OHSHIT - You did what?
18If you’ve been around for a bit, you’ve undoubtedly seen an OHSHIT report or 2.
Mondays are historically days where things tend to go unexpectedly, so it seems like a good day to ask you to share your personal OHSHIT reports. (Doesn’t need to be from today.)
OHSHIT Kitchen Flood Edition
Summary
Water. Water everywhere. People yelling. Pets running in circles. Minor chaos.
Why It Went Wrong
When we moved in here about 7 years ago, we had a little plumbing issue that caused some water to backup. One plumber and a few hundred bucks later, we learned that the trees that used to be in our front yard had put roots through the plumbing.
We were supposed to use some tree root eating enzyme in our toilets from time to time to prevent them from growing back. Spoiler - we forgot.
Timeline
2011 - first disaster.
2011-2018 - neglect
2018 - flood and panick
Impact
Several gallons of water on the bathroom, kitchen, and pantry floors. ~$50 in food toast. Panic and annoyance.
Action Items
We are supposed to use some tree root eating enzyme in our toilets from time to time to prevent them from growing back.
Who wants to take bets on whether or not we remember?
What’s your OHSHIT?
- 9 comments, 38 replies
- Comment
When it rains, it pours
Summary
While giving a bath, I got an unexpected shower.
What went wrong
For 3 years, I have given my daughter a bath without incident. I consider myself quite the pro at this point. I quickly found out that bathing a girl is not the same as bathing a boy.
While he was in his tub, which was on the dining room table, he decided to make his own fountain. He had a pretty good shot, as he arched his stream over the tub, and onto the floor. We keep some paper towels on the dining room table, no big deal, I just grab a few and clean it up while his mom finishes cleaning him.
Not 5 seconds after I get on the ground to clean it up, I feel a trickle… then a little more, then it starts pouring. Yeah, he wasn’t done yet. He got a bath, I got a shower.
Impact
An intentional shower after an unintentional shower, a life lesson, and some good laughs
Action Items
No matter what, if the diaper is off, there is a wash cloth covering the hose.
@lichme
And then you took another shower (hopefully).
Edit: Just read the impact statement more carefully.
@lichme The drawing is the best part of this.
@lichme @Thumperchick And that you appear to be a cat.
@lichme There’s a name for that.
It’s called “The Full Moscow”.
@mike808 it’s only the full Moscow if he pays for it.
I guess future college tuition could count, but it’s not a direct currency exchange.
@lichme I will never forget my fourth grade teacher telling us in class about how she once was changing the diaper of a boy baby (can’t remember if it was hers or a relative’s) who urinated, some got into her mouth and it was sweet. They took him to the doctor and found out he was diabetic. Your story is not as dramatic (thank goodness), but @Thumperchick is right that the drawing really sells it.
@lichme I do not have offspring, but learned that lesson very young, as I had a nephew by the time I was 8 y/o.
My neighbor is an RN, and was cleaning her son’s BR, when she noticed that his toilet seat was sticky from dripped urine- Yup, she tasted it, it was sweet, and he was then diagnosed with Type I [Juvenile] Diabetes.
BTW, before urine dipsticks [and HIV] this was a common method of testing urine for diabetes, as well as some other diseases.
@lichme @PhysAssist hence the term:
Diabetes Mellitus and the fact that flies and bees/wasps were attracted to the chamberpot of diabetics…
@ChadP @Thumperchick What is it with you customer service people and flooding your houses
@Moose I think mine was karma for making so many water jokes about @Chadp’s flood.
@ChadP @Moose @Thumperchick
Just stay away from my area.
This ain’t gonna be properly formatted for a formal OHSHIT report.
On the way to school/work, child and I stopped at convenience store for morning snacks. Child selects messy donut as preferred snack. I grab lots of napkins to prevent soiling child’s clothes first thing in the morning. Back in the car, I carefully drape them over child’s lap, tuck into shirt, and have extras nearby for hands.
One block down the road…“Dad! I’m not strapped in!” Pulled onto sidestreet and buckled kid in. Everything was fine, but I guess I was more worried about the mess than personal safety. Parenting fail. That evening, spouse tells me she heard about my little mistake. This is only the 2nd time we forgot to buckle up. Can’t recall whose fault it was the first time. Impact: I was ashamed of myself as well as daddy-shamed by spouse and child. Action items: don’t let it happen again.
@medz been there, done that myself. Glad it was remembered and done, that’s the good news.
Summary
While investigating why my dryer’s exhaust got so hot, I took the express route out of the attic.
