Comments on: The One Reason NOT to Do It Yourself https://www.energyvanguard.com/blog/the-one-reason-not-to-do-it-yourself/ Building science knowledge, HVAC design, & fun Mon, 01 Apr 2024 19:29:43 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.2 By: Bill Cowhig https://www.energyvanguard.com/blog/the-one-reason-not-to-do-it-yourself/#comment-38839 Mon, 01 Apr 2024 19:29:43 +0000 https://www.energyvanguard.com/?p=8917#comment-38839 Dale, I found your question unsettling, at first.

“So the question is, why do we do it??”

You really made me think, as I don’t remember ever asking myself that question. And, I think, deep down, I was scared of what the answer might be.

One thing I know, the answer has to be ever so personal. Why do we do anything? We more or less personally decide what we are going to do, moment by moment. They don’t yet put a gun to our heads and demand that we do something, so it is our choice and we can only blame ourselves if there is anything blameworthy done, any accidents had, and so forth.

In my case, I have long told myself that I was a “lifelong learner.” And, that seems to be true, as I have been in “school” almost all the way along. And I detest the feeling of my mind not being fully engaged in answering some new question. Then I remembered a line from a broadway play I attended many years ago “Fiddler on the Roof,” and that line went like this. . . “Life is what you do while you are waiting to die.” That made me not want to waste my time. Another nugget came from a working colleague “In 100 years, it won’t matter to anyone.” So, I could shirk off any idea that I might not be able to succeed because I fear I might screw it up. That just never happens to me, despite making my share of mistakes.

Those were just thoughts along the way toward finding my answer to your question.

Then, with those half-baked ideas in mind this morning, I opened and read an article. . .
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-efficiency/north-carolina-kills-effort-to-make-its-building-code-energy-efficient

After reading that, like a clap of thunder, it struck me what my answer is. I do love to learn new things, and I love even more when something I have learned turns out to have a longer term benefit in my life. That article I stumbled upon this morning reflected me back on why I came to love reading this blog by Allison Bailes, including his comment section. I love the way he writes. I love the subjects he writes about. I find each article he writes a nugget worth as much as gold. That means that his book is an absolute gold mine for people like myself.

So, my answer to your question is that I do things DIY because of how everything I have done DIY has taught me something new that effects my later life.

As an example, take that link above. As one of the “building codes” I was required to become conversant with to do my HVAC job was the ENERGY code. Once I read that code, I found that it made great sense, so much so that I was an immediate convert, and I began reading everything I could find that could help me eventually upgrade my 1997 home to be as good and energy efficient as the existing ENERGY code is, or better. Saving money is my connection with capitalism: there is income, and there is spending (outgo), so whenever I have the tools and the time to do a job we have to have done anyway, I am saving money. And as I upgrade my home to make it more energy efficient, I begin to multiply my savings.

You probably agree with me that every job you do DIY opens some new door, avenue, world, adding some new bit of knowledge to your acquired knowledge base (starting with Google, YouTube, whatever source). Sometimes I feel downright proud of something I did that I believe was better than what someone else might have done. Maybe that self-satisfying realization, that thing done, and having done it myself, when I add something more useful or more beautiful to my life, well that hits home. I know it doesn’t happen too often, but it does happen, right? It happened today when I read that article I gave the link for this morning.

You see, I live in North Carolina, the state about which that article applies, so it effects ME! And it effects me in a bad way, long term. Having done all this DIY stuff in the past prepared me to be able to read that article with understanding, and especially it made me capable of understanding its ramifications. I don’t need to ask anybody, and I don’t need to feel that the knowledge has passed me by. Moreover, I can use it in my everyday interactions with my fellow citizens. I can tell them what their government has done and point out why it’s a problem for them as well.

