What did you do today?

[Mitchell-DIY-Guy]

Yes 60A breaker, and #6 THHN wire. That stuff is a BEAR to work with. Stuffing the green ground into the ground bus bar was a pain. Took much “smoothing” and careful insertion with a needle nose pliers before it went in.

The Tesla charger base plate AND the 60A breaker were much more accommodating to #6.

$115 worth of parts and two hours most of that time in wall penetration.

 

[BlueSkyHigh]

Nicely done!

 

[Mitchell-DIY-Guy]

I was under a time crunch! Our neighbors just got a new Tesla Model 3 and while it came fully charged, it was down to about 20%. They are heading from NC to Key West on Thursday, and the thought of trickle charging at 110V was just too long. They charge during the day when the sun is shining as they have solar panels on the roof. So just when I thought I was home at 5:30 to make dinner, NOOOOO I'm over at the neighbors installing a charger. All is good, great neighbors...

By contrast the backflow at the other neighbors was a 20 minute job. I did one on Sunday and the next neighbor this coming weekend; many of these cracked in the winter cold here, and nobody can get any irrigation people to call them back, much less do any work.

It's amazing how busy I can be as a handyman simply by being responsive and returning a call.

 

[BlueSkyHigh]

Interesting idea the solar panels. Do the solar panels provide enough energy in bright sunlight to keep the "status quo" or is a discharge to "dangerously" low levels still a reality?

 

[Mitchell-DIY-Guy]

They have 10 solar panels. Their average electric bill has been about $14/month. Mine, just down the street, about $100. During the night, if they charge, they are drawing power through the grid, and pay for that. During the day, if they are sucking that power from the panels into the Tesla, it stays at home and does not go into the grid. So, it's best for them to charge during the day, not overnight.

There's no storage of electricity; the excess is fed back into the grid and the local utility pays a wholesale rate. Best to use that instead.

I don't have an electric car, and it would take many years of those kinds of savings to even begin to break even. But that's an environmental choice for them, not necessarily a financial one.

 

[BlueSkyHigh]

Oh thanks for the clarification. I misinterpreted your post and I thought the Tesla itself had some solar panels on the roof of the automobile.

 

[Mitchell-DIY-Guy]

Oh thanks for the clarification. I misinterpreted your post and I thought the Tesla itself had some solar panels on the roof of the automobile.

…and there it is.

 

[BlueSkyHigh]

Very nice. By the way, the only way I'd own a fully electric vehicle is if it had a trailer hitch on it and I could pull an appropriately sized engine generator with fuel to keep the battery topped off.

 

[Mitchell-DIY-Guy]

…and then there’s the backflow. Very few people around here do anything about these in the winter. It was 9 degrees here on Christmas Eve and many cracked. Thankfully Zurn makes the plastic center “business” available as a $150 repair part, as the entire unit is like $600. A 15 minute installation. Eight bolts and a little cleaning and grease on the O-rings.

 

[breplum]

Was doing a repair few days ago ProPressing some 1-1/4" service entry valve and PRV.
Customer didn't know the colleague I was helping did water heaters.
She had just paid that prior week, $4,300 to a 'water heater guys' company for a straight swap-out 50 g. gas. Not a savvy shopper.

 

[Mitchell-DIY-Guy]

Was doing a repair few days ago ProPressing some 1-1/4" service entry valve and PRV.
Customer didn't know the colleague I was helping did water heaters.
She had just paid that prior week, $4,300 to a 'water heater guys' company for a straight swap-out 50 g. gas. Not a savvy shopper.

That’s really sad and gives lots of contractors a bad name.

 

[Zanne]

I've heard that the Tesla home chargers (the official ones) broadcast a signal or get registered on some sort of network to show up on some sort of Tesla app to alert people of charging station locations. There have been several reddit posts about people with the charging stations having entitled jerks hooking up to charge their vehicles (if the chargers are outside) and trying to get in to the garage and demanding entry to charge claiming the chargers are public. There was one story where after being told to leave & that it was a private charger (and being escorted away by police) the angry entitled neighbor took an axe to the OP's garage door to try to break in to use the charger bc she was too cheap to buy her own.

