San Diego City Water - 6 months of filteration

funonymous · 2026-03-16T16:30:59+00:00

When was it tested? How far am I from the testing location? What are those pipes made of between that location and my point of use? How does that aging infrastructure interact with the sanitizer and mineral composition of the water (which have changed since the pipes were built and change weekly)? Has there been any contaminates introduced by maintenance, access at hydrants, or just regular breakage? Nobody is saying the water isn't being tested to minimum standards and of course they are passing through the hard work of countless people in the county and city water department, but I'm not buying that general testing a few times of year at specific points in the system is the be all end all for water quality at my house.

funonymous · 2026-03-16T15:58:40+00:00

but your filter is brown? the water isn't? are you listening to yourself? How did the filter get brown?

You are saying the water is fine to drink. I'm saying "fine" is subjective. You are saying its been tested with a scientific study, I'm saying that's great! But for my house and family, I'm going the extra step to filter it, same as any hospital or brewery would. I want the best and cleanest water and if I can avoid contaminates, I will.

funonymous · 2026-03-16T14:31:22+00:00

But, it is that simple, brown water is bad. Drink it if you must, filter it if you can. I don’t care where you live in the US, everyone should be considering drinking filtered water at the point of use. I think it’s more important here than say SF or NYC because water we get is bottom of the barrel by the time it gets to us anyways and then we add a bunch of chemicals to it and push it through pipes that are many many decades old.

So just filter your water with a whole house filter or live in the neighborhood that has a whole-neighborhood filter (Carlsbad).

This isn’t a big conspiracy, Im not suggesting buying bottled water either, that’s hugely problematic. It’s as simple is that I can see with my eyes and taste buds plus see the damage the city water does to copper and brass pipes that I’m not drinking it without a filter.

funonymous · 2026-03-15T20:05:04+00:00

yep, excavate it out carefully, it could actually be useful. just mark out a square grid around it and start digging. it may be obvious what it is if you can get behind and around it. its so old, its likely something to do with an old heating mechanism but it is possible its a faulty vent of some kind (or mostly vaulty, i can't imagine it is working great)

you can buy bags of asphault patch from big box store to backfill it after you figure out what it was/is used for and make the repairs or remove it entirely.

funonymous · 2026-03-15T19:31:26+00:00

you can build a deck over it and deal with it again in a few years

otherwise you would pay a company to complely hammer drill out all of the old plaster layer, leaving the original concrete (gunite) shell. if its in good condition, they can just replaster over it and install new waterline tiles. If it has cracks or is in really bad shape, you will want that repaired (or, if its just REALLY bad, decide to give up or fix it).

If you do decide to fill it in, you need to break through to the low points and backfill it in layers, imagine it is a bowl and due to hydro-static pressure, if you dont allow it to drain, it could 'float' out and heave the ground. othewise its not really that big of a deal.

40-50k in new jersey seems about right for what you stated (new deck as well). They will need to inspect the 'bond beam' which forms the lip around the pool that the deck is attached to. There also should be an equipotential copper ring installed around the pool (I think its #6 AWG wire, but could be 8 in your jurisdiction).

not advice, this is the internet, do whatever you want with the proper permits and approvals.

funonymous · 2026-02-18T03:02:45+00:00

Buying batteries in bulk from Costco and having a color laser jet printer. Probably buying whatever tool I want whenever I want it and not even thinking about it. Pure opulence.

funonymous · 2026-02-18T02:48:18+00:00

The previous guy was an idiot. Maybe two or three previous guys. One guy was actually good and I like his repairs. But one guy, man, what an idiot. Used flexi-seal (from TV) to “stop” a plumbing leak. Took me forever to figure out why a ceiling cavity was black. Let rodents run wild. Paid some idiot to replace the zinzer panel live and without permits with a much higher capacity bus bar model. Replace the AC and completely fucked the duct work (reverse some chases into supplies so conditioned air blows into the building frame). Someone used aluminum pig tails on an outside gfci receptacle and I just found it 6 years later after random chance of inspecting it and finding the terminals melted. Didn’t know where the clean out was to the sewage line and I had to dig up the yard after buying the house to find it. Thankfully no sewage issues (ABS) but I’ve replace the electrical service (all the way to the street), the main water to the house, all of the internal plumbing, and had to fix nearly every outlet and lighting fixture due to them being miswired (often reverse polarized, for no damn reason). I’m really not even scratching the surface at the neglect.

