So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Edward]

Partly that, but also there's the basic economics. Take rlectric kettles. Some will buy a made in England Duslit for £150. Last a lifetime, completely repairable. Most will spend far less every five years on something that, by design, is cheaper to replace than repair. The disposable culture, brought to you by The 20th Century Boys From Marketing. Most stuff these days, even if repairable, voids the warranty as soon as you pop the hood.

 

[3fingers]

I have no issue with anyone who chooses to call a professional to do any task. Everyone needs to make a living.
I don't expect every Tom, Dick and Harriet to replace their own water heater, but I find it incredible that some of them don't even know that they have one, and are taken aback that we only provide cold water and that the hot is produced in their own home. ( Yes I have had that conversation- more than once.)
I don't expect the majority to replace their own breaker panel, but it does amaze me that people can make it to middle age and have no idea why when they plugged in two more crockpots that they all quit working. (Had that phone conversation as well even though we are not the energy provider in this town).
I could go on for quite a while about these things.
If it was college students who have never lived on their own maybe I wouldn't be so surprised, but the worst are middle aged professionals who usually act outraged when you are "useless" and can't solve their issue with a wave of your wand.

 

[tonyb]

A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing, but only when the possessor of that little bit of knowledge gets to thinking he knows all he needs to know when he clearly doesn’t.

Our house was a testament to that. Among our undoing of the previous owners’ DIYs was a kitchen remo-lite we executed back in September. I had a vision for it, which I ran by a guy who knows what he’s doing (he’s been a builder for, oh, 50 years or so) before I went shopping for material, much of which I had to order from remote vendors, seeing how it’s stuff you just can’t get at Blowe’s.

Guy who knows what he’s doing picked up a fair amount of scratch doing the work I knew better than to attempt myself, which was most of it. All I did was paint the walls and ceiling and cabinets. (Doing a proper job of cabinet painting isn’t a one-day commitment, by the way. I bet I had 40-plus hours into it.)

Guy who knows what he’s doing demo’ed the existing glass-tile backsplash (another waste of a good material through shoddy workmanship), ripped out the counters and sink, shored up lower cabinets and built the new counters. Seeing what all was involved in crafting those counters left me with absolutely no doubt that had I attempted it myself the results would have been far short of satisfactory.

 

[Zombie_61]

...I don't expect every Tom, Dick and Harriet to replace their own water heater, but I find it incredible that some of them don't even know that they have one, and are taken aback that we only provide cold water and that the hot is produced in their own home. ( Yes I have had that conversation- more than once.)...

I learned this at a very early age because the water heater in our house was in a cabinet in the kitchen. Yep, just to the left of the oven. Either water heaters were more indestructible when the house was built in 1951, or the people who wrote the building codes weren't so concerned with safety.

 

[tonyb]

I learned this at a very early age because the water heater in our house was in a cabinet in the kitchen. Yep, just to the left of the oven. Either water heaters were more indestructible when the house was built in 1951, or the people who wrote the building codes weren't so concerned with safety.

An old house of ours had the water heater buried under the lower kitchen cabinets. When it gave up the ghost the fellow who helped me address the problem suggested we just cap it off and pull the wiring and run new wire to a corner of the mud porch, where the clothes washer already resided and where plumbing was already in. It was either that or tear up the kitchen cabinets and leave a similar hassle for whoever would be addressing the replacement water heater when it eventually went south, as it surely would at some point a decade or so removed.

 

[3fingers]

Either water heaters were more indestructible when the house was built in 1951, or the people who wrote the building codes weren't so concerned with safety.

New water heaters have a design life of 7 or 8 years. Anything beyond that is gravy.
I have seen old water heaters chugging away after 30+ years with either no service done or an element replacement.
On the rare occasion that somebody actually drained them annually to keep the sediment out and water quality was decent, they would run longer.
Planned failure keeps the economic engine running.

 

[Zombie_61]

New water heaters have a design life of 7 or 8 years. Anything beyond that is gravy...

