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Ohio Supreme Court Drawn Into Magnetic Homes Case
The Ohio Supreme Court will decide if a builder will have to replace magnetized parts of two couples' homes, even though they signed a limited warranty which did not specifically cover replacing positively- or negatively-charged building materials. After moving into the homes the couples found that something was not quite right. Their TV screens were distorted. Cordless phones ran into interference. Computer hard drives were corrupted. Soon after, it was discovered that steel joists in the homes had become magnetized."
Just rent a large degaussing coil.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
... just how strong the magnetic field is, for it to affect the hard drive of a computer at any likely distance. It seems like metal objects would be flying through the air and sticking to the floor. Also, I have to wonder how a static magnetic field would affect most phones. Seems there would have to be an alternating field of some sort to do so. Finally, any links to the 'numbers' (field strength, gauss, whatever the proper term is)?
V for Vendetta: People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.
"After moving into the homes the couples found that something was not quite right. Their TV screens were distorted. Cordless phones ran into interference. Computer hard drives were corrupted." And, their tinfoil hats were stuck to the ceiling.
maybe they're just on THE island.
I'm not certain that the company *should* win. But should and will are two different beasts.
According to TFA "By signing the contracts, the buyers agreed to waive claims for repairs except those specifically mentioned in a separate document, which was available for inspection at a separate location and not before or at the time they bought the houses." The main point is that the restrictions were not available for review where the contract was being provided and signed. Hiding the restrictions on a contract prior to its acceptance? Smells really funky to me, and were I in their shoes, I wouldn't have signed it in the first place.
When I have signed contracts to purchase things, I have had to sign waivers limiting liability. Those waivers certainly covered reasonable expectations and disclaimed certain possible defects. This is a terrible problem for both sides, because it is just completely unexpected. I have never before heard of a steel beam's magnetization causing such difficulty. TFA is pretty slim on the real effects they are experiencing. I wonder if this is just one of those pseudo-scientific problems (magnetism = evil?) or if it is a real problem, or if it's just my reading comprehension. It would be interesting to see what the field measurements actually looked like. You'd need a very strong magnet to affect a TV from any significant distance.
At least with smaller pieces of metal you can whack them a few times to re-randomize the magnetic domains. I don't know if that actually works for something large enough to support a building (you might have to hit it hard enough to damage it or the structure it supports). Depending on the alignment of the magnetic field it might be possible to form an electromagnet to cancel its field ("degauss" it). Or the structural members can be replaced and removed (I've done this in my house). Most of these options are pretty expensive (except for the first one where you hit it a lot with a hammer).
It seems unfair for me, as a homebuyer, to get stuck dealing with a house which was built with nonstandard components (in the form of a magnetic structural support). From the builder's perspective it seems like this would be something that they would have to eat and then go after the material seller for their losses, if they can prove when the magnetization occurred.
Just my $0.55 (US inflation, 1774-2008, for $0.02)
...get what you pay for.
When homebuyers decide to get a house within their budget instead of stretching for extra rooms by going cheap on construction, they'll get better quality. Building a 2000 sq ft house on a 1500 sq ft budget means, necessarily, cutting some corners. If you don't realize that, you either aren't paying attention or you are deluding yourself.
The quality on some of these new houses is really atrocious. I've seen cabinets fall apart after 10-12 years, decks rotting after 15, drywall that won't even hold a painting. I saw a dishwasher held to a cabinet by a pair of wood screws.
Have you ever tried to kill a harddrive with a magnet? It basically requires passing a rare earth magnet closely over the platters several times before the data is reliably damaged and if they had that kind of magnetic fields it would cause much bigger problems. And while I don't know to much about the properties EM radiation, I believe that magnetic fields don't interfere with radio waves.
My guess is that its the steel beams themselves are causing interference with the phones, that they incidentally had hdd failures (they have lived there for like 6 years), and the the steel beams have slight magnetic field because a small amount of current is passing through them (electricians like to ground to steel beams instead of running a ground line back to power box and putting to ground their) and they blame that weak magnetic field for their problems.
This is all purely speculation because they don't give any real details about the field.
If its just a couple of beams, it can be degaussed using a arc-welded and a few wraps of the arc-welds cables around the beam. There is a more to the procedure but the tools are easy to obtain. Did this in the Navy, wrap a submarine in about 300 turns of cable and run a few thousand amps through them.
"But Centex’s attorney, Michael Long, urged justices to trust the free market."
That "free market" shit works on a macro scale. If thousands of people were affected by this, and Centex were already going out of business because they were returning their homes for a refund, then it might be a reasonable argument. But when a couple of people are screwed by the company, they do not have enough "free market" power to make Centex change a damned thing.
Fuck Centex, and fuck their lawyer. Find for the plaintiffs and triple the damages. That's muh rulin'.
Modern TVs aren't influenced by magnetic fields anymore. Static magnetic fields don't cause cell phone interference. And hard drives have such high magnetization that erasing them is extremely hard.