What Went Wrong
My laundry room shared a wall with my living room, and the exhaust tube went straight up that wall into the attic, where it finally escaped through the roof.
When I got the house inspected before buying it, the inspector noted lint in the attic. He did not mention that the exhaust was not up to code due to the use of flexible vinyl tubing. Anyway, I noticed that when I ran the dryer, it would take awhile to dry stuff, and the wall would get really, really hot. So I investigated.
Climbing into an awkward area in the attic, I pulled the tube out, and this is what I saw:
My guess is the previous owners were like “clean the lint trap? Psh who needs that, I’ll just get rid of it and let the lint fly out into nature.”
As I’m looking at this mess, I lose my balance and step back. My first thought as I pulled my back leg up was “that felt like my foot went reeaally far…”
My wife and her brother were in the living room watching football. From their perspective, they heard a loud commotion from the laundry room, a short beat, and then me from the attic shouting “everything’s fine, DON’T LOOK IN THE LAUNDRY ROOM!”
Of course, they beat me to the scene.
Impact
Old gross insulation was everywhere, and now I had to replace a dryer exhaust duct and patch a hole in the ceiling.
Resolution
The way the wall opened up in the attic made it impossible to just run a duct down, so I had to cut a big hole in the wall. Everything about this project was terrible, but I did find a dollar covered in lint inside the wall at least.
In the end, we have a dryer exhaust that isn’t a deathtrap, I eventually patched up the wall and ceiling, and we have painted over the ridiculous Painters Tape Blue walls.
@Moose Finding a dollar in the wall does bring a new meaning to the idea of a Money Pit.
@Moose I am currently turning blind eye to problem with my vent going out the roof. I so hate that they do that, should just go right out a wall (yes a house should be designed with the room on an outside wall).
I don’t want to mess with cutting open more walls now, and I have already had my turn of stepping through, then following with my body through the ceiling, not fun.
@Moose Holy Crap.You are very luck you didn’t have a fire. When I was a kid the lint caught on fire and all our clothes burned up (but fortunately not the house). This might win the internet.
@Moose
@Moose I like your apron. I take it the roof is such that you can’t have the exhaust go up into the attic and then out the side of the house? (under a soffit or something) Crazy it has to go so far straight up.
@medz yeah the laundry room is surrounded by the living room, dining room, garage, and entry hall, so the most direct route out is straight up. I tried to come up with any other solution to get it out more directly but there wasn’t another option.
@Moose @raccoon81 Yeah, it’s really crappy and stupid that they route dryer vents like this. My house has it, too. It burns me up because the builders had to have known better. It’s not like indoor clothes dryers have only just come onto market.
@Moose one place I lived they ran it under the floor and then out the back. Problematic in that it went probably 25’ and so would need cleaned on a regular basis with something more than a hand reaching in to pull out any lint that was “stuck”.
@Moose In a rental house (duplex) we had couple years ago, the dryer took forever to dry stuff. Similar setup in that the dryer vent had to go up 9 feet then over maybe 10 more feet and out the side of the house. You see, the dryer was just inside the interior garage door and the garage had a storm shelter room that was solid concrete and rebar. The vent had to go up and over it to get outside. I told the landlady it needed to be cleaned and she thought it had recently been done. Security cam caught this picture.
That wasn’t all of it, there was a bunch inside the house too.
Poor design. Dangerous especially for rental properties.
@Moose @raccoon81 you both need:
/image lint eater
@Moose @RiotDemon I have one of those… probably time to use it again. Knocks lots of crap out, I think it might be clogged up at the roof that such a thing doesn’t reach or clean.
@Moose My house (built in 60s) has dryer venting 3 feet into garage. Lint was making a mess, so we installed a trap sorta like this. Much easier than tearing up the wall & poking thru the roof.
Note: does require emptying 2-3 times per month.
/image garage lint trap
@compunaut @Moose still makes garage humid. Must fill with water to trap lint.
@compunaut @Moose I do hope that you have an electric dryer, and not a natural gas fired one! Venting a gas dryer indoors can cause a buildup of asphyxiating combustion byproducts that might kill you…
@Moose I think my minor flood was less of a pain than you falling through the ceiling.
@medz @Moose
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Where we live, not sure you can tell the difference between humid garage & humid outdoors. Without garage heating/cooling, it’s soon all the same.