Sounds about right. When we had the house re-done in 1997-98 we had them relocate the water heater outside and install a new one. That one lasted about 10 years before we had to replace it, and we just replaced that replacement earlier this year, so we're averaging about 10 years so far.

 

[tonyb]

Saw a TV ad today for a furniture store offering zero-percent financing until 2020.

Far be it from me to tell people how they ought to mind their own finances, but it doesn't take a particularly sharp imagination to project where that sort of purchase leads.

I can see financing things a person pretty much has to have to participate in this economy -- education, housing, an automobile, maybe -- but a bedroom set that'll be landfill fodder within a decade or so? Or a couch that'll be put on the curb with a "free" sign taped to it after a few years of living with kids and pets? Maybe it will actually be paid for by then. And maybe it won't.

If it were a friend of mine considering that sort of furniture (junk) on those kinds of terms, I'd be tempted to suggest against it.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I’d really dig having a quality replica made to order, but I’m not the sort to drop some four-figure sum on a leather jacket. I am now at a point, for the first time in my life, where I could actually afford such an extravagance, but I got to this point by NOT doing such extravagant things.

About ten years ago I picked up a leather jacket at the thrift store by my house for ten dollars -- this was before they jacked up the prices. The jacket was probably $200 new.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I learned this at a very early age because the water heater in our house was in a cabinet in the kitchen. Yep, just to the left of the oven. Either water heaters were more indestructible when the house was built in 1951, or the people who wrote the building codes weren't so concerned with safety.

My grandparents' house, built in 1920, had an enormous copper tank in the bathroom for the hot water. A pipe ran thru the wall and across the ceiling to the kerosene stove in the kitchen, where the water was heated by the flame and then ran back into the tank thru another pipe. The excess heat radiating from the tank was the sole source of heat in the bathroom, and you didn't want to bump into that tank on your way in or out.

 

[BobHufford]

My grandparents' house, built in 1920, had an enormous copper tank in the bathroom for the hot water.

"Hot Water" ... sure.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That was my grandfather's brother who did that stuff.

 

[GHT]

I can see financing things a person pretty much has to have to participate in this economy -- education, housing, an automobile, maybe -- but a bedroom set that'll be landfill fodder within a decade or so? Or a couch that'll be put on the curb with a "free" sign taped to it after a few years of living with kids and pets? Maybe it will actually be paid for by then. And maybe it won't.

As a penniless newly married, I could have easily fallen into that trap. Live now, pay later. The apartment that we rented had a lot of junk to be disposed of. One of the items was an extra long sofa, it was a cloth covered kind of settee. My father-in-law, a cabinet maker by trade, suggested that we didn't throw it out. He got a knife and cut back the fabric, showing us the exposed wood. He explained that at some time this sofa had cost a lot of money, he knew that because the frame was made of hard wood. Dad stripped the fabric, cleaned the interior support fabric and springs, recovered the settee in a leatherette fabric and fastened it to the frame with domed head copper tacks. When he had finished, it looked just like a Chesterfield sofa. I was impressed.

Dad's talent of recycling gave us the inspiration to do likewise, we filled our home with old chattels, still in perfect working order, most of which is still giving good service today.

 

[Zombie_61]

"Hot Water" ... sure.

That was my grandfather's brother who did that stuff.

That was my father-in-law when they lived in the Chicago area. My brothers-in-law were not pleased when he dismantled it just before they moved to California and spent the better part of an afternoon driving around disposing of the bits and pieces, but they understood he did not want to risk them getting caught. They claimed they each wanted to keep just one small piece as a "memento", but father-in-law knew better.

