FBXL Social

Drippy McDripperson is no mo

I can only imagine how miserable modern life must be for people with no ability to repair things.

I guess those people are just renters.

@eriner that green color always makes me ponder chemistry

@eriner they would have bought a new water heater and paid a plumber to install it. I am always shocked how much they pay for the whole job.

I genuinely wonder what percentage of heads-of-household can diagnose and perform this kind of trivial repair?

I think this is a good test-case because it's a $20 fix, requires zero specialized tools, zero specialized knowledge, and can be done start to finish in ~3m.

I'd bet optimistically that only half of HoH's can fix this. A combination of low IQ, apathy, "I can just call the plumber", and general lack of self-reliance explain it, but it still makes me sad.

@weeniewawa I swapped the elements on both of my water heaters some time last year, and I guarantee that most people are not capable of doing that job despite it being comparably trivial.

@eriner these are one shot deals the seats always get cruddy and never reseat. I guess it depends on your water.

@eriner They would be asking "what is a sacrificial anode" The same people are proud of just calling someone to take care of that, saying "I got no time to do that" while sitting on the couch.

@eriner well, I have to shut the water off at the street but okay

@phifer lolwut

@weeniewawa to be fair, replacing the anode is a HUGE bitch and I don't fault anyone who says "fuck that shit"

@eriner really only if you wait too long. smart people, not including me, would put anti seize on it when it is first installed so years later they would have a fighting chance at getting it out.

@eriner I don't have a basement or accessible crawlspace. To do dumb leaky fixes I have to shut the water off at the street.

@phifer wait, you don't have a ball valve inside the building envelope so that you don't have to do that? Wild.

@sj_zero @eriner would that work with any water types? Would harder water act differently?

@weeniewawa yeah, these units are a more than a decade old and I'm certain the anode was never replaced (had insulation foam over the bolt/screw). I tried unseating it with a 18" wrench and a 5' breaker bar to no avail, so I said F that, it'll rust and bottom out when it does, nothing I can do about it. I'm surprised the liner hasn't given out yet tbh

@eriner When we bought our place the plumbing had problems. Entire sections of the plumbing were mismatched pipes held together with caulk, epoxy, and duct tape.

I did break down and call a plumber to cut everything and build it the right way so that in the future things can be fixed for $5 and a trip to the hardware store.

@eriner I'd guess the number that meet the criteria under the age of 40 is <20%.

...and drops precipitously every 5 year interval down.

@eriner my old tank water heater was already 20 years old when i bought this house and I didn't dare attempt it either. I used it for another 13 years or so and it was in my laundry room with no drain so I replaced it with a tankless which I moved to the outside so no more chance of coming home to a flooded house. The tank one never did leak and worked perfectly and is still sitting out back. I just figured it was better to change it before I had problems.

@istvan I don't eschew calling a plumber in every instance, there are some cases that warrant the expertise and expense.

I meet Matt’s minimum standard for redeemable human beings.

IQ:
https://noauthority.social/@c00p/114054313981637589

Home repair:
https://noauthority.social/@c00p/114014894938035170

@eriner

I was talking to someone today, and we were both mentioning seeing the remains of car fires on the side of the road fairly regularly, compared to any other time in our lives.

I postulated that most people under 30 have no idea what what a radiator is, where it is, how it works or what goes in it.

aka, they just run their car until it explodes. Because they only know about fueling it.

@eriner yeah, my house was built in 1930 and has had no less than 4 additions...it's the street lol

@phifer @eriner itust not be to hard to shut off at street, or you'd have just put in a shut off in the house.

I live in an old house to. The struggle is real. 😂

@CattleBaron @phifer @eriner Yep. My house was built in 1921 and didn't have an internal shut-off valve when I purchased it. It most certainly does now.

@weeniewawa @eriner
I've always wondered why sacrificial anodes even exist, since almost nobody is even aware of them, let alone actually bother to change them before it's too late.

Seems like the sacrificial anode would be first on the list of things to eliminate from the production line in order to optimize and en-cheap-ify.

@CattleBaron @eriner
Here's the whole story: about 3-4 winters ago I dripped my cold water lines but not my hot...the hot froze and burst. So now my plumbing is exposed and routed in the house, because my crawlspace is not one (it got filled with concrete some 30 years ago). So I technically *do* have a shutoff at the water heater for everything that is hooked up, but I have no idea what's between the water heater and the curb at this point. Old House Shit.

I may not have changed my sacrificial anode, but one of the first things I did in this house was to replace the shitty shut off valve with a good ball valve. Because it SUCKS when the shut off valve isn't working. And the one at the street can be so old that it's pretty much stuck and useless.

Recently I went on a campaign to replace all the shitty shut off values for my sinks and toilets with good ball valves as well.

@phifer @CattleBaron @eriner @GettingCooked

but that's a really easy job, so I don't get much homeowner extra credit for that...

@phifer @CattleBaron @eriner @GettingCooked

@Nimbius666 @eriner @weeniewawa
Thank you, I had no idea such a thing existed.

@eriner being a renter sucks for many reasons of which not being able to take the risk of fixing some things by myself is one.

Usually I try anyway, if the downside seems affordable.

@Richard @eriner
Cars are also not immune from the creep of enshitification. They are too complex to be easily user serviceable, and the average user doesn't have the needed mechanical knowledge to attempt to understand.

@eriner partially why so many are correct when they say "I'll never be able to afford to own a home".

90% attitude, 10% failure of education by parents.

@eriner It has a metallic form of STD. #feelthehurt