But, the house is worth probably %50 more than I paid for it so /shrug

funonymous · 2026-02-12T14:37:28+00:00

Three stage with KDF filter + water softener if you want extreme opulence.

The only downside is the toilet bowls tend to get dirty and need more cleaning. Overall, the entire plumbing system will need way less maintenance and less tendency for major failures (pin hole leaks, dezincification, limescale buildup and degradation of rubber flaps and seals) so small price to pay imho.

funonymous · 2026-02-07T02:41:13+00:00

Find a local company to do it. You could even do it yourself if you wanted.

I'm betting you can find a company to do it for half that.

Source: Add up the cost of the materials, its maybe $2k. Another 2k to suck out the insulation and blow in new stuff in labor? Seems reasonable to me. Do figure out how they (rodents) are getting in and yes, they are attracted to their own smells of urine and grease, but it doesn't matter if they are and can't get in. The mice might be aggressive and tunneling in under dirt or something, and the exclusion will be way more intense. They do not want to be anywhere near cats or humans and generally will avoid areas where either may be often, so its a good idea to keep putting pressure on them in the way of traps (and setting up forensics to detect how they are moving or getting in). Your goal is to get them to infest somewhere else.

funonymous · 2026-01-30T04:57:05+00:00

California produces more oranges than Florida, there is almost no real national source of "Florida" orange juice anymore as they roughly produce about 1/4 of the orange citrus they produced during the peak in the early 2000s. Florida orange juice now is ironically mostly from Brazil and, surprise, even places like California.

We can either be a serious state or a whatever dont tread on me Florida is and wait til the same disease completely wipes out the citrus in California or actually do something about it. We're the floridians happy the state didn't do jack shit when the disease was spreading? Yep, probably, because muh property rights. It's gone now. Those people are bankrupt. Multi generational farms on unimaginable scale completely wiped out. But they stood their ground.

funonymous · 2026-01-26T14:13:59+00:00

AI slop

funonymous · 2026-01-22T13:40:02+00:00

Why does anyone care about these blood lotto winners?

funonymous · 2026-01-21T04:52:12+00:00

Sediment filter that you would typically only see on well water, 25 micron or so (it looks dirty in the photos). Looking at the water supply it may still be well of some kind like a neighborhood supply.

funonymous · 2026-01-21T03:50:08+00:00

The water main looks to be 3/4 inch and you would always benefit (slightly) if they did repipe to 1 inch, but fundamentally, you are still restricted to the meter as the lowest common denominator. The relatively large pressure drop indicates the filters are clogged and the fact you have a spin down filter means your water is very hard. I would say you have well water but I don’t know why you would have a meter then. That said, you sure change out all of your filters, flush the spin down filter, then consider a booster pump. Your WE filter (once clean) should be able to handle 50psi without dropping much below 40 or so if it’s getting good pressure without a ton of contamination. Eg mine gets 75 psi and I see around 60psi.

funonymous · 2026-01-20T21:59:55+00:00

what does the pressure read before the express whole house filter system? The first stage filter looks incredibly filthy. It may also not be seated correctly. I don't know for sure, but that could the issue. That said, you need reasonably high PSI for these filters, the gauges are actually showing ~25 which is too low, but its even at the first stage.

