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Episode: 4595
Title: WATER WATER EVERYWHERE!
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4595/hpr4595.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:14:43 (official HPR transcript)
---
This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4595, for 2026-03-13
Today's show is entitled, "WATER WATER EVERYWHERE!"
The host is operat0r and the duration is 00:21:14
The flag is Explicit, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "operat0r talks about various home related water things"
You are listening to a show from the Reserve Queue.
This show was submitted in February 2025 to cover occasions like this
where there are gaps in the schedule.
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Hack and Pulse Video with your whole stop
radio.
Today I'm talking about water meters and I'm probably three years ago, I had to do this
three years ago and what I want to heal and the thing with a lot of meters is you need
to be prepared to set off the main water meter at the street.
Where are your yard?
And I can explain the background.
So if you haven't messed with your water meter in three to five years, it's probably
buried.
So what's going to happen, it's not if when at some point your water is going to mess up
and you're not going to be able to cut off the main at the house, you're going to have
to come down here to the water meter, it's just your water meter, a lot of people don't
even know where they are.
So you have to spend 10-20 minutes trying to figure it out before something or you finally
stop that music.
Sometimes it'll start in the back and you've got a leak and you can't find your main
or you can't shut off your main or you can't get your main and you want to come down
to the meter and cut it off while you can't do that either.
I've been buried for 16 years.
A lot of these folks have no idea about any of that stuff and I'm sure you guys know
exactly what I'm talking about.
But if you don't, just start digging and you'll find this little plastic covered, plastic covered,
gate valve or ball valve, I don't know what it is.
And it's covered in plastic to kind of protect.
That might even be metal.
It feels metal.
You can't get it.
You can't get it.
You can't get it.
So what you buy is you buy a cut-off thing, like Home Depot or something.
It's a big cut-off key.
It's a big piece of rebar with a little scoop thing at the end.
And then you tell your spouse, hey, this is how you use it, turn it off this way.
So what I'm trying to do is make it so that's easily accessible.
And I'm not going to digging around to it to the point where there's, you know, about a three inches
three inches around it so that I don't have to do this every two years.
So I'm kind of digging around it and allowing it to get filled back up in about four to five years.
On the last time I did this, it was because of neighbor.
There yard had been flooded for I don't know how long and of course they weren't even up or something.
So I'm going to get around and find the shut off.
I think one of them finally came home or something like 10 minutes later.
And maybe they finally answered the door or something.
And this was like early and more than we were walking.
So we're walking and I see you know, flooding.
And then I ran the doorbell and something happened.
Sorry, excuse me, children.
Oh, no, no.
And they're all wireless now too.
I'm assuming if you had, if you were dumb and stupid, you could probably version of the protocol,
which I'm trying to spend a hundred times over.
And make it so you never have to use any water.
Eventually they catch you.
Just like a cable.
And give you a hard time, but.
So yeah, you want to have a sea bar.
You want to tell your spouse how to use it.
You want to check and make sure that the lid can go on.
And what caused me to do this originally was one of the kids's in your yard,
and step on the.
My phone's going.
Step down the thing.
And it just fell into the hole.
And took me to a 20 minutes there.
Not 20 minutes.
About five minutes to get it out.
But we had done it just to where.
It kind of opened up because this.
Limit classes.
No, it's a little.
So I have no idea how you did it.
But anyway.
And dig it out.
Get your T bar.
And then practice.
You know,
Bring it on to need off.
And just have your spouse be prepared.
If and when something goes wrong.
Here's the shut off for the house.
And then here's the shut off at the street.
And we'll.
You know.
It's a little help in general.
Wait for that.
Um.
But also.
You can buy.
The whole house.
Water detection systems.
Um, so when we're going on to leaking.
And try leaking.
They have a.
They're.
They're tech.
They're calling.
Make.
Figure that regular wireless one.
They've been kind of the leader in that space up until.
Everything got an idea dress.
So.
They're gone has wired.
Wireless one.
It'll hook up to the internet.
But now you can buy off.
Brand one.
For any number.
Off.
You can get like three for.
You know.
Sixty bucks.
Twenty bucks or something.
So I would.
I don't know if I'd.
I don't know if I'd pick the Zercon.
They've been around.
Um, but I have water.
Or.
On the.
For.
Everywhere in the house.