Why home buyers figure out that a brand new home in a band new subdivision is nothing but a great big PITA for the next 20 years. Get a nice old home if it's been standing for 100 years it's probably going to continue to do so if make sure the roof gutters and siding are in good order.
No sir I dont like it.
The people who claim they are affected are just mixing things that, to their uneducated minds, are the same thing. Static magneticity, radio waves, same difference, right?
It reads like a bunch of BS. Do they still have CRTs in their TVs? In typical 2-story U.S. homes, there's structural steel in a few isolated places -- a beam or two in the basement, perhaps another beam and a column in the garage. That would, at best, cause some changes in color. It'd need to be substantial to cause geometric distortion of the image itself. You can have typical home speakers a few feet away from a color CRT and there's no effect. That structural steel would need to be magnetized quite well to see the effects they claim.
Hard drives won't be affected by any remnant magnetization of structural steel that's a byproduct of production, shipping and storage in varied conditions. Same goes for wireless devices -- static fields do nothing much to them. I'll read their case and perhaps pay them a visit, I need to see it to believe it.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I agree, mostly cause I watched the neighborhood next to the one I lived in growing up.
Our houses were made in the 50's, not really old for houses, but the sardine can developer projects on the other side of the hill were made in the early 90's, my parents house with reasonable but not insane maintenance is in great shape. 5 years after the developer cram houses were made the metal door jams were buckling and rusting, and the crappy nylon siding was cracking. now you go there and all the houses have some major foundation issues for anyone buying (though not major if its not a new investment) bricks are loose enough to just yank off the houses and most of the plastic frame windows have gaps big enough to stick your fingers in.
Its not that "they just dont make them like they used to", its that "they make them as cheap as possible to maximize profit and run the hell out of town" and that is sad considering the outlandish price they ask.
we are looking at houses, some are awesome, some are real beaters that need some love, none are built post 1980.
As a long time City Planner, I'm surprised that the their attorney did not bring up the "implied warranty of habitability" that is a standard among housing disputes. The clause, included in most building codes, mortgages and fair housing laws has a broad meaning but insures that any housing sold and or rented is habitable. Making a case that the house is NOT habitable with the "magnetic" defects may require some digging around. But if a homeowner CANNOT enjoy the creature comforts of their home,(like TV or the internet) that is enjoyed by others due, whole or in part, to construction defects or errors, they may have a case. ADD the fact that the magnetic interference may interrupt or cause to behave erratically any medical devices, then you have an extra "clear and present danger" to the habitability of their house.
Due diligence, like inspecting the list of defects covered, may not be probative in this case, if their attorney can prove that this condition happened in a prior building and was not specifically mentioned as a possible defect.
The only time I've seen steel beams in a home is just a single beam
to replace the centre wood beam. It's a significant expanse, but you
get a basement without support posts, etc. Homes (as far as I know)
are stick-framed, not sky scrapers. This whole thing sounds shady...
The easiest way to get rid of magnetism is with flame so just burn the house down.
I've got a bulk tape eraser. Which is an electro-magnet. Tried to erase a few laptop and 3.5 hdds with it. I could pick the drives up by it holding onto the scant bits of ferrous metal in them but was unable to blank any of them. I tried one drive for 3 minutes and it still booted an OS just fine. If they had beams that could corrupt their drives their keys, belts, zippers, furniture and every damn thing in the house with metal would be stuck to that wall before that drive got nailed. It's just normal lifetime use/failure of the drive.
Or are you just happy to see me?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
why would someone buy a 20yo house instead of a 100yo house? Hmm...lets think on that a sec... Well, off the top of my head, how about the dramatically increased knowledge about, and regulations then concerning, electrical wiring during that time period? How about the dramatically different levels of insulation the houses would likely have? Because while an old house may be quaint, nothing sucks like paying high heating bills in the winter as your heat just runs straight out the walls, cracks, and single-pane windows - and then the cool does the same during the summer (oh wait, cooling? you likely don't have that, or it was cobbled on after-the-fact in a very ugly and inefficient way). Constantly chasing problems with your electronics because not only is the wiring faulty/flaky/without grounding/likely polarity swapped all over is AWESOME, let me tell you. Not having phone wiring in your house is ok these days, because hell - who has landlines anymore anyway. But it would be nice to have cable runs, which yeah - I guess you could run wires along the floor or something. Sounds great. I mean damn, the old house I owned was built in the 50s, and even it drove me nuts with the cloth-covered non-grounded wiring. Fragile crap I couldn't touch else it would crumble - ended up just throwing up my hands and replacing about 80% of the wiring in the house. And we didn't have an AC, because you know - people in that area just didn't have them in the 50s. But even if we did, it would have been too expensive to run - I took an infrared camera to it one winter and heat came from...everywhere. There wasn't some particular this or that I could improve, it was just...pouring out everywhere. Everyone I've known with an old house has the same problems. You really think that's somehow better? Really?
By signing the contracts, the buyers agreed to waive claims for repairs except those specifically mentioned in a separate document, which was available for inspection at a separate location and not before or at the time they bought the houses.
