u/Kay_Donald

Aging in place reno, did not expect the windows to be the hardest part

My mother in law is moving in with us next spring and we've been slowly getting the downstairs bedroom set up for her. Most of it has been the obvious stuff, swapped the door knobs for levers, took the threshold strip out, lever faucet in the bathroom, walk-in shower install is on the books for January. All that part i kind of knew was coming.

What blindsided me a bit is the windows. The room has two regular double-hung windows with the old corded blinds the previous owner left up. She physically can't work them. Cords are too thin for her grip, and one of them needs a yank to break the friction at the top which she doesn't have the wrist strength for anymore. Looked at the tilt-wand mini blinds too but the twisting motion is also a fine motor thing she struggles with.

Motorized is probably where this ends up but i honestly don't know enough about it yet to commit. Just wants the room to feel normal. Mostly trying to figure out if motorized is overkill for one room or if it's just the most normal-looking option once it's actually up.

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u/Kay_Donald — 20 hours ago

Why is the radio fleet the first thing to die in every plant I've worked at

Specialty chem plant, mostly bulk batch ops. We replace more handhelds in a year than any other handheld tool on site. Pumps run for years. VFDs sit in cabinets that haven't been opened since 2019 and they just keep going. Push a radio off a tank gantry one time and it's done.

Current fleet is intrinsically safe rated but the actual hardware reliability has been awful. Speakers blown out from the ammonia loading area within months, antennas snap when operators clip them wrong, batteries swell, displays die from solvent vapor at the rail rack. We're maybe 18 months into this fleet and a third of them are in the deadbox at any given time.

Purchasing wants me to spec the next round. I've pulled quotes on the obvious names and the spread is wild, $400 budget units that probably won't make 6 months up to $2500/unit gear that might. EHS wants ATEX or IECEx for process areas, that's not negotiable.

What I actually want to know is whether anyone has run a fleet of these things for years with a low failure rate. Not a one-radio anecdote, actual fleet experience. Because every brand's spec sheet promises the world and they all seem to die the same way in practice.

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u/Kay_Donald — 14 days ago