Submitted 2 months ago by Blaze@piefed.social to [deleted]
I don’t have a house. Wife and I lived in a car for almost 4 months, now we have an RV.
Currently sorting rocks by size to make gravel for foundations. Need to setup some foundation blocks for shipping containers, foundation for a huge water tank, then the foundation for our house will be gravel in large sandbags (Hyperadobe) and hopefully we can make enough gravel for the driveway too.
I’m still stuck on the first step. Acquire a home
Not a home improvement per se this week. Last week had to reso front walkway. Yesterday Inhad to get on roof to seal some metal screws to stop two leaks. Crazy wind worked them loose. Will do a permanent fix later.
I’ve finished renovating the inside of my two built in cupboards from 1909. Plastered the wall, put it nice wallpaper, cut to measure and replaced the shelves and hardware. Took me like three years to find the time but I’m there.
Too lazy to turn on my irrigation system. I drained it 2 weeks ago in preparation for the deep freeze last week. Homes in my state aren’t built for freezing weather so we have to drain our irrigation lines and drip faucets anytime it gets below freezing.
notnotmike@programming.dev 2 months ago
I’m leaning the science behind home electricity. I want to install an outlet in my bathroom for a bidet but I realized I didn’t understand when and where I needed a GFI outlet. So I’m learning via a handful of books
Similarly, I want to add another outlet in the basement for my cats’ automatic litter box.
I also just replaced my Nest doorbell with a “dumb” doorbell but the chime won’t work. So I need to do some research on how the chimes work…
b34k@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The bidet outlet just needs to be on the load side of the GFI.
notnotmike@programming.dev 2 months ago
That statement presumes knowledge of GFI that I did not have - load side means nothing to a layperson
popsyking@feddit.nl 2 months ago
Which books do you use? I’ve been wanting to get better at understanding home electricity but I’ll admit electricity scares me a bit
notnotmike@programming.dev 2 months ago
Black and Decker makes a series of books that are pretty good, I’ve been enjoying them so far. Black & Decker The Complete Guide to Wiring
I’ve also found various books from thrift shops to supplement as well as various resources from the internet
BarbecueCowboy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
Turn off the breaker before you work on anything, if you aren’t 100% positive that you’ve got the right breaker, turn off the main breaker, if you still aren’t sure, just stop. Always do a pull test after joining two wires and apply electrical tape liberally. Be wary of aluminum wiring and even more so for knob and tube if you ever see it. You’ll eventually hit a point where you realize you can get creative with the materials you use and the way you do things, don’t do that. This is also about the time you’ll start to feel confident in your skills as an electrician, this is when you’re going to skip something basic and electrocute yourself, it will probably be minor and you’ll be sore for a week and feel 10 years older. Sometimes though it’s not minor, it’s an electrician meme, but we all have the “Remember kids, Electricity will kill you” sticker.
If you remember all that, you’re probably good to install the basement outlet, you’ll probably have local building codes to adhere to, but they’re usually not a major burden to comply with. For your chime, do you know if you have a doorbell transformer at all (and are you sure it’s getting power if so) or where the wires on your doorbell go to?