Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with pipes

My shower vibrates loudly.

reductiondesign — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:39:23 -0800

How can I stop my vibrating shower pipes… in a college dorm? My shower here at college will vibrate really loudly, seemingly at random. Sometimes if I turn the water all the way to hot or all the way to cold, it stops. This isn't a daily thing, and it does eventually go away on its own—that can take anywhere from five seconds to five minutes.

The building is brand-new this year, so I don't think it's a matter of old plumbing. No one else has this problem. It's a shower/tub combination, with a level to pull up on the faucet to activate the shower.

What might be causing this? Might I be able to fix it on my own, or will I have to submit a work order?

Where can I find a soap bubble blowing pipe that looks like a realistic wooden smoking pipe?

leptin — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:03:52 -0800

Where can I find a soap bubble blowing pipe that looks like a realistic wooden smoking pipe? All the ones I see online are made of brightly colored plastic. Alternatively, is it possible to modify a real smoking pipe for blowing soap bubbles? Thank you very much for your help!

My heaters groan with the cold

Eicats — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 07:06:16 -0800

Why are electric baseboard heaters so noisy only in the dead of winter? In my apartment building, we have just the little baseboard heaters, the metal kind that are attached to the base of the wall-- the kind that work by using hot water, I believe. Now, as it's starting to get cold, the heat has been turned on- but you would never know it by sound. Not a single creak, click, or peep from the heaters. However, I know from living almost a decade in this apartment that even though the heaters are nice a quiet at the start of the cold season, by the middle of winter, every time the heat comes on, it makes incredibly loud groaning and creaking noises. And it almost sounds like little popping noises, that seem like the water bubbling in the pipes (?)

So I thought I'd finally ask: why does this happen?! It gets so loud and annoying! Is there some problem like water lines or pipes freezing and that's why it makes so much noise heating up when it's so cold outside?

If there's something that could be done to mitigate this, I would love to know so I can request service from the landlord.

Thanks, all!

How can you create a communal Yahoo Pipes feed?

The Devil Tesla — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:37:50 -0800

Can I use Yahoo Pipes to create a feed that contains a bunch of other feeds added by other people? All of the example pipes I've seen are made of feeds inputed by one person. Is there a way to make one designed such that other people can add feeds to the pipe?

Just to let you know, I'm trying to make a feed that that works like the Recent Twitters by MeFites page.

How can A and B be connected if there's nothing to connect them?

pokeedog — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 17:58:21 -0800

When our pool equipment runs, it triggers the sound of a leaky pipe in a wall adjacent to our hot water heater. By triggering the valve on the hot water heater when the water to the house is off, I can stop the noise. How can I fix this? This is a very odd situation. So here's the detail:
1. House is slab foundation.
2. Pool equipment is outside kind of far from the hot water heater. No house plumbing connects to the pool equipment. The only common link between the pool equipment and rest of the house workings I can find is electricity, via a fuse box.
3. When the pool equipment goes on, it triggers the sound of a leaky pipe in the wall where the hot water heater is adjacent to. Minimal water appears on the floor after several hours on the hot water heater side of the wall, but no other water indicates any kind of leak.
4. If you turn off the water to the house at the street, the sound in the wall stops.
5. If you fiddle with the pressure release valve on the hot water heater while the water to the house is off, you stop the noise in the wall. Pool equipment must be off.
6. If you fiddle with the pressure release valve on the hot water heater while the water to the house is on, the noise doesn't stop.

We've had a plumber out, it's driving us a little crazy. These two things just don't seem connected. Am I grasping at straws? What other things should I check? It seems to coincidental to me, since the water system of the house isn't connected to the pool equipment.

Will my spigots freeze?

roaring beast — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 11:24:41 -0800

Do I need to wrap my outdoor spigots to prevent freezing? We are experiencing our first few days of freezing temps. I was always told to wrap up the outdoor spigots so they wouldn't freeze. However, since the wraps will be the same temp as the air, I can't see how this would help very much. I have already disconnected the garden hoses. House is about 25 years old, on a slab (no basement/crawlspace). Is there anything I need to do?

