Home Depot: a local German guy went to home depot for lumber. He got two carts and started sorting 2x4s. When he finally got what he needed, one of the home depot guys offered to help him push that 2nd cart to the front. The guy said I'm only getting these... those aren't worth buying. Home depot employee was angry and said he'd have to put them back on the rack.

This may seem silly, but I'm hanging fascia boards on the rafter tails of my pole barn roof and can't reach both ends of a 10ft span from the man basket. So I had this idea... use a 1x2 scrap as a hinged hanger for one end of the face board. Now I can drive the man lift 10ft to the right and work on the other end of the face board. By using one screw in the rafter tail like this, i now have a hinge joint that allows me to make fine adjustments on the board left and right before screwing it in.

Well yet another day the power company will ding you for using power. Although they don't spell it out in this email, the price of electric will be 3x the normal price during this time.

"Duke Energy Solar Choice Rate Alert. Tomorrow, Aug. 20, 2026, is a critical peak-pricing day. Be sure to limit energy use during the on-peak hours of 5 p.m. - 8 p.m. (adjusted by one hour)."

I won't even sell them power then, I'll just throw the main breaker at 5pm

Venting a 2nd story toilet. Very similar concept to venting an island kitchen sink with a "chicago loop".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcE6lsOkhzA

McMansions seem to take the roof and pull it upward. Instead of a 6:12 pitch, they usualy have a 10:12 or 12:12 roof just to make the house look bigger... but it's wasted roof space. Also, you end up with HVAC ductwork running thru the attic. It's much better to run HVAC ducts inside a basement or a crawlspace. Imagine your ductwork in a 120F or 130F attic pumped cool air.... that air in the duct is going to condensate if any of the duct is exposed and also the air getting to your vents is not going to be as cold as when it left the air handler.

In our previous house, we had a Finished Room Over Garage that we often didn't use. So the HVAC system had a damper on the duct going to the FROG. The problem with this was that the return air was *always* pulled from the hot FROG. This meant that probably 25% of the air returning to the air handler in our attic was air from a hot space. So when it was time to replace that HVAC system, I had them install an additional damper on the return air from the FROG. it ran off the same 24v power supply, but it meant that both the supply and return air was shut off when the FROG was not in use.

Another issue with the original HVAC system in that house was that it had a one speed fan in the air handler. There was a bypass duct on the output of the air handler that recirced air back to the return of the air handler if the air pressure was too high. This damper was a gravity operated vane with a weight on a penduulum. And it would get corroded from condensation on it and stick open or shut. I had to lubricate it each year when the air pressure was so high the vents would whistle.

So the solution with our new HVAC system was that it had a variable speed fan that actually measured the pressure in the ductwork instead of this unreliable bypass/recirc system.