other internet sites

[geniescience]

Link to a standard page showing risks -- how about it?

i wouldn't mind it if the senior people here pointed out to (some) new posters that
1. they may not be describing the right things, the right context,
---1.a. they may have missed a lot.
2. they may not know what it is that they don't know, and that they need to know
---2.a. no matter how much free reading they get here.
3. even if they got a professional to draw up a perfect diagram, the chances are high they will end up building it wrong, making a mistake.
4. along the way they can cause a lot of damage too.
5. an improperly built system can poison them later.
6. other risks apply, too numerous to mention.


Last year I sent $5 to an Appliance Guru site just so I would get their attention when I asked my first question there. It was a donation, not a fee.

If Terry doesn't want to start accepting donations, it could be because administering it would make things more complicated.

David

[Cookie]

I think your post is very good David, but I know that those things are being done here at Terry's. Time and Time again, regarding drawings, more information is requested, additional drawings are requested to clearify... Possible mistakes I can read are pointed out to the posters, I see it time and time again from experienced people here regarding plumbing. I really think, the plumbers here are very meticulous in their answers to others, they really go out of their way most of the time to make sure they are right on the money; and what I find astounding, is the fact that other plumbers/their peers are also, either giving their opinions, too. Wow. Where else can one get that? That is amazing to me.

Grumpy was right on one thing for sure, where else can you go for free advice? Absolutely, right.

I can't imagine the amount of work and time, it must take Terry to do what he does with the site. I wouldn't have the energy.

Everything to me you posted is right David, but I think all those things have already been addressed to posters so many times. If Terry wants to add a page that is great, but to be honest, in my opinion, he doesn't need it. That could be also, just another thing he must take care of.

So far as the money, save Terry his time, and send it to me.

[master plumber mark]

Grumpy...how have you been??
have you been pretty busy this summer??


you can get free advice anywhere...
wether the advice is good or not is the real issue
I dont plan on takeing out my own appendix anytime soon..


if some sites dont want to give free advice to diyers becasue they feel it cuts into their income stream....
....so be it.....

Those sites come across with an air of
huffiness in my opinion....

these DIYers are going to forge ahead and do the job
wether it be new gas lines, drain lines, or water lines.....
and they will let the chips fall where they may..

if they blow themselves up or flood themselves out
it is the risk that they are willling to take....

I feel it is better to help them than not....


NOW....If steve or others truely have the real clout in your state like you claim that they do....

may I suggest that they go after the people at Lowes and Whirlpool and start another class action lawsuit

Whirlpool encourages anyone to break down their gas water heaters to clean and replace parts in them..they even send total amatures replacement parts by fed -ex every day... ( I have a few of the repair kits in my shop)

It would seem to me that companies that sell directly to the DIYERS are cutting into everyones income stream much more deeply than sites like this one....

expecting these DIYERs to make repairs to their defective gas water heaters is almost close to criminal...


I am sure that they are all just talk and credentials.
but if they really wanted to shut something down, or use their
clout to make some new state laws....

I would love to see that brand of water heater kicked out of the market..

[Dunbar Plumbing]

I just found out how to rid myself of those bothersome colon polyps with a mulcher and a yard hydrant..........! Blessed be WebMD!


Serious though, I got more health problems than a tribe in africa.

[Dunbar Plumbing]

In our schools we have the Dare program. It teaches why not to use drugs and to say, no. Then, in sixth grade we teach sex education, so they understand what sex is about to expel some myths on pregnancy and disease. It is far better to teach them than to let them go out and experiment and be a DIY'er.

http://www.columbiapd.com/cpd_023.htm

Just my 2 cents worth.

That system went belly up in my area. No funding. Kids are doing drugs just like they always do from generation to generation to generation.


And now that I have gray hairs growing everywhere they shouldn't, I'm wise to NOW see that those who "didn't" do drugs in high school....and took up the recreational habits later in life....like adulthood?


They are worse than a disaster because the system doesn't provide as much for adults with serious addiction problems as much as it is for adolescents.

I know a guy who has a 22 year old son that is literally costing him the value of a house to get him sober... if he was just under 18, most if not all insurance policies pick up under his own.