 

[tonyb]

As a penniless newly married, I could have easily fallen into that trap. Live now, pay later. The apartment that we rented had a lot of junk to be disposed of. One of the items was an extra long sofa, it was a cloth covered kind of settee. My father-in-law, a cabinet maker by trade, suggested that we didn't throw it out. He got a knife and cut back the fabric, showing us the exposed wood. He explained that at some time this sofa had cost a lot of money, he knew that because the frame was made of hard wood. Dad stripped the fabric, cleaned the interior support fabric and springs, recovered the settee in a leatherette fabric and fastened it to the frame with domed head copper tacks. When he had finished, it looked just like a Chesterfield sofa. I was impressed.

Dad's talent of recycling gave us the inspiration to do likewise, we filled our home with old chattels, still in perfect working order, most of which is still giving good service today.

I’m almost embarrassed to tell how long I carried consumer debt. I’m confident that if I were to calculate how much interest I paid over the years I would just look in the garage to where a late-model Ferrari isn’t and just bawl.

But I never financed furniture. I’ve borrowed to buy a car or two, but I paid off those loans in months, not years. I recall getting a Sears credit card with which I bought a stereo system when I was 19 or so. That put me on the wrong path. I was something of a profligate youth in my way. I smoked then, too. Heavily. I paid dearly for that in the long run, too.

 

[tonyb]

"Hot Water" ... sure.

In this state, it’s legal to grow your own pot, and to make your own beer and wine. (Federal law prohibits that first item, but the Feds have so far had the good sense to leave things be.) But it’s still darn-nigh impossible to distill your own spirits without risking serious legal consequences. And that’s just silly, in my book.

Home distillers would be much like home beer brewers and pot growers — hobbyists, very few of whom would ever attempt to profit from the activity. With legal whiskey being readily available and relatively cheap already, I can’t see an illicit market ever gaining a foothold.

FWIW, legal pot here in Colorado retails for a third to a quarter as much as it cost on the illicit market a decade or so ago, and that’s in dollars unadjusted for inflation. It’s a better product for a whole lot less money. The illicit growers and traffickers either went straight or got out of the biz. The vast majority did the latter, I’m sure.

 

[ChrisB]

There are some real hazards in distillation that you don’t have in beer or wine making: flammable liquids & vapors, possibility of explosion, and methanol poisoning if done incorrectly.
.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^
It does nothing to diminish the potential hazards of home distilleries to note that at this very moment tens of millions of automobiles are on the public thoroughfares of this fair land, each of them carrying, on average, several gallons of a highly flammable liquid. Nor does it discount those hazards to mention that in millions of home medicine cabinets are truly lethal dosages of acetaminophen, where any person who can reach that high can get their hands on them.

I suspect that if hobby distilling ever caught on in a big way, there would be fatalities associated with it. I have little doubt that lazy and/or impatient distillers would be ingesting poison of their own making. And an explosion or several are bound to happen.

A couple-three weeks ago, about half a mile from where I reside, an elderly woman died as a result of a natural gas explosion. I, and several of the neighbors, smelled the gas in the minutes preceding the explosion. It appears that a subcontractor of the contractor working with a cable provider dug where s/he shouldn’t have. (Over-reliance on subcontractors played its part in this tragedy, for sure. The cable company will attempt to wash its hands of this, no doubt.)

Dangerous? Uh, yeah. But good for all of us that mitigating measures can be taken, and almost always are. But, not quite always.

 

[Harp]

Not since Miggie Montero's clubhouse squawk over Jake Arrieta bad pitching has another rebuke made such
a news splash as Judge E. Sullivan's broadside against Lt Gen Flynn at sentencing the other day.
The judge tripped over the facts a bit, Flynn's mendacity-or supposed-notwithstanding, Sullivan erred
the pompous jurist. A lousy FBI apprise and scattered buckshot 302s; and the possibility of special counsel
coercion missed by the media entirely.

 

[swanson_eyes]

On hot water: why don't more houses in the U.S. have hot water on demand? I hear it's common in Germany and maybe other countries in Europe. Sure, houses have been built with heaters and I'm sure the owners want to use those until they die, but at the heater's demise why doesn't anyone suggest switching to on demand system? Is it hard to install if it wasn't there originally?