Jim Katen

I suspect a cheap element. It's just a coil of wire that gets hot when a 240-volt current passes through it. There's not much the oven can do to make it fail. Try an OEM one next time.

Why do you put pneumatic tires on these things? The one that I had was constantly getting flat tires. No matter how often I patched the tubes, they kept leaking. My partner made one with rigid wheels - they never went flat.

I used the metal versions 40+ years ago. In the early 2000s, I placed a garage slab at my own house and found that they had been changed to plastic somewhere along the way. The metal ones pretty much stayed put as the concrete was placed, but the plastic ones tended to bow outward when concrete was placed on one side, causing the finished joint to have a slight curve. Frankly, I'm amazed that these aren't used everywhere. I rarely see a concrete slab without control joints around here.

In the old days, I'd suggest Graingers. Nowadays, you can find pretty much anything you need on "the internet."

Whatever you do, don't remove it or the seller will accuse you of . . .

You're not supposed to rely on the yoke for grounding unless it's a self-grounding-type receptacle. The portion of the yolk in your picture doesn't show the self-grounding feature, but it might be present at the other end. Do you have a picture of the whole receptacle? Also, as John pointed out, the entire purpose of the mud ring is to bring the enclosure out flush with the surface of the drywall - or at least not more than 1/4" behind it.

Hi Mike, It's not unusual to bring power into a panel through a backfed breaker like the one in your first two pictures. In that case, the breaker handle becomes your main disconnect and it should be so labeled. In the US, that breaker would require either a bolt or a clip (depending on the manufacturer) to hold it in place. Otherwise, if it comes loose from the panel you've got a "tiger by the tail" flopping around. The single biggest problem that I see in the panel in the first two pictures is the very small wires that feed the panel. That backfed main breaker will allow 60 amps of current to pass before tripping and those wires look like#14 or #12 (maybe #10?) which are far too small to safely carry 60 amps. (I doubt that it's #16) Next time you go down there, replace the main breaker with a 15-amp breaker (if the wires are #14), a 20-amp breaker (if the wires are #12), or a 30-amp breaker (if the wires are #10). Even if you can extend the #8 wires into the panel, I'd replace it with a 40-amp breaker - no more. Is this the only electrical panel serving the house, or is there another panel (or even just a disconnect) upstream of it? If this is the only disconnect for the building, then the grounding wires should be connected to the neutral wires. Without that connection, the grounding wires won't do squat. It would be nice if the grounding wires were connected to the earth at some point, but the critical thing is that they are connected to the neutral at the first disconnect. Next time you go down there, bring a clamp-on ammeter/multimeter, wire strippers/cutters, a selection of Eaton CH breakers, a bunch of wire in various sizes, wire nuts, screwdrivers, and lots of electrician's tape. With that, you can do almost anything. CATSA will love you.

Apparently not rated to hold the weight of a 100-amp meter base.

Looks like Z-Brick.

Thanks for the update. That makes sense. Some older GFCI receptacles would go faulty and produce a hot-ground-reverse reading in downstream receptacles. As I recall, it happens when you don't push the reset button all the way in and you can "fix" it by tripping the GFCI and fully pressing the reset button again.

Sorry to hear that, Mike. It sucks when the machine starts to break down. Maybe it's time to start thinking about your 3rd career - have you considered an OnlyFans page?

I suspect that the old receptacle was not "grounded" to the box. The new receptacle is - but only when you tighten the screws. You're probably on the right track looking for a fault to the cable jacket. Let us know what the electrician comes up with.

I'm gonna disagree with my esteemed brethren. Those old Aircos are beasts. Get some new bearings on the blower and use your money for other things. About the only thing that can't be replaced on these furnaces is the heat exchanger and, as you say, they're likely to last a very, very long time if you keep the damn filters clean. If your technician doesn't know how to find a bearing at Graingers and if he doesn't know how to get one on and off a shaft, you need another technician. It's not rocket science.

