Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 alpha 4/15/85; site pucc-j Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!pucc-j!rsk From: rsk@pucc-j (Wombat) Newsgroups: net.jokes Subject: Dave Barry on "The Taming of the Screw" Message-ID: <710@pucc-j> Date: Sun, 12-Jan-86 10:52:26 EST Article-I.D.: pucc-j.710 Posted: Sun Jan 12 10:52:26 1986 Date-Received: Fri, 17-Jan-86 02:39:47 EST Organization: Purdue University Lines: 360 Keywords: dave barry, household repairs [This originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune's weekend magazine some time ago; as far as I can tell, it's excerpted from the book of the same title. I have not edited their piece...] The Taming of the Screw The intricacies of home repair explained in one easy lesson. Dave Barry If you're like most homeowners, you're afraid that many repairs around your home are too difficult to tackle. So, when your furnace explodes, you call in a so-called professional to fix it. The "professional" arrives in a truck with lettering on the sides and deposits a large quantity of tools and two assistants who spend the better part of the week in your basement whacking objects at random with heavy wrenches, after which the "professional" returns and gives you a bill for slightly more money than it would cost you to run a successful campaign for the U.S. Senate. And that's why you've decided to start doing things yourself. You figure, "If those guys can fix my furnace, then so can I. How difficult can it be?" Very difficult. In fact, most home projects are impossible, which is why you should do them yourself. There is no point in paying other people to screw things up when you can easily screw them up yourself for far less money. This article can help you. First, a few words about tools. Basically, a tool is an object that enables you to take advantage of the laws of physics and mechanics in such a way that you can seriously injure yourself. Today, people tend to take tools for granted. If you're ever walking down the street and you notice some people who look particularly smug, the odds are that they are taking tools for granted. If I were you, I'd walk right up and smack them in the face. We ought to be very grateful that we have tools. Millions of years ago people did not have them, and home projects were extremely difficult. For example, when a primitive person wanted to put up paneling, he had to drive the little paneling nails into the cave wall with his bare fist, so generally the paneling wound up getting spattered with primitive blood, which isn't really all that bad when you consider how ugly paneling is to begin with. The three major kind of tools * Tools for hittings things to make them loose or to tighten them up or jar their many complex, sophisticated electrical parts in such a manner that they functions perfectly. (These are your hammers, maces, bludgeons, and truncheons.) * Tools that, if dropped properly, can penetrate your foot. (Awls) * Tools that nobody should ever use because the potential danger is far greater than the value of any project that could possibly result. (Power saws, power drills, power staplers, any kind of tools that uses any kind of power more advanced than flashlight batteries.) Now, you might ask, "How do I get one of those complete home tool sets for under $4?" An excellent question. Go to one of those really cheap discount stores where they sell plastic furniture in colors visible from the planet Neptune and where they have a food section specializing in cardboard cartons full of Raisinets and malted milk balls manufactured during the Nixon administration. In either the hardware or housewares department, you'll find an item imported from an obscure Oriental country and described as "Nine Tools in One", consisting of a little handle with interchangeable ends representing inscrutable Oriental notions of tools that Americans might use around the home. Buy it. This is the kind of tool set professionals use. Not only is it inexpensive, but it also has a great safety feature not found in the so-called quality tools sets: The handle will actually break right off if you accidentally hit yourself or anything else, or expose it to direct sunlight. Warning: Do not be misled by advertisements for so-called tool sets allegedly containing large numbers of tools. These are frauds! Oh, sure, you get a lot of tools, but most of them are the same kind! For example, you'll get 127 wrenches, and the only difference is that one will be maybe an eighth of an an inch bigger than another. Big deal. A word about wood Wood has been the preferred building material for thousands of years because it is one of the few materials that will rot as well as burn. Basically, there are two kinds of wood: hardwoods such as oak and walnut, which are used by skilled craftsmen to make furniture that you cannot afford, and softwoods such as fir, spruce, and tripe, which are actually members of the crabgrass family and are more suitable to the kinds of projects that an incompetent such as yourself will be doing. Dealing with lumberyards Lumberyards are dangerous and hostile places, inhabited by suspicious men who wear bib overalls and spit a lot and duck behind piles of boards as soon as they see a homeowner coming. These men have lived in the lumberyard since childhood. It is the only home they know. At night, they just pull sheets of plywood over themselves and go to sleep. They don't like intruders, especially homeowners such as yourself and they will try any crafty ruse to drive you away. For example, all their wood measurements are lies. A so-called two-by-four is *not* two anythings by four anythings, and so on. There is no way you can possibly know what size of wood you're getting. Another common trick among the lumbermen is to call things by silly names such as "soffit". They dream up these names at night while they're lying under their sheets of plywood, and they use them to make you feel stupid when you try to order your wood. YOU: Hi. I'd like two 8-foot two-by-fours, please. LUMBERMAN: What are they