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
16 gauge wire in the walls
:agony-shivering: :agony-acid: :agony-immense: :agony-consuming:
It will absolutely catch fire if you run a standard load (120V at 15A) through it. 14 gauge is the standard for in-wall wiring, 12 gauge for 20A circuits.
The full (incidental, not continuous) load you can push through a 15A circuit is around 1800W (this is your standard hair dryer) but that’s unsafe for continuous operation on 14 gauge. 1500W is the highest continuous draw you can safely put on 14 gauge (microwaves, space heaters, many appliances).
Not only will 16 gauge wiring in your walls catch fire, but your circuit breaker will be unable to do anything about it because the load never exceeded the circuit breaker’s capacity.
This is also why most of our extension cords are extremely dangerous, they’re usually 16 gauge and don’t have fuses that will blow if their current rating is exceeded, they’ll happily heat right up and burn your house down.
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.
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.
the fuses are actually fine safety-wise, just horribly impractical compared to actually running 14 gauge wire and 15A outlets. gonna blow a fuse any time you put more than 1200W on a single circuit (trivially easy, but at least the house won’t burn down). I guess this might be less of a problem if it’s a cabin-tier residence that doesn’t rely on electricity for cooking, heating, or AC
Are the fuses located in the outlets themselves? I have been doing this stuff for a long time and I’ve never seen those in the US
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.
Gotta say I’m glad you’re not there anymore. Hopefully wherever you are now is less of a nightmare than any of these places.
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.
Oh, shit.
I don't think I've seen any 1500W microwaves, though. All the ones I've bought run at 1100W.
They were more common in the 90’s. As a kid we always had gigantic second-hand microwaves with insane wattage ratings and adjusting the instructions for microwaved food was a fun game of chance.
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
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.
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.
I have a guess about the cursed toilet, it’s probably a neighbor’s pump running, either improperly installed or malfunctioning, backing air up through the pipes. Removing the cursed toilet took out the shortest path for the air to escape, so it either stayed where it was supposed to go or escaped elsewhere. Might have transferred the curse to another nearby toilet.
I think the possibility of transferring the curse to another toilet is fucking hilarious.
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.
If I learned anything from the WTYP on Groverhaus it's that is was actually pretty solid in the end, just really ugly and with a few baffling decisions.
Well There's Your Problem Bonus Content Feed (Bootleg): https://ankino.xyz/wtyp/wtyp.xml
$10 this is is Texas from the guys accent. There are 0 building regulations here.
I once visited a friend in Texas who lived in a subdivision where the power went out nearly every day at some point during the middle of the day, like 350 or so days per year. Like 1 PM, bam, power goes out and flickers on a couple of times over a 20 minute period before it's back. And everyone I spoke with thought it was an entirely normal thing that they just plan their life around and simply have everything they own aside from lights and 240v major appliances either on a UPS or power strip, even things like their toaster. Nobody bothers resetting the clock on the oven or microwave or anything because it's just gonna get messed up again tomorrow.
Bruh this is like the one thing Americans pride themselves on not having to deal with
And this is considered a pretty high end community. The average house price is around 375k, and surrounding areas outside of the gated community are like 110k or so.
My parents live in a house they honestly hate because it has so much yard work, but they chose it because it was built by an architect for himself. In Texas, that’s basically the only way to guarantee that corners weren’t cut. Across the highway there are new cookie cutter developments in corn fields that are 1/3 the price but are going to fall apart in 10 years. We often think about getting stuck holding the bag when the bubble pops, but what about when the house literally falls apart?
Leave Texas Challenge (impossible for Texans for some reason)
Why is it that even after they spend like 20 minutes ranting about how Texas is the worst state, whenever you suggest that any Texan perhaps leave Texas for another state, they look at you like you just ate seven babies in two seconds?
Man my parents moved TO Texas. Went there for college and never left. They’re liberals though so at least they’re not chuds
Fucking insane. It's a black hole for people. Once you enter you cannot leave except at gunpoint.
Is Texas REALLY that bad? I'm from California and am frequently told I do not know how great America is because "I'm from the worst state in the union which taxed itself into irrelevance"
I'm Canadian. Of the handful states I've been to, I think California and Colorado are the most tolerable ones I've been to, and the worst ones I've been to are Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas.
I mean, yeah, it is an absolute hell of a thing, that's true. I just think it's funny that when someone has a conversation with you that ends in them saying "There is absolutely nothing here for me and I want to go postal rather than continuing on like this" and the concept of moving is still off the table. I have never seen any group of people from anywhere more resistant to the concept of moving, even in the face of their own impending death than Texans.
How dare you suggest they simply give up Tacos and Whataburger?
I had a cousin that left Texas for Seattle.
As much as he loved it, he kinda needed to head back because houses there are quite pricey. As much as it pains me to say something positive about liberals, it's hilarious how stuck-up fash are when liberals are probably better capitalists than they are. California's major problem is that it is TOO desirable, and everyone wants to live there. So, in a way "Not Texas" is a huge selling point, regardless of what Twitter or iFunny tries to tell you.
Across the highway there are new cookie cutter developments in corn fields that are 1/3 the price but are going to fall apart in 10 years
Sardine packed cookie cutter homes in corn/sorghum fields with a brand new Super Target within a 15 mins drive is just the Texas way now
Every developer wants to make yet another bedroom community for Austin/Plano/etc.
:agony-consuming: Not even a third of a million dollars can afford you decent housing in this country I am done :amerikkka:
Not anymore we don’t lol. The blackouts are now happening in my area about half a dozen times per year
Wow really? The last we had blackouts was the February storm, but nothing since then.
Yeah what the heck it's going on, this hasn't been my experience ever.
In Texas they have the freedom to get their power from private power plants that sell their energy to the grid in an unregulated market.
I saw something on how crypto mining companies would get money for not running their rigs during peak hours. Not a discount, not a penalty, they'd get paid for not consuming power.
The capitalist imperative of profit maximisation corrodes every human activity. Especially in residential construction this means wages are pressured as low as possible, designs become stagnant and uncreative, the pace of work is sped up so mistakes can't be properly fixed, and materials are preferred to be cheap. It's why tract homes here all have the same shitty look - little side entrance for humans, huge yawning garage door for cars, and a skimpy tree or bush in the lawn if you're lucky.
Basically, the strength and integrity of your local building inspection and permit department is essentially all what's keeping the builders from gluing 4 pieces of cardboard together and calling it habitable.
The housing market is such a scam. No wonder it crashed the economy in 2008 so badly that we never recovered from it.
How is this fucking real? I thought my house was a hoopty but it was built when the USA was at least a functioning country and goddamn what a difference
I lived in a few suburban rental places during college and they were all like this
I just want a patch of dirt with water and power and a fema tent. Fuck houses. :anprim-pat:
Become a god at stealth camping and you'll live freer than any of us.
Simply hunker down, enjoy step two, and run like hell in the morning.
Are there good online resources to learn about stuff like this? Everything about houses is mystery to me
Ig mcmansionhell is pretty entertaining, this old house is a tv show and they upload most of their stuff to youtube, for specifics you can try a trades textbook or just searching online.
mcmansionhell is good but she seems to have moved away from being as informative in favor of being epic constantly
Here's an index of building codes most of them have diagrams and such
Saw a house listed that said you could not inspect it if you wanted to buy. Big :ukkk: flags
Legality is only applicable when enforced. No one going to do shit about it. And some sucker is gullible enough to do it
