feeds the boiler, but I don’t even know where to start.

dishwashers are a lost cause often. I had a dishwasher that broke my heart repeatedly. i had to replace the same seal on it over and over again.

the rollers on the drawers had corroded, meaning the drawers no longer lined up properly and thus new seals got busted after only maybe a month of use. I eventually got rid of it. my current dishwasher is great!

"I even had a guy working for me for a bit that sat on the committee that writes the wiring rules for Australia"

as an ex-sparkie I've met plenty of these reg-worm types who can accurately quote amendment 1 section 274 blah blah.. but they are basically incapable of doing the most basic electrical installation work! You are right about plumbing though, it's much harder than it looks.

I was hearing a few stories about people's attempts at attaching bidet hoses on podcasts a couple of weeks ago. People thinking they would be able to do it withouit hassle and then finding the attachments didn't seal properly or something similar.

Would be a good skill to have though. Plumbing like. Always useful.

there is no amount of pro-tips/online guides that is a substitute for the skills you attain doing the same shit every day.

I've worked at a few companies that had a mechanical side as well as electric but never talked seriously with plumbers. It took me years to realise you turn both the taps off where the silver flexi pipe connects the boiler with the water main when you need to add water because of low pressure fault. I'd just turn the secondary tap off where it connects to the boiler so it was slowly adding extra pressure to the boiler! I'm a fucking idiot though.

I remember having a big existential crisis about calling a plumber to seat a toilet - I’d done it once or twice but always fucked up the wax ring in the process and I didn’t want to worry about it leaking. But it’s such a straightforward thing that I felt like a sucker hiring someone to do it for me.

The plumber was a youngish guy and we talked for a while and it was cool - he told that he’d installed hundreds of toilets and me paying $100 for the peace of mind was totally worth it, and that he had no idea how to do my job and had no shame about that. It made me much more comfortable deciding what I was comfortable with and what I wanted to entrust to experts.

I'm shit around the house but primed and painted the box around the gas meter and laid some matting (all in the porch) and goddamn I feel good. Also bought myself a laplander saw with no real idea what I'm going to do with it.

My old man was a gas fitter and plumber, the father-in-law was all manner of shit: made ship's lanterns, fitted out gas tanks, carpet fitter. I'm generally in awe of tradesmen.

Currently fixing not being pissed.

Also listening to Outfit by the Drive By Truckers and weeping about being shit with a paintbrush.

if you ever wanted to bang some extra sockets in a stud wall with fast fix boxes your laplander saw is your friend. When I was in the game we called them "pad saws" but there is a lot of different names for that particular tool.

Yes! Also great for fiddly jobs in the garden (like dealing with rhododendron in tight spaces, I've found). The thing is so pretty and compact.

i need to re-affix one of the metal struts to my little library stepladder (with just one i think i am asking too much of it when it clamber into it)

a professional carpenter and refurbisher who i know a little -- but have somewhat fallen out with via unrelated ambient internet beef -- said i should drill out the hole the old screw was in, completely fill it with broken-off matchsticks and superglue them, then allow to dry. this would hold any new screws fine.

however the old screws are lost and he replacements i have seem too long for the drilled-out hole as is. i've tried screwing them further into the unscrewed original wood at the bottom of the hole, but it just seems too hard to be screwed into, even using an electric drill and phillips head bit, or even just to drill further into this wood :(

might fuck around tomorrow and drill out all the match sticks and glue, then try and drill out more of the old hard wood with a larger bit, then refill with matches and superglue -- then (eventually) screw into this

I wonder if I can replace the screen glass on my 2010 MacBook Pro ... judging from YouTube videos, it's a pain in the ass to do, but the replacement glass is pretty cheap

I would attempt many fewer DIY repairs if not for YouTube

i know, there is no way i ever would have started disassembling my laptop for repairs if it wasn't for youtube

fyi i have been watching The Repair Shop on iPlayer and crying at the stories

xp my job includes repairing laptops and I'd be stuck without Youtube teardowns.

i've just spent about an hour with bf repairing brazilian figurines that have been in pieces for over a decade. Now I'm going to figure out why my bread won't rise!

I broke the pressure cooker last night; I left the inner lid off and it overheated. After some poking around I assumed the thermal fuse had gone (as it should) bought a multimeter to confirm and a replacement fuse. Now it works again. I was pretty pissed at myself for breaking it in the first place but I’m pleased I could fix it.

Ico Letting salt and sugar get too close to the yeast before it starts working can prevent it fully rising. I remember having to put it in a different part of the bread machine when setting up a loaf.

I remember the giddy feeling of walking through my house and checking off the things I had made serious, appliance-saving repairs to: dryer (replaced frayed internal wire), washing machine (replaced faulty control board, and stator motor for the spin), fridge (replaced thermal sensors and fans in the freezer), stove (replaced jets, thermal cutoffs, elements, etc.), stereo amplifier (power supply and signal caps), plasma TV (main power board), plus pretty much every computer in the house ...

Turns out I wasn't giving my bread enough time to rise

It's all looking beautiful now

to revisit the saga of my little library stepladder i am having to busk recharging the battery of my black and decker with the only mains lead i can find in the flat that fits (i have no idea if it's the correct one)

i guess the worst that can happen is that i have to buy a new battery which is probably good sense anyway, i've had the drill like 15-odd years minimum without ever recharging it afaicr

(did it once have a lead? i'm guessing yes. is this its actual real lead: i think no, the conversion factor is not what the internet tells me i need tho who tf kno if this matters that much)

Dryer in new house sounded like an artillery barrage. I’ve never attempted an appliance repair before but decided fuck it. From what I saw online it was pretty clearly the roller, so I ordered a new set as well as a tool I had never been aware of before — snap ring pliers. About $45. Watched YouTube videos. Disassembling the drier wasn’t all that hard but the bolts for the roller axles were rusted on and it took a lot of different approaches before I found a way to break them off (I basically attached pliers to a socket wrench so I could get more torque). Getting the belt back on was also confusing (the pattern of my pulley and motor shaft didn’t match the videos and getting the “zig zag” was tricky). Putting it back together was also harder than taking it apart. But after 3-4 hours and having filth permanently tattooed into my skin, we have a normal, not too loud dryer and I probably saved us a few hundred bucks. And it was kind of fun.

I feel ready to take on a lot of handyman stuff now, much of which I think will be easier than the dryer.

The fuse has gone on the microwave, the 5000v fuse.

Search on Google and it links to a video that looks easy enough but it links halfway through the video and skips the bit about discharging the capacitor containing said lethal voltages.

Anyway, I have new fuses and it's been unplugged for 3 weeks and they reckon it discharges itself within a week so...

to remove all doubt you can get one of those twin probe capacitor discharge units for about £20, but you could probably get a new microwave for the same price these days!

I replaced a wall socket the other week, shit was easy

Yeah I’m looking to do a bunch of those soon - I apparently need to rewrite some of them (polarity is reversed?) and also I want to put some usb outlets in for device charging.

Lol usually apprentice electricians are let loose on second fixing the sockets because apparently it's too simple a task to fuck up!

Although I often seen houses where the polarity is wrong at the incoming isolator of the supply side. God knows how that works, I'd guess motors in fans and vacum cleaners all run backwards etc...

I was thinking of replacing double switches where only one worked effectively or removing the actual switch part of the excess switch after finding myself clicking the wrong one recently.

If you don't have any kind voltage tester, always make sure you don't forget which are the permanent lives, switch wires, two-ways etc because if you get them mixed up while swapping the switch, sorting it out without test leads can be a bit of a pisser!

its not repairing things, but me and bf built a new kitchen table a few weeks ago which was fun.

I've got to switch out a fluorescent fixture above our kitchen sink and really don't want to blow myself up.

oh, i fixed a broken lightswitch! Have never done anything that was directly connected to the mains so was a bit nervous even of something that simple!

it was just fixing a loose wire

There was a time I'd casually fault find on switches when they were live, like touching every arcing sparking wire to the live until we'd worked out which was which. Lol my snips have been hung up for 9 years and I wouldn't dare do such craziness these days. Mind you I have had hundreds of electrical belts over the years. Which some say is either a sign that you are either a shit electrician or working with too many shit ones!

lol u mad bastard

It's not like there is anything complicated about a 2 or 3 gang switch or whatever, but if you lose track of what is what it can become a confusing jumble of wires, especially if there is an intermediate switch on there as well.

YouTube videos and the like have been a godsend when it comes to repairing stuff, but I find it really frustrating when a thing I really need isn't some skill or online help but some obscure screwdriver or other tool that has one use. Looking at you, stuff like snap ring pliers, or Apple, with your funky one-off T5 torx screwdrivers.

uh, it's pretty easy to just buy the obscure tools -- most of which aren't all that expensive, in general. ... the most frustrating thing for me is when I can't find the fucking manual online. ... though I did learn that magic chef refrigerator/freezers are the same as three other brands of refrigerators.

It's super easy to buy the obscure tools! But then you have an obscure tool that you use once. Like my own snap ring pliers, I'm pretty sure I bought them to repair a gear in our stand mixer. And that's literally all I have ever used it for. Repairing that stand mixer, once, 10 years ago or whenever. Was the repair easy? Yes. Did I save a bunch of money doing it myself? Yes. And that was maybe my realization that so many repair shops are really in the end just convenience stores. They're not necessarily selling skill, they're not selling knowledge, they're selling that one weird screwdriver that you don't have or have the time to research and order. I have an oscillating tower fan I once wanted to disassemble to clean. Something like 15 regular screws ... and one weird screw. Why the one weird screw? To make it hard to do yourself.

I've had a couple of instances lately where there were actually two manuals, the consumer manual that comes with the product, but then a repair manual that repair people have access to. The former was no help, the latter took me forever to dig up, And that was only once I learned it existed.

my most recent repair was unclogging the defrost drain in our side-by-side refrigerator ... no more ice on the bottom of the freezer or water on the kitchen floor

the owner's manual was useless, but sifting through YouTube videos got me going in the right direction

the funniest "repair" or more like rough-as-fuck bodge in this case, I ever witnessed was: when some dodgy fucker I worked with had put an electrical distribution board way too close to a front door to the extent that if the door swung open with any force it might smash into it. The clerk of works was wandering about and if he noticed this the whole board would need moving, which would be a massive pain in the arse and some of the cables might not have been long enough to do it. So he improvised by screwing a plastic coca cola lid into the floor as an improvised doorstop and his pièce de résistance was then colouring it black with a sharpie marker pen!

I once saw the same guy fixing a lighting pattress to a ceiling with decorators caulk, by wedging a sweeping brush on a toolbox on a bed to hold it up till it it dried! He was one of these cowboys that took a perverse pleasure in doing terrible work!

I recently "repaired" a slat on an outdoor table by holding the slat in place with a paint stirring stick that I wood glued under it.

My fave DIY story was when I had to change a lightbulb in my car, which shouldn't be that difficult except that everything is more difficult in cars these days because they all require computers and stuff (which is ironic, because the computers make things easier ... for the people with the right program/disc/whatever; see: special screwdriver). I look up a youtube video and it was a bit trickier than I might have expected but even so, the video was something like 45 minutes long, which seemed a bit high to change a lightbulb. I get what I need from the store and dive in and ... it takes me more like 10 minutes, because it turns out that the only reason the video was 45 minutes was because the dude was filming himself with one hand while he did the lightbulb change with the other. With two hands, it took 10 minutes.

screwing a plastic coca cola lid into the floor as an improvised doorstop and his pièce de résistance was then colouring it black with a sharpie marker pen!

omg this is hilarious!!!!! hahahah

a repair manual that repair people have access to.

yes, this was what I was trying to find online for my fridge/freezer ... and how I learned that so many fridges are the same fridge with different names.

Can't find one for my sewing machine either.
Drag.

one thing I did discover online, which was cool, is there are websites for repair people that are like, diagnostics-for-dummies kinda? ... like, "it is 50% likely the problem is actually this" vs. "it is highly unlikely that when the thing has this problem, you will need to replace this part" ... that's how I figured out what was wrong with my fridge sans manual.

Having gone down the rabbit hole of this sort of thing for cars, I was happy that my assumption that there would be the same for household things was correct.

At some point I need to take a sewing refresher course, or just sew some things again. it has been awhile

join us on ILX Sewing!

Four weeks after I replaced the support roller in the dryer, the drum stopped spinning. Presumably it's the belt. It's something I could fix (especially now that I already know how to take apart the dryer), but then what's going to go next? It's clearly an old dryer. So I said fuck it and ordered a new dryer.

I fixed my dyson (new battery)

microwave still sat behind the sofa, waiting for me to change the fuse. will only take 30 minutes, if that, and will pay for itself, timewise, within 3 cups of coffee / 2 bowls of porridge, but still...

I had (to me) a kind of fascinating microwave fix to do a year or so ago. I'd noticed that the microwave every once in a while would kind of behave as if there were a small piece of metal in it. Basically freak out and force me to turn it off. I could't figure out what was going on, and while a close inspection didn't reveal any answers, it did reveal this little square of relatively flimsy cardboard on the side that I'd never noticed before. It turns out this thing is called the waveguide cover, or magnetron cover, and is actually not cardboard:

It covers the magnetron (which is what generates microwaves) from food splatter and debris. It is not made out of cardboard, even if it looks that way on some models. It's made out of Formica-molten rock and shaped into a sheet.

What had happened, or what I was able to surmise, is that over the years the thing did its job, but in the process got a bit of splatter stuck to it, and that splatter of food, over time, got cooked and cooked over and over again until it essentially carbonized, and *that* is what was causing the sparking. Once I figured that out it was easy enough to take off and clean the waveguide cover.

done the microwave, was easy enough to put a new fuse in without touching anything metal, not even the fuse... (the wire was stiff enough that i could hold it by the insulation and push it over the fuse, then pick the fuse up by the same wire and push the other wire onto it). but haven't plugged it back in to test it yet - i wiped down the cover and am waiting for it to dry before reassembling.

win. after 2 months the microwave makes things hot again.

(i also wiped down the mica window over the magnetron, just in case)

bless you both!

I didn't know that the cover was mica, I always assumed it was cardboard.

We had some guests over in the backyard last night, and after they left, I half-drunkenly loaded the dishwasher, pressed start and ... nothing. Just a blinking red light indicating it wasn't latching. Except I heard it latch, and it's less than a year old and has worked well so far, so no way should things be falling apart this soon. I load and reload all the gross, covid-y dishes and glasses multiple times, but no dice. Still, I notice that if I push on the front of the dishwasher after I press start it *does* seems to work (until I remove the pressure; then it stops again), which implies, yeah, a latching issue. It's pretty late and I just want to lie down, but I also want this full dishwasher clean when I wake up, so I spend several more minutes googling potential solutions. Indeed, the blinking red light means it's not latching, and the only solution is either inspecting and fixing the latch (which involves 20 minutes of disassembly) or replacing the latch (which involves ordering a $50 part and ... 20 minutes of disassembly). Or, I suppose, calling a technician to come out, which even if covered by warranty would mean several days of no dishwasher. Regardless, it's late, so I go upstairs and pass out. (Figuratively speaking.)

I wake up with a start sometime pretty early this morning, like before 6am (it's still dark). I realize the dishwasher still needs attention, and it's annoying me so much that I can't fall back asleep. I go downstairs, make coffee, take an Advil, then get to work googling, reading forums and watching DIY youtube videos, figuring there has to be a simpler solution than taking the whole thing apart and/or paying for a repair. I remove everything in the entire bottom rack, and then the rack itself: doesn't help. Then I start taking everything out of the top rack and ... there was one coffee mug turned around just enough in its place that its handle was protruding out from the back of the rack the *tiniest* bit. Aha! The simple solution. I rotate the mug maybe 10 degrees, reload everything, press start and ... fixed!