Previously

Preventing frozen pipes

lisa g — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:34:12 -0800

Preventing my house's pipes from freezing while a few timezones away? Suppose I live in a city where it rarely freezes (say, Portland, Oregon), yet it's predicted that we'll soon have three+ days of subfreezing temps (as in, not even rising above 32). Yet I'm out of town now, and will be for all the drama.

I'm worried about the pipes in our 100-year-old house. We have lots of stuff in the basement. I have a friend with a key. Should I ask her to:

1.) leave a slow drip from all the faucets & the shower? The two outdoor faucets too?

or

2.) shut off our water valve completely, and run out as much water as possible from all our faucets?

Or something else?

We left the thermostat at 50, for what that's worth.

Thanks in advance!

Coldstream Civic Week?

DickStock — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 19:59:41 -0800

Can anyone fill me in on Coldstream Civic Week? I shot this little video on my still camera. It was a saturday evening on the borders of Scotland / England, in Coldstream.

I was driving thru the village in the late afternoon and parked to have a pint. The main pub downtown was crowded and spilling into the street with drunken, unruly young males.

I went a bit further, to near the end of the village and stopped at a hotel pub. It was filled with older gents (like me) with their ladies, and they were all well-dressed. However, we were all drinking out of plastic glasses.

They invited me over the road to a public ceremony in the park. The closing ceremony, though it probably had a name.

Who are these guys? Who are the three up on the podium? Why is the guy cryin' his eyes out? I know it must be a very important ritual, this "Civic Week" but WHAT IS IT?

I know, I should've asked, but somehow it didn't seem right at the time. I think I was the only 'tourist' there.

Plus, I'm a 'septic'. OK

http://www.vimeo.com/343158

Do you like using Yahoo Pipes?

Foam Pants — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:01:16 -0800

Has anyone used Yahoo's Pipes? How was the ease of using it? Are there better ways for a programming dunce like me to achieve similar results?

How can I use Yahoo Pipes to omit my username from my RSS feed?

deern the headlice — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 12:03:39 -0800

How can I use Yahoo Pipes to omit my username from my RSS feed? Currently, an item from my parsed feed reads like this:

"deerntheheadlice: had a great club sandwich today."

I would like to shorten to this:

"had a great club sandwich today."

From what I can tell, my username is not wrapped with its own tag, thus is not easy to remove. Can anyone with experience in Yahoo Pipes tell me which modules might help?

How do I show off my pipes?

wolfsleepy — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 19:29:32 -0800

Does anyone have any experience or advice on building a clothing/display rack out of pipes? Firstly, I don't know anything about plumbing, building things, or generally being handy.

I suspect it might be simple enough to construct a simple clothing rack out of steel pipes, but I'm posting here in case I'm mistaken so someone can tell me not to waste my time.

It would basically be a rectangular frame held together by 45 degree elbow joints, with a 4-directional joiner on each corner at the bottom so that parallel pipes can be fitted as a base.

(I'd sketch out a design but I'm worse at drawing than I am at words).

I'd like to know if something like this would be sturdy enough without having to weld anything together, and any tips/terminology that would make me sound less moronic in front of the staff at the hardware store.

Yet another Yahoo! Pipes/RSS question...

qvtqht — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 17:38:21 -0800

I'd like to create a feed of all references to my web site (by searching for the domain name) on popular link farms such as reddit. I tried to do this by creating a fairly simple Y! Pipe, but this didn't work because they redirect the link via their own domain.

Can anyone suggest an easy way of doing this? I just want to search the links from reddit, digg, delicious, etc. (those three will do for now) and have an RSS feed of just the results. If I can pipe them all into one RSS feed, even better, but this is optional.

I can already do this easily with sites like Metafilter, since the URL is contained within the post.

HTML to RSS without your own server?

krisjohn — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:06:22 -0800

Can anyone help me create an RSS feed, using Yahoo Pipes, from a list on an HTML page? I want an RSS feed of my Slashdot comments. I used Fetch Page with the following parameters:

URL: http://slashdot.org/~Kris_J/comments
Cut Content From: 1
to <div id="footer">
Split Using Delimiter: 

And it does create a list of just my comments as fragments of HTML. How do I turn that list into an RSS feed?

(I don't have to use Pipes. If there's a better solution, I'm all ears.)