I remember one time a friend and I were out watching trains and I got the brilliant idea to climb the nearby signal tower to get a train from above on camera, going right under me. The signal was green and everything was going well…until a cop pulled up and honked at my buddy’s car. He hadn’t seen me up on the signals, but wanted to know what my friend was doing parked by the tracks. Meanwhile I’m hiding behind the signal target and doing my best impression of a marble statue, hoping to hell and back my friend doesn’t mention watching the signals and inadvertently drawing the officer’s attention to the tower. The cop asked questions for what felt like an hour but was really about 10 minutes, and by the grace of God the cop never saw me sitting on the tower almost directly above his cruiser. There is a happy ending, though - I got my train, and it was the most awesome thing ever. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard a diesel locomotive in full notch from above and gotten your t-shirt blown up by diesel exhaust at high velocity!
@PooltoyWolf pic?
@Kidsandliz Here is a daytime shot of the signal bridge, with one of my inflatables posing.
@Kidsandliz And a long exposure I took at night with a train passing. Really like this one.
@PooltoyWolf You are really lucky that cop didn’t look up. Nowhere to hide.
@Kidsandliz Exactly!!
No pics were taken, it was very dark. But I may have a daytime shot of the signal bridge somewhere…pardon me while I dig.
These did not end in catastrophe. When I was in my 20’s I was teaching lead rock climbing and climbing all over a 50 or so foot cliff checking student hardware placement before they’d rely on it as they were lead climbing up the cliff. I didn’t bother to tie in anywhere which was incredibly stupid had I slipped. When I worked on tall ships I’d slide down the shrouds (eventually burns a hole in the underside of your shoes) - another if things had gone wrong I’d have been, in this case, deck pizza. We’d also balanced our kayaks on the rail of a high bridge and then shove off (in Austria). You’d end up burying the bow in the river below and then popping up (and then sometimes having to roll). I hate to think what it would have been like landing any other way than bow first. All of these things were really fun but potentially really dangerous. These are more of the retrospective oh shit I was stupid enough to have done that in the way I did it?
OHSHIT Chicken Edition
Summary
Two dead chickens, a new coop
Why It Went Wrong
We occasionally will foster dogs. Our current foster, Elsa, decided that chicken might make a good snack.
Now, our chicken enclosure at the time wasn’t the most secure thing in the world. It was strong enough to keep OUR dog out, but apparently Elsa was a bit more tenacious. Pictured with our previous foster puppy.
She was able to pull the door to the side, get her head in and rip some feathers off the back of one of our chickens necks.
So we moved their enclosure outside our fence line to protect the chickens, or so we thought. One day after our morning walk I went to water the garden and noticed a chicken outside the enclosure, unmoving. Upon closer inspection, she had died. I checked the enclosure, only two chickens to be seen. It would appear that, without the dog scented back yard, there was nothing stopping our neighborhood foxes from getting to our poor hens.
Timeline
June 16th - got foster dog
June 19th - dog attack
June 30th - fox attack
July 8th-19th - construction of new coop and enclosure
Impact
Went from 4 chickens to 2. We are now raising a new set of chicks to bring us up to 6.
Action
Ended up building a whole new enclosure, pictured. Hopefully it’ll keep my ladies happier, and safer, but only time will tell.
Obligatory picture of the old tractor raising the new chicks
@smigit2002 Well that is sad. Foxes kept getting my niece’s ducks too even though they’d put them in a shed at night that also had a high chain link fence (they could come and go from the shed but were contained). Hope your new chicks survive.
@smigit2002 Where are the wheels on that there chicken tractor?
@PhysAssist The above picture is the first design. If you look under the coop, you might be able to make out a caster bolted to a 2x4 facing upwards. There were a pair, and the design was that the 2x4 would hinge under. This design worked once, to get the tractor from the garage to the back yard. The next time we tried moving it, the screws holding the hinges sheered off.
Design two is shown below. Pretty common design with a lever that raises and lowers a pair of pneumatic tires. Thanks for asking! Still needs some work, but it’ll get us through the season
@smigit2002 You’re very welcome!
I did see the wheels there, I just didn’t see how they could accomplish the moving around where they were located.
I was also proud that I knew it was called a tractor.
I’m also sorry that last time I posted, I forgot to say:
“Sorry 'bout your chick loss…”
…and compliment your chick-dominium improvements:
“Nicely done, Sir!!!”
My niece and her kidlets have backyard chickens too, and they would have been heartsick to lose ANY of theirs as you did.
In fact, my niece has her very own pink carbine that she would use to execute any “cluckicidal” manaics she witnessed [if that were possible], which I guess would likewise make them suicidal…
Stay safe!!
PA
You guys are making me feel much better about my minor flood.
@Thumperchick schadenfreude?
@smigit2002 a bit.