Basically, I am a genius. Bosch should pay *me.*

either all dishwashers matter, or none do

i burnt my tongue this morning on microwaved porridge.

Serves you right for repairing the microwave.

the god of inbuilt obsolescence is a vengeful god

Oh god, I've had a frustrating weekend with trying to repair a broken toilet handle and I'm still not done with it. Should be one of the most basic, simple fixes on a toilet, no? Unhook the chain, unscrew the flange, pull out the old one and reverse for the new one. Except whomever renovated our bathroom years ago installed a side mounted handle on a toilet that was less than 3 inches from a chase wall - so no angle to slide the new handle lever in directly.

They make "universal mounts" that are designed to fit any configuration (front-mount, side- and angle-), with the supposed benefit of the bulk of the lever being installed from inside the tank and you only attach the handle on the outside last. Great, except the hole for our side mount handle it so close to the front wall of the tank that none of the three versions I've tried will fit and still turn for flushing.

Also tried an allegedly bendable plastic one that was super cheap, but that snapped as soon as I tried to maneuver it into the side.

So five hours and three trips to Home Depot, still no luck. The guy I talked to there told me that I have "no choice but to replace the whole toilet", but I refuse to believe that because, a) come on, and b) a moron at Home Depot also told me a few years ago that I would have to replace my entire kitchen sick faucet when the sprayer hose broke, but actually it turned out I could buy a $7 sleeve online and fix it in 15 minutes myself.

So going to try the local Ace today to see if they have any suggestions. Some online research indicates there are metal handle levers that are a little bendable so that I can get it angled in and straightened out. I certainly hope so, because having to take off the entire toilet to replace a handle seems absolutely batshit to me.

And Josh, I feel you. Our microwave decided to give out in the middle of all of this yesterday. Googling tells me it's likely donezo for good, so it appears microwave shopping in the pandemic is also in my near future.

Keep the toilet, demolish the wall. Problem sorted.

No, more seriously, could you take the tank off, replace the handle on the tank while it is detached, and then reattach the tank?

Not quite visualizing your problem so I don't know if that's feasible.

I'd have to see if the tank is detachable. Not near it at the moment, but I want to say that it's all one piece - the bowl and tank are all molded together. I think going down that route would mean taking off the lugs and lifting the whole toilet off, which I'm not exactly stoked to do - I foresee a mess and a few cracked floor tiles in my future.

I've done it a few times and it wasn't THAT bad.

But - hate to say so in this thread - at some point it may be cheaper and more efficient to just have a plumber do it.

I've certainly done plenty of five-hour sagas with multiple trips to HD... And then reflected that if I valued my time at even minimum wage, I would have come out way ahead by calling a professional and handing them $200.

You probably aren't wrong, I'm going to give Ace one more go (since I have a few other things I can grab while I'm there) and see if that helps, then maybe call in the pros. I certainly thought this would be a quick run for the part and a 10 minute fix, not the saga it became. Had I known Friday where this would go I might have just called someone from the start.

Certainly removing the tank would be easier than removing the entire toilet, which can be a PIA, because all/most of them (iirc?) have a sort of wax seal/ring at the base you'd have to replace as well. But it's definitely doable.

I learned a lot about that wax seal when my bf fixed his toilet with his brother's help, and his brother said you could add a new seal without removing the old one, which worked great until a few weeks/months later when the toilet clogged because too much wax seal had squeezed out and blocked it.

i bought a accordion on ebay and it arrived today with the bass keys all in the wrong shape so i screwed open the panel and it was a bit like a typewriter (i have a knack for repairing typewriters, they make sense to me) and i messed around until it all seemed to be in order and screwed it back together and now it seems to be working fine! didn't even consult youtube!

sidenote i'm learning the accordion now

Yeah I've read enough stories about dealing with/replacing the wax ring that I'm super nervous to go down that route.

Toilet wax rings are NBD if you have gloves and scraping tools. I used a small plaster "knife". Remember, its all designed so even a drunken plumber can do it.

Yeah, the toilet in question does not have a tank that can be removed, it's all one piece. So here's opening I can find a malleable metal lever.

laptop:
replaced faulty dc port

I've had a laptop sitting around for almost two years with what I believe is a busted DC port and I finally got off my ass to order the part in the mail. It seems like an easy fix, so here's hoping that's the problem.

What had happened, or what I was able to surmise, is that over the years the thing did its job, but in the process got a bit of splatter stuck to it, and that splatter of food, over time, got cooked and cooked over and over again until it essentially carbonized, and *that* is what was causing the sparking. Once I figured that out it was easy enough to take off and clean the waveguide cover.

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, October 18, 2020 6:45 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

this is fun. splatter on the waveguide aperture will absorb more energy because the field is still concentrated there. the field diffracts and spreads out further away from the aperture, so the food splatter absorbs less energy there and won't 'spark'. A similar thing can happen in fiber optics, where the waveguide is a glass fiber with field concentrated to a ~9 micron diameter. If you connect an optical fiber with a similar cleaved output aperture to enough optical power, any dust or other contamination on the fiber's output aperture will burn. In fiber optics work, we are always looking at the cleaved ends of fibers with "fiber scopes" to check for this kind of contamination. If we find it, we clean the fiber end with specialized tools (or maybe a kimwipe soaked in IPA). congrats, you have now completed at least 33% of a phd in fiber optics.

if you inspect a fiber end in the scope and forgot to turn off a laser, you could permanently damage your retina. in that case, the splatter might save your vision.

Last time I replaced a wax ring I got one of the new fangled foam rings (after seeing someone on This Old House use one and I tend to trust them) and it has been fine so far and way less never wracking than trying to not to nick the wax and cause a leak that shows up after a few weeks.

microwave buzzed this morning and porridge came out cold. so i guess the fuse was a symptom and not the cause. i have 4 more, but at the current rate that won't last me past the end of the month.

So, yes, my local Ace had the solution - a brass handle that was malleable enough that I could get it in through the side and bend back in place. Worked like a charm.

Can I also just add that Home Depot is one of the most useless chain stores I've ever dealt with? I'm well aware of the owner's odious politics, but there is one that is five minutes from my house while a Lowe's or Menard's is a twenty minute drive away, meaning it can be a necessary evil in the middle of a project. But this is now the third time in about five years I've gone in looking for a very specific part that I knew was exactly what I needed to fix something, only for their employee to insist that the part I needed didn't exist and that I would have no choice but to replace the entire thing I was trying to fix. Once I could write it off as an employee that doesn't know any better, but at this point I can only assume its a corporate policy to not stock common repair parts and instead steer customers to a full replacement.

Menard's owner even more evil than Home Depot, iirc

Checks out. I can't say I've been in one of those for 15 years or so.

owner's odious politics

To be fair, it's the co-founder's politics, and the co-founder retired from the company back in 2002.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lowes-versus-home-depot-meme/

I swore I thought there was something more recent about Home Depot donating to something pretty awful, but I could be wrong.

there was one coffee mug turned around just enough in its place that its handle was protruding out from the back of the rack the *tiniest* bit. Aha! The simple solution. I rotate the mug maybe 10 degrees, reload everything, press start and ... fixed!

Basically, I am a genius. Bosch should pay *me.*

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, October 19, 2020 8:51 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

I had a rental with a bosch dishwasher and for some reason stuff like this happened to me all the time - there would be like one little plastic spatula protruding slightly somewhere on the top rack and I couldn't close the door and couldn't figure out why

Bosch leaves no door unopened

I still think Bosch should release a line of dishwashers with front panels by Hieronymus Bosch.

Like, you'd put your cereal bowl in there and close it, and bam. Upside-down demons with trumpets in their butts. Melting skulls. Laughing donkeys wearing lederhosen. Awesome.

Jvc, the employee turnover rates at Home Despot and BLowe's are about as high as they come. Lots of seasonal workers, lots of people coming and leaving after a few weeks or months, etc.

The work is hard and sometimes dangerous, and the pay is shit.

I'm not scolding you, just noting that the people you talked to might not have known what the fuck they were talking about. It's baked into their whole employment model

Oh I get it, I always try to be polite to the workers there because I’ve been in their shoes in retail and I don’t blame them for dumbass corporate decisions. Still it’s kinda maddening when someone is swearing up and down that you have to buy a whole new toilet to replace a ten dollar part.

On the other hand, I had to go to Home Depot the other day, and as I was walking around I passed what I assume to be an off-duty employee, an older lady, by all indications packed up and ready to leave for the day, no uniform or smock or store identification, yet she immediately asked me what I was looking for and pointed me to the precise aisle I could find it in.

just repaired an extraction fan that was installed by an idiot (the builder who did our kitchen) real cowboy stuff of the kind calzino describes elsewhere in this thread. literally just stuck together with bluetac. Bought a couple of clips and the correct size reducer and it all seems properly sturdy now.

I am building a bike - my first ever. it is an old (at the time) high end italian steel frame. I'm classing this as repairing a thing - tbf I am having to clean and refurbish a lot of the components as I do this. it's a very satisfying process so far, though granted I've not yet got to the fiddly bit I'm dreading (cabling)

is cabling really hard?

Cabling is easier than the cleaning IMO. Spend 20bucks on a cable puller and another 10 on snips and you’ll do well.

it's not hard by the looks of things - just something I've never done before, and could be potentially fiddly. having the right tools probably key

v dedicated to hub gears for their beautifully reliable simplicity

this project all came about because I failed to repair a thing - stuck alu seatpost in a carbon frame. I've tried brute force and immersion in plusgas (two course). I'm going to try hot-cold differential expansion next... before I resort to a slide hammer or cutting the thing out

I built my bike up from a frame maybe 10 years ago and there is something immensely satisfying about getting on it and thinking 'I know every part of you' & being confident that if something goes wrong, you'll know or be able to figure out what to do. It's probably my single favourite material possession.

Recent dodgy repairs: Nutribullet. After taking it apart I saw that the mush container should activate two switches when it's pressed down and one of them wasn't closing. I zip-tied that one into permanent contact. Pretty sure I'm bypassing a safety feature but no-one's lost a finger yet so I'm saying REPAIR COMPLETE.

put me on the repair shop now

would be so handy to have men's sheds or simial in every area hosting skillshare workshops showing how to fix everyday objects so people have the knowledge. As much as getting beyond proprietary security devices preventing people doing their own repairs on a lot of things.
Could be good to teach basic prgramming and electric repairs too as well as showing what the danger points are.
Possibly some basic gardening/crp growing and garment repair/upcycling.

Nutrition, basic valuing for furture barter. Howw to tell what is actually necessary in a scenario without money?
Having the gift of teh gab basic trading/salesmanship?

learning how to make things ad hoc from existing objects would be handy, what MacGyver does but ona apracticalkk level.
Basic principles of what makes a thing work. relevant snatches of physics and chemistry etc

Also knowing what is essential and what is cosmetic in a process so you know what you actually need. YOu can build up decoration at a later point once you've got what you need.

re: bikes, I ordered a bike online this summer and it was a case study in why I don't usually try to repair things on my own. I knew going in that I would probably have to adjust the brakes and derailleurs. I bought a few tools and studied as many youtube videos as I could find about these basic tasks. I managed to adjust the brakes marginally well, but nowhere near perfect. The derailleurs were just a fucking mess. I spent hours trying to set them up and just couldn't make it happen. Because local shops were so backed up with repairs this summer, I took it to a guy in my neighborhood who had been posting online about fixing bikes. He got the brakes in perfect order, and the derailleurs are shifting well but I've still been getting a ton of chain rub. I called up my local shop and their wait time for repairs is pretty much back to normal, so I'm going to run it up there this week for some extra tweaks.

To my credit, I swapped my stem out without any problems and managed to change the tire alright when I got a flat. But all the cable-adjustment stuff might as well have been a major appliance as far as how useless I was at fixing it.

After sticking to internal hubs for years I now have a regular (externally) geared bike and it doesn't shift smoothly and I'm putting off trying to figure out why. I resent that it doesn't come with a little window and a tension dial.

I love working on bikes (and guitars) and am a much better bike mechanic and guitar tech than I am cyclist or guitar player - I've built a few of both from frames/bodies/parts. It took me a while to get the shifting stuff figured out but there are only a few settings - the upper and lower limits and the cable tension - but if you don't do it that often it can be frustrating to remember.

If you have the room and money a bike repair stand makes it orders of magnitude easier - mine was like $50 and works just fine. And something to cut cables cleanly (I use a dremel with a cutoff wheel) because regular old wire cutters will wreck them. I swore by all the Park Tools repair videos when I was learning.

I have a cable cutter from Park Tools somewhere. I've fixed up a few bikes that ppl gave me bc they didn't work or were in pieces, but it's been a while. In fact, I ended up needing specific tools that aren't made anymore bc the bikes were so old! I'd forgotten about that! Bike shops have everything. (RIP cottered cranks.)

I'm very into the idea of visible clothing repairs but have done nothing about it. I think ilxor elmo argonaut was learning about it iirc?

I follow someone on twitter who is a Navy vet & an anarchist farmer, I guess you might say? They've been watching the show "Doomsday Preppers" and picking out all the things ppl do wrong and I've been enjoying it so much. Something they specifically pointed out was that no one thinks they're going to need fiber arts after the apocalypse, so where do they plan to get clothes from?

so many annoying proprietary standards in bike maintenance (don't get me started on BBs) - really need a tool library nearby

Soooo true. Btw I wanted to say that

tbf I am having to clean and refurbish a lot of the components as I do this. it's a very satisfying process so far

...is super-relatable! Repairing things has done a lot for my mental health at certain times. It's good to be useful when you feel like a lump.

more bike repairing chat. building up my other bike has given me the confidence (and tools) to tackle some jobs I'd previously have handed off to the bike shop, so... I've serviced the rear hub on my good bike. one of the benefits of doing things yourself: you can discover when others (i.e. professionals) have previously bodged it. my rear hub doesn't have the little interior weather seal - which will probably have shortened the service life of my bearings which is annoying (altho they looked OK when I took them out). can only think the bike shop forgot to put it back in when they last serviced. looks like I can get replacement parts easily enough. very satisfying (if a little messy)

Yesterday I tackled the biennial breakdown of the internals of my ageing Gaggia espresso machine to scrape out corrosion and weird mineral grit. Don't think I will use the kettle as a handy jug to fill it any more. I will admit that I thought briefly about throwing it away and buying another, but no. At 18 it's my fourth oldest appliance, after the toaster (53, older than me), the dryer (42) and the fridge (19). I've repaired them all.

xp afterwards you can go for a lovely cycle in the rain to rinse it down

MatthewK that's an impressive lifespan on that toaster! (And the rest, frankly) What make is it??

It's a Sunbeam AT40 - I have repaired the internals a couple of times, but my parents got it as an engagement gift in 1967. Wait I think they got *married* in 1967, maybe it's 54. It's all electromechanical, just a triggered drop mechanism (which drives other people crazy) and some kind of thermal-expansion release. I don't think it's got so much as a resistor in it, aside from the heating elements. Makes better toast than anything I've otherwise used.
https://i.imgur.com/YTDpSW9.jpg
I have two backups, one working, one for parts ...

MatthewK, you possess a marvel of engineering.

heh heh
although mine will only trigger if the other slot is empty

oh my god, that is insane! I have pulled it apart several times but could never understand the mechanism.

fixed the link between the toilet handle and the plastic flusing thing earlier this year - it had rusted through after >20 years. replaced it with a 4" bit of coathanger but that has itself rusted through and broke again yesterday.

i've cut another bit off the same coathanger and replaced it, but i wonder if something like a zip-tie would be better. my worry is that the bottom of the link seems to be the only thing stopping the plunger thing disappearing completely into the flush mechanism to be lost forever.

you could try coating the coathanger in something that makes it rust resistant like plastikote if you have it?

yeah, wondering if if have any other plastic coated wire that'd work, like that usb cable that broke last week even. i'm not sure whether the link needs to be stiff or whether i can get away with something floppier, as long as the tensile strength is enough so it doesn't break when pulled.

and i can fix the plunger worry by adding something higher up the shaft - won't be in the way but will stop it from retracting completely.

i mean, zip tie sounds reasonable im just spitballing!

alternative solutions always welcome

You mean just the mechanism that pulls up the flapper? Isn't that often a lightweight chain?

