Awesome!

In b4

Was thinking today that nobody's posted in this thread for a while. Then, of course...

Went upstairs intending to read for a few minutes. Hit the ceiling fan's remote's button for the lights, nothing.

Checked the remote had battery power. Looked at the circuit, still on. Checked the switch that I'm pretty sure controls it (since I have a remote, it's never switched)--seems to have power.

Dragged the Gorilla ladder in there, pulled the chains manually, nothing. Not sure what to think--even if the fan motor died, seems like the light fixture should work still.

Of course, my ladder gets my head about to the height of the fan. It's one of those vaulted ceilings, then mounted on a downrod, so probably 12 feet off the floor. Thinking about if I were to try to install a new one. I'd be 6 feet off the ground, with nothing to hold the bulk of it while trying to drop the old one and wire up the new one.

Sounds like it's time for a pro with a pro ladder. Fortunately, we're past fan season here, so I can defer that expense for a little while. I'll just use a lamp in there for now.

Looking on the interwebs, they say average lifetime is 10 years. Found the receipt from the installation, it was 2003, so that's good I guess.

It got cold here for the first time, and wife works from home. Came home and she said "it feels like a cold breeze keeps coming from your kegerator." That seems unlikely to me, but I head over there. Then I open the slat blinds for the window behind it to see if maybe there's a bad seal. You could say so. bottom board of frame and bottom few inches of side boards completely gone to rot. Checked outside and no seal between window and brick facing. God knows how long that's been leaking, but I'm sure not just in the year and a half we've owned the house. Sigh.

Temporary fix with foam, but Imma have to reframe the entire window.

The house we just bought has ceiling fans in every bedroom, but no lights. Drives me crazy. We have lamps plugged in for bedroom lights. Unacceptable. However, my wife likes the existing fans so we're stuck with it. I've tried to find add on light attachments to the fans but they don't even make the fans anymore.

just find replacement fans that look the same? of all the jobs replacing a fan is pretty easy. we have no bedroom light and i don't mind at all


we probably have the outside pipe leaking but holding out hope it's a faulty meter. no obvious water pooling

Garick, good luck with that. Sounds like a big job to me.

pwnsall, don't wait too long. Neighbors had a broken pipe coming into the house. Expensive repair plus a big water bill.

My house was built in the 60s so no bedroom overhead lights at all, the switches by the doors controlled just the top receptacle of 1 outlet for a lamp.

Ran new dedicated dual 15a line from panel up a couple floors. Luckily the attic insulation had all settled so had full access from above to add four 'retro brace' electrical boxes (set location from below so you can center in the room and drill up to find your spot from attic) and was able to fish the line down to existing switches and converted them to double switch.

Not a hard job but it took some time.


Replacing ceiling fan on 8' downrod? No thanks. Did that last summer at in-laws beach house and it was an adventure I would not want to repeat. Fan quit after a lightening strike AND it was over 10 years old so went to Lowe's and got a new one, borrowed a painter friends 10ft A-frame and had to be on the last step from the top and have somebody brace it while I had a 3rd person hand me the fan so I could monkey with the wiring. If you attempt this definitely have two helpers just to steady the ladder and a 3rd to pass you tools and take 2x as many wire nuts up the ladder as you think you need. Most fans come with a small S hook to temp hang the weight on the downrod - make sure you dig it out from the box before you start.

yeah i got an estimate already but they didn't physically check for a leak just turned off main water and saw gauge still running. water company will reimburse half of increased bill if you get leak fixed so that's nice.

i have a couple other consideration as well

yeah didn't consider ceiling height for fan replacement, mine are pretty low

Thanks for the hint on the S hook, bosco. Pretty sure I'll have a pro do it, when the time comes.

One of the few things I dislike about this house. Vaulted ceilings have always seemed like a waste of space to me.

I really never thought much about vaulted ceilings until i moved into my current house. First one I've ever owned with vaulted ceilings. I have to say it really changes the "feel " of the house. Seems much bigger than it us.

That being said, there are certainly minuses, like dealing with ceiling fans. And, no attic.

We don't have vaulted ceilings in this house, but all the ceilings are 10'. Going into a house with "standard" 8' ceilings feels so cramped now.

Did my first recon up to HD to see what they had. Nothing jumped out at me, but it looks like decent fans are in the $100-200 range, so not too bad. I bet installation will be more than half the price.

HD guy says most of the non-bottom-end fans anymore have remotes, so that's not such a worry. Just have to find something I like which allows downrod mounting, then call the neighborhood handyman to see if he will throw it up there. No hurry though.

I had a ceiling fan light go out due to a power surge. Turned out it was the remote receiver that needed to be replaced. Albeit, if the fan was from 2003, I'd have just replaced it.

Unless physically not capable of doing so, I'd just install it myself (provided the ceiling is 10ft or less). Ceiling fan installations tend to be easy as long as you carefully follow the instructions (if you forget something you may have to backtrack and undo much of your work).