Been exhausted from the heat the last few days. Got the PVC boards painted but the roller covers I had were garbage and left a rough texture. I wanted smooth. Crud from the ceiling fell on the stuff when I was finished & it was still wet so I had to remove stuff. I'm going to get different roller covers that are smoother and try again after light sanding in between. At least the black bar codes that were printed on the boards aren't visible anymore.

My brother got the shop vac open for me so I could dump it out and dust off the filter. Need to find more filters but I think I threw the box out and don't know the model of the shop vac.

I found a different dremel head to use to remove most of the botched repair on the tub. I exposed some of the black underneath. I then tested some of the other colors that came in the repair kit. Found that mixing the dark and light ceramic ones it came out pretty close. It needs to be sanded, smoothed, and maybe given a coat of turtle wax, but it looks better.

I'm going to have to use my corner grab bar in another area because the wallset has just enough of a curve to it that it won't let the grab bar fit. I might get a different one or figure out a different solution. The bath mat I got prevents slipping so that is a plus.

I have a lot to get done but I mostly have to do things at night when its cooler.

 

[Mitchell-DIY-Guy]

This particular Tesla charger, is merely a connection between the Homes service panel and the car. There are no electronics of any kind in it. No Wi-Fi connection, no anything. All of the brains so to speak are in the car itself. My neighbor got a universal charger because they also own a Nissan Leaf; so they must use the adapter that came with their car, which allows the car to recharge that any charging station anywhere.

 

[havasu]

From what I understand, IF you have an official Tesla Charging Station installed at your home, you can "opt in" to rent it to neighbors to make a few bucks, but this sits strictly with the homeowner whether they choose to do it or not.

 

[Mitchell-DIY-Guy]

From what I understand, IF you have an official Tesla Charging Station installed at your home, you can "opt in" to rent it to neighbors to make a few bucks, but this sits strictly with the homeowner whether they choose to do it or not.

I’ve heard that!

 

[havasu]

On another forum related to those dumb electric cars...

My friend brought out his model Y for the weekend to launch his boat. 2 of us said take your Raptor, it is not going to work well.

He drives out, and it takes an extra hour and a half in total. Charges up to 80% in Needles. Picks up his boat there. He’s down under 10 miles range when he gets to his place towing his boat from Needles to Havasu and can’t understand why it used so much power.



Plugs it into 110 at midnight last night to charge and realizes he lost a seat cushion on the tow out. He’s obviously stuck and can’t go looking for it. Car has like 40 miles of range this morning so he asks around who will loan him an ICE vehicle to go look for his lost cushion this morning.



He’s not really sure yet how he is going to get home either after the revelation that towing sucks with an EV. The car will be dead every day from launching the boat and only charging in 110.



The Tesla won’t be back.

 

[Mitchell-DIY-Guy]

Charging a plug-in electric vehicle with 110 V is like using a battery tender trying to charge the battery on your car. It’s just not enough current flowing fast enough to do anything affective.

Even with that 60 amp 220 V charger I installed for my neighbor it was going to take quite a few hours to get up to full charge. I think something like six.

The real difference is with the Tesla superchargers, but those are not for home use. More current and more voltage than any normal house would ever have.

Right now the superchargers consume power at a rate of 150 to 350 kW depending on the version.

 

[BlueSkyHigh]

On another forum related to those dumb electric cars...

My friend brought out his model Y for the weekend to launch his boat. 2 of us said take your Raptor, it is not going to work well.

He drives out, and it takes an extra hour and a half in total. Charges up to 80% in Needles. Picks up his boat there. He’s down under 10 miles range when he gets to his place towing his boat from Needles to Havasu and can’t understand why it used so much power.



Plugs it into 110 at midnight last night to charge and realizes he lost a seat cushion on the tow out. He’s obviously stuck and can’t go looking for it. Car has like 40 miles of range this morning so he asks around who will loan him an ICE vehicle to go look for his lost cushion this morning.