It's not much of a repair, but just finding the name of the plastic thing along the side of a glass shower door was a challenge. It's an acrylic door stop, or jamb, or strike jamb! Decided to just glue it fixed first anyway.

there's a us/uk different with toilets and that goes for the internals as well.

https://www.tradewindsimports.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/300px-Toilet-cistern-01.png

the siphon there being the biggest difference. which i think means the pressure needed to pull is greater here. the old link was quite thick guage, probably 3x the coathanger wire (and perhaps galvanised to help against rust)

actually, here's a good pic, that bent wire there

https://www.ritefixdiy.co.uk/image/cache/catalog/Plumbing/Flush%20Syphon-500x500.jpg

A zip tie seems like it would work as a replacement - just needs to withstand an upward pull? And they have some rigidity, especially the longer/wider ones.

Is there a reason you can't just buy the actual replacement part? Hereabouts, a kit to replace all the inside bits is less than twenty dollars. Chains and flappers and things are significantly less.

Where's the fun in that, ymp?

ianap but maybe it needs to be stiff so you could e.g. stop it flushing by pushing the handle.

pushing pulling the handle.

there's a return spring in the siphon so theoretically it'll go back down itself. mine doesn't seem to want to, the wire's puling it slightly so it's no longer straight up and down.

eventually found the words to use to search for them and found them online, £2.50 for 2. just need to choose the right size. one size does not fit all.

yeah every time I've jury-rigged something in a toilet, I've regretted it. For a while I had a bread-bag twisty-tie as a temp repair; it rusted immediately.

I was today years old when I learned

there's a us/uk different with toilets and that goes for the internals as well.

Our ancient dryer stopped heating last week and I almost bought a new one before deciding to attempt repairs. I cleaned out the lint trap and exhaust duct, replaced the heating element, and have a working dryer again.

replaced the broken pipe connector for the faucet on my balcony so now we have water for the plants

the first day this has been an issue

Possibly helpful advice in this hot weather. Our outdoor umbrella's winding mechanism broke and I tried to repair it. Tip one: do not pull the cord out from the top of the pole! It's probably just come untied from the handle, remove the handle mechanism and use some wire to hook the cord out through the hole there. Like a fool I pulled ours all the way out and as our pole is hinged there's a tiny gap in the middle that you somehow have to thread the cord through. I eventually managed it by tying the cord to a long bit of garden wire that I straightened out, but of course I then discovered there's a plastic sleeve inside the pole near the bottom and instead of going through the large hole in the middle, the wire had somehow slipped between the sleeve and the metal pole, trapping the cord there. So that was an extra 20 minutes of teeth gnashing. Tip two: be extra sure a) you have all the handle parts and some of them haven't fallen out in the garden; ii) how the handle parts all fit together and 3) which direction the handle slots back in - the ratchet assembly only screws in on one side of the pole. Otherwise you may find yourself threading and unthreading and knotting and unknotting the cord, I don't know, three or four times. Tip three, tie the knot as close to the end as you can as they are not generous with the length of cord - or you might find yourself having to take the whole thing apart untie and retie the knot AGAIN.

But it's fixed now.

sounds like it's time to recover from the repair by sitting under the umbrella

Or I could sit in my sweltering loft while doing the 'working' from home I was enthusing about only a couple of days ago.

The other day one of our smoke detectors started beeping (not the alarm) so I assumed it needed a new battery and changed the 9v battery. But the next day another smoke detector started doing the same thing. And the day after that a *third* detector did the beep thing and I thought, hmm, odd that all the installed batteries should go bad within the same day. Then the one I changed first started doing the beep thing *again* and I suspected something was afoot. I replace the batteries in all of them, but I also order a cheap battery tester, and indeed, the batteries are not bad, it's the combo smoke/carbon monoxide detectors themselves that need to be replaced. That's what the beep of this brand was trying to convey. In fact, the way it apparently works is that they beep five times, and even if you reset them they start the beeping up again in a couple of days. And after a couple of weeks the intermittent beeping supposedly can't be silenced, ensuring that you absolutely *must* replace them. (Or I guess unplug them? Ours are wired.) Anyway, I had no idea these things go bad and need to be replaced! The downside is that they cost about $30 each, which ... sucks. But they're important, so you do what you gotta do.

I've got four wired ones in the upstairs that have a battery backup, and it started beeping at 4am because the battery had drained. I didn't want to dig around downstairs for batteries so I unhooked it which caused the other three to start beeping because they were alerting me that one was no longer connected.

Josh - I've had that happen, but they were older ones. They should all have a date stamped on them that is the date of manufacturer. Most are designed to "go bad" after a certain time has elapsed from that date, some are 7 years and others are 10, iirc. Some might even be less than that, but I would look at the dates to see how old they are.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DizArM0XcAIhyMv.jpg

Yeah, mine are c. 2013, so yeah, it's been about 7-8 years.

Need to replace the flapper seal on my toilet tank, going to try to do so tomorrow, when I was planning on deep cleaning the bathroom anyway. I am not great at plumbing stuff but also am not calling a guy who will charge me $100+ for twenty minutes of work.

Will let y'all know how it goes lol

Yeah that is one of the most frequent - possibly the most frequent - jobs that is realistic for a non-handy civilian to do. You'll be fine.

Yeah, i watched a short video on it and was like, "oh, i'll be fine" right after i posted here.

Anyway, I had no idea these things go bad and need to be replaced! The downside is that they cost about $30 each, which ... sucks.

yeah, that's why there are some that differentiate themselves from others by saying they last "10 years worry free" -- standard models don't last as long. $30/each is the cheap kind! "fancier" ones will run about $10-$20/more -- though the fancier ones were on sale at Home Depot today for about $35 -- the individually packaged ones. They also have "contractors packs" (of 2 or 3 or 4) -- which weren't on sale, why, idk.

I think the "10 years worry free" ones have a lithium battery built in. At least, I think that's what the "10 years" is referring to. Mine were hard wired combo smoke/carbon monoxide, so yeah, something like $32 each in the end, but I assume the lifespan (est. 7-10 years, iirc; mine made it to about 8) has something to do with the technology, not the battery, since the 9v batteries were still all good. The oddest thing was that at least a couple of them, the green operation light was still on when I flipped various breakers. In fact, one green light was pulsing, though most were solid. Maybe because they're wired together, or on their own circuit, or local codes when installed required them to be independent? Anyway, I get anxious around anything electrical, let alone devices designed to blare out an ear-piercing alarm when triggered, not to mention wired together to all go off at once, just inches from my ear when I'm standing on a ladder, so I just shut off power to the house and changed them all in 10 minutes or so. I think they could have been "hot swapped," but every instruction said to shut off the breaker first. Sure, most likely just to be safe, but I didn't want to fry a circuit somehow or whatever.

You can also get a kind that plugs into the wall that also has a battery backup -- so you don't have to deal with frying circuits and live wires.

Had no idea about these smoke alarms.

Had one connected to the wall through ... RCA cables? Started beeping even though there was no fire. Pull it off the wall... and it still beeps.

Find the battery and remove it. Still beeping. So now I'm convinced I got one of those possessed smoke alarms. Threw it out.

i bet the possession is related to the whole "smart home" thing -- like, yr smoke alarm was taking orders or having an argument with someone's smart fridge idk

Fixed that toilet flapper no problem. Toilet works great. Husband was proud of me for attempting to do something "handy."

only things i have repaired recently were the squeaky bathroom lock, and the door handle to the front room. things i need to repair:
- dining room light wiring. i will get someone else to repair this i think, even tho my gf explained how to do it, she is much more practical than me and i would balls it up and die
- landing light needs fixing
- my favourite coffee cup broken, needs fixing

finally getting around to sorting out a couple of zips on jeans taht have been hanging around for months. But not touched sewing machine in ages. JUst not got it together to make anything this year. Started in about the first week of teh year and thought i was getting off to a good start but nothing since early spring.
Hopefully this is me starting to get back into things but don't want to talk too soon.

I bleeded my radiators the other day and then was pissing about trying get the pressure right. First the pressure was too low and the boiler wouldn't fire up and then it was firing up and cutting off after 10 secs because I'd put too much water back in. I just need it to carry on working until the annual service in January. I hate messing about with boilers because I try and act like I know what I'm doing but haven't really got much of a clue. Council plumbers tend to be such arseholes I only like to call them as a last resort.

yah i need to get mine serviced this year. its ancient but touch wood etc. i think it must have some leak somehwere in the system because i have a radiator that needs constant bleeding and is always making high ptiched squealing noises.

so much for "repairing things" the boiler is totally knackered now, the PCB won't even boot up and just keeps blinking on and off. It's getting a milder anyway but the missus has MS related ultra cold sensitivity and anything a degree below room temperature is like Siberia to her!

We had a lock/latch on back door stick in the closed position, meaning we literally couldn't open the door. I tried taking the door off the frame, but of course that couldn't work, because the latch was engaged in the door jamb already. So I got a bunch of pliers and screwdrivers and whatnot and went to work on what little I could reach after taking off the handle, but no use. I did manage to remove/destroy most of the exposed latch mechanism, but the tiny tip of the latch itself was unreachable and just would not retract. We finally had to call a locksmith out and he said I had the right idea, but it still took him a good 20 minutes+ of further physical effort to finally rip all the parts out to free the door. I guess the origin of the problem was that a tiny little piece of metal or something had spontaneously broken loose and clogged up the works? Anyway, pain in the ass, but fixed now. I suppose better to have a door permanently shut than permanently open.

wish I could repair my living space by having the racist morons who live next door permanently removed.
Hate sharing a street door with people who can't keep it locked and just leave it open for hours on end. We've had problems with people who have nothing to do with the building hanging around at teh bottom of the stairs before. Now hopefully coming to the end of a time when kids have been throwing fireworks around and into unlocked doorways.Still no cop on. Hoping mail hasn't disappeared.

we had a package stolen from inside the foyer just this week. deliver guy had a picture of it left by the inside door, but someone got in and took it. the lock hasn't been great recently, stiff because of the change of weather perhaps. and we've had druggies using the porch for shelter for the last few months.

You should do the humanitarian thing and build them their own porch.

so much for "repairing things" the boiler is totally knackered now, the PCB won't even boot up and just keeps blinking on and off. It's getting a milder anyway but the missus has MS related ultra cold sensitivity and anything a degree below room temperature is like Siberia to her!

― calzino, Monday, 8 November 2021 10:45 (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

ugh that really sucks im sorry, its so fn depressing when the most basic shit won't work

It's fine really, we've got a backup electric immersion heater and one them horrible electric fires that is just a heater fan embedded into an MDF fireplace that the council now prefer to gas fires, but it does the job. Plumber has ordered two PCB parts for tomorrow. It's living the dream in comparison to the shit people put up with in the private rental sector.

"Council plumbers tend to be such arseholes I only like to call them as a last resort."

8)

(my landlord's plumber broke the knob on the boiler during the yearly inspection two years ago but balanced it so that it looked ok until i touched it. last year he didn't mention it despite it still being broken - not much of an inspection)

some of them are very snobby little young tory lads and have nothing but contempt for council tenants

luckily my plumber was a very polite goth type which made a pleasant change from the tribal tatt goons they usually send. My conclusion is that my fault analysis that the pressure was the problem after bleeding the rads was completely wrong. The PCB was just shutting down because it was on it's way out.

I had someone call at the door from a claims company that specifically dealt with bad council repairs. It seemed a bit off to me, like shouldn't they be going after private landlords rather local authorities. Sure there are problems with social housing but the worst living conditions in this country are most deffo in the private rental sector. It seems a lot of these claims companies are going bust now, not specifically the type I've just mentioned but the 2018 amendment to the Civil Liability Act kicked in a few months back and they are dropping like flies.

this week i'm learning about "patching" "drywall" with "spackle" and "studs". messed up country.

"it's so simple is plastering, it's just like buttering toast" someone once said to me. yet again when you see people's DIY efforts compared to the work of experienced plasterers, those beautiful shiny smooth walls you see drying - it deffo takes time to get that good!

Ten years ago I wired a new cooker switch at my stepdad's house. His old one was a horrible wall mounted one from the 70's and the plastic was cracking up and it was electrically unsafe. I sunk two drywall boxes into the stud wall for his new one and had to knock a few holes in the wall to get the cable to the new outlet. I did this really fucking awful hack job on the patching and it's still there ten years later!

yeah what we need to do is definitely a step up from filling in drawing pin holes with toothpaste on moving out day.

we have about five 4"x2" holes in the ceiling that i really feel like i should be able to manage myself with these https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B073HQS59F/.

then there's big 1 ft by 6ft hole with a power outlet in the middle that i'm saving for last.

One of my favorite "repairing" stories from before we renovated our house was I was changing our sheets on our bed and made a big show of snapping the flat sheet to spread it out on the bed and hooked it on the ceiling fan above our bed (our ceilings upstairs are 7 feet or so) and it yanked the ceiling fan off the ceiling joist and onto our bed in a shower of 75 yo drywall leaving a hole up to our unheated and largely uninsulated attic.

I repaired the drywall rather quickly that week to keep the heat from escaping. Spackling is like herding cats.

for patching largish troublesome holes I'd screw a bit of random timber in there like the old style latts you'd get in those disgusting old black lime walls for something for it to cling to. Lol they used to horse hair and that's often how electrical fires used to start. Also ignore me I don't have a clue what I'm talking about.

black lime is most disgusting thing present in old walls next to asbestos. At least the latter is doesn't make you feel absolutely poisoned and itchy while it is fixing to kill you.

my problem is 80% i am terrible at the fundamentals of applying stuff to create a smooth surface and 20% walls are different in the united states and if i call my dad his advice makes no sense because it's stuff he learned renovating a terraced house in sheffield ca. 1985.

i've lived here for 8 years and am still unclear what a stud is tbqh.

caek I used those mesh things you linked to before and they really only work if they have something to hold on to. 6x6 obv bigger than 4x2, so it will work if you are just trying to get by for a little, but if you want it to last, you will need something to fill in the gap.

You could get a piece of drywall cut to just about the right size, screw it into the adjoining drywall on an angle, then use the mesh.

Another option would be to enlarge the holes so they reach the nearest joists. That would make a larger but easier job.

studs run vertically in walls, joists run horizontally in ceilings/floors.

if you can get a rough base of some bonding in there, then wack in a lot of polyfila as flat as possible and sand it down afterwards, it will look reet with a lick of paint!

sorry I'm not being helpful here, PBKR is talking sense

lol pbkr that fan story is terrifying and amazing

screwing plasterboard in is the correct approach with stud walls, or gluing it in if you cant get a fixing to some wood. Or even the cowboy option of stuffing the plasterboard in with screwed up paper!

Is drywall the same as plasterboard or not or is it not even a simple yes/no but the dreaded "it depends"

Ive a bit of drilling new holes and hanging a few shelves and repairing of holes meself to look forward too, i was hoping to get away with skimming tbh

a stud sensor will be your friend then because you don't want to be making exploratory holes to find them!

