"More than half of young people lack the skills they need to maintain their homes, with many relying on their parents to carry out basic tasks, a survey suggested today. "Around 50 per cent of people aged under 35 admitted they did not know how to rewire a plug, while 54 per cent did not know how to bleed a radiator and
63 per cent said they would not attempt to put up wallpaper, according to Halifax Home Insurance."
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Or, in the current market, if a faucet starts dripping, walk away from your home and buy another.
I have advocated for years that HS junior or senior year needed a course called 'stuff you need to know in the real world'. One semester of stuff like how to own and operate a checking account/credit card, get a consumer loan, not get bent over at the car dealer, etc. The other semester of basic mechanical and home repair tasks, like how to change a tire, how to check oil, how to not get bent over at the repair shop, how to do basic household repairs, and how to know when to attempt it yourself vs. when you should call a tradesman (and not get bent over by him either.)
Well, parents obviously ain't passing on these skill sets any more, assuming they ever had them.
I'm thinking, "what the hell is 'bleed a radiator'", not realizing, for a few seconds, this does not mean a car radiator. I suspect a large majority of folks in the US haven't a clue about how to bleed a steam radiator, having never seen one. Are there even radiators west of the Mississippi?
I only know these things because I "helped" in the remodel of my home. I fought my Father-unit tooth-and-nail the entire time I was living my teenangst-riddled years. He didn't know half as much as my friends and if he was able to provide a sample, I was quick to shoot it down as a poor sample.
As I got older, of course things changed, but I was still too slow to catch on just how much he knew before he passed on. Saddest day I realized was the day I called my Sainted Mother(tm) and asked, "So how do I do this again?"
"That was a lesson Dad tried to teach you. You didn't want to listen."
The same parents, with similar attitudes during the same times, are lamenting their lack of listening skills because their kids have never seen tools or had experiences that they did.
Luckily for me, the foreman on the job saw potential and was willing to "teach" me. It wasn't so much teach as letting me do it wrong until I was totally frustrated and then saying, "I'd recommend doing it *this* way..." Money and time meant a larger paycheck for him and a collej edumacation from Hard Knocks U. for me but it was worth it.
When I was a first grader back in the middle of the last century, the Catholic Parochial Gulag I was remanded to had steam heat via radiators. I remember the hissing of the water separator doodad on the side of the big old silver painted cast iron radiators. It was an old building then and it had tall ceilings, transom windows, incandescent lights hanging from the ceiling that had the half silvered big bulbs and of course, no air conditioning. This was in North East Alabamastan and I don't see steam except in hospitals and very old buildings, in fact, the steam plant in downtown Birmingham is scheduled to shut down in 2013 because of of too few customers. It is supplying steam to the UAB hospital complex and other institutions in the area so UAB is looking at building its own plant for $69 million. I have done some work in the basements of some of the downtown buildings that got their steam from the existing steam plant and the area around the steam meter was a bit warm. The steam meter looks a lot like a water meter. There are steam leeks all under those old buildings and I remember a steam line bursting on a street a few years ago under a car that cooked the occupants like lobsters.
Perhaps in your part of the world. In the schools I attended, Home Ec was cooking and sewing, and shop was Wood Shop and Metal Shop. Both taught in Junior High (usually now known as Middle School), and it was after my era when boys started taking home ec, and girls were allowed in shop. Both were junior versions of what was called vo-ed track in High School, where they steered the non-college-track kids. None of which included the stuff that kids would need to know to live on their own. More aimed at getting them ready for pink-collar and greasy-collar jobs after graduation.
But yeah, what I am advocating is what HS shop and home ec shoulda been.
I wish the previous owners of my house had been wall paper adverse. I'm taking down the paper in one of the bathrooms now and it seems to have been applied directly to the dry wall. Grrrrrrr.
My father *did* lack those mechanical skills with the exception of he knew how to roof, courtesy of *his* father. But he generally needed to call an electrician to swap out light bulbs, etc. His VCR always flashed 12:00.
Amazingly, he had Command Pilot wings and operated 4 engined transports in the USAF. Of course, there he had a flight engineer to keep things up.
But my dad passed on something more important than mechanical skills (which I developed just the same, courtesy of curiosity, DIY shows and a lot of mistakes): a healthy skepticism for what I read and hear. I can't say that he taught me how to think necessarily but he encouraged me to examine what I did think for flaws.
It's made me a better man. And I change my own light bulbs, thank you.
My previous house had the wallpaper applied directly to the sheetrock. What an unholy mess. It would have been easier to tear out all the sheetrock and start over. When we looked for our current house, wallpaper was a significant deduction.
When I first became a home owner I knew nothing about how to repair stuff. It took a long time but now, after 30+ years of living in this house, I feel I can repair almost anything.
Kind of like I never knew much about repairing computers until I bought a Packard Bell back in the 80's.
The only types I've seen in the US are either big old cast iron ones in schools etc., or little baseboard things in homes. The latter don't seem much good for anything really (and lack bleed screws). If I could find a good local source of the types of panel radiator typically seen in the UK I'd likely dump the forced-air / electric baseboard setup that we currently have in the house.
Yes, at least for domestic AC (there are a few different types designed for less common voltages and currents, but they're not typically seen in the home. I was quite amazed when I moved to the US just how enormous the plugs and cables for 220V AC devices are (particularly as they still don't have a fuse in the plug).
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