He’s not really sure yet how he is going to get home either after the revelation that towing sucks with an EV. The car will be dead every day from launching the boat and only charging in 110.



The Tesla won’t be back.

"Teslas are among the easiest electric vehicles to live with because the company operates an extensive network of fast charging stations exclusively for its owners. Availability of other charging stations is improving, thanks in part to a recent boost from the Biden Administration's $1.5T Infrastructure Bill."

The guy in Havasu's post simply needs to give Elon Musk a call and get them to roll out the infrastructure. Either that or pull a fossil fuel powered generator to recharge the car while in motion.

 

[Zanne]

Tesla advertises that but from what I've heard their customer service is garbage. Someone was driving their new Tesla & felt weird bumping. They got out and it was in fire. It burned up on the road. It took weeks for anyone from Tesla to get back to the owner & when they did they suggested taking it in to a repair shop. There was not much left to take in. Over a month after it happened the were still not getting any answers from Tesla about it.

Got up early & started clearing stuff out of the truck trying to find some caulk I know I bought. Searched all over the house and in my bathroom as well. It disappeared. Will probably turn up when I no longer need it. Yesterday I got the corner trim pieces primed.

I got the box with the miter saw brought in. It's surprisingly light. The stand is 50lbs and the saw is 20lbs.

Worked on sanding and polishing the repair job on the tub. It's still ugly but better than nothing. The included wet sandpaper actually made it worse because it was black and the black color game off on to the repair and didn't fully come off with polishing. I got a polishing kit for my dremel that will hopefully be better than the one that came with the kit. The shank on the polishing wheel was too thin for my dremel tool.

I forgot to get brad nails but I think my brad nailer has some. I also got construction adhesive for the PVC trim to go along with nails. Gonna be "fun" getting the brad nailer and air compressor down. My friend put the air compressor on the top shelf. I can't get it down by myself.

On my way home I saw a red eared slider on the road. I'm fond of turtles so I stopped and nudged it off the road carefully. It was very confused. I didn't want to scare it more by picking it up to see if it was male or female (You can tell by the bottom carapace-- if it is concave it its male, if its convex its female.

Yesterday I discovered I'm able to lift my left arm up from the side and bring it above my head and almost to the center above my head-- without having to push or pull on it with my other arm. First time in months I've been able to do that. I still can't get it completely straight up, but I need to work on that. I can reach up to the higher shelf on mom's desk without any problems now. It took so much effort to do that just a few weeks ago.

 

[Zanne]

My friend was able to come over yesterday and we got the surround glued up. I already have pilot holes through the plywood and cementboard. It says it cures in 24 hrs but to be safe I'll wait longer-- also, my body is not cooperating today. I was stumbling and dropping things so not a good time to be trying to drill holes or use a knife to cut templates. Because the cement board didn't go all the way down to the tub and we couldn't see where it ended from behind the surround, we put adhesive on the cement board instead of on the surround. That way no accidentally smearing adhesive on stuff while moving the panels around and we would know where the bottom was and such. Instructions said to use 4 tubes of adhesive. I had 5 just in case and all got used because we decided to use extra to make damn sure this surround stays in place.

Used a roller (used for laminate countertops and stuff) to smooth it out and make it stick. Since we put the adhesive on the walls, I was able to make circles around the hole for the tub spout and hole for the controls. Hand cramped up on me so friend took over again. I haven't used a caulk gun in over a decade so I suck at it. LOL. The tear away strips from the L-bead trim helped guide the surround into place and then I tore them off. I'll need to do more cleaning up before the PVC trim goes on.

Unfortunately, the wall panels never went as tight to the back wall during dry fit as they did with the final fit so the L-bead trim sticks out too far. At the widest by a little under 3/4". I bought some flat flexible trim that is 1" wide that will bridge that gap from surround to PVC board trim. I am not about to try to cut that stuff off. LOL. I already bought the trim. I also found the 20Amp triple rocker switches for vent/light/heat combo. Broan brand and the switches have been discontinued so I had to get them on ebay.

Allergies were kicking my arse today and I generally feel cruddy so I'm resting with my cuddle buddy Rupert.