Is drywall the same as plasterboard or not or is it not even a simple yes/no but the dreaded "it depends"

very close to the same but plasterboard is specifically designed to be plastered over whereas drywall just gets joint compound plastered over the joints

https://www.hunker.com/12616166/differences-between-gypsum-board-and-plasterboard

xp those mesh things can be tricky on walls and might fall off a ceiling unless supported as PBKR suggests

last time I had to do a drywall repair I watched a bunch of YouTube videos ... many were not relevant to my tiny job, but I gained some reassuring general knowledge and was able to do a California patch that looks pretty good (it would look even better if we painted it to match the wall color)

xp the entire party wall is fuckin wrapped in some kind of foil, alas

Wonderful for insulation no doubt but the fuckin studfinder is useless as a result for anything along that part

Im just hoping that the yungfella who gave me the screws and the go ahead to start drilling into what he presumed was brick beyond the boatd knew what he was talking about, or else....

lol just use those spiral plasterboard fixings and don't actually put anything on your shelf ffs!

lol pbkr that fan story is terrifying and amazing

― Tracer Hand, Monday, November 8, 2021 7:22 PM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I've got loads of house horror stories.

i put little cable clamps down on my speaker wire in my new place, for the left speaker, running up and across a doorway, then back down to the other side and the receiver. felt pretty good because my friend let me borrow these little clamp pieces where you have to nail them in, and even my tiny skeleton fingers were big enough to get in the way of the hammer, so much. i was basically 80% hammering the nail and 20% hammering my thumb, on purpose, because that was the only way.

just throwing this in here because it was a Small Victory but also probably <.0001% of normal handy person skill for normal day-to-day things.

just don't try putting a drywall anchor in where there's a stud ;_; xp

for patching largish troublesome holes I'd screw a bit of random timber in there like the old style latts you'd get in those disgusting old black lime walls for something for it to cling to.

This is the way we patched drywall holes. Stretch of scrap wood or two screwed across the hole, piece of drywall cut to fit, tape bed & texture. The mesh screens are harder to make invisible IMO.

I have hit ceiling fans with sheets on more than one occasion, it is a miracle I've never ripped one out of the ceiling.

just don't try putting a drywall anchor in where there's a stud ;_; xp

― certified juice therapist (harbl), Tuesday, 9 November 2021 00:47 (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Great another fuckin thing to worry about!

but the bonus is there that you've fucked up a plasterboard fixing but also found a solid fixing point!

hah hah unless by some bad luck you just happened to find a bit of the joist in a wiring zone and there is a steel plate on it or not!

oh god lol it's true

those plates have burned me more than once

Bad enough I couldn't sleep before this thread yiz animals

sorry I forgot to put "wiring zone" in scare quotes!

I have successsfully used a magnet to locate studs: rub it gently over the plasterboard and it should detect the nails or screws in the studs; once you've found two or three you get an idea of where the studs are.

never thought of that before, it would have to be a very strong magnet I guess? but looking online you can get super strong neodymium magnets for pocket change.

I've had shit luck with those drywall mesh patches, they always left an obvious mound no matter how smooth I got the surface. I've had much better luck actually making the hole big enough to screw a brace in from behind then putting a cut piece of drywall in the opening.

I'm posting this example video because of my crush on Tom Silva:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLGmTzEGSIY

My current house is from 1938 and has several additions over the years (I can see five totally separate wood floor in my upstairs hallway) and the outer walls are made of concrete block so some walls are modern drywall, some are 83 year old plaster and lathe, some are cinder block, some have regular 16" stud spacing, some do not, etc.

The wall I decided to mount guitar hangers turns out to be drywall added over the top of existing plaster and lathe. The studs have 3 inches of wall material over them and couldn't be found without drilling a number of exploratory holes and having to use 5 1/2" screws to mount everything.

I have successsfully used a magnet to locate studs: rub it gently over the plasterboard and it should detect the nails or screws in the studs; once you've found two or three you get an idea of where the studs are.

I have never had any luck with stud finders. Seems like the whole damn wall has a stud behind it. Or none.

But that makes sense. Hell, it's probably how a stud finder works in the first place and not by, I dunno, sonar like I've always thought.

it puts out like a wave or something to measure density, not magnetic

I guess my walls aren't the only things that are dense then.

not a wave i guess. that would be more like sonar. it's based on whether things conduct electricity?

But there you go, it's looking for the metal, not so much the wood.

I've never had much luck with them either, they only seem to work really well if you've got newer construction with metal studs. Allegedly, the best bet with wood studs is to find a stud located along the seam of a drywall panel joint, where there will be more nails to hold the drywall edge in place and thus more chances for the magnet to pick something up.

Our current house is from the 1920's and has thick as fuck plaster walls that render a stud finder pretty much useless.

xpost - some are magnetic, but yes others measure density (the latter are the ones that I never have luck with)

NB I've never tried any of the newer, extra wide ones that are supposedly much better.

The only time I’ve had difficulty with studfinders is when the walls are plaster with those skinny boards behind it. Lath boards?

Yeah, lath.

But there you go, it's looking for the metal, not so much the wood.

― pplains, Tuesday, November 9, 2021 9:58 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

no because other things conduct electricity too. even you. are YOU metal?

i don't really know how it works but i'm going to imagine it's like my fancy scale that says i am 3% bones. like a stud finder for your body.

But wood doesn't conduct electricity! And that's what studs are usually made of!

that's what she said

*points studfinder to chest* it's beeping hahahahaha

I'm just glad it wasn't me that finally broke the stud barrier on this thread.

Electric stud finders are able to measure the dialectric (resistivity) of the material by trying to induce an eddy current. Kind of like reading the electrical "density" - metal have low dialectric, as do humans due to water content; wood and plaster and air have high dialectric.

Aka magic

Wow yet another thread about investigating the dialectic

A good stud finder will actually let you find the exact edge (width) of the stud. It's not just finding a random nail in the stud.

this thread inspired me to dig out a DIY synth project i'd gotten annoyed with and put away years ago and fuck with it some more. thanks thread!

!!! that's fun!

You know what’s not fun? Dealing with a county planning board to rebuild a shed in my backyard that’s covered in lead paint and falling down. The shit they’ve put me through

F'ING SQUEAKY DOOR. I mean i know it's small beer compared to other things in this thread. but ffs. it's also one of those things you only remember you need to do every time you encounter it but forget immediately after.

one of the most mind blowing moments i've ever experienced was when i was hanging out with some of my druggie friends in glasgow doing absolutely nothing and one of their friends came over and drew a can of oil from her handbag, exactly like you might see one drawn in a cartoon, with a needle-like spout and a convex bottom that made a little POINK sound if you pushed it, and she went over to this one door that had squeaked outrageously ever since anyone could remember and she just squirted a couple of drops of oil on the hinges and suddenly it was as quiet as an ant pissing on cotton and i thought to myself tearily, 'once, you could kick a ball in the street'

hah, a bit of 70's nostalgia "every home had a little can of 3 in 1 oil in the pantry" (usually next to some unused carcinogenic weed killer from the 50's with a faded label).

Its magic, reminds me i have one to do downstairs actually

a certain member of this board once oiled the door of the upstairs area in the Lexington because it was squeaking during a quiet acoustic sunday afternoon gigs he was co-hosting. fixed it right up.

The street door here kept catching and then i used WD40 on it and it closed automatically. So the idiot next door started leaving it on the latch and even bringing the handle around so it looked like it was locked. Never knew whether to think he was actually trying to get one over on me and failing massively or just putting himself out an extra bit because he was a twat or what.

i have one that has like so much emulsion paint wedged into the hinge that an oiling lasts a few days at most. i can hear it sqeaking right now

anyone ever tried re-hanging a door that keeps catching? those chippies make it look so easy. I got it so wrong that it was catching the architrave even worse + rather than correct it I just planed it down to fit, which was what I should have done in the first instance!

the father in law is a chippie and he does quite a bit of that and its anything but easy as far as he tells it

thats a big job thatll set u back

now

I wouldnt do it that way, now

turning into The Irish thread!

https://c.tenor.com/ICSlOQOsVtQAAAAd/hank-hill-wd40.gif

doors are so fucking hard, harder than almost any other construction imho

wedge shims, try to close, repeat x1000

Doors are something I would not want to do myself because the cost of doing it wrong is so high.

Re: stud finders, I've had good luck with a free metal detector app on my phone, which I had no idea existed but which does a pretty good job finding nails.

2/3 screws on the bottom hinge of our bathroom door are stripped, so the door is not hanging true and is dragging across the tile. i know how to fix the stripped screws (plug with dowel/matchsticks, etc.) but i haven't done it because i'm scared of getting the door back on the hinges. if the hinges are already there and already in the right place, how hard will it be?

both of my exterior door frames are trapezoids

xp

It's not bad if it is a light, interior door.

yeah getting doors back on hinges is OK, it's building new doors that's hard

thanks. sounds good but if i'm shitting with the door open next week i'm going to blame this message board.

both of my exterior door frames are trapezoids

hwat

there is a gap above the door because the top of the frame is not quite horizontal

that is much less bonkers than i hoped it would be

I'm now almost into a week with a knackered boiler but i've remembered and relearned that a cooker is also central heating!

Is it possible I’ve got 1” drywall in my ca 1950 Southern California house? Trying to patch holes and the existing drywall seems extremely thick. I thought 1/2 or 5/8” was standard? Could it be two 1/2” sheets? This is ceiling and interior wall.

Never heard of 1" drywall, but with older houses, anything goes. Our house is from 1928 and when we gutted our bathroom years ago, you could see the label on the back of the adjoining walls and it had a label with the year 1928. Our contractor could not believe there was drywall that old.

I think it would be unusual for two sheets to be used back to back and that would be easy to figure out.

i was getting a roof resealed today but now the roofer guys say the wood underneath is soft and they have to entirely redo the roof :(

Oh no. Get a second opinion! We have two quotes for some roof repairs, one over 1700, one less than 600. It's a small flat section in front of a recessed dormer window, the second guy says it should be done with scaffolding but he can do it without... might have to get a third quote.

yeah we will. i’m almost more skeptical of low estimates than high. in any case i feel very much like i have zero leverage or knowledge to evaluate what’s been proposed

i fixed the cold tap and my bf's laptop

that little red/blue pvc tab on top of the tap can be a bugger to remove!

oh it was FAR more dramatic than that

you got the adjustable spanner of mass destruction out?

no

but i did try to change the cartridge without turning off the water at the mains (i did it with the other one on the other side but the pressure was much lower) as i thought the mains were under the bath and would require cutting a siliconed in panel out and i was hoping to avoid it.

lol nothing worse than water spurting everywhere combined with panic. It might have the potential to kill you 18 times, but at least electric current stays in the copper wire and behaves itself. Water spurting everywhere is just chaos!

and siliconed bath panels are bastards. Anything mechanical under a bath should be accessible via a panel that can be screwed on/off ffs

oh its just ridiculous!

but i did try to change the cartridge without turning off the water at the mains (i did it with the other one on the other side but the pressure was much lower) as i thought the mains were under the bath and would require cutting a siliconed in panel out and i was hoping to avoid it.

― plax (ico), Wednesday, December 8, 2021 5:09 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yikes, wet and wild.

We had to have a cartridge replaced in our shower (which is a bitch because of how the screws on the shower body have to be screwed in). The plumber recently did it wrong and it failed several days later when my wife turned the shower on. Luckily she hadn't stepped in yet, because it blew the entire handle and cartridge off the body and a firehose of scalding hot water shot everywhere. I had to fly down to the basement to shut off the main.

Lol dname

you know how people justify the high cost of Dualit toasters by telling you that they're easily repairable? well, the timer broke on our 20 y/o one the other day; I ordered a new part for £11, watched a video on youtube, and did the whole job in five miinutes.

i have a dualit and my heart rose in my throat after your first sentence.

Ya i dont even have one but was very shook by that intro

oh i hate my dualit toaster, literally the worst toaster i've ever had

I'm always planning on getting something else but i only do toast on the grill bc of it

classic plax kitchen utensil opinion, how does he do it

sounds too John Lewis for me as well, not the good John Lewis, the bebop neoclassicist with the golden fingers from the MJQ either. The cunt who sells toasters for 200 quid!

they are insanely expensive. but i went through three toasters in like… six or seven years? and was like, this is ridiculous.

american toasters are all massive and i hate them and miss £14.99 plastic argos toasters every day, but this is nice ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfxlSG6q5Y

they mangle yr bread

like they look nice-ish but then they just pincer your toast to the side of the toaster when its finished

my £20-30 russell hobbs toaster is nearly 3 years old now and still going strong, and doesn't mess with my toast.

no honestly i used to have a tesco value one before and i wish i'd just bought another one after that died

i do like my fancy kettle though

it is true that fragile stuff does not fare well in a dualit. it will get mashed. i use tongs to get that stuff out.

Lads what’s the point of having an expensive toaster though

Heh. One of my neighbors asked my how everybody's favorite local watering hole prepared food. I asked another guy and he told me "I think they have a small toaster oven behind the bar." Then I was in there on Tuesday and saw what looked like a pretty extensive piece of equipment with the brand name Merrychef and later the owner proceeded to tell me all about it.

My bf is always saying we should get a little table toaster like they have in 1930s movies

replaced the 2 igniters in our old gas oven. Previously took 40 minutes to reach 300F. Now takes 8.5 minutes.

Lubricated the street door cos I'd noticed it was sticking again. Seems rlike it's not getting done apart from by me. Surprised it's lasted a yearand a bit if so.& idiot next door is still going to the mindless bother of lining up latch handle so it looks like door locked when it isn't. Noticed that as soon as they started but douche anyway.

Finally fixed laser lens on cd player last week. Found out how to remove case and wiped out the cradles. Plugged in the player and saw how a cd was picked up for play. Tried using a disc cleaner but it read as No Disc then wound up taking a qtip with isopropyl alcohol and wiping the lens then clearing off excess with the other end of the stick cotton wool.
Nothing much in the unit otherwise. Did think there might be 15 years worth of dust accumulating. But no, a couple of long hairs but otherwise no.
Did find laser has a shutter that I hadn't anticipated so maybe cleaning disc just not getting to it.
Anyway playing ok now. Not skipping discs either.
Biggest chore was getting to plug and moving the unit. Probably not been moved in a decade. Plus I had a pile of boxes trapping the plug that I had to move then put back.
So got music now.

patched the drywall holes mentioned upthread. followed recommendations here not to bother with patch kit 👍🏻

replaced flush valve in toilet (american toilets boy, i don't know).

What, caek, can’t handle all that freedom?

Flush valves, flappers, and freedom

my toilet was struggling with all the freedom sauce

I once discovered a dissolving tank-to-bowl gasket that caused the water to run depending on how the flapper hit. The toilet wasn't ancient, but the average lifetime for these things is 4-5 years! Who wants to troubleshoot their running toilet twice per decade?

I replaced gaskets and washers on one of the bolts holding the tank to the bowl and no longer find tiny mysterious pools at the base of the toilet … we won’t go into how many years it took to figure out the problem

the paperwork for the flush valve on my thing said "replace all toilet cistern fixtures and supply lines every five years" ?!

this is Big Plumbing's scam. Same goes for shower valves that start letting water leak through after a bit of deposit build up on the mechanism.

you’re also supposed to clean the filter on your dishwasher after every cycle lol

I had to remove a piece of our clothes washer's armor just to clean the filter when it wouldn't drain. If you know it will need to be cleaned, you could at least make it easily accessible! they want you to depend on them.

Needed to change a lightbulb in the oven, which should be the easiest thing in the world. Just to be safe I googled and found the official LG how-to: turn bulb cover counter clockwise, remove bulb, replace bulb, replace cover. Easy, right? Except the goddamn oven bulb cover won't come off, and googling again, this is apparently a really common oven problem. Some folks took months to find a way to get it off. Some people literally took *years*. Some people - which is to say, more than one! - suggested just breaking the glass cover with a hammer, because it's easier to replace than remove. Wtf? The solution several suggested (and we'll see if it works) is getting a $10 universal oil filter wrench (like, for a car) that attaches to a ratchet. Never thought I'd be going to Autozone to change an oven lightbulb.

it's just a big adjustable spanner.

would something that works via suction do the job? or can you improvise a belt wrench?

