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Home Improvement - Undoing Previous Owners "Landlord" Specials

We find out how things are wired as we replace stuff. Just had the dishwasher replaced and it took 5-10 minutes to figure out it's wired to its own breaker and not controlled by the other two or three breakers that control kitchen stuff. That's labeled now.

Meanwhile, upstairs, we have switch-controlled lights that are just dead/shorted out/whatever because he didn't do things right when he DIY remodeled the master bedroom 30 years ago.

Long story short, don't buy your house from an auto mechanic who thinks he's handy.
 
FadeToBlack&Gold said:
We find out how things are wired as we replace stuff. Just had the dishwasher replaced and it took 5-10 minutes to figure out it's wired to its own breaker and not controlled by the other two or three breakers that control kitchen stuff. That's labeled now.

Meanwhile, upstairs, we have switch-controlled lights that are just dead/shorted out/whatever because he didn't do things right when he DIY remodeled the master bedroom 30 years ago.

Long story short, don't buy your house from an auto mechanic who thinks he's handy.
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Our dishwasher/disposal is separate. I’m pretty confident that’s typical given that it’s a heating element on its own. I’d also expect electric ovens to be on their own circuit too.

I wouldn’t be surprised if you could get a continuity tester and figure it out in a couple weekends. Just draw out the jboxes you can find and start flipping breakers and switches and testing outlets. You’ll get a pretty good picture immediately for the vast majority.

You can also get an outlet tester that tells you exactly how it’s miswired (if it is) at Home Depot for like $10. It’s invaluable.
 
dxmnkd316 said:
Ok, it turns out I did have enough pictures and I took down the light and unwired all of those connections and the remote jbox connections. I worked out the logic for the wire routing between all of them and verified it was correct. I now have a capped 12/3 traveler on both ends and plan to use a wireless switch in the remote jbox. Which I had planned to do the entire time.

Everything works except for one switched outlet. I KNOW I wired that back correctly because I marked those wires. So it has to be that when I replaced the outlet a couple days ago I screwed up the wiring. If that doesn’t fix it then I have no damn clue and I’m back to square one on that circuit.


First a question then a mini rant

Question: when you say what happens, do you mean what’s the voltage across the red and black?

If I cap all the wires and switch both on, nothing happens. So I’m obviously misunderstanding what you’re asking there

They’re on two fully independent breakers both on the even side. My VERY basic understanding of house panels is that this is the correct way to do a MWBC because the neutral is correctly wired then.

Now the rant:
I 100% agree they’re fine and legal per code. I just think it’s extraordinarily cheap and introduces risk (however remote) that just isn’t necessary.

Per 1994 code, you could use two separate breakers that do not share any function as I understand it. This changed a couple times since then. Now I believe the breaker need to be tied together such that if one trips so does the other. I think.

The problem is that because the builder didn’t want to spend $100-$200 (today’s dollars) there’s now a jbox that is fed by two circuits on a single 12/3 romex. That’s dangerous should someone not understand this is a MWBC and thinks power is cut and doesn’t test (you should always test and hence why I found it)

Part of this stems from my experience in old chemical plants where shit is either abandoned in place or no one wants to pay to do things the “most correct” way and you get “code acceptable, but not common practice” installs that bind you up for $10,000-$100,000 just to fix.

Anyways, let me know about the question part. Appreciate the help as always.
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It sounds like the red and black are on opposite phases if the breakers are together on same side of panel and next to each other. breakers beside each other on same side of panel should be opposite phases, 180 degrees apart so when one phase is up, the other is down, the current on neutral is 0. My question was more geared to what else is on those 2 breakers seems like a lot of other things were off when that one J box is taken apart. I was wondering if there were other J boxes in between the one you were working on and the panel? so I was curious if some of the stuff that was killed by breakers came back on with that J box apart. BTW should be 240 across red and black otherwise current would be doubled on that neutral in 12/3 and very bad.

Residential work can get hacked up because no one wants to see J boxes so you make connections in a switch box that has nothing to do with that particular box. In todays world you can run a whole lot of LEDs on one circuit. Maybe 2 15 amp breakers can run a whole house , one breaker per floor. You are correct that MWBC can be dangerous, sharing the neutral is what will bite you if one breaker is off and the other on and you take that shared neutral apart. Nothing hurts more that an open neutral with a load on it.

Now with arc fault breakers in residential work MWBC are no longer a common practice like it used to be in home construction.
 
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That’s my understanding of panels as well (re: phases and neutrals)

I’ll check the voltage across them eventually here. Just need a spare minute. I’d do it immediately but I’m very confident I wired it back exactly the way it was with regards to power and neutrals. I tested each circuit to make sure they were separated on the line side and don’t share. On the neutral side everything that was in that box went to the same neutral bundle before so that gives me confidence it was correct in my reinstall.

It’s funny you mentioned AFCIs because as I was giving my son a bottle in the early hours after installing, I was wondering how those would affect it. We don’t have AFCIs in the house yet. They’re incredibly expensive and I think I’d rather wait and see if we stay in this house. If we do, I’d have its service upgraded to 200 from the current 100 A and upgrade to AFCIs at the same time. That would give room for an EV and a heat pump water heater. But that seems unlikely.
 
Replaced the first of two bathroom faucets today. First for me.

I did the kitchen sink faucet a few years ago but never did a drain. Went ok. A lot of hard water buildup made it a bit tough. Especially in that small of a space.

Glad the previous owner didn’t use silicone to do the drain in the previous install. I was dreading that.

Looks great. No leaks. Going to put a water sensor under the sink for the next few weeks just in case.

Tomorrow I tackle the second sink after I get more Teflon tape. Ran out of time between doing my share of feedings and diapers (unrelated to sink)

Ok shower beer time.
 