Help me find a pipe online

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 20:32:58 -0800

Does anyone have any recommendations on where to buy herbal smoking pipes online? Advice on finding a piece for the adult professional in me? I realize there are a lot of web sites selling bongs and pipes online, but I am looking for specific recommendations. I am looking in paticular for a piece that is more Crate & Barrel and less Bonnaroo. Are there bongs or pipes for those who do not make smoking a party of their identity? Suggestions?

Why do I shiver upstairs?

tomwheeler — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 13:11:56 -0800

Why does my upstairs shower run out of hot water long before the one downstairs? I only have one water heater... For the past 4-5 months, the upstairs shower cools down to lukewarm after just a few minutes. It used to stay piping hot for as long as I might want to use it, just like the downstairs one still does. My water heater is only two years old and hasn't been adjusted since it was (professionally) installed.

Can anyone explain this phenomenon? Is it something I can fix myself?

Old Pipes

Juicylicious — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 14:01:26 -0800

Plugged Pipes - Is there a way to clean out the water pipes in my home without spending oodles of $s to replace them? I own an up/down duplex. The water pressure in the upstairs apartment is fine. The water pressure in the downstairs bathroom is horrible and getting worse by the day. It is so bad that I now have to hand fill the water tank for the toilet. The pressure in the sink and tub are getting progressively worse.

My handyman checked the pipe leading into the toilet and found it severely clogged. The pressure did not get better after cleaning. He has found a work around by putting in pipe from the sink to the toilet. It won't work long as the sink pressure is getting bad too.

I have majority old fashioned lead piping. It will costs thousand of dollars to replace with copper. Needless to say I don't have the cash to do it.

Are there any methods of flushing out the lead pipes?

Good Celtic Music

birdlips — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 11:03:48 -0800

Looking for good Celtic music and I need your help… I am Scottish and Canadian and I have grown up around Celtic music. I have been living in the USA for the past several years and I have lost touch with my roots (at least as far as music goes). I am looking for some music with lots of fiddle and/or pipes.

I listen to NPR on Saturdays when they play a lot of really good music. However, by the time I get to a place with a pen I have forgotten the band names.

I am looking for a faster style like Ashley Macisaac, but not Ashley Macisaac.

Thanks!

Seeking some pipe table-legs

washburn — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 13:19:05 -0800

Help me bend or buy my way into owning 4 U-shaped pipes! I have a somewhat unusual wooden desk/table from perhaps the 1950's or so, which has long U-shaped pipes for legs. These can be removed, which makes the table easy to store and move. (Here's a picture of the desk)

The other day, I was thinking of buying a stand-up desk, when it occurred to me that I could save some money (and avoid accumulating excess furniture), if I could just obtain some longer metal legs for the small table I already have.

So, if i want to make this into a standing desk, I need 4 pieces of U-shaped pipe, 1" in diameter, with 3" of space between the parallel sides. The present legs are about 28.5 inches in length, and I'd want the new ones to be about 48" tall or so (so, about 102" before being bent in half?). (Here's a pic of one table leg)

So, I wonder, is there a way to cheaply obtain such U-shaped pipes? I was thinking that maybe the local home center would have a bender that would easily do this; however they don't seem to. Perhaps I could bend some pipe myself with a rented or (inexpensive) bought tool? Or else where could I go to have them bend me some pipe on the cheap? (I live in Central Illinois (Champaign), but regularly make it up to Chicago). Who knows, maybe there's a U-shaped pipe outlet store somewhere?

Much obliged for any suggestions.

Exhaust pipes for 1985 Thunderbird

Venadium — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 17:06:41 -0800

When buying exhaust flex pipes like these, to fit over an H-pipe with a diameter of 2.5", would you buy the flex pipes with the 2.5" outlet diameter or do you need something bigger? My brother ended up having to cut the H-pipe with a Sawzall to remove the stock headers on his '85 Thunderbird. Now he's having problems installing the new ones. He doesn't want to buy a new H-pipe (even though 2 of the flex pipes he wants instead would cost just as much, but whatever), but we're not sure which diameter flex pipe to order. I say he should order the diameter that matches the diameter of the existing h-pipe, but he wants to order the 3" pipes figuring he'll be able to clamp them or something. Help me help him not waste any more of his money.