I don't think so, because it's in such an awkward space in the oven. Some folks suggested a swivel wrench, but the oil filter wrench should serve the same purpose. I watched one video where a guy succeeded, and he had grippy gloves and used brute strength and still it looks like it took him a while.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MoWcqC8EWA

Had a similar situation in my MiL's fridge where the water filter hadn't been changed in years and was super-awkward to remove.

Holy crap the oil filter wrench worked. The more you know ...

he water filter hadn't been changed in years

this is something that needs replacing?!

lol my thought exactly

Every three months, or at least according to the mailers we keep getting sent by the manufacturer increasingly panicked sounding because we aren't ordering a filter directly from them in a timely enough fashion (or, at all, in our case - I have actually changed it twice, but did not pay the exorbitant fees they want).

They *totally* need to be changed. Our fridge shows a countdown (6 months, iirc) until it's time. But I have a friend whose fridge doesn't mention it, and he noticed the water pressure of the dispenser getting worse and worse. Each time he had his guy out to try to adjust and tweak the pressure, but to no avail. No matter how strong and powerful the pressure, the dispenser still barely streamed. Eventually he did a deep dive on the internet and, duh, realized he had never changed the filter, which was more or less literally bricked solid. He got a new filter and installed it, which was easy enough, but ... forgot to readjust the pressure, so when he pressed the water dispenser it, finally relieved and unblocked, jetted out into his face with the force of a fire house.

ohh y'all are talking about fridges with like water taps or ice makers, not applicable

Yeah - only fridges with water hookups...

Yeah, I was freaking out for a second; I have no water or ice dispenser

last month I learned: 5/8" drywall is significantly heavier and harder to cut than 1/2" drywall, they actually sell 2x2 squares of drywall that are termed "repair size" but really are ideal for working with rooms with 10 foot ceilings, almost two decades later, I still have retained muscle memory of creative mudding techniques developed from having to make nice looking art walls out of drywall scraps scavenged from construction site dumpsters

also realized the freedom of having the walls I'm working on _not_ be art gallery walls, thus the surface doesn't have to be perfectly smooth

Here is a question tangentially related to repair. The waste management people managed to break a bottle or two in the alley, so we're talking about hundreds of pieces of glass on an uneven strip of rough concrete, full of nooks and crannies. It's not my job to clean it up, but I'm sick of seeing all the broken glass, so what's the best way to get it up? I don't have a shop vac, the alley is too rough to sweep, there's too much to clean up by hand ...

is the alley public space? if so call 311?

don't they recommend using bread for picking up glass or have i imagined that? not on this scale, obv, but even though it sounds like an accident waiting to happen.

ha, yes, https://homeservicesforamerica.com/using-bread-to-pick-up-glass/

Yeah, maybe I'll just call the local government into action.

May take a while to get action---I've got some long, thick gloves, supposedly protective against thorns etc., for gardening; haven't used them yet, but also I got ads for ones to be worn when handling dogs (you know which online store all this is coming from)If some of the glass is where a barefoot person might step on it, or a critter get it in pawpads, you might try gloves, otherwise I'd leave it for the gov.

Maybe just attach slices of bread to the soles of your shoes and walk around the alley.

I saw someone essentially suggest wearing a glove wrapped in thick tape.

shop vacs are only like $30 and handy for many things, just saying

Could it get clogged, though? Maybe crunch the bigger glass with mallet or baseball bat or something first.

Crunch it w handle of a broom or rake or etc., so won't put your back out.

too rough to sweep, like, you are afraid you would get mugged for your broom if you were to attempt it? idgi?

shop vacs are only like $30 and handy for many things, just saying

― thinkmanship (sleeve), Thursday, August 11, 2022 4:17 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yes, you already knew the answer Josh. Nobody wants to be their dad, but it is time.

Just bought a shop vac and I'm loving it. Today I realized that the nozzle fits onto the end of my random orbital sander's dust chute *swooooooon*

lol josh i’m not minimising your situation but i have multiple broken bottles in my surrounding streets and alleys every day and have kind of just accepted it as a normal part of living in the city. i can’t imagine what the response would be if i actually got through to someone at the council about it.

I'm pretty sure they'll clean it sooner rather than later. I'm a taxpayer, dammit! But seriously, my municipality is pretty responsive.

Anyway, xpost, I meant "too rough" as in the actual literal surface; all the glass is nestled in the cracks and stuff, so sweeping doesn't work. It has to be either picked up by hand or vacuumed. On that front, there are soooooo many shop/wet-dry vacs! Are capacity and vacuum strengths the only real variables? There seems to be a good, small Craftsman one for about $40. What would I be missing out on with that model vs. the one for, say, $100 (which is by no means the top of the line, either)?

This is the one I was eying:

https://www.lowes.com/pd/CRAFTSMAN-2-5-Gallon-Corded-Portable-Wet-Dry-Shop-Vacuum-Corded/5013057707

Prices seem to go up from there in line with capacity and power.

you could get some syringes and take the needles out and toss them around.. could get some more attention on it

If there were syringes strewn about they would be gone in a second, because hey, free syringes. (#jackhandey)

Are capacity and vacuum strengths the only real variables?

yes

We have a leaky tap. It's a mixer, the cartridge seems to be non standard and the easiest way to check if a new one will fit is to take the old one with me so three times now I've turned off the water via the hard to access screw whose head seems in danger of being stripped, and removed the cartridge to take to a shop, with no luck. The last time I put it back the leak stopped - for a while. Which makes me question if the cartridge is even the problem.

I need to see if i can get sand out of the telescopic lens section of my camera. Don't want to have to pay loads to get the camera repaired. Wondering if having a vacuum cleaner would make things easier since i have seen that suggested. JUst not opening when the power is switched on which has been a pain cos I have had things i would have shot since this happened.

I wonder if compressed air might be more effective than a vacuum?

I attempted to fix a leaky shower. Went outside to the curb to shut off the water and the entire "pit" under the manhole was filled with dirt. Took awhile of digging to find just the meters, much less the nozzle to shut everything down.

So I decided that the shower wasn't really leaking that much.

I swapped out my tail light assemblies a few weeks ago and it felt really good to be out there on the street taking a car apart with tools.

a while back our ancient dryer stopped heating and I revived it with a new heating element; this week it started overheating so much clothes were almost too hot to touch

I replaced the thermostat and the dryer is working at sub-combustion temperatures again

My wife and I troubleshot and fixed the thermocouple on our hot water heater together and it was GLOOOOORIOUS.

Leaky tap update: I bought a replacement valve/cartridge/gland/whatever for this tap:

https://www.bristan.com/product-files/529178/product-web-image.jpg

When I should have bought one for this tap:

https://www.bristan.com/product-files/547295/product-web-image.jpg

Obviously the parts for those taps are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT, why wouldn't they be?

next stage away from legal proprietariness would be universal parts but that would take away from the profit margin wouldn't it?
Like people couldn't accidentally buy the wrong part then not return them within the given time like

I got sand in the telescopic lens bit of a pocket digital camera and can't get it to clear. Have tried compressed air so far but still not clearing.
Don't know what to do. Don't have funds to get a camera fixed and missing taking photos.

vacuum cleaner?

I've heard vacuums can be bad for electronics, because of static (?), but it might still be the best bet in this case, since you can't exactly take the lens off. Compressed air can give mixed results, since you run the risk of getting the grains further in there, but anything that potentially loosens them has got to be a good thing.

Does it still retract/extend? Is it something annoying that you can live with, or is it affecting the operation of the camera?

How do you dial the operator on that, ledge?

when the silicon nose pads fall off my glasses I have fucked up before by trying to superglue them back on again and ruining the lenses. The specsavers ones are a piece of hard plastic quite solidly fixed to the pad arms with a silicon covering which invariably fall off after a year or so of wear and tear. I bought some full moulded nose pads from e-bay for a few quid. Removed what was left of the uncomfortable specsavers one with a hot knife and fitted the replacement with some long nosed pliers. Not exactly the most amazing repair I have ever done but I'm happy because they are more comfortable on the nose than the previous ones. And I really hate going to specsavers, even they offer free repairs on their glasses - can't fucken stand the place.

my dad had an dental plate for his upper teeth - a while back it broke, and my dad decided to repair it w ~superglue~ him being an endearing combo of deeply practical & wildly impractical

of course the superglue precluded any repair the dentist/orthodontist could have made & dad had to shell out for a whole new plate instead of a repaired one :(

you have no control over superglue as well, just the gentlest most careful little squeeze and it runs everywhere. It's still very useful though, lol!

If you want to hang from a girder by a hard hat, it's aces.

i have faith in superglue to a point but not so that i’d put it anywhere near my mouth lol jeez dad

Superglue may be one of the most fear inducing substances you can buy at a retail building.

Learning cycle repair and maintenance to a great degree. Have always wanted to get some mechanical training,. Hoping that once I do have this training I can also apply principles elsewhere. Sewing Machines etc.
But when society collapses I will at least have this behind me.
Has been cutting into my reading time though.

If there's super glue around, have some debonder (Bob Smith Industries Debonder https://a.co/d/38h6pjG) on hand. I learned about it when having to use super glue in a STEM camp for 40 8th graders gave me massive anxiety

aren't they less trouble if they're all stuck together?

repairing kids by making real bonds between them?

lmao

I doubt the parents would approve though

More that they'd end up stuck to me and have to take some home 🤣

"Separating plastics parts with a razor saw is usually the best option"

Poor kids

Portable oil radiator stopped working.
Disassembled and tested continuity. The tip-over safety switch seemed to have gone.
Removed it, joined the contacts.
Radiator works.
Another safety feature, successfully disabled!

I will simply not knock it over.

if it's plugged into a circuit protected by an RCBO it'll be reet! Although I say this about all dodgy electrical appliances, perhaps one day I'll be wrong!

this year i have fixed both of my toilets.
didn't really have an option as getting a plumber to help out re a small issue in the uk these days is quite literally impossible.
both toilets had problems with the flushing system.
one of which i had to completely replace the inner workings of the cistern tank and then stop massive water leaks due to crap seals,
the other was a simple washer issue but stopped a toilet from making a weird amd annoying droning sound after every flush.

and yeah, fixing these issues = personal highlights of 2022.

a barbarous attempt at darning moth holes in my jumpers. two of them will i think be serviceable, and in fact with the last one I did I think I felt a glint of what might have been pride. the cotton/wool one was just too fine a weave and I gave up.

this year everything's going in the freezer at the end of the season and then in bags.

had the shade of plaxico looking over me sceptically as i worked.

My recent fixing achievement was to patch a skylight leak using that smelly sticks-even-on-wet-sutfaces caulk and some foam tube. It held through yesterday's historic rains. I'll get a roofer out in the spring when the Bay Area dry season starts and get it fixed for real.

FAIL!

pvr broke. it would start up but wouldn't find the disk. so i pulled out and put it in a caddy and, well, there was smoke. bought replacement disk, found one on sale, 6x larger than the original. put it in tonight, turned it on. nothing. no lights, no fan.

next time maybe i won't leave it over a year...

BUT THEN...

turned it on and left it on and the front panel lit up. switched TV over to correct input. strains of bbc one, but no picture. scratching sound coming from device. screen flashed green. burning smell. visible smoke (from the aerial out?). 8(

looks like i have a new external drive at least.

that smell really lingers

I had a wall bracket to fix up for a television in the bedroom. My 24v battery hammer drill is superficially in good condition but the batteries have degraded so badly because I've barely used it in 10 years.

It will charge up enough to drill 1-2 holes at most before sputtering to a slowing level of uselessness. I didn't think it had enough life left to do it so I ordered a basic cheap plug in 230 drill for £50 that I can't really afford.

Then I thought maybe by charging and fully discharging the batteries repeatedly by taping the drill trigger might spark a bit more life into the batteries and after doing this for hours it started to charge up enough to drill 4 holes which is almost like overkill for a bracket that is probably slightly heavier than the smallish tv it's holding up. If I'd kept the faith that you can make old knackered stuff work through dogged persistence sometimes, then I wouldn't have wasted £50, damn it.

Can you return the mains powered drill? If it’s undamaged it’s probably worth trying? I’m not sure about consumer law in the UK but “change of mind” within a day or two seems reasonable.

yeah probably could, lol it doesn't arrive until tomorrow. But then again it will probably be worth holding onto so next time much less fucking about. So probably not a waste of money, more like a purchase I probably won't need for a few years.

I cleaned the front of my telly with a bit of spray and a duster and just noticed a few flickering lines running vertically up the screen. I barely made any contact with it at all! I've fucked it, haven't I?

maybe check to see if any cables are a bit loose

Don't let moisture or dampness get into a flat screen or you will regret it.any more liquid is even worse

Did finally manage to get the stereo out and clean the laser on it . But still not playing a few things properly.
Tried Marquee Moon on it again and got a load of fuzz still after first couple of tracks sounded pretty thin.
Soft Machine Third still iffy as to whether it will play through or just hit a random point and stop go to still where yo see the full disc tinming etc.
& the Lee Perry thing i bought a couple of weeks back still doing the same.

I guess the thing is getting pretty old. I bought it in 2005. But still would be good to get a few more years out of it.

a thing I've never thought about, until it broke, is the light in a fridge. it broke the other day whilst i was defrosting (i think it got dripped on because the glass is cracked)

anyway, odd though it looked, stumpy little thing, replacements are available in supermarkets for £2. led as well, 1.8W. hilariously it gives the kwh used on the side of the box, for something that's on about 30 seconds a day.

(light bulb and battery technology has really come on in my lifetime. i remember lugging around old bike lights that took two A cells)

also fixed the toilet inlet, again, so the tank fills up. just needs loosening up every 6 months or so because of the likely build up. i realise that there will come a time when this will not work.

I recently changed to LED fridge lights not for the trivial energy savings but rather to be able to use 5000°K daylight bulbs, which give off natural sunlight-like illumination rather than the overly warm candlelight look from incandescent lamps. Hard to describe, but easy to see the difference - colours really jump out at you.

The A/C in our car has been acting weird for a few years, with the fan sometimes blowing hard but no actual cold air coming out. This would happen intermittently for long stretches and then stop happening, with no rhyme or reason to it. Recently the A/C finally seemed to go out for good. There are any number of things it could have been. The ambient air sensor (which is a PIA to reach, involving removing the front bumper), a hidden fuse (literally, you have to take some things apart to find it), the compressor (expensive). There's also just a good old fashioned leak, discovery of which would entail draining, refilling with dye, and then waiting. But doing some research I found that it could also be something called an EVAP Sensor, the temperature sensor in the car air conditioning system. That part costs $25, and in our case is located in the driver's side foot well, right by the gas pedal, relatively easy to access. I didn't change it myself, but the $25 OEM part I ordered online fixed the problem. Very satisfying, not least because cars are becoming harder and harder to work on without the right proprietary tech/tools.

It is such a relief when you tick off the possible causes of a problem, and the easiest solution is the one that offers the fix.

For example, there's a known problem with Mercedes where the car won't start if the brake lamp is out. Going from "whatthefuck,how am I going to afford this" to smiling real big and going "are you fucking kidding me?" can be quite the ride.