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By: Dale Dellario https://www.energyvanguard.com/blog/the-one-reason-not-to-do-it-yourself/#comment-38813 Sat, 30 Mar 2024 16:32:15 +0000 https://www.energyvanguard.com/?p=8917#comment-38813 When I first saw our house in May of 2019 it was just to take a look for fun. I remember walking up the front walk thinking “oh boy, now I am about to open a can of worms”. We moved in in November, and broke ground Spring of 2021 lifting the house to put a new basement under it as phase one. Phases two and three are remodeling the first and second floors of our Victorian. I am the owner builder contractor and worker and I am NOT sure I am saving money. If someone bids the work then they eat the inevitable time overage assuming no changes and it will almost certainly get done faster tho as folks previously have noted, probably not as well done. After three years the result is beautiful and at a cost of nearly what we paid for the house. Fortunately we got a good deal on the house but still! Most interestingly at age almost 74, I have learned so many skills I probably never will use again, examples, how to tie steel and set foundation forms, current plumbing, electrical, mechanical, and general residential codes. This is my third and most substantive remodel where I have been all trades. I will do but don’t like and usually hire out drywall, same with concrete placing and finishing. Luckily I have a guy who is as meticulous as I who works with me for $35/hour nearly full time. So, it’s all very satisfying, maybe not money saving, and, all useful skills that I probably will never use nor make any money from. I sometimes wish I had just started fresh with raw dirt. Did that once and it was satisfying too. So the question is, why do we do it??

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By: Bill Cowhig https://www.energyvanguard.com/blog/the-one-reason-not-to-do-it-yourself/#comment-38801 Fri, 29 Mar 2024 22:52:10 +0000 https://www.energyvanguard.com/?p=8917#comment-38801 The one reason not to DIY? Maybe I just flat missed it, but I read the article and all the comments.
I’ve been getting things done DIY ever since I first bought a house. For some reason, those projects seemed rather trivial, although I did waste a lot of gas going to and from Home Depot.

The disease began to get serious when I sent my 94 Celica out to get the clutch replaced and it came back without two of the three bolts that tie the engine to the passenger side motor mount, the ones that require the mechanic to go under to put the nuts back on. That fact was discovered after my wife barely struck a curb with the right front wheel, causing the motor to break free and drop maybe 3 inches. Since then I have not sent any of my vehicles out for maintenance or repair, for better or for worse. No one person is a superman.

The fact is, you are unlikely to get a completely proper job done on your vehicle by an automobile technician no matter where you take your car for service. The need to constantly raise profits has technicians all pushed into the corner where they must take shortcuts, do a less than proper jobs, tell a customer a job has been done when it hasn’t. It’s all very sad, but doing a job yourself can go a long way toward having jobs done properly, saving your vehicle for many more years of performance.

It was much later on when my wife and I took an HVAC course at the local community college, thinking ahead that our 1997 gas pack was nearing EOL. So, today we have a 3-Ton 18.5 SEER Bosch Heat Pump sitting proudly outside our house, quietly ramping up and down due to whatever its’ current heat load. I thought I was lucky when a City Inspector informed me that I could do that job my myself as a “Home Owner Acting as His/Her Own Contractor,” so long as I became conversant with about a half dozen building codes, including the NFPA 70 (Electrical Code). But, hey, my first degree was a BS in Electrical Engineering, so I thought, seriously, I can do that.

One might expect that the next thing I am going to say might be the “one reason not to DIY.” To accomplish that heat pump installation, I had to do a Manual J (heat load calculation) before I could select a machine that could handle the heat load of the house. To do the Manual J, I needed all the construction details for my house, so I asked the city for whatever was filed on the building permit used to build my house. Sorry, they said, they had to toss out those documents several years ago because file space was a problem.

That meant that I had to reverse engineer my house. It was not the end of the world, but I can tell you that you would not enjoy having to do that while thinking how easy it might have been if the original building plans had been retained. I used the (expensive for me) Wrightsoft HVAC design software for the Manual J (heat load), then the Manual S (equipment selection), and then the Manual D (duct design) to enter all the necessary data and select a machine I would be glad that I installed myself. Thank the support staff of Wrightsoft who put up with my unremitting stream of questions. Oh, and I found free sources of the building codes I needed to become “conversant with” on-line. So, what’s the problem?

