Where'm I gonna live?

[Clodfobble]

I wonder if at this point they're just hoping for a disaster they can file an insurance claim on. Glad you're in a better situation, highway or no.

[Undertoad]

Prop management company claimed they were "winterizing" it... they did drain the outbound water. I think someone just didn't realize which valve was the right one to close. Dummies! I even took a picture of that valve and put it up here a year ago. Along with the pictures of the first drywall fall with the roof leak.

[Katkeeper]

I have a suggestion from many years of traveling and hearing road noises -ear plugs!

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

~ they should give me a medal ~

[lumberjim]

whyIoughta

[Undertoad]

There is absolutely no ground on any outlet in this place, including those outlets that are three-prong.

~ now i'm into first-world problems and that's good ~

[glatt]

I worked on a house like that once for Rebuilding Together. In that instance, the outlet boxes were grounded, but for some reason, they never ran the ground to the actual outlets. I just pigtailed a short wire to the box and used that to ground the outlet. The wiring might also have a metal armor that can be used as ground, but that is a pain in the ass because making good electrical connections to the armor is pretty difficult.

If you are worried about this, and there is no ground present anywhere in the wiring, you can replace the first outlet of each circuit with a GFCI outlet and feed the downstream outlets off that protected outlet. Then the whole circuit will be GFCI protected, which meets code. There are little stickers in the GFCI package that say "no ground - GFCI protected" and you stick those on the outlets down stream so that it's clear there is no ground.

Half the outlets in my house have no ground, and I've replaced most of them with GFCI outlets.

I personally wouldn't worry about it though. Ground is a good idea, but not necessary.

[Undertoad]

Thanks. I think I will do that.

There are a few places where I'm more concerned... one, Turt's huge aquarium, which is heated by two heaters that run line voltage right into an inch above water level. And two, the bass amp is noisy, and that's completely unacceptable.

[glatt]

I don't think a GCFI outlet will help the amp, but maybe you will get lucky and there is ground in the wiring that was never connected to the outlet.

[gvidas]

For the turtle: is the aquarium made of anything but glass? I'm pretty sure the turtle itself will be fine if the water becomes electrified, since there wouldn't be any current flowing anyway; the risk would be if the water had a potential to ground, and you completed the circuit. If this happened, you could preempt the problem by tripping a circuit breaker if, say, the aquarium had a metal enclosure that were grounded. Which is to say, it's probably not a big deal.

For the amp: Get a $3 cheater plug (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheater_plug) and run a wire (basically anything will do, even bare wire, altho you probably want >14 AWG to be arbitrarily kosher in this one narrow aspect) from the ring part to the nearest ground source, such as a copper pipe feeding a sink, etc.

[Undertoad]

It's come to this: I have one carload of stuff left to haul out of the old place, and one trip to get rid of the washer/dryer. There's probably half a dumpster's worth of crap I'm leaving behind.

The storm last night set down a good 10" of snow, in record low temps. But the warming is now on, and by Saturday we'll begin 6 days of almost entirely above-freezing temps. This was exactly the sort of thing I feared when I was there, and realized that I had to escape, fast.

And so I will make the last two trips out there in the middle of next week, and you know what - I'm secretly hoping that the roof has failed.

Some of the beams have been rotting for about a year. But I don't think it will fall. It has one thing going for it: the house is no longer heated. And that side of the house faces north. That means there probably won't be ice damming, and the melt might drain off to the sides, instead of directly into the house.

If I was still there, I'd be heating it, and the lack of insulation in that room would cause the thaw to happen exactly in the wrong places.

There's no question that, if we had a winter like last winter, it would have completely failed. What a great thread that would have made this! As it is, we can only hope that I've escaped disaster by a hair. That would still make it a good story, if it can't be a great one.

[BigV]

What it is is a great move by you, no pun intended, great story notwithstanding. Good job man, guts plus initiative equals success. I'm happy for you.

[Undertoad]

I just realized that, for the last two weeks, this thread has been a report on the number of carloads I have left. :D

[glatt]

Reminds me of the abandoned building with a hole in its roof right near my office. That hole has been in the roof for years, and I keep expecting to see the whole thing collapse inside its brick outer shell, but it's still standing. I think wood takes a long time to rot to the point of failure under its own weight or the weight of snow. But there's no doubt that water pours inside that building with every rain and snow melt. You wouldn't want to live in there or have your stuff in there.

[Lamplighter]

That looks like a picture billboard, but in reality those balloons are really what is holding that building up.