My biggest auto-related AYFKM moment was finding out that one of the most common reasons for the useless "Check Engine" alert to activate was because of a worn out gas cap seal.

https://www.404media.co/apple-endorses-california-right-to-repair-bill/

"Apple told a California legislator that it is formally supporting a right to repair bill in California, a landmark move that suggests big tech manufacturers understand they have lost the battle to monopolize repair, and need to allow consumers and independent repair shops to fix their own electronics."

nice

bring back radioshack

one of the most common reasons for the useless "Check Engine" alert to activate was because of a worn out gas cap seal.

which can lead to your car failing a smog/emissions test ... so not 100% useless ime

Had a microwave poop out on us the other day, which I diagnosed as the door switch (the fuse-like thing inside that makes sure the door connection is sealed before it puts out heat). Wasn't something I was comfortable fixing myself, but it didn't matter, since, at 10, they no longer make out model or parts for it. We had a guy out who apologized for being unable to do anything with it, so I had to get a new one, though I was able to reinstall the trim (it's an under the counter model).

Weirdly, at the same time our top loading washing machine broke, or specifically, the hubcap-looking wheel/agitator came loose, which thankfully just means swapping out for a new one. Pretty straight forward.

Shit like that *always* happens at the same time. Rule of threes and all that.

Our overflow pipe has been pissing out water for the last couple of weeks - the one from the water tank in the loft that comes out under the eaves of the roof. I've worked out how to turn the water off in the street, so I did that, then got up in the loft, removed the ball valve and bent the metal shaft down slightly, hoping that means the tank will fill slightly lower and not reach the overflow.

It's currently the hottest September on record in the UK and fuck ME was it hot up there. I was running with so much sweat I couldn't see and when I came down I smelt like a swamp. It's not dripping right now, so fingers crossed...

when I was doing an electrical apprenticeship I sweated out in so many dusty lofts. The worst one was the housing office in Bradford during a heatwave. All the dust sticks to you. I constantly felt like passing out, knowing that if I did there was only a thin piece of plasterboard between the widely spaced ceiling joists protecting me from a 50 ft plummett to certain injury or death!

Nothing like an existential threat to keep you conscious!

toilet leak, the seal where the pipe from the cistern enters the bowl has worked use over the years and now it trickles along the outside of the bowl when i flush. but a) it's clean water and b) it's only during the flush, so like an eggcup-full.

landlord's plumber has been around and because it's boxed in and access is difficult he's proposed replacing the entire thing, cistern, bowl, etc. and the *unrelated* vanity unit when it's really only one seal that needs attention.

he's also the gas check man and had already talked about replacing the cooked (doesn't meet current regs) and the boiler (inefficient).

ironically, the one non-working thing in the flat is the washing machine, none of the above is fatally broken. so all basically off-topic, sorry.

which can lead to your car failing a smog/emissions test ... so not 100% useless ime

― sarahell, Saturday, September 9, 2023 2:48 PM (two days ago)

that's cause you live in commiefornia

this is essentially what happened to me a few years ago and i wound up paying something like £800 for the parts and labour, it was totally insane. i feel that i got completely swizzed. but if your landlord's paying for it...

xpost

i can't help but feel that these several thousand pounds worth of changes (most of which don't really need doing) will affect my rent sooner or later.

(next door's rent was put up 17% after she complained that the water pouring through her ceiling was making the pace uninhabitable. 6 months later the flat is for sale and she has to find somewhere new)

got a new washing machine and half way through its first wash cycle was getting the error code for water issues and was furiously convinced I'd been sold a dud. Couldn't find any kinks in the hose or waste pipe, and even heard the water rushing into the tank when I turned the it on. I spent a fruitless hour fucking about with the machine and then the same booking a hotpoint engineer. Then I checked again because you get charged £70 if the engineer finds out the fault is your own dumbass doing. After further investigation I discovered when the machine was out of the bay the hose was ok and then was being stressed back into a water blocking kink out of my sight when it was pushed back towards the wall...duh. So now I realise in future: don't turn the water on until you've pushed the machine back towards the wall in the bay because at least then it won't even start a wash cycle if this irksome shit happens and you'll know what the problem is straight away.

the plumber took the cupboard door off its hinges to give himself better access. (he then left it outdoors for 3 weeks until i brought it in, but hey). four and a half months later(!) he has finished in the cupboard but the door is still unattached. the screws, god knows where those are.

i went and had a look for new screws yesterday. i need exactly 9, they sell them in packets of 250.

There's an old-school hardware down the street that sells screws and bolts individually, for 8¢ or 12¢.

And each time I go in, this old man follows me back there and watches me like a hawk as I pick them out from the giant drawers.

What's the worst that's going to happen? I grab a handful and make out like a bandit with $1.56 worth of stock?

I think taking them out and putting them back but mixing them up would be worse!

local hardware place sells screws individually and because they were visibly different i got enough to replace the hinges on all 3 doors, not just the one that's currently unhinged. so, 27 (actually 30) rather than 9. £2. which is a bargain until you consider they were only £3.50 for 250 screws which makes this v expensive on a per-screw basis.

(42p for 30 at box prices so i paid almost 5x)

door now attached. hadn't figured on having to jack the door up a bit to get it to reach the hinges but it was nothing a few bits of cardboard couldn't cure. had forgotten how cock-eyed the door used to hang anyway because, like every single thing in this flat, it was done on the cheap.

(another example of this is the line of blue tiles in amongst the 5 lines of white tiles in the bathroom, one colour metric, the other imperial so the joins don't line up)

(another example being the bedroom door, which is an old front door, compete with yale lock)

What's the worst that's going to happen? I grab a handful and make out like a bandit with $1.56 worth of stock?

have been working on my pops kitchen sink/dishwasher situation lately, and patronizing his local home depot

and it is fascinating, the usual sales associates wandering around, but also there are no checkout lanes, only individual self checkout stations however each station has a cashier, just kind of standing there to scan your things

could be a geographical anomaly but I suspect theft is such an issue that we don't deserve hardware stores anymore

As per the commentary on the 'continuing with CDs' thread, my kid got given a CD player. It had a 3-pin connector plug on it, so I figured I'd just cut that off and put on a regular UK plug. But there's no earth wire in there - just the blue and brown ones. I've wired the thing up, just to see if the CD player works as much as anything but am I going to a) give someone an electric shock or ii) burn the house down?

I've done some basic Googling and not *all* devices require the earth wire apparently - saw things like electric drills and vacuum cleaners mentioned.

If it is expecting a 120vac 60 Hz power input and you hit it with 230vac then option ii is a possibility. But if it expects UK power and not weedy US power, then no.

Option a can happen with an ungrounded device and also don't touch any capacitors if you are poking around inside the guts.

there's a bunch of interesting details in the link from the other CD thread where this came up

https://www.hifiwigwam.com/threads/what-sort-of-plug-is-this.122336/

It's probably not modern compliant, but it is to British Standard. The design means the earth pin connects before the others. The non-compliant bit is that the sockets aren't shuttered. IIRC, the socket is part shrouded, so the pins are covered when they're live and not fully inserted, so safe enough.

Thanks Jaq and sleeve (and NickB elsewhere). This place continues to be the sanest place on the web.

Interesting! Thanks for that link sleeve, have never seen one of those.

This is good:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/4/24090828/oregon-right-to-repair-sb-1596-parts-pairing

too bad for the owners of 2013 Audis, which apparently are exceptionally stupidly designed with proprietary parts and manuals.

cars are an entire thing, though

I recently repaired a sewing machine on behalf of a community repair café where I hope it will be used to repair many clothes and homeware items. I was lucky to find on ebay a random lot of parts that happened to contain exactly the small part I needed. It runs beautifully.

wow. yes!!!

That's so cool! Bravo!

Also cool to find out repair cafés are a thing. https://www.repaircafe.org/en/cafe/long-beach-repair-cafe-ca/ There's one close that reopened yesterday after 3 years.

~Hope to repair to the repair cafe soon~.

was gonna say plax that’s just a lovely thing to have done, both repairing the thing itself and the ends to which it can now be used. fantastic.

Thanks everyone for the nice replies. I'm looking forward to seeing it in action at then end of the month. The repair café is at a community garden that a friend helped found that is really incredible and connects all kinds of local groups they do all kinds of interesting activities. Its very active and has birthed all kinds of initiatives. My friend is really involved with several orgs for asylum seekers and refugees so that is a big part of it.

I serviced all the machines they already use and someone used one to repair a costume that was in the St Patrick's day parade in Dublin. The one I repaired is a new acquisition - a 1960s Brother that is closer to an industrial machine than today's domestic plastic nonsense. Before returning it I will be redoing the topstitching on all the jeans I altered for my bf recently.

There is also a guy who sharpens knives and repairs garden tools.

That's great, plax! Some people I know in a local town are wanting to do something like that and planning their first "repair cafe" for June. They just started recruiting repairers, hope their message finds those people.

I'm still banging on about visible mending but can only hope to brush the hem of former ilxor elmo argonaut's garment in this regard. I hope to spend more time on sashiko and also machine sewing this year, but I'm finding that it would be nice to have some company and conversation to go with this hand-work. Why sewing circles have been a thing since forever.

I'm told it's a good idea to have people sign a disclaimer in case anything happens when repairing, although this is yet to be implemented.

I love a good stitch and bitch.

I've got a newer plasticky Singer sewing machine that I have been too timid to use on jeans myself. But I took two pairs of jeans to alterations to have them patch kneeholes and other assorted rips from the inside with denim from other jeans. So it's visible patching but neatly done with denim. Very happy with my 2 latest repaired jeans.

Oh you can definitely use a domestic machine to patch/darn denim! By all means if the alterations people do a good job I'm not telling you not to give them your business but your machine should be able to handle it. I'm talking about redoing the top stitching over the flat felled seams, particularly at points where a flat felled seam meets a flat felled seam and I lose count of how many layers of denim there are!

You know one thing about repairing clothes (and other things too) is that the crappy stuff is hard to repair.

I rate myself as 'barely competent' at sewing but I am happy to do basic repair tasks. However, I've decided its just not worth it to bother with fast fashion stuff at all. Same thing with poorly made electronics etc.

Re clothing, I have to think about how to make repairs still "formal" -- like as soon as I fix something, no matter how cool it is, it turns into a piece of casual clothing, because now it might be "artsy" but it's not professional. I need work clothes. I need to think about how mending can still be elevated. And I don't mean starting with a super high fashion garment which is always going to look elevated. Maybe there's too much casual clothing out there that only looks "nice" when it's brand new.

I'm a curvy person, I need clothing to have swing and ease, and things are going to rub together and wear out. I know people say "buy high quality and it will last 10/20/30 years" but moths happen and wear happens and no matter how great the fibers and construction are, nothing lasts forever.

Maybe there's too much casual clothing out there that only looks "nice" when it's brand new.

yes! i feel good stuff only really becomes mine after a year or so of washing and wearing. the good clothes look and feel and wear at their best then.

agree on formal mending though - i have no skill in this area at all, so if necessary i'll send it out to get done well (luckily being in london there are some good services for this). frequently though I'll just ask the local dry cleaner to do it. i don't mind a bit of visible mending on my clothes, but as you say it does move them from formal work wear to informal at home wear.

i would love to be better at formal mending. i made an instagram account lately and it 25% gives me repairing videos. I've seen some techniques that are just amazing and would love to try.

The Repair Shop is now also in australia but i'm thinking the quality standards aren't quite as high...

a kid bought in a model of the Flying Scotsman which wasn't running. they fixed the motor and all but either didn't notice or didn't care that the entire front bogie was missing, so instead of being a 4-6-2 it was a 0-6-2.

(i did wonder if they'd even know what the Flying Scotsman was but it spent some time i australia at the end of the 80s, set a bunch of records there)

on topic, i'm trying to fix the floorboards that the plumber left untidy after he'd done replacing some pipes. in the hallway (1m x 2m) he left 3 boards un-nailed and another one split in half. but the entire area had been covered with hardboard (nailed) and then a layer of cork (glued) and he'd removed this from around the boards he needed access to, but didn't for the rest of the hallway, so there's a 5m difference in heights in random places. he'd put the carpet back down, without even picking up all the nails he'd pulled.

it's slow going, mainly because i don't have the tools. plan is to screw down the loose boards (i don't have a hammer). but some of them he's cut in places where they are no joists underneath. and, of course, there are now additional pipes there.

i would love to be better at formal mending. i made an instagram account lately and it 25% gives me repairing videos. I've seen some techniques that are just amazing and would love to try.

― plax (ico), Tuesday, April 2, 2024 1:21 PM (three weeks ago)

this is the stuff I learned to do as a teenager when I worked for a theater costume shop. of course that was 30+ years ago so I could probably use some remedial lessons.

I need work clothes. I need to think about how mending can still be elevated.

I think it depends on the garment ... as in, pants, dress, shirt ... a huge rip in the knee of a pair of dress pants is likely not going to something you can mend and have look normal, but inseams and hems and belt loops you can definitely do. In terms of feminine tops and dresses, currently there is so much "fussiness" in design with bows and buttons and contrast colors, I think you've got a leeway there.

it's slow going, mainly because i don't have the tools. plan is to screw down the loose boards (i don't have a hammer). but some of them he's cut in places where they are no joists underneath. and, of course, there are now additional pipes there.

In a way, screws are better than nails as it's a lot easier to take them out again if you need to or if you mess up. A cheap cordless screwdriver would save you a bit of time. Not sure about the unsupported ends though - if you're not able to fix a supporting beam underneath, it might be easier to buy a new board

i would love to be better at formal mending. i made an instagram account lately and it 25% gives me repairing videos. I've seen some techniques that are just amazing and would love to try.

― plax (ico), Tuesday, April 2, 2024 1:21 PM (three weeks ago)

this is the stuff I learned to do as a teenager when I worked for a theater costume shop. of course that was 30+ years ago so I could probably use some remedial lessons.

I need work clothes. I need to think about how mending can still be elevated.

I think it depends on the garment ... as in, pants, dress, shirt ... a huge rip in the knee of a pair of dress pants is likely not going to something you can mend and have look normal, but inseams and hems and belt loops you can definitely do. In terms of feminine tops and dresses, currently there is so much "fussiness" in design with bows and buttons and contrast colors, I think you've got a leeway there.

― sarahell, Thursday, 25 April 2024 17:44 (one week ago) bookmarkflaglin

No no! The videos I'm talking about are ones where its just absolutely flawless reconstructions of holes in silk. Microscopically fine repairs. Absolutely insane stuff!

Seems like, in the opposite corner, 'visible mending' is also a thing?

I patched my teenager's beloved butterfly print puffer with a solid color and she kept wearing it. I appreciated that.

yeah visible mending is definitely a thing. i mean obv it always has been (leather patches on elbows, motley patching on trousers or coats) but you see places that fix moth holes with v different colours. brings individuality over time, makes the garment yours etc. no longer going to be formal wear but it migrates clothing to old loved comfy wear.

invisible mending - i was at the tailors pinnas and needles recently, standing on the stairs waiting my turn while one of the brothers discussed whether they could invisibly mend a reversible silk bomber the customer had brought in. in the end they said they couldn’t - there just wasn’t enough spare fabric to do it but they suggested visibly mending it to give it some character. customer didn’t want that tho.

my laptop was overheating and turning off even though the heat sensors were telling me that it was nowhere near hot enough for that to make sense and i opened it and the fan was basically solid with dust so i cleaned it out and its now working. perhaps the fan was so bad that it was heating so rapidly that the sensors were behind whatever cutout mechanism there is for heat. in any case it was only staying on for minutes at a time before but seems to be working now and I'm cautiously optimistic that it is 'repaired'. anyway i have now had this secondhand laptop for about 11 years and I like it so don't want to have to get a new one.

I knackered up the motor that rotates the brush in my Dyson vac by getting a canvas cord snagged on the wheel and it made some horrendously loud screeching noises and carried on working for a few more weeks, albeit sounding like a fatally fucked up ww2 bomber, then it died. Without the brush the vac becomes a useless piece of shit, could do a better job with a bristle brush and pan than using this vac now.

