Tinfoil Hat House

An anonymous reader writes "A family in Sacromento has covered the side of their house with aluminum to keep the radiowaves from their neighbors at bay. The city has given them one week to remove the life saving shielding or face charges."

Flame me, but...

[afabbro]

It's Sacramento, not Socromento, samzenpus, you oaf. Yes, it's a spelling flame, but it's the third [slashdot.org] one [slashdot.org] in three days. I guess the "editors" don't do much "editing".

Re:I'm not a Californian

[Kethryvis]

Because it's a housing code violation. It looks from the picture like it's touching the fence/house next door and in CA (at least in Sac, I live there) it's illegal to build or have any structure connected to your house touching or within x amount of feet of the fence. Our neighbours behind us built some rickity lean-to on their house which used our back fence as one of the walls and we called the housing code people who came and told them to tear it down.

Re:weird but illegal

[JadeNB]

easy fix, just line the inside of the house with foil.

According to this link [kxtv.com] posted by mgmatrix, that is exactly what they are doing.

Re:I'm not a Californian

[Kethryvis]

For being "California's News Leader", KCRA doesn't always get their stuff correct :) (they're my local news station. they used to be good but they've slid over the last couple of years)

Re:Legalistics

[gameboyhippo]

But they don't have the right to put up whatever they want. Especially if they have neighbors. You see, if the town becomes ugly, then the value of their property diminishes. It's kinda like me going over to some kids house and spilling kool-aid on his super rare comic book.

Re:Wow...

[unitron]

Actually you can get insulation boards, such as Tuf-R, which are basically styrofoam or something similar with an aluminum foil skin, designed to be nailed directly to the outside of the wall studs before the siding goes on. As of several years ago they were looking into connecting the aluminum skin together, electrically speaking, and tieing it all to a grounding system to create a "Faraday cage" type shield.

The video is amusing to watch

[MarkTina]

The seem really certain that the neighbours are out to get them, though if they've proved it I've no idea why they don't get the police involved.

what a crock

[SuperBanana]

The D'Souzas said the bombardment began after the first anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and that the radio waves have caused them health problems ranging from headaches to lupus.

As someone who has a family member with Lupus, I call absolute bullshit on this.

Lupus causes haven't really been figured out. Furthermore, there's absolutely ZERO medical evidence that EMF/EMI causes or even aggravates Lupus. Trust me, I looked and looked after her doctor told her to "avoid cell phones and wireless devices whenever possible". I even emailed two mailing lists- one for researchers, one for patients- and came up with nothing. Nobody had ever heard of this. Furthermore, if their theory wer correct, we'd be seeing an explosion of Lupus cases (we haven't).

The D'Souzas said they will comply with the order and remove the sheet metal, but they also plan to gather evidence to show city officials what they believe is a problem with radiation.

That will be pretty tough, given there's next to no evidence EMF/EMI causes anything in people, and a lot of studies showing it has no discernible effects.

The inside of the house is also covered with foil and the beds are covered with a foil-like material as well,"

Sounds to me like they'd be a lot better served spending their money on a psychologist, not tin foil. Self-diagnosis ("radio waves are making us depressed, and giving us Lupus!") is a textbook sign of a hypochondriac.

Re:At least they're taking extra precautions...

[benjamindees]

Seriously, space blankets work great to keep out the day star. I put one on a couple of windows last year, and went most of the summer without air conditioning. I'd bet it was 10 degrees cooler than without.

Those window films you buy at Home Depot are mostly the same stuff, but with a huge markup. And, though you can still kind of see through a space blanket, they block much more light than any of the commercial films.

It's probably not economical to re-apply film every summer and remove it for the winter. And space blankets aren't reusable. But there used to be a site on the 'net that sold reusable films. I'd tell you what I think they are probably made of, but I haven't ordered my supply yet :)

The 9/11 anniversary and psychosis

[Quirk]

"The D'Souzas said the bombardment began after the first anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks"

There's an interesting, if not well defined, link between trauma and psychosis. Delusions and paranoia seem to have a strong link to widely shared public "concerns". I recently talked with a psychiatrist about paraniod schizophrenics and mentioned that there seemed to be a recurring theme of religious delusion and persecution. He, in return, said that in the 50's, paranoid schizophrenics, frequently complained of persecution by communists. The bogey man of the day seems to morph readily into paranoid delusions.

On a less humane note, it's scary these people are procreating, but just to help things along this site [mindjustice.org] should validate their paranoia.

well, I may be drunk....

[Kulaid982]

but yes, yes I did read that URL as something do to wiht crak and chanels

Re:It isn't about California

[Lord Kano]

Unless the covenent of your deed prohibits it, or you're a member of a HOA; you can tell your neighbors to mind their own damned business.

I bought a house, it was average for the part of Pennsylvania that I'm from. It's in an upper-middle class neighborhood.

The few weeks after we bought it, we discovered a leak in the basement. We had to get a backhoe to tear up a trench around two sides of the house to install proper drainage. It was like that for a few months, the neighbors probably didn't like it, but there was nothing they could do.

LK

Re:Proof that physics and pot don't mix

[Anonymous Coward]

But insulation won't help at all, because the point isn't to keep heat in, it's to get rid of it! The heat is produced by grow lights.

Best thing to do is to start digging a geothermal sink, or tap a line to the swimming pool and use it as an evaporative cooler.

