Comments for Peeter Joot's Blog.

Comment on My letter to the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) about Just Energy by bubba transvere

bubba transvere — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 21:58:19 +0000

i bought my father-inlaws house 2007 . he was with direct energy,on a budget of $158.00 per month, 2 yrs later budget $198.00. 2012 budget $258.00// 2013 budget $270.00. i called and got out of contract only because i left the name on the bill in my father-inlaw name. I told them my father-inlaw was moving into a old age home and we are cancelling all of his bills, we bought the house and we are going with enwin. they tried talking me into it, i said no thanks, we got refund of $135.00 in your face

Comment on New faucet installation by Kuba Ober

Kuba Ober — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 04:31:39 +0000

The “leak” will be entirely contained, that’s why I think it’s just folklore that someone put into instructions for no good reason. Look at where and when it’ll “leak”: with the stopper in, it’ll leak from the bowl into the space where the overflow line feeds into. This space is designed to be occasionally filled with water anyway with no ill effects.

The real leaks you want to avoid are those where water ends up on the floor, or, more likely, on the bottom of a particleboard cabinet, destroying it in quick order. The real leak is contained by the black conical seal/washer further down the line, on the underside of the sink. If the putty ever starts to leak, you most likely won’t realize it since the only observable effects are: very slow draining of the contents of the bowl and a very slight sound it generates. It’s pretty much a waste of putty, especially that unless you got a very small single-use package, I bet it’ll sit somewhere on a shelf, gathering dust… I have one, too

Yes, I know, it’s no big deal, but I somewhat dislike cargo cult anything, and that includes cargo cult plumbing

Comment on Ease of screwing up C string operations. by peeterjoot

peeterjoot — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 01:57:42 +0000

Our codebase is at least 20 years old … more legacy than non-legacy. There’s lots that we do that should be forbidden;)

Comment on Basement electrical now done! by peeterjoot

peeterjoot — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 01:56:35 +0000

Thanks. I was proud of that work.

Comment on New faucet installation by peeterjoot

peeterjoot — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 01:55:08 +0000

The putty was in the instructions, which is why I’d used it …but it appears to be holding up well enough. I’ll try to remember your silicone tip if it ever starts leaking or causing trouble in some way.

Comment on Ease of screwing up C string operations. by Kuba Ober

Kuba Ober — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 00:39:58 +0000

I’m thinking that even in C using the naked pointer types as strings is tragic. The use of standard C library for strings should be IMHO forbidden in production code. In most of my microcontroller C-based projects, I use a custom library that exposes strings as opaque pointers that just happen to point to the beginning of the character array, for the times when you need to index such a beast. Even then I leave the indexing to a macro that typecasts the pointer and optionally does bounds checking. It’s impossible to use the opaque pointer in place of a C-string inadvertently. Of course using naked pointers as strings in C++ is wholly inexcusable. Legacy interfaces notwithstanding.

Comment on very deceptive indenting. by Kuba Ober

Kuba Ober — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 23:21:05 +0000

That’s one of the reasons why Python’s indentation rules look better to me every day

Comment on Basement electrical now done! by Kuba Ober

Kuba Ober — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 22:58:06 +0000

Good job! Looks great.

Comment on Oops. Fixing a drill hole in PEX (plastic) plumbing. by Kuba Ober

Kuba Ober — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 22:56:58 +0000

I’m in love with SharkBites. They are ultra-convenient when you try to re-plumb a whole house in sections while trying to live in it somewhat normally. They also have steel-braided hose sections with bite terminations. Great when you have to stop work for the night and need to plug your work-in-progress to existing piping that you should have had the foresight to leave in place as your eyelids started to droop.

Just remember to leave the plastic inserts in place for PEX, they should be removed otherwise.

Comment on New faucet installation by Kuba Ober

Kuba Ober — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 22:51:59 +0000

If my tradesperson-by-necessity-not-by-job-description experience is anything to go by, I don’t think you should be using plumber’s putty on, well, anything. Silicone does it in this specific case if you really want a stopped sink to only lose its contents by evaporation and diffusion. Silicone stays flexible forever and is, when applied between de-fatted surfaces, pretty much indestructible in normal use. Even then it’s overkill. You don’t really need anything between the relatively soft metal plug insert and the ceramics unless you are really concerned about cracking the ceramics. The tiny gap under the plug insert won’t really make the sink appreciably drain in any reasonable use scenario IMHO.

There are few exemptions to this rule, and they all involve relatively small amounts of modern teflon-bearing “putty”, not the legacy stuff that cracks over time and is just IMHO an anachronism. People who are not very skilled in applying compression fittings on copper tubing may cheat by putting a tiny amount of teflon putty on the compression ring. Even this is I think a stretch. A compression fitting on copper is not supposed to leak and is supposed to be gas-tight. It doesn’t cost a fortune to redo it if it leaks due to not being done properly.

PS. The aerator also has a flow restrictor. It’ll take ages to fill that bowl with the aerator on. Nothing to do with aeration