There was an ambitious attempt at working out how to replace the motor and I then realised the motor is the most expensive part of the vac head, so just bought a new vaqc head on my credit card for 50 knicker to spare me the pain of fucking about with moulded plastic parts that awkwardly fit together and make want to cry.

i literally hate the dyson that came with my flat

my dc02 seems fine, motor works as well as ever but somewhere between the motor and the end of the hose it loses 95% of the suction power. probably a leak somewhere, bad seal, but i can't see

currently it struggles to even pick up polystyrene beads

mine seems to have picked things up and then drops them five minutes later in another part of the room.

polterdyst

next time I buy a new vac, if I can, it will be a Vax - which is a well reviewed cheap knockoff of a Dyson. I used to think buying reconditioned 2nd hand Dysons off e-bay was the way forward, now I think I was supporting neo-vacism. There is a coin slot to open the vac head on a Dyson and clean off the hairs + strands that clump around the brush. Never actually done this before, just learned this from the Dyson vac maintenance community on youtube.

i read that sharks were good, everyone hates dysons tho

i have to do the coin slot thing like weekly because its permanently getting choked by sewing thread lol

we have a shark and its v good

when I got married we got a Miele, by far the most expensive thing on our wedding list, and it lasted 18 years! we replaced the hose once I think. always used generic bags. finally had to get a new one, and it is basically exactly the same as the old one which suits me fine

I have a shark and I hate it. It could be my particular model, but the footprint is smaller than the average vac and it falls over easily.

got a miele and wouldn't get a dyson again.

I can't afford durable, but in many ways I'm quite happy about moaning about how shit everything in my house is for the rest of my life. Then occasionally treating myself to something even worse!

when I got married we got a Miele, by far the most expensive thing on our wedding list, and it lasted 18 years! we replaced the hose once I think. always used generic bags. finally had to get a new one, and it is basically exactly the same as the old one which suits me fine

― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 18 June 2024 21:25 bookmarkflaglink

my miele must be getting on for 20 as well now. it is on its last legs and have a dust allergy so i'm thinking about getting a new one, but yeah, they look exactly the same (which is reassuring).

people are just wild for a miele. i feel like its like the volvo of hoovers. people are like oh this old thing just keeps running.

fuck paying that much for a vac that needs a bag

I fixed my front door and finally solved the issue with my mac not wanting to rip CDs today

So satisfying

what's a CD?

(I actually bought a Marantz portable CD recorder years ago for like $700, thinking that finally here's a medium that will last forever... it doesn't have USB, it's already sort of obsolete)

The Henry hoover is good and doesn't break the bank

when I used to be a sparky and doing house-bashing, Henry was used mainly for sucking up small rubble and dust. Poor lad would get daily hardcore abuse and then get thrown into the back of a van.

my hitachi DV3 HDR325 digital TV recorder and freeview box (10 possibly 15 years old) now constantly turns itself on and off on and off at random: ON when you’ve gone to bed and everything in the TV room is should be silent and dark till morning; OFF when you’re in the middle of watching something (so everything has to boot up again)

i feel it must be easily repairable -- simple small item like a capacitor or whatever swapped out -- but the local (plymouth) we-repair-all-appliances guys tell me "not worth it, repair will cost more than replacement"

which makes sense except first i want to rescue the many items (music documentaries) recorded on it so as to transfer them to somewhere i can watch them without the machine turning on and off at random all the time

possible lost cause i know BUT

ps I ALSO HATE MY STUPID LITTLE DYSON

it has no suck and it must suck
— harlan ellison

maybe the internal hd can be removed + is sata 22 to usb connectable, like in PCs? maybe not

yeah i bet the internal HD can be removed and hooked up to a compooter. i'd bet it's running some kind of windows filesystem too

i guess since both hitachi and a local we-repair-everything guy called andy have said they won't repair it i'm not going to be voiding any warranties by taking the cover off and having a look

doubting it still has a warranty at 10-15 years old

Some friends of mine held a repair cafe last month and I couldn't be there but I heard it was busy and they're doing another one in the fall! Plus apparently a brake light repair clinic which is nice. This makes me happy.

"repair will cost more than replacement" becomeses less and less a priority update for me

this may be linked to my knee or it may not but im starting to feel more and more strongly that repairing-what-is speaks to me in a way that bringing-in-new doesnt

I've managed to repair my digestive system by not drinking 8 cups of coffee every morning because I couldn't afford to buy a new digestive system!

my hitachi DV3 HDR325 digital TV recorder and freeview box (10 possibly 15 years old) now constantly turns itself on and off on and off at random: ON when you’ve gone to bed and everything in the TV room is should be silent and dark till morning; OFF when you’re in the middle of watching something (so everything has to boot up again)

i feel it must be easily repairable -- simple small item like a capacitor or whatever swapped out -- but the local (plymouth) we-repair-all-appliances guys tell me "not worth it, repair will cost more than replacement"

which makes sense except first i want to rescue the many items (music documentaries) recorded on it so as to transfer them to somewhere i can watch them without the machine turning on and off at random all the time

possible lost cause i know BUT

― mark s, Saturday, 27 July 2024 12:00 (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I feel like you need to get it done by a guy in his 70s in zone 4 like I did with my stereo amp. Try looking for UK based gear nerd forums maybe?

These guys are going out of business this minute so really last chance

hi plax

i bought a second hand gaming pc and cleaned it up but the power button seems to not work im gonna bring it to a repair shop i thought u should know

plymouth doesn't have a zone 4 i don't think but it very probably DOES have retired guys who like to tinker w/tech so i will indeed start hunting on-line for clues

(there was a repair cafe scene here a while back too but it seems to have dwindled, or is anyway currently occluded behind websites that haven't been updated for several years))

there is a former electronics engineer who lives across the road from me and fixes from home for a living, he's very good but was no use with a non-responsive i-pad. He said if it's a complex looking problem, then i-pads require too much fucking about. Never bought one since.

hi plax

i bought a second hand gaming pc and cleaned it up but the power button seems to not work im gonna bring it to a repair shop i thought u should know

― tuah dé danann (darraghmac), Sunday, July 28, 2024 12:42 AM (three weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

thank u for the update!

update

i didnt bring it to a repair place i fiddled with the cable a bit hoping that i would have to like solder or anything (because i simply wasnt going to) and now it works ok

that's even better!

i know, right?

darraghmacgyver

my hitachi DV3 HDR325 digital TV recorder and freeview box (10 possibly 15 years old) now constantly turns itself on and off on and off at random: ON when you’ve gone to bed and everything in the TV room is should be silent and dark till morning; OFF when you’re in the middle of watching something (so everything has to boot up again)

i feel it must be easily repairable -- simple small item like a capacitor or whatever swapped out -- but the local (plymouth) we-repair-all-appliances guys tell me "not worth it, repair will cost more than replacement"

which makes sense except first i want to rescue the many items (music documentaries) recorded on it so as to transfer them to somewhere i can watch them without the machine turning on and off at random all the time

I could be totally wrong, but odds are the hard drive inside would be an off the shelf part, and possibly use a standard formatting readable by a Mac or PC (you'd just need the proper hard drive connector to USB adapter which Amazon etc will have). If you can get that far odds are also good that the videos are stored in some standard format that VLC (etc) would be able to play, you'd just need to find them in the file structure of that drive and then copy them to your computer. This assumes the drive is working properly though, 10-15 years is pushing it.

My freezer is fucked and I can't repair it and it's killing me. If I had time I would learn to weld but I don't.

So my kids coming up and we're going to tidy up some rot at the bottom of the uprights supporting the roof of my deck. I hired two acrow props. It'll be like the youtube clips for sure

We bought some stirrups and i have my dad's big mounted circular saw i grabbed from his garage after he died. I think i got the manual in a manila folder called "dad's manuals".
We prop the roof with the acro props.
Remove the upright.
Circular saw off the rot
Attach the stirrup.
Re attach the upright
Lower the acrow prop
and screw the stirrup to the joist

Right?

Went exactly as expected. Isn't finished. Isn't going to plan.

Repairing things always takes much much longer than i think it will.

Biggest thing for me is the number of trips you need to make to the hardware store to buy just one more thing...

O yeah

tried replacing my phone screen as i foolishly thought it would be a doddle but holy shit what a nightmare. now in a thousand bits and i still can't get the old screen out. and everything is so small too! have really made a complete bollocks of it, oh dear

My repairing things approach always seems to mirror that. From "how hard can it be?" to "ffs" in the blink of an eye

haha, sounds about right!

I don't think I'd ever try a first-time repair if there wasn't already a YouTube video available. That said, I fully refurbished my Weber grill last week and was disproportionately elated that I was successful.

I have a weather station with an outdoor remote sensor. The sensor stopped transmitting after Francine blew through with her sideways rain the other day. New batteries didn't help. This morning I had the idea to stick it in the oven on Bread Proof for 30 minutes to dry out parts I couldn't get at -- bingo, signal reacquired.

🙌

Over the years i’ve accumulated a lot of decent music equipment that has kicked the bucket but I can’t bear to toss the stuff. Stereo amps, effects pedals, etc. It’s at a point of taking up too much space for it to be junk so i’m learn how to diagnose and fix the stuff. Bought a soldering iron and I’ve been watching a ton of videos about testing and replacing capacitors and components. Hopefully in the near future I can get the garage organized and have a decent workspace to crack these things open and figure stuff out. If I can work my way through it, maybe it’ll open up a world of fixing high end audio stuff? Or maybe I’ll get frustrated and trash all of it.

Could go either way! Gotta make sure I don’t get fried by the capacitors in the amps.

Good point! And you’re gonna need an oscilloscope at some point, that’s where my audio repairs hit a wall.

fear of things breaking is definitely saving me from buying a bunch of vintage shit I don't need.

I could be totally wrong, but odds are the hard drive inside would be an off the shelf part, and possibly use a standard formatting readable by a Mac or PC (you'd just need the proper hard drive connector to USB adapter which Amazon etc will have). If you can get that far odds are also good that the videos are stored in some standard format that VLC (etc) would be able to play, you'd just need to find them in the file structure of that drive and then copy them to your computer. This assumes the drive is working properly though, 10-15 years is pushing it.

― encino morricone (majorairbro), Saturday, 24 August 2024 06:54 (three weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh! i only just saw this! i believe the drive is still OK!? when i access the library the films are all still there in order and they seem to start ok when i click on them -- the issue is that the freeview box turns off and on randomly, which i think is probably another part. the guy i spoke to also said what you're saying. he was less sanguine about it being standard formatting but he did think it was my best chance. anyway thank you encino morricone, perhaps it is at last time to unscrew the housing and poke around inside lol

also i might fire up youtube and watch a well meaning if slow-speaking person talk me through a process with attention to all the details i don't need to attend to (i love these people!) (but!)

so you were just completely ignoring me and poster 龜 when we gave you the exact same advice on this thread, an entire month earlier. Maybe we were posting too fast!

i immediately responded to both of you! kind of!

(however as it was both cryptic and basically a silly joke abt warranties, thank you both calzino and poster 龜 for this encouraging advice!)

fear of things breaking is definitely saving me from buying a bunch of vintage shit I don't need.

I'm very much in the "buy it right, buy it once" camp, but it leads to ridiculous rabbit holes where suddenly I'm as opinionated about pre-Carly Fiorina Hewlett-Packard test equipment as I am about pre-CBS Fender guitar amps. That HP3610A DC power supply? Totally "warm and clean" voltage that never needs calibrating - all others should be chopped up for landfill.

Good point! And you’re gonna need an oscilloscope at some point, that’s where my audio repairs hit a wall.

I'm actually in the market for an oscilloscope and there's some remarkable deals to be had out there, but a retired EE talked me out of it by saying "do you want a tool, or do you want to add an oscilloscope to what you need fixing?"

xp

It wasn't cryptic, it was succinct!

Calzino- I think hectoring is unlikely to work in getting MarkS to act faster.

Advice on repairing is like a branch of psychotherapy where clients have resistance to change, deeply ingrained existing patterns of behaviour, fear of the unknown, and painful memories of past DIY traumas. Repair gurus need to provide a safe supportive environment offering encouragement and strategies to facilitate change over time!

I'm the damaged product of a hostile apprenticeship system where if you didn't do something the correct way then something got thrown at your head and you got called a useless cunt. But I did think I had long ago outgrown that attitude tbh.

tbf i am very much a useless cunt when it comes to anything more complex than changing batteries or a lightbulb

not a repair, but for years I've been struggling to find a satisfactory way of catching the overspill water when cleaning out the fluff filter on the washing machine. It is positioned an inch above the floor. A shallow baking tray with a tea towel in it reduces the mopping time a bit but it still spills over everywhere.

i had a similar problem when defrosting the fridge - the drip tray would fill with freezing cold water and then overflow in a random place. solved it by burning a hole in the tray with a red hot pin so now it comes out in a known spot and i can just put a pot underneath it.

there is no solution for the washing machine overspill, because the opening has to be extra low for the water to drain out - maybe more expensive machines have an internal pump for this, but not mine. A wet and dry vac could suck it up as it floods out. But I'm not on the market for a new vac.

Puppy pads ftw on washing machine filter cleaning. I use the giant breed size. They absorb pretty fast, but I do need to shove at least half the pad under the washer to catch all of the overflow.

I spoke too soon on the weather station -- last night the outside sensor went haywire, registering 111˚F (it was actually 71) before quitting altogether.

xp there's not a little hose that pulls out to drain the water?

they should be standard on all washing machines, my hotpoint doesn't have one.

Totally feel your pain, calzino. Our washing machine tells us we need to clear the filter about once a week, invariably when the machine is full. Trying to open the cover, which is about five inches off the ground always leads to some kind of flooding incident. I like the puppy pads lifehack though! Will try and get some (I wont - I'll just whinge about it/point and laugh when it's my wife taking the job on).

https://x.com/cbedc27c-956d-40c3-8de8-bfbb0db29da1

years ago I bought a KULLABERG desk from that Aryan-scum furniture chain. It was a sturdy desk from which I'm posting from rn, good kit. A couple of years later I bought one for my son and the Aryan-scum had downgraded the mofo whilst still charging the same price for it and the fucking thing now had no diagonal struts underneath - THE FUCKING SOURCE OF ITS STRUCTUAL STABILITY.

It was driving me nuts for years because it's his pc desk and while playing on the pc he bangs the wobbly piece of shit against the wall, which sometimes caused my pathetic arsehole neighbour to bang on their wall in response which would often cause me to shout: go fuck yourrself, arsehole etc.. and go through my usual repertoire of highly unpleasant shouted neighbourly death threats! So this desk has done my head in tbh and caused much more consternation and stress than it should have.

I fixed it with a strapped cushion I got with a swivel chair. The swivel chair was useless and was broken within a week, but this cushion was priceless! Just strapped it to the back of the desk, against the wall. And this fucker is stable and doesn't bang against the wall anymore.

blob:https://x.com/cbedc27c-956d-40c3-8de8-bfbb0db29da1" class="noborder">

stupid fucking twitter, it doesn't even function as an image sharing app anymore!

blob:https://x.com/cbedc27c-956d-40c3-8de8-bfbb0db29da1

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GaMZL3EWcAAmCiR?format=jpg&name=900x900

need a breaking things thread

contactless card has stopped working. which is fine in shops because i can just chip'n'pin it, but a pita if i want to use the tube. have switched to another bank card for a current account that has no money paid into it...

and this morning the mortis lock on my door took 5 minutes to decide to let me in. I've not been using the Yale lock since that time i locked myself out but i might have to switch back...

mortice, obv. it's not dead. dying perhaps.

had to oil the yale lock on front door the other day because it was getting janky as hell and i was worried i’d be locked out at some point.

also lubricated yale lock last week. Now worrying that I used the wrong lubricant. Should have researched first.