The Problem? It took me the better part of THREE YEARS working almost full time to learn all that I had to learn in order to get that job done. But, that wasn’t the reason I would say it should not be done DIY. The reason it should not be done DIY is that HVAC equipment manufacturers have a system of distributors and contractors through which they have built up a profitable business model for themselves and those obtaining and installing their machines. And, to make that system work to the benefit of the professionals involved, most of the manufacturers decided not to deal with anybody desiring to buy and install one of their systems DIY. There are exceptions, but I would not personally want to DIY inferior equipment. As a result of my persistence (stubborness), I have an expensive, technologically advanced machine working fantastically, providing comfort to our home, but when it experiences a failure (as it eventually will), I am at the mercy of the on-line seller who (among very few like him) would sell me the machine I selected. Those 10-year warrantees, well the equipment has to be installed by a legitimate contractor in order for you to be worthy of that benefit. I just have the word of the on-line seller that he will help. Nothing in wrighting means nothing, legally.

Heck, when the City Mechanical Inspector dropped by to inspect my installation, he spent 15 minutes exclaiming in fine detail how good a job I had done, with this and with that, and how much better my installatioin looks than 95% of the contractor installed systems he has been called to inspect.

Yeah, all the cons mentioned in these comments about DIY jobs pale into non-problems when you have to deal with an industry that is dead set against you doing a job you want to do with their equipment DIY. However, I am living proof that it can be done. Like where there’s a will there’s a way?

To a somewhat lessor degree, automakers try to make it difficult for DIY people. As an example, say Toyota, since I have had a couple. They make about half their profit from selling Toyota OEM parts, which are quite expensive if you buy through a dealer, so if you want to work on your Tacoma DIY, and you want a certain part, you need to know the part number. so you can search for a cheaper OEM part supplier. Well, for Japanese cars, my secret is a place named PartSuq.com, located in Dubai (not the only one). On their website I can reference any Japanese made vehicle and find a catalog that contains all the parts explosion diagrams needed to push down and determine the part number of any part in my vehicle, selected by VIN, within minutes. When you are a DIY you will have to develop tricks like this to survive. The more you do, the more you learn, the better you get. And yes, sometimes you end up paying more.

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By: Robert Adams https://www.energyvanguard.com/blog/the-one-reason-not-to-do-it-yourself/#comment-38587 Sun, 24 Mar 2024 03:05:05 +0000 https://www.energyvanguard.com/?p=8917#comment-38587 In reply to Different Ben.

He would be even more surprised to learn that in a number of states that there are no permits or inspections when you are outside city limits. And then some places like parts of AZ flat out admit that permitting and inspections are just a revenue collection agency and allow you to pay a flat fee and opt out of the program. They get their $ and you get to build your structure.
But like mentioned the people in the US wouldn’t stand for not being able to do their own work. For one it would mean people living with everything broken since many wouldn’t be able to afford a tradesmen to come out for every little thing needed.

And when running Pex don’t worry about the reduced sizes of fittings on Pex B. The pipe still flows way way more than the restrictor in the faucet or showerhead will allow to flow through it. Also why on home run set plumbing you use 3/8 pex instead of 1/2. Cheaper easier to run still flows more than the faucet and the hot water gets there faster since there is less water in the pipe. Speaking of that if I ever do another kitchen in the next house…. It’s getting a commercial sink faucet. Filling anything with these low flow faucets takes a week.

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By: Stacy Long https://www.energyvanguard.com/blog/the-one-reason-not-to-do-it-yourself/#comment-38566 Sat, 23 Mar 2024 00:14:11 +0000 https://www.energyvanguard.com/?p=8917#comment-38566 In reply to Different Ben.