I'm amazed that the courts would uphold part of a contract that... isn't part of the contract. That 'separate document' could be literally anything. Show up the day before signing the contract and see one 'separate document'. Show up with a warranty claim after the sale and see a different document. How would you be able to prove that the document is different if it isn't part of the contract, and you don't have your own copy of it???
The state supreme court will only decide whether the case can proceed despite the waiver attached to the purchase agreement. The question of magnetization and its effects (if any) will be decided by a jury if the case goes to trial.
BTW "magnetized" is not the same as "charged".
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Trouble is that most people are clueless to what they're getting, so you can pay a fair price for a 2000 sq ft house and still get crap, except you've spent more. To take a beloved group of workers here on slashdot, is the consultant with the highest price tag the best? And for what it's worth, the amount of hidden problems people take over when they buy old houses is usually larger, not smaller. Sellers will often sell at convienient times, kniwing things will break down very soon but not just yet.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
5 years after the developer cram houses were made the metal door jams were buckling and rusting, and the crappy nylon siding was cracking.
Well, these new house developments definitely cut corners, sure, but five years for all that? Seems like you can sue the builders and have them fix it. I just bought a house from one of the sardine-can home builders and my contract includes a ten-year warranty for any structural defects.
I mean, I got a mortgage, and I can't imagine the bank giving me a loan with collateral that could rot away like that. I'm pretty sure that if the builders want to sell to people who will get loans, they need to offer such warranties.
You really think the editors are idiots? You really think they don't know the difference between a ferromagnet and a charged object? When are you folks going to figure out that slashdot uses a tried and true formulaic mix of stories designed to maximize readership, which includes the Hilariously Stupid Story of the Week?
No kidding. My dad has been remodeling his house and in the process discovered the rather astonishing electrical circuits involved. One of which circles the entire house. And seemingly random splicings that could have burned the house down years ago.
Not to mention things like the chimney lacking reinforcing in case of earthquakes.
positive or negatively charged building materials.
Submitter fails Physics. Magnetized materials don't have to be electrically charged (and usually aren't).
After moving into the homes the couples found that something was not quite right. Their TV screens were distorted. Cordless phones ran into interference. Computer hard drives were corrupted. Soon after it was discovered that steel joists in the homes had become magnetized."
Everyone mentioned in the article fails Physics, too. Hard drives have very strong magnets inside them, however distance and shielding prevent platters from being affected by those. Floppies and tapes can be damaged by magnets, not hard drives. Magnetic field can only affect electronics by magnetizing cores of coils to saturation or distorting images in CRTs. While old TVs (CRT) and radios (antenna coils' core? I guess, magnetizing it to saturation can render it ineffective) may have this problem, phones and modern TVs don't have CRTs and coils in circuits tuned to low enough frequency to be affected.
Maybe they are all Juggalos?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I didn't say buy and old house and leave it as it is. The price of the house plus a full interior remodel can be similar to building new. I live in a 109 year old house, first thing I did was replace the electrical with a two story house with open attic and basement it's pretty straight forward. Had electrical well above code in a weekend on a 3k square foot home. Cat 6, rg6 and speaker wiring in another couple weekends nearly up to full structured wiring specs (speakers were matched length straight runs). Hell I had fiber out the the garage in another weekend and a ditch witch rental. Figure a thousand in wire etc (those new ground fault bits are expensive).
No sir I dont like it.
Slashdot summary does not agree with the original article, which says the Supreme Court will only decide whether the couple has the right to sue (a matter of law). Only later might the question move to whether magnetized joists have caused any trouble, a matter of fact.
If the joists were as magnetic enough to do what they claim, I would hesitate to walk through the house with steel toed boots. One could lose a foot that way.
The game.
Would be interesting to see some of the proof though, cutlery sticking to walls?
most dishwashers mount by 2 wood screws.
Hard to sue the builders when it's a corp formed just to build the one development then closed down there are no assets. Things have gotten better with them requiring an insurance company to cover that warranty.
No sir I dont like it.
sounds suspect to me but I would not be surprised to hear they won their case given the populations understanding of this stuff.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I was selling an old CRT (when they were worth something) and I put it on the floor beside my computer. When the guy came in to see it the whole image was screwed. After the guy left I picked up my monitor and it un-distorted. The beam in the floor had somehow become a compass spinning monster. But beyond messing with classified ad sales I don't know what other negative impact it might have had.
Use a gigantic degaussing ring, similar to what they used on old CRT television tubes.
Even if the warranty they signed had covered "replacing positive or negatively charged building materials" I'm not sure how that would help them. What kind of charge are we looking at? Electric charge? Ground it. There is no "magnetic charge" out there. Or, rather, modern science has yet to observe such a thing.
Sounds more like a ground loop or hum modulation in the common electrical system... ground potential differences somewhere?
I've very recently brought a very cheap ex council house built in 1938 - the wiring has been completely redone in 2007 and is to specs laid out in that year, the gas system & boiler (furnace) is up to 2004 regs, it has double glazing throughout, loft insulation, TRVs, energy saving bulbs, etc etc. In the UK, you must have an energy performance certificate when selling houses - the house is rated between A to F in terms of energy efficiency. The house got band C which is impressive for its age. The surveyor report rated the house as in "excellent" condition although it does need some superficial redecoration in all rooms.
