Stupid repairs and maintenance

[PadPhilosopher]

I was in a bathroom at a grocery store today, and saw the work of a "maintenance man" who has obviously never heard of a wax ring. Toilet leaking at the floor? Silicone it!


Anyone else got stories of "maintenance" doing idiotic things?

 

[BabyHailey1977]

In my military barracks building they had us all move out temporarily to repair a black mold issue. They did it by floors. Well, their “repairs” was simply paint over the moldy walls because within a month, the mold was showing through.

 

[PadPhilosopher]

In my military barracks building they had us all move out temporarily to repair a black mold issue. They did it by floors. Well, their “repairs” was simply paint over the moldy walls because within a month, the mold was showing through.

Repair the leak? Naw, it'll be a'ight.....

 

[BabyHailey1977]

Repair the leak? Naw, it'll be a'ight.....

Exactly

 

[princessarya]

I have a similar story at my first apartment. I was on the 1st floor and any time my upstairs neighbors would shower the pipes would leak. I had to put a giant trash can to catch all the water. Told the landlord many times and all he ever did was replace the ceiling tiles, which shockingly didn't fix the issue. Then when I moved out he kept my security deposit due to the destroyed ceiling tiles and I didn't have the energy to fight him

 

[PadPhilosopher]

I have a similar story at my first apartment. I was on the 1st floor and any time my upstairs neighbors would shower the pipes would leak. I had to put a giant trash can to catch all the water. Told the landlord many times and all he ever did was replace the ceiling tiles, which shockingly didn't fix the issue. Then when I moved out he kept my security deposit due to the destroyed ceiling tiles and I didn't have the energy to fight him

What a weasel! I hope he tries that on someone who sues him and gets attorney fees and damages. That's incredibly crooked.

 

[sillygirl]

I wouldn’t even bother with silicone. Just use flex tape. What do you think my last car was made of after 200000 miles

 

[Edgewater]

I was in a bathroom at a grocery store today, and saw the work of a "maintenance man" who has obviously never heard of a wax ring. Toilet leaking at the floor? Silicone it!

View attachment 135806
Anyone else got stories of "maintenance" doing idiotic things?

OR: The maintenance effort was as a result of the metal fastener ring sitting about the tile and with the wax ring in place, it all created a gap and in place of correctly fixing the position of the metal fastener ring, maintenance simply "Silicone it"!

 

[Edgewater]

How to connect a 155 cannon to the dampening system of its base that reduces the recoil of the cannon when the shafts do not align with the attachment holes?? Grind the threads from one side and slide the huge nuts on with a few turns in place of the normal 50 turns of the nut!

With great luck, to fire this type of cannon requires a remote firing device. Several lucky folks got to dig the cannon out of the hole in the ground behind it! I was the sorry individual that refused to allow the cannon to be fired. With the line officer in my face for Red Flagging his cannon line, he approved its firing. It is why I wear hearing aids and he was released from command.

 

[Cottontail]

I was in a bathroom at a grocery store today, and saw the work of a "maintenance man" who has obviously never heard of a wax ring. Toilet leaking at the floor? Silicone it!

Reminds me of one of my "dive" apartments at college. The double-pane window in my bedroom had obviously been hit by a rock of something. One pane had been completely shattered and they'd done their best to pull all the shards out of the frame. The other pane had multiple large cracks right through the middle, and they'd just drizzled silicone over them. Literally my bedroom window had a big silicone spider web in it! Classy. I only had four months of school left when I moved into that dump and it didn't seem worth the effort to complain to the famously stingy landlord.

 

[PadPhilosopher]

How to connect a 155 cannon to the dampening system of its base that reduces the recoil of the cannon when the shafts do not align with the attachment holes?? Grind the threads from one side and slide the huge nuts on with a few turns in place of the normal 50 turns of the nut!

With great luck, to fire this type of cannon requires a remote firing device. Several lucky folks got to dig the cannon out of the hole in the ground behind it! I was the sorry individual that refused to allow the cannon to be fired. With the line officer in my face for Red Flagging his cannon line, he approved its firing. It is why I wear hearing aids and he was released from command.

Wow. Good for you for calling the obviously unsafe foolishness. I'm sorry you still managed to get injured.

Reminds me of one of my "dive" apartments at college. The double-pane window in my bedroom had obviously been hit by a rock of something. One pane had been completely shattered and they'd done their best to pull all the shards out of the frame. The other pane had multiple large cracks right through the middle, and they'd just drizzled silicone over them. Literally my bedroom window had a big silicone spider web in it! Classy. I only had four months of school left when I moved into that dump and it didn't seem worth the effort to complain to the famously stingy landlord.

At least that's not hazardous as long as you're not next to it in a windstorm. But yes, stingy indeed! And I'll bet the person who broke it paid for a replacement window....

 

[BobbiSueEllen]

In flooring, I did a lot of bathroom vinyl floors. One of the tasks of the job was to remove the toilet, place it on a cardboard sheet after removing the wax ring (and, sometimes, the plastic funnel-like flange in the wax-ring) from under the toilet & atop the pipe flange. When time to put the toilet in, I'd put a flanged ring atop the pipe flange, a flangeless wax ring atop that, then install the toilet. Cheap leak insurance.

Many times, the customer would ask "Aren't you going to silicone caulk the toilet base to the floor? I always replied "No", giving the reasons:

1. If the ring leaks, better to find out about it quickly on the vinyl than seal it off, hide the wet, damage the underlayment and then the vinyl...or the subfloor, joists and, if possible, a ceiling below. Plus, set up for thousands of dollars of rot;
2. If pulling the toilet is ever required, the toilet will come off the floor much easier; otherwise, the vinyl could tear, thus requiring an all-new, expensive floor.

