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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3022 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 10, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I want to bitch about the blue collar middle class here for a second: Contractors are all liars and thieves, or thieves and liars.

Was doing some maintenance on one of our properties, in this case a leaking water line near a wall from god knows when; but was on the plans and part of the original construction. Fuckers ran that shit 100 feet through a slab and instead of spending an extra 50 bucks on fittings and labor to put a t to a hose bib for hose bib and draining purposes; they did four pipe bends to bring the whole fucking thing into the air, ran it into the wall, then back into the fucking slab. Turned a 30 min. solder job into a 8 hour hell march (admittedly because I didn't restock on slip to street couplings and wide radius 90s. Oh well) because I can't just tell the resident "lol i cut the water pipe no water till the grainger truck arives lol".

This a couple days after I went to replace a failing range hood to find it was venting through dryer vent (NOT TO CODE BIG FIRE HAZARD HOURS) and the dryer vent was venting into a cavity in the ceiling, and was actually not even connected to the range hood that had never had the plug removed so it wasn't venting at all.

I go to fix this, and find that the complete shitbags that did previous owners kitchen remodel installed a 3 layers of drywall and a 2*4 below the galvanized vent pipe that goes to the roof. These motherfuckers turned a 30 min. job into me having to cut a 2 foot access hole into the fucking kitchen ceiling because they also ran a ton of vents to a gas heater 100% blocking the crawl space; all in service of scamming their customer out of thousand(s) of dollar(s) and maybe burning their house down.

All this to say: Never trust a contractor. Never trust a tradesman older than 36 but younger than 68. I've never worked with one in that range that didn't try to cut corners or steal from their customers on the quote end.

We've bought an aging manufactured home, and are trying to figure what maintenance we should do. Unfortunately, if I, as a naive person who doesn't know that much yet, try searching for information online, I just get a bunch of contractor sites telling us to hire them to do work that won't result in a clear end state that we'd be in a position to evaluate. Things like "re-level" it every three years or something (there wouldn't be much evidence whether this had been done properly or not). The only thing I've found that's clearly measurable by me at this point is "wait for the house to fall apart in some obvious way, replace it with an entirely new structure."

Are there good sources of information to help a homeowner figure out what to even hire someone to do, and how to tell if they did in fact do a good job of it?

try searching for information online, Ask ChatGPT.

I’ll give it a try, though the anecdote above about it staunchly insisting the ISS is larger than the moon wasn’t reassuring.

Adding: I did try asking Chat GPT, and it gave a bit of advice, but mostly recommends finding and evaluating a structural engineer. I suppose I could ask either the organization we bought it though (a local non-profit who are still holding the mortgage, and therefore invested in it retaining value) or some friends who are doing contractor and handyman work.

Man, don't ask chat GPT. Doesn't know dick about shit. Try getting it to say anything deeper than buzzfeed for your area of expertise for a laugh.

Speaking of not knowing dick, mobile homes are a closed book to me. I assume you are in a community of such; if they have a managment office they'll probably know. Failing that, probably normal house shit needs done in addition to mobile home shit.

EG, check your roof, check your door sweeps and insulation, change the anode in your water heater if it's gone, clean the filters in your range hood and furnace, flush your water heater, etc.

Haha.

I assume you are in a community of such; if they have a managment office they'll probably know

No, this is just how they do semi-rural houses out here. We have it because the land it's on is very nice for a variety of reasons, and the house itself is... a house, which provides shelter, and is large enough. It has a metal roof, which is nice.

change the anode in your water heater if it's gone, clean the filters in your range hood and furnace, flush your water heater, etc.

I'll look into this, thanks. I hadn't heard of an anode before, and had to look it up. We do have very hard water -- mountain spring water, so at least it's nice to drink, but is pretty hard on appliances.

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