I've got two of the Zercon.
I.
I got two of the Zercon.
And then.
A kid of like three.
Three.
Three.
It was like the price of one.
Zercon.
Um, and then the kid I got comes with like.
I'm blind.
Um, so I don't know what you could put in here.
Make this less painful.
Um, maybe rocks.
But then the rocks will just get filled up there.
And notice that rocks dared to be up and said it's.
Start.
So I don't know what you're supposed to put down.
Maybe a screen on top of this.
I guess that's the whole point of the lead on the sausage.
Keep all this mud out of here.
So.
I've dug off enough around it.
Where it's going to break even at some point.
I didn't mean kind of a flat surface.
Um, but yeah, I've dug a bunch.
Fair amount around the actual.
Cut off.
Um, they also have like.
Uh, you're on copper.
And you can actually get them to come out and tap your.
Tap your.
You're, you know, galvanized.
And see you'll or whatever with a copper.
I'm about to go somewhere where it's quieter.
Uh, tap your galvanized with copper.
And then that way.
It still goes.
That way.
Somebody messes with kids playing with the water.
You can tap your galvanized with copper.
And then you can put one of these fancy.
Uh, fancy things.
Oh.
That will, um,
detect leak and theory.
And it can also like detect when you're.
Washing dishes.
They're.
Washing clothes apparently.
That's.
Theory.
The idea is you run your washer.
And then.
It says, oh, something is using water.
What is it?
And based on this pattern.
It'll, you know, detect that your washer being.
Something with.
Everything else.
Yeah.
Ideally.
And you do that.
Oh, my goodness.
You do that.
And then you can have like automatic thing.
And it'll tell you when.
You're using what you're supposed to.
But.
He bought you the real part.
You want is the.
I'm going to cut off.
So when you're out of town.
You can remotely shut your water off.
When there's a detective leak or just.
You know, hey, after three days of.
I do water usage or minimal.
You can have your water set off.
If you have a far away house or.
So we call.
I'll be there.
So.
You have far away house.
You're not there.
That.
You can set up some kind of.
More systems.
Where say is it.
The water's not being used.
You know, 5% of the water or whatever's not being used.
Within certain amount of time.
And.
Come up the water.
Or even better.
You have a detective leak.
Which.
And what I was reading.
If you're.
If you do the detective leak, it's going to detect.
Like a major bite.
Pipe bursting or something like that.
But that's not what usually gets us.
It's the.
You know, a little pipe that's going.
Shh.
In the in the attic or something.
And it destroys your whole house.
So.
I would just.
Be.
Aaron said a costume and just.
Uh, shut things off and can.
But you can have that is an option for you to.
Do some of that stuff.
Um.
What else do I have for like.
General maintenance on stuff.
Uh.
Your water heaters have a bleed out on the bottom.
And you can take a piece of.
Uh.
Uh.
Small form pipe.
Uh, this is a new one.
I can't shut the pipe down in there.
That's more.
But the one I had had a bigger office.
And you could shove something down in there.
And believe the bottom of the tank out and get roughed out down at the bottom.
Um, oh, that's nice.
There's a piece of styrofoam sitting right in there.
Pointable bit of the one of you.
Um, must have got blown up there from.
So there's like a bunch of plain wool stuff up here on the top.
From blowing the garage.
You know, I should need to get rid of.
But, uh, yeah, there's after a while the bottom gets starts to rough.
And then what happens is the heating elements on the bottom.
And it's on the bottom.
And the, you know, the sensor is on the bottom.
And they get roughed it.
And then you do replace your item here.
So that's why.
It's not the water heater itself, necessarily.
It's usually the sensory bits and the water heater go bad.
And then there's no easy to wait or a place.
Uh, some of those coils.
Um.
It's what I understand.
But anyways.
Um, leaks and leak sections.
Water in general.
Um, I built rebuilt this pump.
The pressure washer.
I don't think 1600 or something.
It's not crazy.
Um, I don't have the stock and taste for it anymore.
Uh, but I rebuilt the pump.
And it's not fun.
It's you're not into fixing motors.
And you won't be into fixing pumps.
Because it's basically a motor with water and anything.
Uh, whatever.
But you can buy.
Um,
uh, radiator fluid.
For, you know, snowy, whatever.
And I, uh, radiator fluid.