There's nothing wrong with having a low ceiling but I agree once you move into a place with higher ceilings you won't like being in a place with lower ceilings. Practically all new homes have 10ft ceilings, which was not the case 20 years ago. The living areas in my house are 20ft, which is nice but does make changing out some of the lights daunting/expensive.

Or, I could take the batteries out of the remote for a minute, letting it reset. Glad I finally found the post which mentioned that.

What a dumbass.

My brother has the high ceilings like DC mentioned. Uses the long fiberglass tool to switch the can lights. I don't think I'd be coordinated enough to get them properly aligned.

The no attic part really sucks at least for me in a cold, wetter environment. Roof leaks are hard to find, our insulation is awful so we get ice dams and icicles but the only way to get new insulation in there is tear off the roof decking I guess. Maybe it could be done from the inside but that sounds like a disaster.

Vaulted ceilings are nice aesthetically but I don't enjoy having them from a maintenance perspective.

Check,

For the ice dams, you can get a wire to plug into an outlet. Not sure what they're called, but they look like an extension cord, only without an outlet on the other end.

I've got a spot that gets almost no sun during the winter (fortunately directly above the front sidewalk. Sigh.) Attached the wire in kind of a sine wave pattern to the shingles up there, and ran the end into the gutter. It doesn't keep the snow and ice completely clear, but melts it enough to keep it from piling up and causing ice dams.

Kinda strange. Running leaf blower, went to move cord from one outlet to another. When plugging in to new outlet, noticed the cord no longer had a ground prong. (Not sure if that's the right name, the thicker one on the bottom.)

Just a hole in the plastic plug where it would normally be. Wasn't stuck in the old outlet, not sure what happened. Didn't seem safe, off to HD to get a new one.

In semi-related news, a different, outdoor, GFCI outlet seems screwed up--a plug no longer goes in, the white plastic part in the middle is cracked. Started raining, so I didn't get a good chance to examine it. It's mounted in a gray box with a plastic, flip-up cover.

Assuming I find that an swap is necessary, is there anything special to know about changing GFCIs? Or, just like an inside outlet--make sure circuit is off, unscrew, wires off old in same spot as new, screw back into box?

The wires may or may not go back in "the same spot", but each plug will have an In/Line and Out/Load set of screws. Just make sure that stays the same. Black wire on gold screw, white wire on silver screw.

OK, thanks Mark. Looked in more detail after the shower yesterday, seemed more complicated than an inside socket. Later, looked at homedepot.com for prices, and saw what you said--different manufacturers looked different. Of course, forgot to note the mfr when I had it apart.

In this particular instance, there's the box with the GFCI, then above (later in circuit), another box with a half-outlet/half switch, then a light above that (hence the switch). I can use that outlet for leaf blower for now, and address this at some future point.

Or not. Never have more than one thing plugged in. Maybe whoever buys my house after I die will fix it.

I suspect one day I'll get the combination of motivation and good weather, and turn a one-hour job into an all-day project. Sigh.

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In other news, the connectors between the main part of my leaf blower/vacuum and the vac tube broke over the winter. Needless to say, my attempts at repair were a disaster. Toro's website said "see your local dealer" for this specific part (Ofc, everything else was available online).

Went down to Arvada over the winter, naturally the local dealer doesn't carry that part. Rats.

Over the summer, saw an older model on sale at the local Habitat for Humanity store (it's kinda like a Goodwill but mostly has house-related stuff and tools. A good spot for that kinda stuff if you don't mind used).

Ofc, the parts weren't compatible, but I can use old tool for vacuuming and new for blowing. $20 beats ~$80 to buy a whole new one.

Old quit working this morning. Sigh. Well, I got most of a season out of it.

On the plus side, while finishing up, raking leaves into bags, a young man comes jogging into the cul-de-sac, says hi. Sounds, but doesn't look, too familiar.

Turns out it was the ex-neighbor kid. Now a senior in high school. On the cross country team, was out for a run in his off hour and went through the old neighborhood. Nice to see him again and hear that the family's doing well. had a nice chat for 10-15 minutes. They only moved out 3 summers ago, but he'd changed enough that it took a few minutes to recognize him.

Also checked torodealers.com, the part is now available online. Hopefully in 3-5 business days I'll have a complete working blower/vac again.

Also did my good deed for the week blowing/raking the front yard of a couple who's out of town. Market's up, nice and sunny here. A pretty good day overall so far.

Found my first and only? Fake ground a few weeks ago when trying to install the heated bidet in the bathroom. I just put a gfci on and a sticker that says not ground and going to run with that.

I just found a prong in one of my outlets. I've never seen that before Maybe it's yours?

Heh. Mail it to me!

Actually, found mine in the front outlet (the last section I do each time) yesterday.

Almost ready to go out and perform today's version. Sigh. Getting tired of this. At least it's pretty nice out.

speed-read the last three dozen posts and my quick advice:
when it comes to water problems, never wait
the high lights are sexy, but the low lights are convenient
i'm not a fan either way
stay grounded everyone