for? YOU: What? LUMBERMAN: Are they for joists? Headers? Beams? Rafters? Footers? Sills? Framing? Tenons? Partitions? Templates? Easements? Debentures? Just what is it you want, mister? YOU: Uh, well, ah, maybe I better go home and check my measurements. The home center Several years ago, some smart businessmen had an idea: Why not build a big store where a do-it-yourselfer could get everything he needed at reasonable prices? Then they decided, nah, the hell with that, let's build a home center. And before long home centers were springing up like crabgrass all over the United States. Home centers are designed for the do-it-yourselfer who's willing to pay higher prices for the convenience of being able to shop for lumber, hardware, and toasters all in one location. Notice I say "shop for", as opposed to "obtain". This is the major drawback of home centers: They are always out of everything except artificial Christmas trees. The home center employees have no time to reorder merchandise because they are too busy applying little price stickers to every object--every board, washer, nail and screw--in the entire store. Once they've applied a round of stickers, they immediately set out to apply a new set, with slightly higher prices, to the same merchandise. This leaves them no time to learn about the products they sell, so it is utterly futile to ask them for help. Let's say a piece in your toilet tank breaks, so you remove the broken part, take it to the home center, and ask an employee if he has a replacement. The employee, who has never is his life even seen the inside of a toilet tank, will peer at the broken part in very much the same way that a member of a primitive Amazon jungle tribe would look at an electronic calculator, and then say, "We're expecting a shipment of these sometime around the middle of next week". So the bottom line is that home centers are even worse than lumberyards as a source for lumber. The only really good place to buy lumber is at a store where the lumber has already been cut and attached together in the form of furniture, finished, and put inside boxes. Electricity Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles, called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking. Electrons travel at the speed of light, which in most American homes is 110 volts per hour. This is very fast. In the time it has taken you to read this sentence so far, an electron could have traveled all the way from San Francisco to Hackensack, New Jersey, although God alone knows why it would want to. The five main kinds of electricity are alternating current, direct current, lightning, static, and European. Most American homes have alternating current, which means that the electricity goes in one direction for a while, then goes in the other direction. This prevents harmful electron buildup in the wires. Your home electrical system Your home electrical system is basically a bunch of wires that bring electricity into your home and take if back out before it has a chance to kill you. This is called a "circuit". The most common home electrical problem is when the circuit is broken by a "circuit breaker"; this causes the electricity to back up in one of the wires until it bursts out of an outlet in the form of sparks, which can damage your carpet. The best way to avoid broken circuits is to change your fuses regularly. Another common problem is that the lights flicker. This sometimes means that your electrical system is inadequate, but more often it means that your home is possessed by demons, in which case you'll need to get a caulking gun and some caulking. If you're not sure whether your house is possessed, see "The Amityville Horror", a fine documentary film based on an actual book. Or call in a licensed electrician, who is trained to spot the signs of demonic possession, such as blood coming down the stairs, enormous cats on the dinette table, etc. How to change a fuse You should change a fuse every six months or 200,000 amperes, whichever comes first. Here's how: 1. Go down to the basement, which should be located beneath the first floor, and find the gray box with all kinds of wires leading to it and little stickers on it saying things like "CAUTION: 80 SKILLION WATTS". 2. Standing about 15 feet away, toss a small domestic animal toward the box and note whether it [a] falls to the floor unscathed or [b] is reduced to a lump of carbon by a gigantic bolt of electricity. 3. In the latter case, call an experienced electrician without dependents and have him replace your fuses. In the event of the former case, open the box and remove the old fuses by unscrewing them and replace them with new fuses, which can be obtained wherever new fuses are sold. Then simply close the box and continue to lead a normal life. Repairing appliances 1. The primary cause of failure in electrical appliances is an expired warranty. Often, you can get an appliance running again simply by changing the warranty expiration date with a 15/64-inch felt-tipped marker. 2. If this fails, take the applicance to the basement and leave it there for several months, on the theory that [a] it will get lonely and want to work again so it can be up in the kitchen with all the other appliances, or [b] we'll have a nuclear war, and you won't have any uses for appliances anymore because you'll be too busy defending your beef jerky and water from your neighbors, or [c] you'll develop a horrible, lingering disease, and people will feel sorry for you and give you new appliances. 