I have never seen a case more in need of an expert witness than this one.
You'd need to have a superconducting magnet like one in an MRI machine to get effects like they're talking about. Steel, by itself, cannot sustain field strengths that high. Claim is total nonsense.
replace the electrical with a two story house with open attic and basement
For my next trick, I'll replace the water lines so I have hot and cold running skyscrapers!
A huge number of buildings have been built using steel or iron, there has been over a century of constant construction all over the world. Amazing that these people are the first to experience a problem with magnetic fields!
The interior construction of most commercial buildings is drywall over steel studs. Low-rise Business Park type buildings have steel truss roofing and interior floors.
Maybe that's why MS, Oracle, IBM, Morgan Stanley and all those mom & pop shops in the business parks are hosed up - all their electronics are under attack by the building's magnetic fields!
The general contractor is personally liable. The individual contractors are also personally liable for their respective trades. Why do you think so many GCs declared bankruptcy after the "Chinese drywall" issues came to light?
Christ, where's Richard Feynman when you need him? Having him as an expert witness in this case I am sure a small chuckle would be all that's needed for the judges to throw the case out.
Low carbon steel is needed to retain or channel magnetic flux in any appreciable amount. And low-carbon steel is exactly the opposite of what you want for structural steel, where carbon is desired because of the strength it lends. I'd want the steel replaced because it's lousy steel, not because it's magnetized...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Most dishwashers are held in place with exactly two screws. Wood screws are nicer than typical - most of the time I see drywall screws.
Otherwise you're absolutely right, you get exactly what you pay for. If you don't know enough to assess the property on your own, or you don't pay a qualified inspector (and even more rare - an honest and knowledgeable one) to tell you about the house and heed his warnings, you're stupid. Quality of materials and workmanship is not that hard to inspect by eye.
Just my $0.55 (US inflation, 1774-2008, for $0.02)
Why do you suppose the court was attracted to this case? It seems like it could be very polarizing.
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
look into the homeowners financials, i bet anyone $100 that these people cannot afford their payments and are trying to use ignorant courts to defraud the builders.
nothing in this case makes sense
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
no. Replacing all the wiring, plumbing and insulation in the house - plus retro-fitting cooling ducts in without it looking horrible - is *not* a minor thing that keeps an old house cheaper than a new house. Unless you're doing it completely yourself, and you have months (and the skill...) to do it, you will be spending far more to do all that than it would cost to just get a new house. If you have the time to completely gut and remodel your entire house, then great, but most of us don't.
Fucking magnets, how do they work?
The banks have no clue what the collateral is. They send an appraiser who does a joke of an appraisal and that's it. The residential mortgage underwriting system in the U.S. is fundamentally broken.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Dangerous electrical wiring has been replaced in most places (the ones where the leads run uninsulated in the spaces in the walls divided by the wooden beams). Insulation is likewise easily fixed either on the exterior or the interior. It's also been noticed lately that new, fully insulated houses might be worse for your health than those with "holes in the wall". The air gets stagnant and mold develops much easier in these super insulated houses. I just replaced ALL my windows with double pane, LoE3 glass for ~$5000 done by a professional and that alone helps a lot. The siding has insulation and the attic has been finished so all of that (floor and rafters) has insulation. Sure there is still heat pouring out here and there but it's not too bad and as I said, keeps the air from getting stagnant.
Also, most wiring issues (disconnected ground, polarity reversal) can easily be fixed usually at the socket that's misbehaving. Grounding shouldn't be an issue if the wiring has been done since the mid-60s but for really old houses you just need to re-run electricity (a $2000-$5000 job for a professional).
Extra cable and CAT5 runs (installed it last summer) behind my siding to the basement to every room. It's invisible, you just need a drill. I installed a 220V line to get a AC unit and it cools the whole house. I could've gotten it with the heating system (if you use forced air, uses the same ducts). AC is not really necessary in a lot of places, you just need to circulate air and that helps a lot, you could use the basement as a heat sink as well.
Get an inspector before you buy though, it'll cost you $100-200 but they can point out a lot of potential issues. My house had a CO leaking heater furnace (the heating elements were rusted through) something you can't see with the naked eye.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Is Slashdot suggesting that it isn't normal for pocket change to stick to the ceiling?
By an electromagnetic poltergeist.
Pretty creepy.
I can't get to the text of TFA, and I can't find the names of either the plaintiff or the defendant. Without that, it's too difficult to track down the case and related documentation.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Obviously they don't have a "magnetic beam" problem. They might have some electrical wiring problem. Those are easy to find.
Only once have I seen a real "magnet problem". I was trying to get a flux-gate compass to work in a mobile robot at Stanford, and was getting bogus results. So I got an ordinary needle compass, and observed that it didn't point north. I walked around with the compass plotting directions, and the center of the problem was a small building about a block away. When I went into the building, I saw "High Magnetic Field" warning signs, and found out there was a superconducting magnet in there. A big one. Even there, it was only one gauss just outside the lab.