If you have just regular radiator,
I wouldn't be surprised.
That would work.
But works with water pumps.
Um, so it's a yellow little box bottle.
It's 11 ounces.
Preston radiator anti rust with pump glue.
Um, so, you know, I think this is for like more for like air commissioners or something.
I don't know.
Uh, water of water funds cooling system components.
Like a water, water pumps and cooling system.
So basically this is radiator fluid.
It's why you.
And you can look online as you get a little tea valve.
And I have a, uh,
Uh, pipes in a cut off valve.
And I screw that onto the bottom of the pressure washer.
When I've done with it.
And I'll, we get dry for a second turn off the turn off the motor.
Because you don't run a pump dry.
So it'll, I'll let it run dry for a second.
And then I will put the attached screw on attached to the thing.
And I'll pour the white liquid in there.
A little bit of it.
And I will turn over the engine manually with my tan with the crank.
And until quite good comes out.
And that way I know this has been flushed through the system.
And then I will cut off the tea valve.
Dumps the excess, twice the back end to the vessel.
Mostly sometimes I make a mess.
And then that gives it kind of winnerizes it.
I'm not in a winner right place.
But what happens is with the pumps is that there's metal and different kinds of metal.
And you got water and metal, different kinds of metal,
plus the other kinds of metal.
And it's just a match.
There's a recipe for,
an eventual failure in any direction.
So there is no one.
It would run.
But it would cut itself off.
I think just because of the valves would get all ducts.
Because they were all rested.
So I bought a pump for it.
And of course, it was the dry shaft was too long.
And I didn't really want to cut off the dry shaft.
So I raised the inch in block.
Like, you know, two, probably two inches.
It was the wrong size pump basically.
And I guess I could have just cut off the,
the end of the shaft there.
But I wasn't really super comfortable with that.
And I also think it would have less than the amount of torque that the shaft had on to the engine
properly.
Because I don't think the thing ran all the way down.
So either way, I would have cut it off.
I think Canada is that would have been an option.
But I think there wasn't enough of the amount for the,
so the rod has a cut in it.
And it's like a D shape.
This is what's explaining it.
And that D shape goes into the engine.
And if that D shape, if I were to cut it or it doesn't go up all the way,
then I'd have to like manually sand down the rest to go up up in the dry shaft.
I think that was the problem is that it was just too long.
And the shape of the rod changed as it went down a shaft.
So I just couldn't just cut it off and then show it up in there.
So I had to get, I got like, that's a stack of washers.
And set that on top and put it in between the engine.
And I just make sure that the engine doesn't rattle around too much.
Because they, you know, it's going to rattle and eventually rattle itself apart.
So I try to watch it when it twists, they're twisting around a lot.
Which that means the dry shaft is like twisting around and dropping.
I'll go in there and tighten it a little bit.
And then I'll give it a few more.
A few more goes.
But yeah, pumps are gross.
You've got to make sure they're winter ice.
You make sure there's not any water in them.
Put that radiator fluid in the runaway room once in a while.
This one has been doing nothing for a year.
And it started on the second frame.
I primed it.
And the second frame started right up.
So, and this is used.
My dad had it.
And then of course, let's somebody borrow it and got really.
You think I'll see that people borrow you to.
What else?
Water.
Oh, these little anything.
Please don't, they tell you.
Please don't use your yard with the regular.
With the regular.
With the regular fresh washers.
Head.
Get one of these rotating ones.
And they are pain in the butt.
This one is a big metal one.
And it's cheap.
And by cheap, I mean, it might have been 60, 70, 80,
100 dollars.
And basically, it's the bar.
With some higher mass involved.
And when the pressure comes through, it's kind of certain pressure.
The thing comes out and it spins itself around.
And it does wonders here.
I mean, you can do your driveway in no time.
And if you want to opt at the cost, you can have, you know,
when your kids or somebody.
Or do some do some driveway.
Do a few driveways.
Then it will pay for itself.
Because I think it's awesome.
What I had, the problem I had,
is that it wouldn't spin.
And then because it wouldn't spin,
it wouldn't activate the mass that allows it to spin
and allows the pressure to, like,
differentials of differentials of kick-ins.
So it wasn't spinning.
So if it wasn't spinning, then it would kind of,
that's kind of pressure system would kick in with the internal.
