As a financially challenged (aka poor) person, I typically have my thermostat set to the winterize position which is about 46 or 47°F. When it gets below 20°F outside I turn my thermostat up and leave it up to help prevent the water pipes from freezing. The progressively colder it gets outside the h...

Something that people should probably investigate and know and think about before they lose their power in their mobile home below freezing. Most homes can't heat if the power goes out; without heat the pipes can more easily freeze. Sometimes a little bit of planning an investigation prior to such a...

NASA's zero-gravity cat astronaut http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvU9GZjBTzs I have a solution to solve the worlds energy crisis. My plan is to attach dynamos to cats; and shoot them into space; they will spin to try to right themselves thusly the attached dynamos will generate electricity that coul...

High-Rise Syndrome http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=709 In a 1987 study, published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, of 132 cats that were brought into the New York Animal Medical Center after having fallen from buildings, it was found that the injuries per cat increase...

I heard the following story to the best of my memory; I cannot vouch for it, it could be urban legend. Allegedly someone conducted a study dropping inverted cats from various heights to document a cats ability to self right itself. Allegedly the study found that many cats were not able to right them...

If it just drains okay when you flush with a bucket that makes me think that there is a slight restriction from an obstruction in the P-trap. If you aggressively manually flush a toilet with a bucket even a low flow toilet should flush great; if not that would make me suspect a wastewater obstructio...

Was driving me crazy For some of us that would be a short drive. I think many in government and the media are already at the destination. (that’s a joke, with my strange dark sense of humor based partly on truth) Took one last look and found the small hole in the bottom of the bowl that is supposed...

i went to do some more investigating to see if i could better answer your questions and i got down and stuck my head in the toilet and saw what looks like toilet paper stuck to the top of where the water exits the bowl. I tried to scrap it off with a putty knife but it is like cement, some little f...

It flushes OK with just water. Not alot of force like a normal house toilet but i thought maybe it was just a cheap toilet in a mobile home? As I indicated before it; you could probably get a better diagnosis if you gave if you gave a better and more elaborate description of the problem and symptom...

I’m not a plumber by profession. I’m thinking that perhaps it’s just a coincidence that it started to flush poorly after the sewer froze and backed up. Questions; does it flush good if it’s just water and no solids? Does it flush well enough that it vigorously breaks the siphon when it flushes? If t...

You probably have dirt in your toilet valve. Probably when you made the repair in the water line; some dirt sand or gravel got down in the line; then when you turn on the water it went throughout your system. This often clogs up low flow nozzles, aerators, sometimes can damage valve/seal/ring faces ...

One good silly question deserves another good silly question. I vaguely seem to remember a testing device to trace wires behind walls. I think I saw a similar thing in the hardware store the other day. It looked like a transmitter that you stick in an outlet, then you could go to the breaker box wit...

Do you still need help ? Thanks, Robert Yes and no. I replaced the nozzle and adjusted the electrodes (by dead reckoning), I tried to keep all the other adjustments identical for the most part. However I am still tempted to see if I can find a professional to tune and inspect the furnace as a preca...

Schemefighter, My issue is this, all the vents that are on the roof of my home are on one half of it. Everywhere there is a pipe or vent sticking out of the roof, I have a water spot on the ceiling. As the snow or whatever is in there melts, the water leaks. We haven't had much snow in the 8 years ...

Vents? What type of vents are you talking about? Like a bathroom exhaust vent that I don’t have? The only vents I think are on my roof is for plumbing or smokestack. I assume that those don’t have to be covered/caped. Or do you mean like some sort of vent that would be equivalent of an attic vent in...