Why home buyers figure out that a brand new home in a band new subdivision is nothing but a great big PITA for the next 20 years. Get a nice old home if it's been standing for 100 years it's probably going to continue to do so if make sure the roof gutters and siding are in good order.
Any house requires regular maintenance. Some of the problems the new homes have involve how the house settles. This can cause basement leaks, cracked paint/drywall, and all sorts of random problems. However, unless you made a terrible deal, most of these things are probably covered by some kind of warranty if the house is "new" enough. Build quality differs from house to house but I've never heard of someone who's owned a house for at least 5 years and has never had a single problem with it, no matter how old it was.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
Anybody who has worked with soft iron/steel - like railroad rails - learns from experience that the earth's magnetic field slowly magnetizes the iron/steel. It happens faster when there are shocks, as a train passing over the rail.
Didn't anyone anymore do the demonstration in elementary school where one hammers on a soft iron rod and sees how it becomes magnetized?
"By signing the contracts, the buyers agreed to waive claims for repairs except those specifically mentioned in a separate document, which was available for inspection at a separate location and not before or at the time they bought the houses."
It was on display on the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.'"
I've seen color CRTs get screwed up by lightning-induced magnetic fields. A direct hit to a lightning rod can draw thousands of amps of current for a millisecond or so. That induces a potent short-lived magnetic field that can magnetize nearby objects.
Tell the to put on their tin foil hats on and forget about it. Hard drive being erased? check your local trojan. phone/tv interference, check for a local radio station. I bet they have a 100KW station in their back yard.
magnetic beams, right! and they are made from unobtainium.
Really depends on how bad the old house is, and how much the new houses cost. In my area, a decent old house could save some money. But like you said, time and energy (as in doing the work) are also expenses.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Depends. My 100 (ok, I exaggerate. It's 99) year old house has, um a 175A panel and all modern wiring. Cost me $6k, took an electrician about a week, done just before we moved in (we'd expected it, and it means our insurance rate is low, too). It's got blown in insulation, done before I bought it, but essentially the same as my neighbor's 10yo house. And single-pane windows aren't that much worse than double on an old house. Unlike a modern house, they are generally inset about 4 inches. This isn't just aesthetic - there's a boundary layer that gets trapped, even in high winds, which is not the case with modern flush windows. Yeah, that's what those "cute" sills and frames are for - they're actually functional. More heat is lost to convection than to radiation, so don't put too much stock in your infrared pix. People weren't stupid 100 years ago, or even 1000 years ago. Oh, and cooling? Hah. Don't need aircon. Double-hung windows have a purpose, again it's not just aesthetics. Open both top and bottom, and the hot air goes out the top, sucking cool air in the bottom. You won't get better than outside ambient air temp, but that's usually adequate in the Pacific NW. And you get a constant air recirc and breeze,*even in a room with only the window open. Bliss. And I could go on about the gallery design of such houses.
Unlike my neighbor (10yo house again), I don't have mold growing on the drywall in my basement, the foundation's quite done settling, and my 1953 GE gas furnace, while not as efficient as his THIRD furnace, is definitely more reliable. With a programmable thermostat, my costs are low. I did have to replace a thermocouple once ($25). But I'm pretty sure, if you include the various replacements/tinkering he's had to do, it's WAY cheaper to run, even if it uses more gas.
Downsides: plaster walls. Hate em. Hard to put holes in. Hard to fix. Though they kill sound better than drywall. Erm, that's about it. I definitely spend less time and effort on repairs than my neighbors. But the, say, $10k and 2 weeks I paid/took to bring it up to code was much less than the price differential between it and a new house.
As an aside, most (not all) houses build during and after WWII, say to 1955 or so, suck really bad. The build quality and materials are significantly inferior to early 1900's houses, or to modern houses. They do tend to be leaky, drafty, and have all sorts of terrible engineering (flush, metal pane windows, leaky cripple walls, etc).
A witty saying is worth nothing - Voltaire
They need to hire an electrician to fix their wiring.
Seriously,
The Island is causing it.
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The dishwasher is just an appliance, not a structural item. How many screws hold the washing machine, clothes drier, fridge, or tank water heater in place?
The two screws are just there to keep the thing from tipping forward annoyingly when the racks are all the way out. They're perfectly adequate for this role (actually, one screw in the right spot would be adequate -- three points define a plane...).
I've seen children swing from cabinet doors, teenagers slam them with wild abandon, and homeowners who don't know how to tighten a screw when things get wonky with time. I've seen top dollar decks rot from general lack of maintenance. And I've seen folks who are unqualified to hang anything on any wall, because the first thing they do is reach for a hammer and a nail, and when that doesn't work, they find a bigger hammer.
My house has some drywall that is 50 or 60 years old, just 3/8" thick, and brittle. It holds stuff just fine, provided that appropriate fasteners are used in appropriate ways. It's not rocket surgery.