That's beautiful. I aspire to be Chad.

Funny and true. New Yorkers really are a different breed.

Changing from an oil-fired water heater to a heat-pump water heater might be an upgrade in terms of energy efficiency, but it'll be a downgrade in performance. It will also function as an air conditioner in the surrounding room - great if you're located in the south but not so much in the north. If you're looking for the "correct size," do what Bill said. If you're just looking to match the performance of the existing water heater, look for a new one that has the same recovery rate as this one, which has an absurd 86 to 100 gallons per hour. I doubt that any heat pump water heater out there will match it. Is this water heater just providing potable hot water or is it being used for space heating as well?

That's the gist of it but with one exception. Aluminum is *more* malleable than copper, so it deforms more readily under pressure from a lug. (Which is why you shouldn't "re-torque" aluminum connections.) The old, 1960s aluminum alloy also suffered from "creep" or "cold flow," a property related to its malleability. This (along with the crappy old stab-back connections popular at the time) was what resulted in loose connections that caused fires. Connections made with old aluminum alloy and the old receptacle and switch screws would loosen over time as a result of the aluminum creeping under pressure, especially under cycles of pressure resulting from the different coefficients of expansion between the aluminum and the screw connectors. Modern AA-8000 aluminum alloy wiring doesn't creep under pressure anywhere near as much as the old alloy and modern screw connections at the switches and receptacles are far more compatible with aluminum. It's also worth noting that the designation of CU/AL is fine on breakers, but for switches and receptacles you want to see CO/ALR - the revised designation for aluminum-compatible devices. As for Mike's original question, stranded aluminum wire never experienced the same problems because the expansion/contraction cycles and the "creep" phenomenon were distributed over many small strands instead of over one larger one and the overall integrity of the connection didn't suffer as much as a result. And to answer Jim's question, the AA-8000 alloy would work just fine for branch wiring today (you can still buy it in solid #8), but no one makes it in #10 and #12 because it's just a tainted product.

Mistakes happen. I once worked on an apartment building that ended up being built 6" over the boundary of the neighboring property. It was discovered during the ALTA survey at the very end of construction. The original surveyor's E&O insurance paid to buy a 1' strip of land from the neighbor.

Barry's link pretty much sums it up. I'll only point out that these are no longer called "fine print notes," but have been changed to, "informational notes."

I suspect the reason is that bonded sub-panels in the same building are more likely to cause problems with parallel paths. Most buildings - and particularly dwellings - are full of conductive paths. No so much with separate buildings. That might be why the rule morphed from "allowed in separate buildings" to "allowed in separate buildings only when there are no continuous metallic pathways between the two buildings," to "not allowed in separate buildings."

No one here can help you. You need to work this out with the local electrical inspectors who will be inspecting the work. Call the building department and ask them for a meeting to go over your options.

The first panel is Hardie Panel in a stucco design. It's on this page: https://www.jameshardie.com/products/hardiepanel-vertical-siding I can't tell much about the siding in the 2nd picture - it's too far away.

I've never had that experience and I haven't heard about any problems with them. These are relatively cheaply mass produced devices, though. It's inevitable that a few klunkers will make it into people's panels.

I strive as hard as I can to buy stuff locally - from people in my town, the surrounding towns or, if I can't find it there, then from within my state. If I can find a thing that's made in the USA, great, but if not, I'd rather buy foreign-made goods from my neighbors than from some far-flung corporate giant. I don't *not* buy from Amazon, but I avoid it when I can. You certainly have a local furniture store that can sell you a desk. That said, you're out of luck with the printer and shredder - you can buy directly from HP, but you're not going to be able to buy them without enriching some corporate giant. I'm curious about your idea of providing paper reports. Is this something that people actually want?

The splits are damage that the tree suffered while it was still standing - perhaps the result of a severe wind storm. Sap entered the split areas and dried over time. Somehow, this made it past the lumber grader. After all this time, I wouldn't worry about it.