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Reasons for the French to be revolting? :-
Unfair tax on tea may have triggered the "little local difficulty" between the US and Britain, how about this little tale?-
In 1748 the French State imposed a tax of 58 livres on a 3 livre box of salt! Only the poor paid taxes, the middle classes and the rich paid absolutely nothing. Smuggling became rife and to halt it, Louis, the Sun King ordered draconian punishments. Caught near Mayenne with a bag of salt, Sébastien Paturel, a 20 year old native of my commune ( pop 290), was convicted and sentenced to 3 years hard labor. Branded with a red-hot iron on his forehead, he was force-marched rivetted in heavy chains and weights to Marseilles, where he endured a horrific period in the galleys as an oarsmen, then was shipped to a grim prison at Brest where the work was de-barnacling ships bottoms. Rebranded with "liberté", he was eventually released in 1751 and walked home. He married in 1753 at our church, and had several children. He died in 1790 aged 62. He has descendants. For his story in full, (unfortunately in French), Google 'Images' then Sebastien Paturel and click on a one of the paturel pics.
I researched this after finding a peculier chain and a crude iron weight at a junk sale, and my good friend Georges pointed me in the right direction....
Sobering reading when put in context to VAT on nails!
Oh, and my house is on the 200 year old map!


Alan

Yep. Or if it's for business use and you're a VAT-registered business, of course, in which case you claim the tax back (but charge it your customer if you're selling the nails on to him).

Alan,

58 livres on a 3 livre item? Sounds like British gasoline......

Paul, the irony is that Louis eventually got himself in an immense financial black hole by secretly funding the American Revolution! Since the poor were already taxed to the point of starvation, he asked the rich and the bourgeois to contribute a small amount in tax. It was their violent protests against being taxed, and not that of the poor, which triggered the revolution.
As to gasoline, did you know that a petrol station owner has to pay all the VAT on fuel when it's delivered, not after it's sold? A friend of mine used to pay out over £15,000 in VAT before he sold one gallon. When he tried to argue the unfairness of this, the Waffen SS VAT Squad, ( Not a joke, these people really do have more power than the Gestapo had ), arrived at his premises and demanded immediate payment or they would sequester all his trucks, cars, works tools and the contents of his auto-trade shop. Needless to say, small operators went out of the petrol trade PDQ.

Alan

Bumping this one up...

Sven:
Tex:
Hey, them's fightin' words!

Seriously, houses these days made of 'Ticky Tacky,' such as the one in Rollie's photos might blow down in ten years due to the "Get it done NOW NOW NOW!" Mentality, but old 'Ticky Tacky' houses (read: 'Levittown,' and Fairless Hills Pre-fabs) will probably last forever, due to the workers actually liking their jobs with Levitt.


Ian A.

Alan,
I worked for a Petro-Chem company doing Hazardous Area work (mainly petrol pump work and Instrinically Safe controls).
I can back up what you say, the owners of tanks in the ground (the Fuel Companies)would charge anyone that needed maintenance or upgrade work at the rate of 300% of the time it took me to do the job.
Little country towns here have had to dig up their tanks because they just cannot afford the maintenance or whatever, this is a real smack in the face for people that depend on a fuel supply.
I lasted 6 months at that job, it was so depressing hearing the tales of owners being screwed by a company that makes billions (not millions).

Like some of the pre-fabs erected here during the post-WWII housing shortage. They were designed to be cheap, quick to erect, and intended to last for 10 years. Many are still in use and their owners love them.

Edit: bad angle in the one photo, and my comments were in err. Nevermind!

Also, firefighters HATE balloon frame, I-joists and plate-joined wood trusses. (Though, as an engineer, I love 'em!)

I did not see any comments about the number of cable running through 1 connector. Is this common practice? I had a guy here from Arizona that took a short piece of 2" pvc from the top of the panel up to the joist space and just ran all the home runs in a bundle into the panel. It is required here to install a connector for each cable entering the panel. but typically yyou can put two 2 wire cables through 1 Loomex connector 4040. or one 3 wire and one 2 wire.
Dryer and range cable would be alone in their connectors. A bug bundle of cables into a panel will not be secure and any stress on the cable would transfer to the terminals. I have seen several examples of this from photos posted from the US but very little or any comment on the practice. Is it code compliant in the NEC? I don't think it should be if it is.

That brings me to Fairless Hills. 4000 little (960 sq ft) pre-fab houses. Carpenters (my late great-uncle comes to mind) said they would blow away in the first good wind. If only he was still here today to pay off that $25 bet... (Hmm, with interest, inflation... We're moving to the Gates! )

I've since edited my last post about Fairless Hills, including them with L-town.

Ian A.

New guy on the block here, have lurked and read for a year or so, just wanted to add my .02 ..... I have wired houses in SOCAL, Denver, St Louis and most recently Oklahoma. I actually wired a bunnch in SOCAL that looked just like the one pictured wouldnt happen to be a KB build would it?? Bundling wires through a TA is common and encouraged in Cali and Colorado, forbidden in St Louis, and "not encouraged" in Oklahoma. St Louis goes so far as to ban multiple wires through any KO or even a hole drilled in a 2x4. Makes the top plate look like swiss cheese when feeding all home runs into the panel.