Some people try to take care of their things. Some people don't think they have time to figure out how. The former group is proud of their collection of tools and earned experience. The latter bemoans every failure as being someone else's problem without ever considering if there were something they could have done differently.
*shrug*
Kid-proof tablet..
The bimetal is for structural integrity not corrosion prevention. Boatbuilders who have to use an aluminum superstructure on a steel hull (usually for stability reasons) will normally isolate them using an insulating gasket and insulated bolts, or a gap filling adhesive with standoffs. This is to prevent the problem described by tragedy above, but is not as strong as an AlFe bond. The hull of course does not get electrically charged (it is in seawater, Dummkopf...), it is current flows due to differences in surface potential that cause the problems.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I believe what they were adovcating is buying an old house, having it torn down to its studs and redoing everything. BTW I agree with it, it is a lot of work but I would rather buy a house that has settled, has a history (stood the test of time) and rebuild it. Assuming there is redeeming qualities to it. Oh and right yeah I have done that several times over...
Round where I live the option is 20 year old wood framed, dry wall and clad modern places, versus brick built 100 year old houses. I've lived in both, and I prefer solid brick built houses. Much better build quality on the older places, much more solid. As another poster has noted, my place has done all it's settling. Insulation isn't so good for keeping the heat in, but definitely bettter sound insulation. Definitely you need to update the electrics and check out the quality of plumbing, but you need to do that in any property over 20 years old (in the UK electric regulations change about once every ten years so you need to be thinking about keeping your electrics up to date if you want to sell the place).
Modern places you can punch your first through the wall, mine, you need a heck of a drill to put up a picture frame. Mind you this at least is a bit easier than the last place, a 1720s house. Not a lot you can do with 2 foot thick stone walls apart from route everything round them.... :-)
Centax must have a pretty bad warranty or their is more to the story... Standard warranties cover structural defects for 5-10 years so it sounds like these folks but a home without a substandard warranty. Having worked for a home builder fixing latent defects (defects which cause structural damage thus are covered by a structural warranty, ie mold from bad masonry gets on the frame of the home, in order to fix the frame the masonry and mold must be fixed). I'm guessing the house was poorly built and likely has electrical and or plumbing issues. That being said some homes or parts of homes just have charges (i'm a builder not a scientist so I don't know the technically correct term). In some homes the walls become charged and attract dust along the beams creating rather odd shadow like dust lines on the interior walls where the beams are. This can be caused by weather (hot / cold, wet / dry (from running humidifiers), improper insulation, plumbing, electrical issues, etc. but isn't an actual structural defect. I'll venture to say about the same thing is happening in this house but I doubt their list of issues is valid.
The merit claim says "crt televisions", "cordless phones", and "computer hard drives". The first two are very definitely affected by minor magnetic fields. I do doubt the hard drives are that easily affected but I would expect that the computers were older instead of being newer technology. The owners moved into these houses 6 years ago and probably did not buy new electronics at the time, so the tv, computer and cordless phone would be older technology.
BTW, I have a cheap android cell phone which when laid down next to my desktop ( 1 year old) produces interface with the sound, cheaper electronics are not always shielded that well.
Claim is unlikely but not entirely impossible. If anything is going on in these houses, it is probably some sort of faulty wiring issue using the steel beams as a ground. The builder is not arguing that there is no problem, he is arguing a magnetic field is not a warranty item.
"It's not rocket surgery." What a great mixed metaphor.
The TV is the only one of these that can actually happen, but only if it is not an LCD. Static magnetism has zero influence on wireless transmissions. It can also not be strong enough in steel to do any harm to HDDs. For that you need several orders of magnitude more.
And for the submitter: There is no "positive" or "negative" and no "charge" in magnetism. Seems you failed physics 101.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
By an electromagnetic poltergeist.
Pretty creepy.
Either that or magneto is their next door neighbour
When I was in college one of my first dorm walls was a magnetic metal sheet (it was an OLD building) and we never had any electronics problems...except horrible cell signal. It was useful when hanging posters.
I agree with the other posts calling this BS. I'm wondering if the real problem is simply that cables and wiring that are in close proximity to the steel joists are being affected. Does that jive?
It doesn't need to be 100 years old, but find one with the old heavy wood floor trusses and a real wood sub floor (real plywood works as well but not the cheap MDF they use now). My neighborhood was built in the late 60s early 70s and the houses are all in good condition and were made from real wood. Granted the previous owner of my house should not have ever been allowed to touch tools, but now that most of his screw ups have been corrected I haven't had any problems. I do however need to rewire the house as there is just too much wire in it as all 36 breakers in the panel are filled and each one controls something in my 1900 sq. ft. house. Also the previous owner liked to party so the sheet rock has a lot of patch work that has been done and doesn't look the greatest so when I replace that I will rewire the house and get some 10 gauge wire in it instead of the 12 gauge that is currently code for the minimum as well as running network, cable tv, and phone throughout the house.
