The gas company is supposed to come by and paint your meter. My experience is they won't come out unless your meter is leaking and might not even paint it then. So DIY like I did by loosening the rust with steel wool, masking everything with painter's tape and newspaper and then putting a couple coats of Rust-Oleum Winter Gray on! This is also a good color for electric meters and electric supply boxes. #plumbing #electric

After a remodel and adding a new set of drywall, it can be a far reach to screw in an outlet. This extender can take care of those loose connections to the electric box. Click image above for link. Metal switch plate covers can also help. Metal Switch Plate Covers #electric #popular

Just installed a new porch light fixture for my mother-in-law. Found these great light bulbs that have an electric eye. Just keep the light switch on and the bulb turns on at dusk and off at dawn! Click on image for link. So when I was working on this post I found radar bulbs! This one says it can sense movement through walls! I wondered with all the skeletons that turn on automatically for Halloween when more practical applications might arise (with the monsters)! CLICK H

This switch senses humidity and turns on the bathroom fan automatically! Good for basement and top floor bathrooms. If moisture doesn't make it up to the attic it can't do any damage! I especially recommend this attached to a bathroom fan in moist basements. If you don't have a bathroom fan already, or even a bathroom in the basement you can still install a bathroom-type fan. Just read that dehumidifiers can use more than 1000 kwh/year, so over $200 in VA. They just take o

This is extremely bright, can be dropped repeatedly (which I have done!), and can be focused to get just the right exposure when taking pictures, like close up in a basement corner or far away, lets say of a wet eave inside an attic. It's compact enough to fit in a pocket, albeit a big one. This twin pack is an especially good deal including Duracell batteries. Click on image for link. #electric #misc #maintenance

Well, it certainly affects mood (ergo, "mood lighting") and is the point of argument for couples and their progeny. She does not really like any kind of overhead lighting. We have small table lamps under the counter in the kitchen, for example. Therefore if you have recessed lights and no way to dim them you are at their mercy. The color of light is measured in Kelvins, degrees Celsius adjusted to absolute zero, so find bulbs with literally the right warmth for you. I pr

Electric current flows in a circuit from the positive to the negative. It is often portrayed as a flow of electrons but it's more of a sloshing back and forth and a transfer of energy. In electric panels you have hot wires (like the positive pole of a battery) and neutrals which return the flow of energy to its source at the power plant. The neutrals are the white coated wires above. Ground wires (the bare ones) are there to bleed off any excess current on a fixture, swi

Just read in my Black and Decker Advanced Home Wiring that we all are supposed to "exercise" our circuit breakers once a year by flipping them all off and then on again. They recommend doing it at daylight savings time because you have to reset all your clocks then anyhow. I presume this is to make sure they flip and don't get gummed up somehow. In the same category is replacing batteries in your thermostat every year (some have battery icons, some don't) and there are gas

Current code recommends Ground Fault Circuit Interupters, in basements, garages, outside and within 6 feet of water inside. They are easy to update, Beware of the ones with "safety" covers that are "tamper resistant" because these commonly get jammed and may lead to more serious damage to the wiring or encourage alcoholism. This model actually sings when tripped, making it much easier to figure out which other receptacles are connected to it. One of these can be connecte

We all have disposer stories. My mom would fill the sink with vegetable peelings every Thanksgiving and then try to grind them all down at once..."Clogged!" "Sad!" My stupidest disposer moment was when I put a whole two week old pork roast down the drain. Took $40 of drain cleaner and 24 hours to remediate that early morning fiasco. We had a French visitor who was fascinated by the concept of disposers. Really, how hard is it to just throw debris in the trash? Yet this

Ha! That title reminds me of the new grammar I learned while I was a peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines. Interestingly the dialect had an inclusive and exclusive "we". So you could talk to a group of people and make it clear whether everyone was going fishing or only some of we are going fishing. They also had a modifier than could change nouns into verbs. It was mag. The word for thing was "kwan". The word "ba" adds emphasis. So the common phrase "Magkwan ba kwan

Within a month of each other I filled two spas and tested them. But then I drained them and one leaked into the dining room and the other onto the porch! Foreclosure properties present hazards whenever I turn on the water or gas to the house. I position realtors and clients on each level to shout out warnings to me so I can turn off supply valves immediately. Just the other day I had completed several hours of an inspection in a big house when all four upstairs smoke detec

See the circle bottom left? That's the light sensor. Half circles at bottom are LEDs. Just remove old face plate and snap this in for about 25 years of not stubbing your toes or tripping over your dog! The five pack costs $65. $15 for one. Click on image for link. #electric

You need to be able to move in your kitchen! You live in a nice neighborhood. Take a walk and go buy that ice cream! Click on image for link. #remodel #electric

You will enjoy a solution like this even more than we inspectors who have to cut away at paint over your panel to check inside it! Click on image for link to custom wood shutter firm. #electric

If you don't know what these things are click on them and be taken to Home Depot's new aggregation of all things Internet of Things, which is the future. Which, as always, can be scary. Just heard some discussion at the hackers' conference where they were easily able to get passwords for smart locks and take over control of automatic cars. Yeah, but new gadgets can be lots of fun! That's the secret to life, right? Always try to have fun doing something you really care ab

I live down near George Washington's old house. There is a bottle brush cell tower there that doesn't really look like a spruce tree. FYI they have equipped many of the trees on the estate with WiFi. I'm sure The General would approve. He was always into the latest technology, notably composting. Anyhow I don't get many more bars than George would have at my house down the road on what was called then his Muddy Hole Farm. Lost calls, lot's of "WHAT DID YOU SAY?" Gettin

Just inspected a 70 year old basement. Leaky walls, leaky plumbing, dank and dark, a huge neglected space. Any unused space is potentially free real estate. Let there be light! These solar tubes can bring almost any space back to life and therefore pay for themselves rather quickly. Click on image for link. #remodel #electric

I would add good air as an additional essential and provide lots of ventiliation ideas on this site. Basement stairs are a particular challenge to light. You either have recessed spots that burn your bald head (alright MY bald head) or it's just too dang dark and you are liable to trip looking directly down because you have biofocals (OK, right, that's me again!). Today I visited a house with a beautifully lit basement starting with the stairs. The upper drywall was offset

Put your longitude and latitude into this switch and it will turn off at dawn and on at dusk with NO photosensor! Click on image for link. #electric