I still think kids shouldn't do drugs......but ffs! let them try them at a young age so they grow out of the habit NOW instead of later in life.

Some adult drug users I know are beyond hope....and they was clean as a whistle in school. Now they affect not just them, their family.

[Taylor]

Something Grumpy said a while back:

Work, work, work and more work....so much for the housing crisis.
It's gotten to the point where I'm not getting to a large number of my calls.

For the record, I have been living a DIY nightmare for some time in large part because of the need to fix the hack work done by hack contractors (some of them licensed) over the lifetime of this house. I spent a year (a year!) trying to find a framer to replace a beam for me, before I gave up and did it myself. In some cases I've had to rip out the work done by contractors for me and redo it myself, or hire someone else to come in and fix it for me. For example, I had to rip out the joists in a bathroom that a carpenter screwed up, after the joist manufacturer told me he had destroyed the joists. In the process, I had to rip out my new water pipes around these joists, and redo them myself. Had I asked the original plumber to come back in and redo them, I knew I'd never see him again. As it is, I've been trying since last fall to get him to come back and finish my bathroom. My plan now is to hire someone myself to move the bathtub in, and then try again to get him in (if there's a waste pipe leakage, I want him to be responsible).

Had it not been for forums like this, I don't know what I would have done. I am eternally grateful for the pros that take the time to inhabit boards like this and dispense helpful advice. I know it takes a rare kind of seriousness in one's trade to take the time to answer questions here and in other such forums, and it's hard to find serious professionals like this in the Real World.

[Mike Swearingen]

Gary,
You hit the problem with that other site right on the head. That pompous @$$ that was given control of that site by the owner thinks he is some kind of PC god and treats a lot of good people badly for no reason other than his own ego.
I like to think that I helped build that site early on (well prior to that guy every coming along), but when the owner ultimately let that jerk (and others like him) take over, I simply chose to bail out like you. (He never messed with me, but he forced out a number of friends of mine.)
There always seems to be controversy on the Internet.
It's so nice to always be right like us though, isn't it? LOL
Is this a great country or what?
Mike

[sjsmithjr]

Having a tough time finding the appendix removal thread...got a link?

Nah, but there's plenty of information and suggestions on them pages ain't they?

[Dunbar Plumbing]

Gary,
You hit the problem with that other site right on the head. That pompous @$$ that was given control of that site by the owner thinks he is some kind of PC god and treats a lot of good people badly for no reason other than his own ego.
I like to think that I helped build that site early on (well prior to that guy every coming along), but when the owner ultimately let that jerk (and others like him) take over, I simply chose to bail out like you. (He never messed with me, but he forced out a number of friends of mine.)
There always seems to be controversy on the Internet.
It's so nice to always be right like us though, isn't it? LOL
Is this a great country or what?
Mike

Are you talking about DIY.com? I'm curious to know because I saw something recently that spoke volumes in regards to activity.

[jimbo]

I would say there are about 15 HD stores in San Diego. Add about Blue. Between them, I would guess they sell well over 100 water heaters a WEEK....and I'm talking over the counter, not including the ones they contract install. Of that 100, I give even money that most are homeowners or handymen, most are installed without permits.

Not that I am praising that situation, but according to Grumpy, the whole city should be lit up like a Christmas tree with exploding water heaters. In fact, the only gas issue was the explosion a few months ago on a high rise hotel under construction. BIG contractor involved in that leak.

Maybe a few disasters have been AVERTED by advice found on these forums. It is what it is. No point in being grumpy!

[Taylor]

I have to ask what, or whom came to the conclusaion as to what, if anything, was done wrong?

16d nails laterally into the LVL flanges of I-joists. In one case, the flange was literally split in two. If you know engineered lumber, you know an I-joist without its flange is so much cardboard. I was informed of this by a technical rep for the joist company, after I described the situation.

Before he left the job, the carpenter proudly said that no-one would be able to take out his work, it would be impossible.

As I proceeded to do the impossible, I discovered that the joists holding up the planned CI tub rested on a ledger supported by two 3/8" lag screws. Design weight of tub with water and occupants: 1300 lbs. Shear strength of two 3/8" lag screws: 300 lbs. The tub alone is over 400 lbs. I kiss the ground that he busted the I-joists so I found this out in advance. The work (my work) has since passed inspection.

