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Related: Culture Forums, Support Forums5 Products Consumers Like to Scrimp On, But Shouldn’t
Were a nation of consumers and bargain hunting and scrimping are part of our way of life. However, there have always been products out there that weve collectively known we shouldnt be frugal with.
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Earth_First
(14,910 posts)Many beer-drinking consumers have no idea what they are missing out on in the craft-brewed market...
Likewise with distilled spirits.
Batch distilled spirits have had a resurgence recently producing some top notch products that are superior in every way to commercially produced spirits.
hunter
(38,304 posts)It's treated so it doesn't eat copper pipes on the way to fixtures, but once it's out in the open it goes to work.
It will also eat through copper pipes if the water is recirculated too rapidly through an "always ready" hot water system. It hates water heaters. You can try to replace the anode in a timely manner, but usually by the time you remember, maybe even in a year or less, the threaded fitting holding the anode is thoroughly welded in place.
Using metal drain pipes under the sink, even traditional heavier copper alloys, is a very bad investment. That plastic pipe pictured on your link will last many decades. Metal drainpipe will fail in less than a decade.
I've grown to loathe any kind of metallic plumbing. Pex, PVC, and ABS are awesome. A mostly plastic fixture with nylon, ceramic, or other non-metallic valves will last much longer than traditional brass.
As to the other "consumer" advice, all my computers are long obsolete and diverted from the waste stream one way or another. I've used computers left out on the curb with "FREE" signs on them. I refurbish them, top up the memory, and install Linux. Linux doesn't seem to suffer the "slowing down" phenomena that afflicts Apple and Microsoft products. Updates will just as frequently use less memory and hard drive space rather than more.
My attitude toward paint is radically different than that of my wife's. I paint according to what colors I have, my wife would rather buy new precisely colored paint.
A long time ago I worked for a guy who made Section 8 and cheap student housing habitable. (OMG, the things I've seen...) His theory of painting was to scrape, fill, cover with Kilz, and then paint from one of his five gallon buckets.
These buckets were filled with water-based paint left over from higher class jobs. One bucket was off-white. Any leftover white paint of any shade went into that. Other buckets were pink, baby blue, soft green, and dirt tan, all somewhere between "egg shell" and semi-gloss. Pick the one you like.
Our city's anti-graffiti detail does a similar thing. Their universal paint is all recycled, a dirty tan color. They even use it to paint over graffiti on tree trunks.
I buy my tires at Costco, in sets of two, new tires in back. If some tire dies or is killed prematurely, I'll either find a used tire similar to the surviving mate, or I'll buy two new tires and replace the spare.
Mattresses I never think about. I have a lifetime of experience sleeping anywhere . I once drove our car across the U.S.A. and my wife and kids flew later because she was working, and grandma was watching the kids.
My wife was looking at the credit card bill and noticed there were no motel charges. I shrugged my shoulders, "so?"
The biggest trouble I ever got sleeping in my car was in Santa Monica. The police were not nice, but I did escape without any sort of record, probably because they realized they'd been a little too rough with me and I wasn't drunk, stoned, or homeless.