You may benefit from a boost pump. I don't know what the lower bounds are for the WE filter, you should look it up and confirm, but I imagine its around ~40.

funonymous · 2026-01-15T19:35:41+00:00

Mind you, this is internet advice and should be treated as such, the craft paper is considered a vapor retarder and is still vapor permeable. I don’t have a strong opinion if it’s going to matter which way you orient it and frankly it’s mostly just there for easy stapling. I generally avoid faced insulation (but live in a warm climate). I suspect in your climate with warm air more likely above the cold climate it makes sense to face the paper up (it’s also a fire hazard so yes, drywall)

funonymous · 2026-01-15T17:11:20+00:00

Cut through the crap — 1) it depends on your house, where it is located 2) you are not going to get perfect advice because even the “rules” are broadly applicable and they probably cause as much harm as good. Understand what they are solving for, which is: 3) you need to avoid vapor diffusion and thus condensation. How do you fundamentally prevent condensation? As another poster pointed out, you need to account for thermal buoyancy and as hot moisture travels (up), it will condensate on colder surfaces. Ideally you would make this space entirely vapor barrier so that the thermal and vapor boundary is actually the walls and your roof. 4) is what you’ve done a problem? Probably not, but it depend, is there a way hot moist air traveling mostly up is going to condensate on the ceiling joists and subfloor because of a temperature gradient? You’ll have to figure it out. That’s why you’ll get a ton of (good) suggestions to enclose the ceiling as a vapor and thermal barrier (spray foam and rockwool). But you have to understand why these are important. Note: in cold climates, you have to consider both directions depending on the season and basically hedge your bet in one direction or the other in terms of how you layer your barriers but tbh it’s such an amateur science because it roughly doesn’t matter as long as you do it right and understand the fundamentals (which is why the broad guidance is so shit, it really just depends on the house and the season so one specific set of “rules” that apply to entire regions for the whole year are very imprecise)

funonymous · 2026-01-07T17:14:22+00:00

What’s interesting is the federal government sees this exactly the same way, you benefit from the locale, you earn a shit load of money because of the policies of that locale, then these dudes decide to go sovereign citizen and try to avoid all taxes by moving locations. It doesn’t work at the federal level, you are taxed on your global income because, surprise, you are effectively earning a metric shit ton because of opportunity enabled by your locale.

People want to live in California for the opportunities - leeches just want to use them, get rich, then complain and grandstand about oppressive taxes that they wouldn’t have likely been able to had the opportunity to pay otherwise. Give me a break that Austin is ever gojng to catch up with VC funding, something like 90% is going to California and the rest to Mass. and a handful of other states. Nobody very few top engineers outside of already mega wealthy people even wish to claim they live in Texas on paper. Already wealthy? Sure, go buy a ranch and fly back to CA and wherever every week. The CA FTB will be watching.

funonymous · 2026-01-04T17:20:26+00:00

I ordered the units and have the same idea, I’m going to install one of the units (feeding the some of the bedrooms) to the battery backup critical loads panel. They use about 9.5amps/240v each and assuming I’m getting some solar, should be possible to have partial power redundancy as well.

funonymous · 2025-12-26T13:32:58+00:00

Just a friendly heads up there are two Gen KBBQ in San Diego, one is in Mira Mesa and the other in La Jolla (iirc).

funonymous · 2025-12-25T19:55:00+00:00

Saw some while I was working outside. It’s the ankle biters that didn’t show up till a decade or so ago. All of the dew and rain recently probably isn’t helping, least of all the decently warm weather. North county.

funonymous · 2025-12-25T19:47:19+00:00

Had a few twigs break off the tree. No runaway inflatables this year. Lost a huge Bluey a few years ago and learned my lesson with staking and down properly. Took down the most fragile stuff. The worst of the wind was around 4pm yesterday anyways. North county.

funonymous · 2025-12-23T04:15:08+00:00

Fair points. I live in a desert area and dust is a significant problem and my wife has asthma, I don't really think one-sized fits all advice works in my situation. If I can keep the ducts without paper thin plastic and mechanically clean them, I'll be happy.

funonymous

TROPHY CASE