In any case, I don't mean to get into a discussion between pros. But I do want to offer the perspective of a HO trying to navigate the jungle of hacks out here, and with the good guys too busy to return calls. I don't know where I would be without boards like this to keep me informed. It is a strange attitude to take that informed consumers are dangerous, which seems to be where this is coming from.

[jimbo]

In my state HD is now required to have licensed master plumbers & electricians in their perspective departments. I don't think it is a state requirement. At least not here. HD advertised quite a bit that they were hiring a plumber and an electrician at every store to improve their quality of help. I don't know if the desired effect is taking place.

I don't recall stating water heaters are exploding all over the place, but rather than be deleted I'll just agree. No, you didn't say that. I was just pointing out that whether we like it or not, the results of DIY work may not be as dire as some might predict.

I have to ask...you're intent on pointing out there's a website specifically set up for pro's only, you find it objectionable enough to mention it here as if it were wrong.
I have to wonder if somehow you feel it's a plumbers obligation to share free information...barring that I can't understand where the problem lies. I don't find that website objectionable at all. They have their own opinion and are free to do as they wish. I simply opined that it didn't look like a lot of fun, so I didn't join in.

Be mindful, no-one over there is bad mouthing you or this forum. I agree that no one has badmouthed other forums, and my comments have never been intended to badmouth them.

On the other hand, somebody this evening really had it in for hj! Don't know what he did to tick that guy off!!! It was crude, and the posts were quickly deleted.

[Taylor]

I won't question your credibility, but something isn't right with the details there.

Grumpy, you should have resisted that urge at the last to add, "Yo Mama!"

Flippers don't need to get advice here on how to do plumbing, they already know enough. They're too dumb to realize how much they don't know.

I am one of those HOs who has a house, not a flip, but the result of 80 years of ignoring problems and cosmetic reno work before the sale. No DIY, just hack crews (heard about it afterwards from neighbors), a licensed plumber, and no internet involved. We specifically were looking for and thought we had a finished house, neither of us was handy. Instead a major part of the house has been gutted, and I have had to hit a steep learning curve to find out how things should be fixed, instead of depending on some potential hack off the street telling me.

We haven't been in tears (came close when the new roof started leaking), but I am convinced that many if not most marriages would not have survived the experience.

If I went after all the contractors who screwed things up, I'd spend half my time in court. I spent almost as much on roof repairs as I did on the original roof (having learned from experience that the recommended guy was a hack and going with the expensive guy I should have gone with). Same with the carpenter on the joists (who in his own mind did a great job), the plumber who had water coming out of my steam radiators (ditto), etc.

[Cookie]

If so, he could had just deleted his own, I do it all the time.

[Taylor]

It's late, just a couple of points:

* On the roofer for example, he was always willing to come back and fix problems. Given that, I had no basis for trying to get money from him, and since his crews were so frigging incompetent I did not want him on my roof again. They didn't flash, they just smeared caulk everywhere. I learned a lot about flashing while researching how the roof should be fixed.

* With the carpenter, I preferred to fix it myself. I have better tools and I'm more careful e.g. on an old house like this, with very dry wood, I now know you should predrill before driving any nails, to avoid splits like the carpenter left on the end of a beam, and any contractor would guffaw at that suggestion.

* On the water radiators: nope, the frigging idiot screwed up the near-boiler piping and the boiler was guaranteed to surge as a result. It said right in the manual how to do it, I think he was just lazy. It took a really cold spell for the boiler to surge so much that water came up out of the radiators, but y'know surging ain't good, it can split a boiler. I considered suing him for the cost of repiping the boiler, but he was dead at that point. Didn't have time to consider going from steam to hydronic, the boiler failed the day I was leaving on Christmas vacation, but a big fan of the mechanical simplicity of steam heat, and I think my money is better spent on insulation. Spent a lot of time at Dan Holohan's site, and reading his books, during the adventure with the radiators. I also think this hack plumber put something in the boiler to stop it leaking during the house inspection, he basically admitted it to me with a "Who coulda done it?" attitude when it finally failed. Oh yeah he also put a thermostat for FHA on my steam boiler, it was cycling every 15 minutes.....