Will the lights stay on this winter?

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

Pat J,

You are my kind of guy, I often aspire to many of the things you do, my daughters are always accusing me of being a hoarder and I tackle most jobs like you do, plumbing, electrics and in my younger days bricklaying, carpentry and plastering, must admit I hated the plastering only did it of necessity to save money. Dave W

[PatJParticipant @patj87806]

I have always liked to build/make my own stuff, even as a kid.

I could never play sports, and was the one they always told "go play somewhere by yourself while we play this baseball game".

If you can't play sports, then that sort of leaves a few other things to do, and so I passed the time by making things.

I do my almost all of my own home repairs because many of the local contractors are rip-off artists, and they assume that you don't know enough about what they are saying to object.

One HVAC guy many years ago charged me $350.00 for a "new relay".

I opened the air handling unit, and the old relay was missing.

I called him and asked if he had installed a new relay, and he assured me on a stack of bibles that he had.

I said "Then why is there no relay in the unit". He was a bit shocked, and finally said "Well the cost of the trip out makes it the same amount, and you really don't need a time-delay relay".  The unit is less efficient without the fan-off delay.

Diddo on auto repairs that are not done by a reputable dealer.

I took my car in to get two new tires on the front, and came back later to pick it up, and they handed me a bill for several thousand dollars of unnecessary engine work. They assumed I knew nothing about auto engines, but I use to help a buddy of mine rebuild his racing engines, and I knew everything about an auto engine.

It is a bluff game, and if you are dumb enough to sign the form, then they do thousands of dollars of unnecessary work. That was my first and last visit to that rip-off shop.  Needless to say I only paid for two tires, and they were very lucky that they did not do the engine work without getting my authorization first, else they would have done that for free.

I don't like people BS'ing me about stuff. It makes my blood boil, and it is an expensive scam too.

The general public gets scammed all the time around here. I guess it is a worldwide thing.

And all too often, a contractor will do a shoddy job, which also bothers me greatly, and he will assume that I don't know any better. I end up having to redo half of their work.

So I learned early on to just do it my self, and do it right the first time.

Knowledge is power as they say, and knowledge is also money.

As the US and UK lose their technological edge to other countries, the last thing in the world I want to do is give up any technical knowhow.

I basically want to know how to do anything and everything.

.

Edited By PatJ on 30/07/2022 04:21:44

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

It's all by design.

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

I would like to see all the "charges" itemised seperately on a bill, ALL of them, no exceptions

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