Working on a bathroom project - considering using either Kerdi-board or go-board in lieu of the traditional cement board for behind the tile/shower walls. Wondering if anyone had experience using either of these products?
 
Had a hose on the inlet of my water heat catastrophically fail.

Thankfully it was while we were home this week and I heard it and got it shut off. I’m sure my wife has only seen me move that fast in soccer.

Change ALL of your hoses every five years. If you don’t know when they were last changed, do it now.
 
I usually see cement board and schluter membrane over it. I imagine the kerdi is like that but I looked its poly styrene covered by membrane. What would be under the Kerdi board?
 
walrus said:
I usually see cement board and schluter membrane over it. I imagine the kerdi is like that but I looked its poly styrene covered by membrane. What would be under the Kerdi board?
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On the website and some youtube instructions- the Kerdi board goes straight on the studs - so it replaces the cement board….. It is super light weight which maybe is ok but very different.
 
Finally committed to a pack of Google Nest temperature sensors and set them up last week. (They've been in my Amazon cart for a couple years, just never could pull the trigger until the wife said we've spent more on worse things.)

Confirmed what I kinda was suspicious about, the back half of our house is about three degrees cooler (in winter) than the hallway where the Nest thermostat is.

Will be interesting to see what the difference is during the summer.
 
My wife bought new blinds for the living room and kitchen windows, six in total. Yesterday was the day to complete the work. While not a complicated project, I did run into a tough spot.

The mounting brackets are supposed to be inset about 3” from the end. So I drill a couple holes, insert the first screw, and then start on the second screw. Well, as I’m placing the screw using my impact driver, the screw head snaps off. Because that, I move the bracket about a half-inch inward, and drive a new screw into place. This one is a little larger but still fits the bracket’s mounting holes. This one stopped going in about 1/3” before being flush with the mounting bracket, and I can’t back it out. I did knot see this coming.

All of this is happening on the last window to be completed , or course, and I’m looking up options. Because this replacement screw has a Phillips head, the head stripped. I looked up the solutions as I can’t get my screw extractors to work. In short made long, I will soon be cutting a slot into the screw head and chastise the screw into backing out.
 
aparch said:
Finally committed to a pack of Google Nest temperature sensors and set them up last week. (They've been in my Amazon cart for a couple years, just never could pull the trigger until the wife said we've spent more on worse things.)

Confirmed what I kinda was suspicious about, the back half of our house is about three degrees cooler (in winter) than the hallway where the Nest thermostat is.

Will be interesting to see what the difference is during the summer.
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Three degrees is fairly minor. Coldest to warmest (by design depending on season, closing vents) in our house is like 10-12 degrees.

The hallway is the warmest part of our house too. Because it’s central and high :)

I’m confident we’ve paid for all the ecobee sensors (and then some) with energy savings over the last five years.
 
Anyone with fiber internet have any insight into how the ONT installation went? Thinking of making the switch from coax, but the setup rules seem both arbitrary (in that they can put it anywhere!) and filled with specifics (but not there!). The ideal scenario would be installed in the basement with a long ethernet hooking it up to the first floor where the router would sit in a more central spot, but the basement is unfinished so it would be installed directly into cinder block or try to have them put it on a beam, and quite a few of these guides mention having the router right next to the ONT. Mainly trying to avoid something installed on the main floor that we'd constantly be trying to hide with furniture or having exposed cords.
 
We have both in the basement on the cinder block. Did it because initially we weren’t really using the second level much. We do now and actually haven’t had many problems, and we’re all WiFi. House is 2000 sq ft and built in 1950.
 
So I got a 17.5% back rewards offer on that new washer and dryer set we bought and I wasn’t sure it was going to work.

The confirmation came back this morning. Lol. we ended up saving $320 off the already massively discounted sales price.

Since we went with a heat pump dryer, that alone will pay for the *entire set* in 9 years. Not even including the energy savings from the washer. Which will cut an entire year off. The extra cost of the heat pump over the standard vented will be paid off in roughly 14 months.

The dryer has a ten-year warranty on the expensive bits. The washer comes with a four-year.
 
I accidentally learned the least efficient, most expensive, most thorough way to clean a massive outdoor line-fed gas grill.

Make dinner with many meats, with all coils and burners at full.

Pull meat off, throw hood back down.

Become distracted.
















87 hours later... my 17-year old grill which, despite my best scraping and scrubbing efforts and zero effort by my prior tenants, had become more carbonized fat grit than grill, now looks like the day it rolled out of the plant. And there is a fine white powder of incinerated everything that was not steel which even now is circulating in a cloud above the city of Phoenix.
 
The creosote on the grill lid is usually best taken care of with a pumice stone. But eh. Probably more likely to just damage it. I’ve never cleaned my charcoal grill lid.

The grates are best replaced if thoroughly neglected. Get cast iron if you can, stainless is a relatively poor conductor. If gas, the drip pan is usually best to be replaced.

Get yourself a good chainmail scraper with a hard blade back. Costco sometimes sells these from Oxo I think. God is it ever good at cleaning grates. I got away from pumice for the grates because the stone was coming apart and causing the ash scraper to damage the bottom.
 
Kepler said:
I accidentally learned the least efficient, most expensive, most thorough way to clean a massive outdoor line-fed gas grill.

Make dinner with many meats, with all coils and burners at full.

Pull meat off, throw hood back down.

Become distracted.
















87 hours later... my 17-year old grill which, despite my best scraping and scrubbing efforts and zero effort by my prior tenants, had become more carbonized fat grit than grill, now looks like the day it rolled out of the plant. And there is a fine white powder of incinerated everything that was not steel which even now is circulating in a cloud above the city of Phoenix.
Click to expand...
Ouch. Let us know what the gas bill runs when you get it!
 
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