Time to offend someone
Materials used in building will not hold much of a magnetic charge at all. You can take cheap steel and make a weak magnet but that's all you'll get. And just about anything will cause it to lose its magnetic strength. Hit it with a hammer a few times and watch its charge drop.
High strength spherical magnets are used to pull dents out of brass musical instruments. People who use them usually do suffer injury as they will jump quite a distance and fingers or hands caught in between get mashed bad. It is sort of like having one in a room and sliding it inside a dented tuba and then bringing the other in the room and wiggle it near the other side of the brass so that the ball shape rolls out the dent. But eventually you get just a little careless and you get hurt.
Sounds similar to when I helped my dad redo his house that was built in 1921. It had the old octopus furnace in the basement, no AC, no insulation and that old fabric covered wire. The interior walls were all plaster over lath and once we had those down you could see light from outside. After spending a summer gutting the house and redoing the interior and siding it was a really nice little house that had a finished basement. It had proper insulation, good wiring, refinished oak floors, oak doors and oak cabinets, modern central heating and air and even a shower (previously it only had an old cast iron bath tub). These changes really upped the value of the house and dramatically lowered utility and insurance costs as the building is no longer a fire hazard. The improvements have probably paid from them selves in utility and insurance savings over the last 12 years.
Time to offend someone
This looks like a job for Mythbusters!
Rocket Surgery?
Do tell...that sounds fantastically dangerous and interesting at the same time.
Q: Does An AC Output Have Any Advantages? A: Yes, if you need to weld on material that's become magnetized from friction, such as when hay, feed or water constantly rub against a steel part. A DC output won't work because of "arc blow," where the magnetic field blows the molten filler metal out of the weld puddle. Because an AC output alternates between polarities, it enables you to weld magnetized parts.
With all things hypothetical, and that I am not an electrical engineer (please feel free to correct me) just someone who has worked on his house too often, couldn't something like fiberglass insulation, induce a static charge that could magnetize the joist? (A friend of mine was hauling insulation into his house, and vacuumed the stuff that fell out, and the static electricity blew out his vacuum cleaner and tripped the circuit. He told me never to vacuum without misting it first). I don't know how much and even if it is possible, but since most wiring is run along joists and studs, etc, can the current be altered enough by the magnetized beams to mess with an electrical device?
I know how to do basic electrical work around the house. This kind of stuff exceeds my basic knowledge.
You'll remember that when the Germans set up V2s to fire at London, what the RAF noticed as handy targets were the identical oriented sheds - in which teams of soldiers with little hammers would tap the fuselages first, so that magnetic targetting would work. Don't you know there's a war on?
Magnetized steel beams are not the likely culprit. How did it make it this far with such a lousy summary? This reads as a grounding issue. The symptoms fit perfectly. The steel beams are connected to earth at one potential and the grounding rod / waterline bond is at another. Somewhere in the house, connections are bridged so current is flowing from one ground path to the other on a high resistance link. The fix is to bond the building steel to the common earth that the electrical panel is utilizing with a hefty piece of copper wire. Drain the imbalance and modern electrical equipment starts working correctly.
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
It seems like the cheapest solution is just to replace all of their TV's with LCD/LED TV's,
and replace all hard discs with solid state drives of the same size.
You are attempting to argue through the presentation of data derived from direct observation.
That's science. You will find that does not work as a mode of argument.
Get somebody famous (like Stephen Hawking or Snooki) to say you are right and it won't matter if you've misinterpreted your data or not. That always works better than the scientific method (observing reality, formulating hypotheses and making experiments) for convincing people of things on the Internet.
PS: Incidentally, if it was an original IBM PC/XT or something similar, there may have been wirewound inductors on the mobo that were close enough to the case to be tweaked by a fridge magnet. You probably wouldn't see anything like that in a modern computer.
Computer hard drives were corrupted.
Bullshit. Corrupting hard drives from a distance of a few feet requires ***MASSIVE*** magnetic force.
I don't get the bewareoftheleopard tag for this article. These people _want_ their house torn down, not the other way around!
Maybe the house was built over an Amish burial ground.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
Whats wrong with each breaker controlling exactly one thing? 14 Gauge is the minim for 15 amp circuits 12 for 20 (if you do not live in the us you might have 30 amp regular circuits and need 10 gauge). I like having one outlet per breaker my electrical inspector did not care for it to much but he still passed it. I do have all the smoke/co2 alarms on one breaker but they have battery backup and needed an extra wire to communicate between themselves and the home security system. It also make it much easier when I put in the sub pannel for the gen's transfer switch.
No sir I dont like it.
Unfortunately few people care about the beauty of a well finished old growth wood floor course they also think pergo looks nice. Houses used to be something you passed down from generation to generation, and people wonder why these idiots got us into sub prime mortgages.
No sir I dont like it.
They built the home over an old graveyard and didn't move the bodies.
A magnetized hull is detrimental to a number of electronic warfare devices. We're not so worried about mines, or even being detected, so much as we're concerned about the proper functioning of sonar, radar, gunplot, computers, etc ad nauseum.
Then somebody's not worrying about the right things.
