Home Improvement

Lejina_sl said:

Id wrap a towel around the stick and fasten whatever you got with zip-ties. The towel is so the paint doesn't get mangled if your kid decide to go crazy convict and give the entire thing a good shake.

If it doesn't feel solid, use more zip-ties.

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The problem is that gates are usually pressure fitted (spring loaded) against two walls. You cannot just use zip ties on the banister side, because nothing is holding the gate to the wall at that point, because no pressure is being applied to the wall side.

They do have gates that are more permanently applied to the wall that swing open with hinges. So thats an option. Sort of like this...Wall to Banister Signature Gate (Mocha) THE STAIR BARRIERT

I recommend just keeping the kid out of the room with the stairs entirely. Back when we had young ones, we corralled them both to our living room, gated at every entrance.

But I had a kid fall down the stairs one day. Probably the scariest shit I ever witnessed as a parent. I was downstairs in the basement doing some shit, and not sure how, either the gate at the top failed or wasnt put on properly but I just remember the kid rolling down the stairs. It happened so quick that I did not have any time to react. I just stood there in shock seeing my kid roll down. Thank god there was a thick carpet piece at the bottom of stairs, he hit his head on the concrete but it was not too bad. He had a huge lump for a few days. we had him checked out and everything was cool.

lurkingdirk_sl said:

Where? Where it meets the sink, where the dishwasher joins, or where it exits to the sewage line?

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Seems to leaking out of the very bottom, not around any connections.

The receptacle in our laundry room went out, or so I thought. Washer and dryer would turn off mid-cycle sometimes and the other day nothing. Tried to see if the GFCI had tripped or the breaker in the panel, but nothing. Picked up a replacement receptacle and swapped out the old one. Washer started up but turned off again maybe 20 minutes into the wash cycle. Again, nothing seems tripped, no smoke, smell, or anything else.

To make sure it isn't the washer or dryer I tried an extension cord from a plug in the hallway maybe 8 ft away (line of sight) and both run fine.

Ideas?

The"Runs fine for 20m"part worries me. Sounds like that circuit is holding a load long enough that the constant current might be heating something up and then a connection is going bad. Then once it cools, you have a connection again. If something was tripping it might be easier to troubleshoot the circuit. Personally, first I would trace your circuit out, and I would try to see if the hallways plug is on the same circuit (newer homes it won't be, but you never know depending on the electricians or house age). If it is on the same circuit, then you can probably eliminate there being a problem in the panel. If it isn't on the same circuit, I'd then wonder if your circuit feeds only that laundry room (newer code) or if it's tied to other stuff. If it is tied to other receptacles, you could get the cord back out and try running off those - sometimes you can isolate a fault that way.

I imagine I would end up looking at your breaker (busbar tabs and wire terminal) and then every single connection made in that circuit inside junction boxes. I cannot tell you how many times I've pulled receptacles out and seen problems that you can't see otherwise. The push-in connections are a common issue, as are bad splices (sometime you'll have one wire in a wirenut not actually IN the inner coil, but the twist of the wire is keeping it 'kinda' secure).

If it isn't a connection/splice somewhere (or that duplex receptacle is on a dedicated circuit) and everything else looks fine, I'd think about swapping breakers. So, if that's a 20A, find another 20A circuit/breaker and just land Circuit A on Breaker B and Circuit B on Breaker A. If that holds, then there is something wrong with the breaker.

An intermittent problem like that can be a real PITA for electricians to find w/o having to keep waiting for 20m. I guess that's why I would first trace the circuit out and then go looking at connections, instead of trying to isolate the breaker or trying to split a circuit into parts to test. A dead short is easy by comparison. Since you're the homeowner though, you can try things like swapping the breaker out first and waiting 20m w/o having to worry about doing that as an electrician. I'd hate to come to someone's house, swap the breaker, wait 20m and then find out that the breaker isn't even the problem, LOL.

Knowing Noodle, he might actually try doing that