• EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    Every single house built since 2000 in the US and Canada is some sort of Cryptid created with luxury-looking interiors made of materials that necessitate a ridiculous supply chain dripping with blood and environmental destruction, while simultaneously being constructed in such a manner as to fall over at any random moment. All building codes must be just slightly ignored, and the fit and finish must be just slightly worse than a landlord renoviction special.

    This house brought to you by such classics as:

    "Why is half of the house on one circuit breaker, just the dishwasher on the other, and the rest of the house is unaffected by any of the other 5 breakers that seem to do absolutely nothing?"

    16 gauge wire in the walls

    "Why are my walls bleeding this weird brown goo after 6 months?"

    No GFCIs in any of the bathrooms or the kitchen

    The room that is always at least 5 degrees colder or hotter than every other room, no matter how many fans you use or windows you open

    Now with new hits like:

    Discovering that your "granite" countertops get dents in them if you leave anything on top of them overnight

    "What the fuck is that noise?"

    Popcorn ceilings that very much do not hide the lumps and gaps in the drywalling

    The Mystery Light Switch that somehow makes your wifi slow down but doesn't control any other appliance, light, or outlet

    The guest bathroom toilet that gurgles every night at exactly 3:22 AM and constantly smells like sewer gas, and none of the 7 plumbers you've called can figure out why

      • BeamBrain [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I'm no electrician, what's the problem with 16 gauge wire?

          • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            The house in question has one 10 amp fuse for every outlet in the house, one ten amp fuse for all the lights, and then the oven does not have a breaker of its own, it's just somehow connected into the "entire house" breaker.

              • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]
                ·
                3 years ago

                It's about a 450 sqft house built in the 40s on a lake 2 hours from the nearest place you could call a village or town. There is no way to get internet or a phone signal there, and I'm shocked it even has electricity. It was cool to visit for a few weeks but I would never live there. Insane motherfuckers out there.

                  • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]
                    ·
                    3 years ago

                    They're not, they're in a, and you're going to hate this, breaker box that is outside of the building next to the water hookups and the garden hose spigot. There's a ground level grate next to the house that you pick up to go into a little vertical coffin sized dug out area with the water shut-off for the building and the breaker box is just above that grate at ground level.

                          • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]
                            ·
                            3 years ago

                            I live in the apartment with the mystery light switch that kills WiFi. I've done some home lab radio nerdery with a software defined radio and determined that there is something in the wall about at ceiling level directly above the lightswitch that emits a very strong 2.4 GHz signal. Like, so strong that I should call Industry Canada instead of the landlord.

                            I've been here six months and the walls and ceiling are now bleeding brown ooze.

                            Having said that, all of these places (other than the shack with the sketchy wiring which I was just visiting a family member in), including this apartment which I've dubbed The Radio Zone, have been considered luxury rentals. It's fucked up that like even higher end stuff is like this. There are a handful of buildings in Toronto that I almost refuse to even visit friends at because they have such a sketchy rep, like the ICE Condo building which has false fire alarms going off all the time, and it's become just a hellscape of AirBNB morons.

          • BeamBrain [he/him]
            ·
            edit-2
            3 years ago

            Oh, shit.

            I don't think I've seen any 1500W microwaves, though. All the ones I've bought run at 1100W.

        • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          Higher gauges means thinner wire. Like the mains lines you see on poles are usually 4-6 AWG, 16AWG is like what you'd see in a laptop power chord and 20AWG is like a USB phone charger.

          They use it because copper is expensive

    • MsUltraViolet [she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      That toilet straight up sounds supernaturally cursed. Starting to think greedy contractors make some kinda blood oath with The Ancient Ones to keep costs down when building a house.

      • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        I literally broke the lease after a month with that one and the landlord told me she didn't blame me and even fucking gave me back my deposit and rent. I think she was just happy to have someone call about the Cursed Toilet for her. I bumped into her in a grocery store way the fuck out in Vaughan about 2 years later and she said they never figured it out so she had someone literally just remove the toilet and now that bathroom just doesn't have a toilet.

        Thank you for coming to my ted talk about the worst places I've lived.

          • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            That makes sense. The closest guess anyone had was that there was something to do with vacuum pressure in the sewer lines caused by a clog in the vent pipe by that it also made no sense because it was at the same time each night.