ConstructionAg

I'm in Houston and have a 24kw Generac purchased/installed through Generator Supercenter that was installed about 2 years ago. They were offering the 5 year warranty when I purchased and don't recall the maintenance plan being a requirement but did it anyway for like $39/month.

I will say that the warranty is worth it and the longer the better. We recently had the rotor & stator go out, which reading through our 5 year warranty, are the only parts that are actually covered for the full 5 years. Ours runs the weekly test and has been fine every time it's ran for the 2 years I've had it and the first time we had a small outage, these parts went out after running for a few hours. Then the "derecho" came through Houston in May and it wasn't fixed yet so needless to say, I was disappointed in not having it for the first, real prolonged outage I wanted/needed it for. Luckily, we got it fixed in time for Hurricane Beryl last week.

All of this say I'm 50/50 on the maintenance plan. On the positive side, you don't have to worry about the preventative maintenance if all things stay normal/no power outages. However, when there is an extended outage, you simply cannot get a hold of the company because they are so inundated with calls, etc. You basically need to check oils levels daily and replace oil every 100-200 hours of continuous use, which we certainly hit during Beryl. You need to make sure you can change the oil filter and oil yourself during times of extended use because they simply won't be able to respond to you due to the volume of calls. Most are in the business to sell and install generators. They simply keep the maintenance side to keep them in business during slow installation periods but don't have near the crews available to service all of their customers in a large outage (nor do I expect them to).

If you're not handy in those type of situations, I would recommend a local electrician/mechanic that you can depend on and that feels decent enough about servicing a generator or just a good neighbor who is handy but have spare oil, oil filters, spark plugs and air filters purchased and on-hand for events like this.

Garbage disposal went out. Replaced it with a new one. Didn't do dishes for a couple of days due eating out and also replacing piping with PEX in same general time frame. Starting doing dishes and dish washer would not drain water after completing a cycle. Fiddled with it a couple of days. Finally went to buy a new dish washer, connected it, same problem with not draining. Realized i forgot to remove the plug on the garbage disposal when connecting the dish washer drain line.

Many more to list but as they say, they are life lessons you won't forget. :dope:

They have 3-way dimmers that you can dim from both switch locations. I have them installed in my house.

Home Depot

I just got through doing a PEX (Uponor/expansion) re-pipe of my entire house, well...almost done, to replace the old galvanized steel pipe. There were times through the process where I was turning the main water supply on and off again since I kind of replaced it in phases to keep running water most of the time. In doing this, our kitchen sink, which had decent pressure before, all the sudden got noticeably worse (still connected at that time to galvanized pipe). Figured it would get better in a few weeks once I had replaced the pipe to PEX to the sink. But it did not. Even when connected to PEX. I cleaned all the screens and there was noticeable rust in them but it did not improve the pressure.

I ended up disconnecting the flexible supply hoses under the sink (both hot and cold) at the valves and put those ends into a bucket. With the screen and aerator removed, I took my air compressor and shot air at the faucet down into the bucket. Sure enough, chips of rust shot out and pressure was good again.

Background:
I started woodworking about 12 years in a townhouse with no yard and a 2 car garage with one side used a shop and the other for parking, so space was very limited. We have since moved but still have a 2 car garage with 1 side being actively used to park in. Most of my woodworking has been of the built-in/cabinets variety with some more recent projects being construction toys for my boys. I use mostly cabinet/stain grade plywood and dimensional hard woods so the need for a planer/jointer for me has never really been there and I still don't own those tools.

Table Saw:
I started with a Dewalt contractor/jobsite saw about 12 years ago and still have it today. It does the job. Part of me wishes I would have splurged on the first table saw purchase but I didn't. I would say my biggest challenge is space, as mentioned so regardless of table saws, I do not have room for infeed/outfeed tables. As someone who rips a lot of full sheets of plywood for cabinets and being a one man show, it is not very easy or safe to do on a table saw. With that said, I bought a Festool track saw several years and while a little slower and expensive (especially with long tracks, parallel guides, etc.) it has solved many of my problems with accurate, repeatable rip cuts done in a safe manner and in a small area. I use my table saw mostly for rabbiting/dadoing.

Routers:
I've also had a Porter Cable router for 12 years and it has been great. It came with a fixed and plunge base and definitely recommend both. I also bought a router table pretty early on but the table remains probably one of the things I use the least. It's been handy a few times but feel it's mostly only beneficial if using a router bit with a guide bearing.

Other:
Compound miter saws are very handy as well and was probably my next big purchase when I started out, after the table saw and router.

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Let me start by telling you what I see. Pulled to the right of the box, I see a black and a white (discolored) 12/2 or 14/2 and pulled to the left of the box, I see a black, a red, and a white 12/3 or 14/3. I do not see a ground/bare copper wire anywhere in the photo.

You need to determine which wire is the line/comes from the source. You could do that by leaving the wires separated, flipping your breaker back on, and using a tester to see which wire is hot.

You either have a 3 way switch setup and the line power is coming from the black on the right side of the box OR the line power is coming from/through the light fixture j-box, black comes down to switch, red goes back up to light fixture and the white is the neutral to carry on the circuit to the white/black pair on the right that probably goes to a receptacle somewhere else.

If I wanted to add a receptacle at this location, I would cut out the metal box and get a 2 gang renovation/old work back box and reconnect the light switch exactly as it was before, run a black wire from the line side of the light switch to the receptacle and twist another white wire to the neutrals in the box and tie it to the receptacle.

That being said, it would concern me that there are no grounds and I would be hesitant to put an ice maker/freezer on that circuit without knowing if your circuit can handle the load on it. Also, I would not demo a light switch just because you do not use it. I do not know what your intentions are for the house in the future but someone might want to turn that light on/off.

Good luck.

I don't know what drove me to finally create an account on TD and actually post something instead of lurk. Oh I remember, it's because I spent a weekend doing exactly what keakar, LSUtigermE, etc said to do with the water jet and PVC pipe.

It does work. I drove a 3/4" PVC pipe under a 9' wide driveway for an electrical raceway for a driveway gate operator. Like others have mentioned, you need to dig a pretty long trench to the depth of the concrete so you are driving the pipe in flat and it does not angle down (I did not and my pipe was about 20" down on the other side).

We also had a lot of pine trees in the vicinity so digging was tough (constantly cutting roots) and I'm sure I was hitting some under the driveway causing the pipe to deflect.

This was not happening by just pushing and forcing the pipe under the driveway either (at least my soil conditions didn't allow for it). I ended up putting a PVC Tee on the end, connected the hose at a 90 degree, and then put a PVC cap on the end so I could drive it with the sledge hammer. (Buy several caps because you will break some).

At the end of the day, it was a total pain but damn it was satisfying once I completed it.

I will attempt to post some pics...forgive me if they don't work. First post and first pics.