BG Homeowner and DIY Thread - Out of the Basement Edition

[Yabby]

I can never stress enough how much precaution should be made when working on your electrical. I've been shocked once because I touched an exposed junction box when flipping a light switch. Felt like a hammer blow over my entire arm.

Anyway, those are GFCI switches (ground fault circuit interrupter) which do exactly as you demonstrated - trip an internal circuit. Your bathroom was certainly not up to code, but I don't know when it was last built. Looking online, these were introduced to bathroom receptacles in 1975, with the latest requirement in 2005 for laundry and utility sinks.

Yea, based on what I read, this is ok here in MI, so long as each plug leads back to a GFCI switch (Which it does, just connected in a weird way). I thought I was protected because I had the break to the master bathroom off, turns out those plugs are connected to the breaker in the spare bathroom. Lesson learned.

That reminds me of my house, the spare bathroom on the other side of the house has a small reset button that controls both our front and backyard outlets as well as our master bathroom outlets... like wtf is that wiring?

Yea, I went around my house to look for other odd things, and my washroom outlet didn't have a GFCI switch either, so I did some testing. The outlet in there is connected to my kitchen GFCI switch. I find this all weird because does it really save the builders money to wire the house weirdly to avoid using extra GFCI switches? They can't cost too much more than normal outlets.1

[Delayed]

Sounds like an inspection either wasn't done when the house was purchased, or was done by the builders friend

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[Byrthnoth]

Repainted some trim today, completing the cycle for the year. Now nothing is peeling.

[Fondue]

bought an ego lawnmower off a neighbor for a good deal and used it to mulch all the leaves in the yard, worked pretty good

[archibaldcrane]

Electric mowers are the truth

[Yabby]

Mower, Weedeater, and leafblower have all been amazing. I got a snowblower I will be testing this winter.

[TsingTao]

Got the full Ego setup here, been rock solid for 4 years now. Buy the snowblower with two big batteries and the fast charger, then bare tools for everything else. You can run one battery down mowing (for example) and it will last longer than it takes to recharge the other battery. So much better, and quieter, than gas everything they replaced.

[Fondue]

Which snow blower did y'all get? They have a stick one and a full blower i think. It really doesn't snow that much here but fuck either seems nice when it does. We got like 10" in one storm last year and I did not enjoy shoveling

[Yabby]

This is the one i got:

https://www.greenworkstools.com/coll...7d8cb5a0&_ss=c

I HAVE NOT used it yet. I bought it during a sell during the summer where it was like 40% off. I got the 60v pro because that is the series I have for my mower as well, which gives me 5 batteries total. So I never have an issue with running out of power. I'll try to remember to post back during the 1st snow.

I've seen reviews that there are better E-mowers/etc than greenworks, but I've yet to have an issue with any of mine.

[TsingTao]

I got this one.

https://egopowerplus.com/snow-blower...auger-snt2110/

If you don't get heavy snow you could easily go a step down. They have added electric shovels since I bought all my stuff, so I may have to go get one of those before it snows. Going from very little shoveling to zero would be great.

Disclaimer: If you aren't going all in on the whole Ego line to share batteries between all your tools there may very well be better choices for just a snow blower. I haven't checked since I bought a couple years ago since I've been happy.

[Drai]

I bought a Miluakee blower last year and it's been amazing, hits up to 150 CFM, is fairly light and the battery lasts long enough to do all our walk/driveways, as long as we get to it before it gets super hard packed it's no issue, and even when it DOES get hard packed, as long as you crank it up it can rip it off ground with a little bit of time lol

[Koyangi]

That driveway will be drai in no time.

[Tyche]

This is half my front yard...back yard is twice as big with twice the trees.

I spent about 8 hours this week mulching, blowing, and raking.



It sure is pretty for the like...3 weeks I have leaves before my yard turns into a naked forest.







As far as mowers, I wish the robot mower tech was better for applications like mine. Hilly, uneven, a billion trees, roots, landscaping beds, and stone paths.

Yard grade is too steep for any kind of ride on, stand on, or stand behind. I'm push mowing over an acre of hill with a commercial hydro push mower with a 32" deck. I put a mulch kit on the mower, but there's just too many leaves, my yard come spring will be fucked if I don't get some of it up.

[Outlaw]

I'll get right to the point.

Are LED light bulbs for indoor use suppose to get really hot? I bought a pack of 60 watt equivalent bulbs yesterday because I decided the leds I had in a couple rooms weren't bright enough. The ones I have now are 800 lumens at 20 watts. I went to turn off one today and my hand brushed against the base and I reacted instantly like you do if it was a hot stove. I have a surface temp probe that I use for computer stuff and I checked it with that and it's 139.4F. ^^; I know that the base is suppose to act as a heatsink but do they usually get that hot?

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[Byrthnoth]

No, swap it for a different bulb.

The base can get a warm because it is an A/D converter (like a laptop power brick), but the current levels it is converting should be insufficient to make it hot-stove-levels of hot

[Cyn]

The LEDs themselves definitely generate heat, especially the warmer toned ones that produce more IR light. If you hold your hand in front of the light it shouldn't radiate heat like an incandescent bulb does (they produce tons of IR), but the base hitting 140F doesn't seem unreasonable.

[Outlaw]

Yeah. I looked it up and people have said that's about normal for LED bulbs. I just never thought about it before. These are cheaper GE soft white for general indoor use. They definitely are pretty bright for this room. I saw another kind that cost twice as much and are 800 lumens but only use 10 watts. They have a really good rating online. I might take these back and try those.

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[Cyn]

They'll probably just keep getting better and better. Heat has always held back the LED lighting industry, even to the point of CFLs being pushed onto the market knowing that the technology was going to lose out to LED sooner rather than later, because creating white LEDs was incredibly difficult and keeping LEDs from melting themselves without tons of active cooling was even harder. A lot of the entertainment industry still uses xenon and other short arc lamps to this day despite the ridiculous current draw and heat produced, because there are far fewer hurdles for making really bright fixtures when a ceramic, glass and metal lamp can happily run in hundreds of degrees ambient temperatures for hours at a time.

[Corrderio]

Anyone have any advice to polish a scuffed up granite countertop? Noticed a section near the sink end of mine has a few nicks and really dull.

[Drai]

Anyone have any advice to polish a scuffed up granite countertop? Noticed a section near the sink end of mine has a few nicks and really dull.

there's some DIY guides online to try to remove scratches and such, not sure if by really dull you mean there's discoloration in certain spots, if so I'm not sure that the fix would be for that.

https://www.shopnsavemart.com/blog/g...ate-diy-guide/