Currently planning to splice new 15v plug/transformer onto a LED lamp. Looking forward to it. Don't use my wire stripper enough.

I have a neck massager device that has two major moving parts inside. They're like knobbly wheels that rotate. Only I've been using it for leg cramps and sciatica and I broke it by putting too much pressure against the moving parts. Has been broken for ages and I thought--it opens, it can be taken apart, let's give it a shot.

I found tiny shards of broken plastic gears inside. Unless I can buy two of that particular part, the whole thing is junk. Annoying. But it was cool to see inside!

Friends that I do mutual aid with are having a repair cafe next weekend, I'm very excited for them! Wish I could be there and hang out all day around the incredible vibes.

Some people in/around Asheville, NC explained that having an established repair culture & team of people who met regularly to fix stuff was a crucial part of disaster response: because they had a location and were known in the community, a lot of non-working chain saws & generators & etc were dropped off by well-meaning people in addition to the damaged tools and equipment that came through the flooding. The team efforts of small-engine and electronics people being able to fix things, sharpen blades, replace parts, etc were able to put a lot more working equipment back into service.

in orbit I have been LOVING the trans tiktoker you shared recently who does her own repairs of everything from motorcycle carburetors to leaf blowers. She is INCREDIBLY GOOD at both the repairs and explaining exactly what she's doing. I could watch her all day

Ahahahaha I love her too. Her comments are hilarious--so many gearhead bros arguing about her gender in stupid and predictable ways and other equally gearhead bros archly correcting them.

Honestly the way she talks about this stuff.. it almost (almost) makes me feel like I'd be capable of doing what she does

That's so funny because I feel the opposite! I'm more like "I don't know the first thing about what you're doing, and that's AFTER you edited out the 6 hours it took to get the transmission out, but I'm definitely sending this to my cousin who's a motorcycle mechanic."

But like I said I actually should take my scooter carb apart and clean it. Maybe as a winter project.

If that's Mercury Stardust the trans handy ma'am you're talking about, they're amazing! Their book is great btw, excellent for renters and owners alike, so much great info and so clearly explained.

I'm in the midst of removing an old wood stove from our place and just bought a crowbar. I'm positive something is going to need major fixing once this thing is outta here.

Sounds like something is going to need major demo! I've never seen a crowbar put something together, it's more of a "deconstruction" kind of tool. :D

Not Merc S although I enjoy her content too! The mechanic one is "Caylee P"

Awesome! I will check her out

replaced a headlight that burnt out in my van/ Suprisingly simple but I fretted anyway the whole time

I just changed out the entire headlamp assemblies in my wife’s car as a birthday present! She hated the way the old ones looked because they were all yellowed and cloudy from sun damage. It was harder than I expected; I had to remove the grille and disconnect the front bumper. Not the biggest job but the problem was that all the bolts holding the bumper and headlamps on were rusty (I sheared one off) and- even worse- all the plastic button trim clips that held everything else together were brittle and super easy to break. I managed to get it all back together, but I need to go out and buy more of those plastic trim clips to replace all the halfway broken ones.

on my previous car I tried to brush them with toothpaste, it kind of worked

If you have an angle grinder with a buffing pad and optionally some compound I think you could polish them back up. Alternatively you might completely ruin them, it's probably up to the individual.

3M sells a headlight polishing kit that comes with a little thingamij you can stick into a power drill: https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/d/b40069623/

it works well, i've used it. i've also heard good things about cerakote's kit but haven't used it. some of the kits come with clearcoat wipes that help prevent future uv damage.

for rusty bolts you should try hitting with some penetrant (like pb blaster) and letting soak. unfortunately plastic on cars gets pretty brittle over time due to heat, UV, etc.

fun fact: the reason headlights get cloudy over time from the sun but taillights don't is because the headlights are mandated to be made from shatter-resistant polycarbonate while taillight plastics can be made out of more uv-resistant plastics like ABS

oh wait this is the version of the 3m kit that comes with the attachment and clearcoat wipes https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/d/v100974002/

I had an explosion of milkweed pods in the van and now the puff seeds are everywhere

Currently planning to splice new 15v plug/transformer onto a LED lamp. Looking forward to it. Don't use my wire stripper enough.

― woof, Monday, October 21, 2024 12:18 PM (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Job complete. Clip, strip, solder, heatshrink. Felt like a good sunday afternoon repair.

I replaced the thermostat and the dryer is working at sub-combustion temperatures again

today marks the fourth time I've revived this dryer by replacing the heating element and high limit thermostat ... this is getting ridiculous but it's cheaper than buying a new dryer

repaired a cabinet door today with wood glue and clamps via the method in this vid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45mME5FEhLU

as a bonus the guy has got an absolutely fantastic midwestern accent (michigan?), very soothing to listen to

https://imgix.ranker.com/user_node_img/50020/1000390631/original/clamps-tv-characters-photo-u1?auto=format&q=60&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&dpr=2&w=650

Lost in all the news last week was that the FTC along with Illinois and Minnesota is suing John Deere over its repair monopoly:
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/01/ftc-states-sue-deere-company-protect-farmers-unfair-corporate-tactics-high-repair-costs

Yesterday I learned that, counterintuitively, your car's heater does not work if the car is low on coolant.

interior heat would be the least of my concerns if my car was low on coolant. hopefully your engine didn’t overheat?

No, car was running fine! Maybe it helped that it was 15 degrees here.

(also, a quick explanation for why that's the case - at its heart a car engine is a big metal box in which thousands of tiny explosions occur every second from gasoline and air combusting. those thousands of tiny explosions produce a lot of heat. the coolant circulates around the engine in order to take away some of that heat and keep the engine within operating temp otherwise the engine will melt from the heat. engineers figured out if you route some of that heated coolant into the cabin (where it passes through something called a heater core) the heated coolant can be used to heat the interior of the car, without needing to commit extra resources/fuel to doing so. pretty neat, but this is also why it takes some time for hot air to come out through the vents in the winter (the coolant needs to come up to temperature first).)

all that is to say, i hope your engine didn't overheat from being low on coolant!

xp i'm glad the car was running fine but the coolant system is a closed system so if it was low that means you have a leak. please get that fixed so your engine doesn't overheat (which can still happen even if it's 15 degrees outside)

how would I know if I had a leak? I brought it to my local guy who topped off the coolant and he didn't seem immediately concerned. One consideration, at least with my car, is it has a little relief valve, kind of like with a radiator. Air bubbles can get trapped in the system and when you add coolant it looks like it is full but in fact there's a bubble underneath that has to be released. which was the case with our car.

Pertinent detail. perhaps, the heat worked fine on Tuesday night, I didn't drive it on Wednesday, heat wasn't working on Thursday. No puddles of coolant in the garage.

A puddle under the car that is greenish from the glycol in coolant, or a sort of sweet smell if the engine has been running and it drips on something hot are casual ways to find one. Formal way is to get a pressure test done.

It might have just been the cold that reduced the volume enough.

oh well it could be the case you had an air bubble in your system which was blocking coolant from getting to the heater core... and maybe you were a lil' low because of shrinkage in the cold weather

i'd keep an eye on the coolant overflow tank and yeah on your garage floor to make sure no leaks (make sure not to confuse water puddles in the summer with coolant leaks - that's common from the AC)

don't open the radiator when it's hot or you'll send superheated coolant right into your eyeballs!

xp yeah or what jaq said

yeah, I will just keep my eye on it I guess. it had been to the dealer for something in December and they gave it a pretty thorough inspection, be weird if they missed something like that.

Jaq otm … when I was young and foolish I had this problem and ignored it and then the engine cracked and kinda caught on fire.

Today I removed old broken thermostat and patched the wall. Brian the HVAC guy was impressed that I knew how to patch drywall. Next week is the return of Brian the HVAC guy to replace the electrical panel in my apartment with one that isn’t 50 years old.

The panel is in a closet. There are 3 closets in the hallway. I made a sign to NFPA sign standards and taped it to the door of the closet with the panel inside. Frank the handyman who was there to look at the age of the panel somehow didn’t notice the 6 inch high orange letters and opened the wrong closet door.

sorry to do one of my boring stories. When I used to be an electrician I worked with this guy called Steve who was a heroin addict. His nickname was Dr Death because he always looked like shit.

He once installed a mains board too close to the clapping side of a door. The clerk of works was onto this shit and Steve realised he'd fucked up. To fix the problem he screwed a plastic bottle cap into the floorboard as a doorstopper that would stop it short of hitting the mains board and he coloured it in black with a sharpie. I can never stop laughing whenever I think back to this.

I'm impressed by drywall patching! It seems daunting.

I redid our master bedroom closet last month - ripped out carpet, took out wire shelves, leveled the floor and put down new underlayment, put down vinyl tile, added vinyl baseboard and a new threshold, installed 2 stand-alone shelving/hanging clothes units, and replaced the door with a 6 foot tall bi-swing cat gate.

I've got some small electrical stuff I keep putting off and some weather-stripping updates. Next quarter, the big project I want to tackle is the laundry room - cabinets coming out, flooring likely needing repairs, industrial shelving going in.

This week though, I need to take an automatic litterbox completely apart to figure out why it stopped emptying and started beeping full time.

He once installed a mains board too close to the clapping side of a door. The clerk of works was onto this shit and Steve realised he'd fucked up. To fix the problem he screwed a plastic bottle cap into the floorboard as a doorstopper that would stop it short of hitting the mains board and he coloured it in black with a sharpie. I can never stop laughing whenever I think back to this.

Incredible story, calz.

After about a week with the car's heat working it conked out again, which meant that yeah, there was a slow coolant leak in the car. Our regular guy wasn't comfortable working with the model, so I was planning, reluctantly, to take it to a dealer (we had bought it used elsewhere), but a buddy recommended some other garage which discovered the coolant housing assembly was the source of the leak and got the thing fixed (replaced). So ... leak number one dealt with.

Leak number two (because everything is leaking) was the garbage disposal. I noticed water/liquid dripping out of the bottom of the disposal, which is the telltale sign to get a new one. I was a little reluctant to do it myself, because ours is hardwired, but youtube came to the rescue once again and it was pretty easy. I also learned about these neat in-line connectors which made everything even easier:
https://images.thdstatic.com/productImages/56c0b7fc-e59b-4502-b28d-c3d5ef225899/svn/wago-wire-connectors-wire-terminals-0221412k00-012-64_100.jpg

Leak number three, there is a pipe leading from our water heater that sprung a little drip. The drip was warm so I knew it was coming *from* the heater and *to* whatever needed hot water (as opposed to cold and going to the heater to be warmed), so I knew what lever to switch off to stop the leak. Which I did, then larded on a bunch of epoxy and plumbers tape and all manner of ungraceful solutions that staunched the leak down to a slow drip every few minutes. Which is not a solution and not ideal, but I think I'll stick it out and keep an eye on it before I call in a plumber to do anything drastic. I also sort of suspect I made the problem worse by making the little leak harder to get to, lol.

yeah i've been replacing all the outlets in our place, those wagos connectors are really neat and sure beat twisting 12awg wire together

my latest repair project is replacing the rollers for our hanging closet doors. i've searched high and low and they don't make them anymore. so i've decided to drill the old rollers out and rivet in place roller-skate wheels from amazon.

other cool thing i did this week was finding a way to use snaptoggles to install a wall control pegboard for our kitchen into our mid-century rock lath walls which are both super sturdy and a real pain to hang anything on

that immediately joins the pantheon of pipecockean yank unintelligibility

wagos are the norm on the continent! its us yanks who are stuck in the stone age with wire nuts

"mid-century rock lath walls"

are these like the black lime with wooden lath type walls we had in the UK as well? I used to despise them when I was a sparky. When you breath that shit in and it sticks to your skin because you are sweating, it's just hideous stuff to have to wire around.

jic, i'm rooting for you to fix your leaky pipe with a sharkbite

xp no rock lath walls is plaster over an early form of drywall (what you might call plasterboard in the UK?)

the us also has lath and plaster walls. it's annoying because searching for plaster wall tips in the us just turns up loads of tips about how to work with lath and plaster walls and next to nothing about rock lath walls

here's a cool video about rock lath walls, which i watched all the way through to better understand what my walls are made of, but also because it's just a cool piece of mid century americana

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1CACkgUJcU

in the old UK walls they used to mix horsehair into the plaster which was the probably starting point of lots of electrical fault related fires back in the day.

Going to watch that vid later, looks good!

i'm rooting for you to fix your leaky pipe with a sharkbite

I couldn't find the exact source of the leak, but it wasn't at the fitting/connection/thread/whatever. It's got to be some tiny thing that needs to be patched, so I don't think a sharkbite would have done it. Also, it's a metal pipe, so I'm not in a position to mess with them. It's a go big or go home situation. I went home (DIY), but I assume at some point I'll have to go big (pro).

i replaced the wheels on my used v expensive german office chair with roller blade wheels. fantastic upgrade. good luck with your closet rollers!

i love snaptoggles.

Just bought a mess of snaptoggles - I was today years old, thx JiC! I've been using butt splices and wire caps forever. And I've been dragging my feet on an outdoor light fixture replacement so new toys might help.

ok ye are absolutely doing a bit now

xpost I don't think the thing I used as an alternative to wire caps is called a snaptoggle, as cool as that term is. A snaptoggle is ... a kind of drywall anchor, right?

LOL likely so now that I've read back. I bought those wego lever toggle things for electrical wires

LEVER NUTS not toggles argh

yes snap toggles are drywall anchors (aka "rawl plugs" darra)

roller-skate wheels

Honestly roller skate wheels with full enclosed bearings that are built for a lot of RPMs are probably WAY higher quality than any sliding door hardware out there! Good fix and potentially also style points depending on wheel color and graphic choice.

I used to hate working on stud walls. Even though with solid walls there was the hard work of chasing out brick and plaster for cable drops/rises and capping the cable to protect it from the plasterers. The fiddlyness of stud walls used to tire me out more and I was never happy with the quality of those awful fast fix boxes for switches and outlets.

snap toggles?? jesus. what?? that is not what i imagined they were

i used to call them, that is, rawl plugs, screw sinks before i moved to the uk; no doubt this was wrong in some way

they are the best wall hardware unless you are working truly tiny bolts, or there is no cavity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC1ZuxuZ2PU

Back to the sink disposer - one thing to be careful when installing these is that unless you don't have a nearby dishwasher, you'll need to remove the dishwasher inlet plug from the disposal before connecting the dishwasher drain hose. I've known of many people who installed a new disposal and thought everything was fine until they first ran the dishwasher, after which their sink cabinet and floor under the dishwasher was flooded. Conversely, if you don't have a dishwasher, you must leave the inlet plug in place or else there will be a hole for water to leak from the sink drain into the cabinet below.

two year old sofa, heard a twang and the seat started to sag. do i

a) open it up and see if i can fix it? means doing things i cannot undo, like cutting the bottom out of it, but which you won't see unless you are under said sofa

b) just phone argos and get it replaced under the 10 year guarantee it claims? this will be faff and they don't have an exact replacement.

Iirc there is often a lattice of braces and staples and stuff across the bottom, and if one of them snaps loose that can cause the sag. Sometimes it just has to be pulled/squished back into place and reattached, which admittedly can be a little tricky. If it's something internal ... I dunno, that sounds too invasive to DIY, and often not cost effective enough to pay for, esp. if it's under warranty.

yeah, i fully expect to just see those wavy springs stretched across the base. but will i be able to reattach easily? and the base is sealed, albeit just by a bit of cheaper fabric on the bottom, completely invisible from the top. but...

warranty usually only covers manufacturing faults. but i'd say not being able to function as a sofa after only two years is a fault. (it's actually holding up ok, it's just a bit saggy. i could just sit on the other, non-saggy side, but it's less lined up with the tv)

warranty, if you open it up i'm guessing you're voiding the warranty too