3. If, after several months, the appliance still doesn't work, locate the motor or some other electronic part and whap it briskly with a 58-ounce tire iron. This technique is particularly effective with your modern personal home electronic computers, which are smart enough to not want to be struck by blunt instruments. Toasters are much, much stupider--some of them cannot perform even simple addition--and often must be whapped for hours before coming around. Plumbing No doubt you've heard the tragic story of the family that went away on vacation, unaware that one of their pipes had sprung a small leak. By the time they returned, the leak had destroyed the home and all their possessions, forcing them to collect $175,000 from the insurance company and use the money to go to Hawaii and buy a small, chic restaurant that became fabulously successful, so now all they do is lie around on the beach sipping tropical run drinks. This needless tragedy would never have occurred if this family had taken more of an interest in its plumbing. Plumbing is one of the easier of do-it-yourself activities, requiring only a few simple tools and a willingness to stick your arm into a clogged toilet. In fact, you can solve many home plumbing problems, such as annoying faucet drip, merely by turning up the radio. But before we get into specific techniques, let's look at how plumbing works. A plumbing system is very much like your electrical system, except that instead of electricity, it has water, and instead of wires, it has pipes, and instead of radios and waffle irons, it has faucets and toilets. So the truth is that your plumbing systems is nothing at all like your electrical system, which is good, because electricity can kill you. The major problem with plumbing systems is that they leak. To understand why, imagine that you're on a cross-country bus trip and you have drunk three six-packs of beer singlehandedly and you really, really have to go to the bathroom, only the bus doesn't have a bathroom and the driver refuses to stop until he gets to Elkhart, Indiana, which is 280 miles away. That is how your home plumbing systems feels all the time. it sits there filled with water, day in and day out, until after a while all it can think about is leaking. The key to preventing leaks is proper maintenance. At least once a year [and more often if you have a small brain] you should go around and poke at the various elements of your plumbing systems with the end of a cane. If you see anything the least bit suspicious, make a note of it in a spiral notebook. This routine maintenance program will prevent many plumbing headaches. And if anything does go wrong, don't be afraid to tackle it yourself. Remember: The only difference between you and an experienced master plumber is that he is an experienced master plumber, whereas you are not. Repairing broken pipes 1. Go down to the darkest corner of the basement and locate the valve that turns off all the water in the house. This will be the valve that is covered with slime and a spider web containing a spider and the crumbling bodies of dead insects. 2. Using a 3/4-inch drive socket wrench or a tire iron, prod the spider firmly until it scuttles off to some other area of the basement, muttering angrily. 3. Turn the valve handle clockwise until it breaks off in your hand like a damp pretzel, which is the signal that the water is off. 4. Locate the broken pipe and replace it with a new pipe in such a manner that it will not leak even when it has water going through it. 5. Have a plumber turn the water back on. This job is best left to a professional because [a] the handle is broken off and [b] the spider has returned with thousands of poisonous friends and relatives to defend the valve. Be sure to select a plumber who has a good reputation and life insurance and a flame thrower. How to build a hot tub Now that you've mastered several simple household tasks, let's move on to an advanced project. have you ever wondered what makes Californians so calm? Besides drugs, I mean. The answer is hot tubs. A hot tub is a redwood container filled with water that you sit in naked with members of the opposite sex, none of whom is necessarily your spouse. After a few hours in their hot tubs, Californians don't give a damn about earthquakes or mass murderers. They don't give a damn about anything , which is why they are able to produce "Laverne and Shirley" week after week. Here are the materials and tools you'll need: * Footers and headers * Many redwood slats * Water * A couple hundred gallons of Clorox * Penicillin * Shovel * Tub-making implements I suggest you locate your hot tub outside your house, so it won't do too much damage if it catches fire or explodes. First you decide which direction your hot tub should face for maximum solar energy. After much trial and error, I have found that the best direction for a hot tub to face is up. The next step is to dig the footers. I'm not really sure why hot tubs need footers, but I have yet to read a do-it-yourself article that didn't order the reader to dig a few footers, and I see no reason why I should be any more lenient than the other writers. Your footers should extend down to the "frost line", which is a line of frost that you'll come to if you dig deep enough. If you live in a normal state such as Ohio, you should find the frost line about 2 feet down. If you live in Florida, you'll have to dig 40 or 50 feet to find any frost ; if you live in Maine, you'll find your frost line 10 to 112 feet above the ground almost any time of the year. Once you've dug your footers, you should build some headers and several joists, taking care not to mortise the soffits. Now all you have to do is a get a large quantity of redwoods slats and put them together in such a a manner that they form a water tight tub, and you're all set to go...except that now you need some way to get water into the tub and heat it. Contrary to what a lot of so-called experts will tell you, you don't need fancy plumbing and filtering systems for your hot tub. All you need to do is fill it up with water from a garden house or with used dishwater. This approach is much cheaper, and the only drawback is that after a couple of days the water will teem with every known form of deadly mutant, disease-causing microorganism. So if you're a real health fanatic, you might want to test the tub before you use it by tossing in a cat or a neighbor's child. If neither of these is available, you might want to pour in a couple of hundred gallons of Clorox mixed with penicillin just to be on the safe side. -- Rich Kulawiec pucc-j!rsk or rsk@asc.purdue.edu