And I don't know what you call it.
Like a suction base or whatever base pressure system.
So the pressure got too great on the end of the sprayer.
It was kind of overflow into this other direction.
And then it would kind of few at the top of the thing,
and not to sit around.
So it took, I took it apart.
And I'm like, well, this looks like it's missing a screw.
And then I realized it's some kind of weird pressure system
to where if the thing doesn't start spinning
and it doesn't get enough of the pressure to release
through the proper channels.
It kind of, the pressure is of going up to another direction
and viewing out of the top of the thing,
and kind of bubbling up.
So this one is a little piece of crap.
The commercial grade ones, I guess, are, you know,
probably $200.
And this one is either non-lahine.
It's maybe two-to-low pressure.
My pressure washer is two-low pressure for it,
or it's just their old garbage,
and you've got to buy it.
It's super commercial grade ones.
Now, you want to use your plumbers,
plumbers tape when you can.
These things, all these things have vowels,
so you want to replace little grommets.
And you can go to,
in the harbor spray,
but, you know,
eight-hour wear, wherever your eight-hour wear types are,
and buy different kinds of o-rings,
and you can just buy a bunch of o-rings through these things.
I don't know what the exact size is,
but you buy o-rings to replace them.
When I originally got it, the o-rings were kind of shot,
and I have a longer extension that I use.
So I haven't had the Daisy channel together yet,
but when I do, I'm going to have to find some o-rings for them,
because they kind of make sort of a mess,
but I don't like any leaks when I do my stuff.
So usually it takes me a good hour to get set up,
because, you know, I've got to plug everything in,
and I've got to clean it,
and set it all up,
and it takes me a good 15,
20 minutes to set everything up,
because I'll find a leak,
and I take it hard,
and then I end up doing this,
some other kind of project that comes up,
so the whole thing's been done taking a very minute.
That's that for pressure washers,
wanting to use,
yeah, so if you're faucet outside,
it's giving you problems,
and you don't want to play a plumber to fix it,
you just have to add another faucet to it,
and you can do this up to one time.
So if I originally,
I think the front faucet I read is,
I was able to get enough,
get enough copper or steel,
and whatever it is it's on there,
I just put spray foam on it,
and I don't think you're supposed to use spray foam outside,
I have to carry it out,
because I used to tangle around
through the wood and screw it into the house.
But I was able to re-attach a new,
or no, I haven't done that.
I can't remember what I did,
but if you're lucky,
you can take your faucet apart,
and go to Home Depot or something,
and get some bits,
you need to replace the inside,
just the inside part of your faucet,
which is kind of interesting.
So, let me go all this stuff.
Anyway, that's pretty much it.
Fossets attaching faucets,
white flitters,
they're all garbage timers for your irrigation system.
The one I have is,
I don't know what brand it is.
It's not the waterbird thing,
it's a decent, a decent brand,
not the Orion either,
those are garbage.
But I dug out irrigation system,
and I did it wrong,
so I dug another irrigation system.
So if you're going to do it,
do the math, right?
You can do three to four if you're lucky.
You can comfortably do three,
but our yard is tiny,
so I just have two waterheads,
one at the end,
one at the bottom,
but I had dug for,
I don't know,
it's four or five different spray heads,
and then realize there's not enough
to run them off at the same time,
and if you do that,
then you have to do the switching thing,
and the pain of that.
So, don't even bother.
If your yard is small,
just get two to three heads,
and you should be fine.
We're facing area,
you can set it a little servo.
They have wireless ones.
I wouldn't do that,
because as soon as you have some kind of wireless things,
you're going to have to go in there and place batteries,
and how are you going to have to pay the blood
to replace batteries,
and you're just going to kind of wireless things,
or maybe they are wired,
but their wireless connectivity,
and I'm not going to put some wireless things,
and that's just to get up every 10 years or six years,
and get it to do what it's supposed to do.
So, I just had the waterbird one
from,
and that I reclaimed from somewhere else.
Anyways, that's it for water,
and stay safe,
and if you're real fin of this,
and you made it as far,
please record an episode,
probably needed if you're hearing this,
because it's probably going to go into the back up here.
Cool, take it easy.
You have been listening to the Hacker Public Radio podcast, at hackerpublicradio.org.
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Unless otherwise stated, today's show is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.