Read only the User Friendly comics, inline?

bkudria — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 16:48:49 -0800

Can I get an RSS feed of the User Friendly comic that includes only cartoons, and has them inline in the feed? I like to read the User Friendly comic (http://www.userfriendly.org), but I'd like to read it without seeing the Daily Link, and more importantly, without having to click the link to see the cartoon (the feed just links to a cartoon which displays the comic). Is there any way to do this?

I've tried using Yahoo Pipes with their Regex filter, but the best I can do is filter out the daily link entries.

Creating an image tag fails, because the actual image is stored in a subdirectory that includes the short name of the month (i.e., aug, or sep), and there is no way to get this information in Pipes.

My second try was to put the whole linked page in an iframe, but that didn't work, because Pipes seems to completely strip out the tag. Bummer.

What else could I do? I guess this could be done manually using a PHP or Ruby script (I know both), but I don't look forward to coding all the infrastructure and scaffolding (which Pipes provides me), and I don't really have a place to host it.

What else can I try?

Yahoo Pipes multiple author filter?

Chrysostom — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 12:24:34 -0800

When Yahoo Pipes first came out, there was some muttering about how this would be handy for creating a feed for an individual author on a multi-author blog w/o feeds by author? But I can't seem to find anyone who's done it, or successfully do so myself. Any Pipes gurus on AskMe? The three author filters I'd specifically like to create are:

TNR's The Plank: all authors EXCEPT James Kirchick
AOL Sportsblog: ONLY posts authored by mjd
Reason's Hit & Run: all authors EXCEPT David Weigel

One problem seems to be that there isn't an author tag on these-posts on The Plank, for example, just have the author's name as the last line of the post. But maybe I'm missing something.

How do I ground copper water pipes to old iron water pipes?

kuujjuarapik — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 11:29:08 -0800

How do I ground copper water pipes to old iron water pipes? I have an old house where the oldest plumbing is iron, and the newer plumbing is copper. I want to fit in a water filter on the iron pipe, but use copper fittings. I have heard that if they aren't ground properly they corrode. Unfortunately, replaceing the iron pipes is not an option.

Bonus question: can you solder copper fittings directly to iron pipe?

Can you melt frozen pipes with a welder? What if they aren't entirely metal?

Toekneesan — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 06:16:02 -0800

So here's my dilemma. The pipe that brings water to our house freezes. It’s not four feet deep. We've lived here three years. It happened the first year, not the second year, and then again a few days ago. When it happens I have to go to the neighbors and fill two five gallon buckets and bring them into the house to meet our needs. Flush our toilets, clean our dishes, water our pets and plants, fill the humidifiers in our two babies' rooms, etc. Fifty gallons a day, at least. And that doesn’t include cleaning clothes. This continues until the ground thaws. Now the question. It seems the folks who lived here before us knew of this problem. No, it wasn’t in the disclosure. What they did was weld wires to the pipe, from the well and then at the house, and then hook those up to an arc welder. The current would melt the pipes and the water would flow again. So, yes, in the spring we’ll dig a very expensive new supply pipe, but in the mean time, I’d like advice about circuits.? A condition of the sale of the house required a new septic. The contractor who put in the septic broke the pipe from the well and then he repaired it with PVC. Will the arc welder method still work or would that end in catastrophe? Did he build a fuse? There's water in the pipe and ice is conductive, but how will the PVC respond?

Smoke on the water

poweredbybeard — Sat, 15 Oct 2005 16:15:42 -0800

Cleaning a wooden pipe - two part question. What's the best way to make sure a wooden pipe that's been boiled doesn't get mouldy? And, if boiling a wooden pipe is stupid, what's a better way to clean out a few years' worth of carboninzed resin from a small airway? The first question is the more pressing one.

Reasons for Increased Hair Loss?

jojopizza — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 14:59:56 -0800

I just moved into a new house and am noticing my long hair is falling out much more quickly than before. We've checked on water quality (it's soft and no different than our previous home - just 2 miles away). What might be the reasons for this? It appears to be a combination of both the entire hair falling out and hair breakage. I don't believe it's stress as I have extended time off from work. My diet and exercise routine has not changed from before. I am also using exactly the same hair products as before. The house is older (28 years) compared to our last home (15 years). Could it be the pipes? Any other things to try? Thank you!