A magnetized hull is a problem for:
- Magnetic compasses (and dip sensors) for input to the navigational system. (Not just on the ship itself, but also for other devices nearby, such as other ships.)
- Magnetometers for detecting enemy resources - like subs.
- The ship itself being detected due to its own magnetic field.
- CRT based displays (if the magnetization is extreme.)
The rest of the stuff you mention (sonar, radar (except for big CRT screens), computers, etc.) could really care less about fields resulting from stray magnetization of the hull. If a steel hull were completely saturated it still would be too weak to be an issue - except maybe for old-style ferrite floppy disks or reels of magnetic tape sitting directly against it.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
To get such an effect you would have to have an active wide-band transmitter (to affect TV's, ...
CRT TVs can be affected by moderate ambient DC (and low-frequency AC) mag fields - comparable to the local magnetic field from the Earth. They deflect the electron beam. Such a weak field wouldn't be noticed on a black-and-white TV. But on a color set - especially an older one - it can drastically affect both the color convergence and the interaction of the beams with the shadow mask, resulting in blotches of color, patchy or overall shifts in color (as beams are partially deflected to the wrong phosphor dot, and other visible effects. Magnetization of the shadow mask also does this.
A color set (especially an older one with the triangular gun arrangement and perhaps no - or a defective - automatic degausser) may need to be adjusted for its location and orientation in a room. And a magnetized steel beam would exacerbate the problem beyond that experienced from just the Earth's field.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The Ohio Supreme Court broadcasts oral arguments live on a cable feed, and I watched the arguements for this case. The recorded feed (both audio-only and video) is at: http://www.supremecourtofohiomedialibrary.org/MediaSearchResults.aspx. Look for "Case No. 2010-1826 Paul Jones et al. v. Centex Homes"
The Supreme Court preview summary of the oral arguements may be read at: http://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/PIO/oralArguments/11/1004/1004.asp#OA101826.
To let the judges know the claims in the case are entirely bogus? Not one Ohioan to point out the ludicrousness of it?
Measure and quantify what is going on!
Magnetism is easy to measure.
Older large tube displays did have circuits to
degause and normalize the system.. Rotating
some big 21+ inch monitors could see alignment
changes as it was moved from north-south to east-west
so it does not take a large field but they were designed to
deal with this. In the years since the original litigation
the digital transition has taken place so no OLD TV
is likely in service and if so could be replaced for a
couple hours of legal time.
One possible interaction is ground loop currents from
multi phase power distribution. Ground loops can
move astounding currents and if the connections to
the steel were just so and some steel bolted but insulated
by rust and other steel welded resulting in odd paths and
grounding currents perhaps hundreds of amps could
be flowing because of bad or anomalous earthing.
Again this can be tested and measured...
Ground loops are scarry. years ago some friends were pulling
a wire across a roof that had transformers on it. The
cases of the transformers were 'ground'. As the wire
was pulled tight (make shift antenna) it touched
both and promptly turned red and fuse linked in a big
shower of sparks. We did check it and have it rechecked
and it was all "correct" however the length of the grounds
to common earth was long enough (resistive and inductive) to generate
a low voltage astoundingly high amperage current.
Ohio is electrical storm country. Get lightening rods
installed and verify earthing for the entire structure at
the same time.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
i have a feeling someone shipped their computer and their CRT screen to close to their sub-woofers been their done that.....
why would someone buy a 20yo house instead of a 100yo house? Hmm...lets think on that a sec...
Don't forget the best part, asbestos !
Cordless phones are not affected by magnetic fields. And for practical purposes, CRT televisions don't exist anymore; if that's they problem, it can be fixed for less than $200.
You cell phone causes audio interference because it emits RF.
Some people try to take care of their things. Some people don't think they have time to figure out how. The former group is proud of their collection of tools and earned experience. The latter bemoans every failure as being someone else's problem without ever considering if there were something they could have done differently.
Fuck man, you said it. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to explain this notion, usually in the context of computer security.
In so many words it amounts to, "you're not a baby anymore, you're as helpless as you choose to be, learning can be a joyful process of discovery and amazement, independence is a virtue, and the more personal freedom and integrity you have the less you blame others for your problems".
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I actually wouldn't mind one breaker controlling one thing, but there are 4 rooms on 2 floors (not near each other) that are on 1 breaker, the light in the garage and one of the 3 exterior lights are on another breaker while the other 2 exterior lights and garage door are on another. The rest of the house is similarly wired. There is no rhyme or reason for how it is wired. I would love to have 1 room 1 breaker with major appliances like the fridge, stove, chest freezer, etc.. on their own circuit, and a 220v circuit in the garage. It isn't that big of a house to justify the about of wire that is in it given the number of outlets and appliances. I have a gas dryer, gas furnace, and gas water heater.
Time to offend someone
Actually, the hull is charged as part of the protection system. It's a very small charge (less than a volt if I remember correctly) but enough to get current flowing out the zinc annodes. (vs. the hull itself.)
The issue with aluminium/steal junctions is that it creates a bimetal junction, which is a thermocouple and will create a current.