I only siliconed vinyl against tubs & shower stalls. That was all, because if not done, vinyl will collect moisture, come loose there and curl upwards.

 

[Kirisin]

I was in a bathroom at a grocery store today, and saw the work of a "maintenance man" who has obviously never heard of a wax ring. Toilet leaking at the floor? Silicone it!

View attachment 135806
Anyone else got stories of "maintenance" doing idiotic things?

I actually did the repairs on things like this. Sometimes 1 wax ring isn't enough so you use 2 then bolt it down

 

[dogboy]

My wife would say that my tool box consisted of various sized hammers and duct tape which wasn't entirely true. It also had glue.

 

[LittleAndAlone]

Can't stand half-assing. I'll stop what I'm doing just to wait for the proper single use tool or part.

The one time a single drop of oil leaked from my car I ordered like $100 in gaskets and o rings for the entire stack beforehand. Block to oil cooler, oil cooler to filter adapter, threaded and o ringed oil filter shaft, etc.

I love video games but I don't play games when it comes to engineering stuff.

 

[BobbiSueEllen]

Can't stand half-assing. I'll stop what I'm doing just to wait for the proper single use tool or part.

Same here. My vehicles don't leak...when I rebuild them, they are done up right. Leaks are not only ecologically unsound but can set up for catastrophe on the road.

When I got my Metro, it had receipts for work done: rebuilt short-block (with 0.5mm oversize pistons), new drive axles, so on. All work was done by a young mechanic who apparently neither believed in waiting for correct parts nor used a torque wrench: loose parts abounded, such as shrouding, engine mounts, oil pan, valve cover...and even the cylinder head, which was spraying a tiny bit of coolant into #1 cylinder during operation, requiring top-offs every 80 miles. On a fresh engine!

To make it worse, he used a thermostat that was too cold. That really cheesed me off. One never, ever uses a colder thermostat on a computerized engine because it will keep the engine in Warm-Up Mode and use too much fuel, harming cylinder walls, oxygen sensors and catalytic converters. But he did...

I replaced the head gasket, tightened everything under the hood and replaced the thermostat. The latter I had to send for because 90% of the counter jockey dumb-a**es at car-parts places will hard-sell colder 'stats, every time. It's stupid and destructive. "Why do you want a 195 when a 180 is better?", they ask..."Because the factory bible tells me so", I reply. Uneducated, slop-jockey jerks.

Any job worth doing is worth doing right. No half-a**ery on my watch, ever.

 

[LittleAndAlone]

Same here. My vehicles don't leak...when I rebuild them, they are done up right. Leaks are not only ecologically unsound but can set up for catastrophe on the road.

When I got my Metro, it had receipts for work done: rebuilt short-block (with 0.5mm oversize pistons), new drive axles, so on. All work was done by a young mechanic who apparently neither believed in waiting for correct parts nor used a torque wrench: loose parts abounded, such as shrouding, engine mounts, oil pan, valve cover...and even the cylinder head, which was spraying a tiny bit of coolant into #1 cylinder during operation, requiring top-offs every 80 miles. On a fresh engine!

To make it worse, he used a thermostat that was too cold. That really cheesed me off. One never, ever uses a colder thermostat on a computerized engine because it will keep the engine in Warm-Up Mode and use too much fuel, harming cylinder walls, oxygen sensors and catalytic converters. But he did...

I replaced the head gasket, tightened everything under the hood and replaced the thermostat. The latter I had to send for because 90% of the counter jockey dumb-a**es at car-parts places will hard-sell colder 'stats, every time. It's stupid and destructive. "Why do you want a 195 when a 180 is better?", they ask..."Because the factory bible tells me so", I reply. Uneducated, slop-jockey jerks.

Any job worth doing is worth doing right. No half-a**ery on my watch, ever.

Was borrowing a lift to do a oil change on a 2nd gen CTS V with 50k and a guy that worked there was so enchanted. "I've never seen a GM so dry and spotless underneath wtf!".

 

[BobbiSueEllen]

Was borrowing a lift to do a oil change on a 2nd gen CTS V with 50k and a guy that worked there was so enchanted. "I've never seen a GM so dry and spotless underneath wtf!".

Can you imagine if people flew aircraft like they drive cars? We'd have emergency landings & crashes all over the place. Ya can't pull over on a cloud, LOL.

Land of the lackadaisical, home of the sloppy.

 

[LittleAndAlone]

Can you imagine if people flew aircraft like they drive cars? We'd have emergency landings & crashes all over the place. Ya can't pull over on a cloud, LOL.

Land of the lackadaisical, home of the sloppy.

Just imagining all the 3 year old McDonald's wrappers with half eaten petrified cheeseburgers and other crap people hoard in their cars all over the crash site.

I'm the opposite, maintaining my cars like aircraft.

 

[BobbiSueEllen]

Oh, speaking of aircraft: I saw a guy's beautiful homebuilt aircraft once, his craftership was impeccable! I was in love with the thing, precision and care abounded. Of course, every homebuilt aircraft is required by federal law to have a placard on the instrument panel or prominently nearby, which says:

PASSENGER WARNING:
This aircraft is amateur-built and
does not comply with federal safety
regulations for standard aircraft.
​

The guy was cheesed off a bit and had his own placard made up, exactly thus:

PASSENGER WARNING:
This aircraft is 'amateur-built' and
does not comply with federal safety
regulations for "standard aircraft".

They don't make factory aircraft
good enough to meet my own
professionally-high standards.
​

Absolutely perfect. I burst out laughing and complimented the builder/pilot. He said the fed inspector tried to bust his chops over the placard...the owner's lawyer retorted "Where is it written...?" and the inspector backed off. Freedom of Expression lives in aviation, too.