Water should fall in the direction of the local gravitational field unless there is a strong electric field nearby. That will mean towards the center of the Earth (an inward radial direction) which will still be perceived as down in Australia, even though its Cartesian coordinates will be opposite the down in the US (and approximately aligned with up in the US).
It would make sense to me if plumbing is more tightly regulated in Australia because small water leaks affect the larger population more readily in a desert climate.

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By: Different Ben https://www.energyvanguard.com/blog/the-one-reason-not-to-do-it-yourself/#comment-38546 Fri, 22 Mar 2024 17:56:56 +0000 https://www.energyvanguard.com/?p=8917#comment-38546 In reply to RoyC.

Drop Bears. Do unlicensed plumbing? Drop bears will find you.

I suspect they are speaking mainly from experience in urban areas. I know people from US cities/suburbs who also think this is how the US works. I can’t imagine that every remote ranch/estate in a huge country is calling a plumber from hours away each time some minor work is needed.

It’s less of a problem anyways, when plumbing leaks there the water (I assume) falls UP.

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By: RoyC https://www.energyvanguard.com/blog/the-one-reason-not-to-do-it-yourself/#comment-38515 Thu, 21 Mar 2024 19:35:45 +0000 https://www.energyvanguard.com/?p=8917#comment-38515 In reply to Ben.

Ben: Does Australia have have a way to keep one from working on their own plumbing?

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By: Ben https://www.energyvanguard.com/blog/the-one-reason-not-to-do-it-yourself/#comment-38482 Wed, 20 Mar 2024 22:17:29 +0000 https://www.energyvanguard.com/?p=8917#comment-38482 I find all of this DIY work in the USA quite fascinating. None of the plumbing work you did, Allison, can be completed in Australia by anyone other than a licensed plumber!

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By: Robert Adams https://www.energyvanguard.com/blog/the-one-reason-not-to-do-it-yourself/#comment-38480 Wed, 20 Mar 2024 20:58:54 +0000 https://www.energyvanguard.com/?p=8917#comment-38480 I have worked in every field imaginable from ASE master tech to commercial refrigeration/electrician and many other fields and all this stuff is just easy for me. However I’m also the type that does my research on the minutia of certain things to find best practices if it’s something I want to do better than a so called Pro would. I tend to absorb technical information and I am always the one that everyone asks for information as well. But often people are intimidated by someone that knows far more than they do.
The problem is when I look at things I sometimes assume that people are more capable than they really are because I am always reminded on YouTube just how little many people know about doing things and I often wonder what was going on in their mind when they were doing something.

When it comes to hiring a *Pro*.. Remember that the only thing being a PRO means is that you are paid to do the work. In my experience it’s uncommon to find someone that is good in their field and actually tries to improve their knowledge and quality of work.

I would encourage people to talk to others they know that have knowledge in whatever field it is but don’t badger them. I don’t mind asking a few questions but I have done way too much help and even onsite helping friends etc and no none of them really see the value in your time and they have no desire to ever return the favor or do anything to compensate you for your time or labor. That said I still help but not anywhere to the extent that I used to. Only one person over the years has ever returned the favor.
I do have a tiny channel over on YT that I share help on old car restorations and other little things. There is very little payback but the better half said hey you should film that stuff and put it up… I’m not that entertaining (I’m boring) and the production quality isn’t great etc but I put out useful information. That said there is allot of bad info out there on all platforms on everything.

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By: Allison Bailes https://www.energyvanguard.com/blog/the-one-reason-not-to-do-it-yourself/#comment-38478 Wed, 20 Mar 2024 18:39:43 +0000 https://www.energyvanguard.com/?p=8917#comment-38478 In reply to RoyC.

RoyC: I have a similar problem. I’m particular about how things get done, so after a contractor leaves I always find things that I wish they had done differently. For example, the pipe for the sump pump goes up and out through a crawl space vent, but they put it closer to the wall than I wanted. Or a cabinet installer will put a piece of trim in the opposite way I would have. Or…

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