Re:I'm not a Californian

[kylemonger]

Not health code, fascist community code [cityofsacramento.org], as in "no trucks up on blocks in your front yard", "no neon Looney Tunes paint job for your house", "no satellite dish antennas", "no running a bordello in a residential neighborhood", that sort of thing.

RIGHTS?

[itzdandy]

rights? hahaha haha ha ha a a . . ...

the only way property values should have bering and a persons rights is when DIRECT damage is being done. for instances:
1)you are burning your house and you catch your neighbors house of fire! or less extreme, the odor/smoke is drifting onto their property.
2)you have weeds, your weeds are spreading to your neighbors property.
3)anything else not along these lines, go F'ING LUCK!!!!

What the family should do...

[psykocrime]

What they should do is; keep their aluminum shields up, and tell the city officials to go to fucking hell. And they should tell the city that if they come to arrest them, that the cops had better pack a lunch.

This is ridiculous... as long as they are on their land, they city has no right what-so-fucking-ever to interfere with these people, as long as they aren't violating anybody else's rights (and hint: there is no such thing as the "right to not be offended by an eyesore").

Re:Wow...

[unitron]

The walls on some types of single family homes are not very strong at all by themselves. Codes are different for every area but a normal wall on a split foyer home from the inside out consists of paint, 3/8 or 1/2 inch drywall, fiberglass insulation to fill the area between the 2x4's, a moisture barrier/foam insulation (like you described above) and then vinyl siding. Notice the absense of wood sheets? Some homes have a 2 4'x8' sheets of wood added on the corners for stabilty but some designs apparently do not even require that. A razor knife would allow you entry into the house in about 30 seconds provided you could fit between the 16 in spaced studs. Again codes are different for every area but I've seen many house like this.

Actually, nailing on the drywall and outside sheathing contributes significantly to the strength and rigidity of a stud wall, provided that the recommend nailing schedule is adhered to, and code requirements reflect this.

Re:At least they're taking extra precautions...

[adamfranco]

So, these are the guys that buy those "space blankets"...

Jests aside, those Mylar "space blankets" really do work. A few years ago a friend and I were climbing Ben Nevis [ihug.co.nz] in December in a [failed] attempt at some winter mountaineering. To make a long story short, our shitty mountaineering-club tent leaked through the top and bottom and we spent a very long (13-hour) night laying awake in 2 inches of water on the side of the mountain.

Putting one of those Mylar blankets inside of my sleeping bag was the difference between shifting about uncomfortably all night and hypothermia.

- Adam

Re:Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a pretty common joke around these parts to call the domain name the "crack" channel, so no... it's not just you.

Re:At least they're taking extra precautions...

[SacredNaCl]

The only problem with buying lots of mylar and mylar space blankets it the visit your get from the DEA after the hardware store reports you.

They started offering cash rewards to store owners here to report that kind of activity, it doesn't matter that most people buying it aren't running a grow op.

Re:Too bad he's running the site off on 28.8 Kbps

[dozer]

Or link to a non-slashdotted copy.

http://totfc.net/misc/rednecks/ [totfc.net]

Family Takes Down Metal That Covered Home

[Zoyd]

Family Takes Down Metal That Covered Home
POSTED: 11:12 am PDT May 23, 2005
UPDATED: 1:26 pm PDT May 23, 2005
http://www.thekcrachannel.com/news/4520485/detail. html [thekcrachannel.com]
.

NATOMAS, Calif. -- A house that neighbors called an eyesore is starting to blend in after a Sacramento family spent the weekend removing the metal covering their house.

The D'Souza family started taking it down this weekend. They claim neighbors are bombarding their home with harmful microwave radiation and it's making them sick.

The D'Souza's lined the inside and outside of their home with metal and aluminum to block the rays, but the Sacramento city building inspector ordered them to take it down by Monday.

The city says that all the metal is dangerous and that there is no evidence of radiation.

Re:It isn't about California

[DerekLyons]

Unless the covenent of your deed prohibits it, or you're a member of a HOA; you can tell your neighbors to mind their own damned business.

Absolutely incorrect. Every municpality in the US has building codes and zoning restrictions, many also have any number of civil and/or criminal codes, all of which limit what you may or may not do with or on your property.

I bought a house, it was average for the part of Pennsylvania that I'm from. It's in an upper-middle class neighborhood.

The few weeks after we bought it, we discovered a leak in the basement. We had to get a backhoe to tear up a trench around two sides of the house to install proper drainage. It was like that for a few months, the neighbors probably didn't like it, but there was nothing they could do.

More likely there was nothing they could do in that particular situation or that they didn't care. That does not generalize into the statement quoted in the first paragraph.

Re:At least they're taking extra precautions...

[ElfKnight]

'Space blankets' are AFAIK absolutely standard hiking/camping gear - you'd be an idiot to go away without one.

They're compact, light, and they could save you from hypothermia.

And they are no more use than any other sheet of light plastic (except to keep the sun off you). Most heat is lost from the body by convection and conduction and evaporation of water or sweat - NOT by radiation.

Hillwalkers in the UK are recommended by instructors to carry orange plastic survival bags instead - a little more bulky, but more effective since you can get inside, it'll keep water and wind out better, and it's less likely to blow away. And you can fold the damn thing up again properly.

Re:Glad I'm not a Californian anymore

[core plexus]

Yes, it's a hard life. Not paying state income taxes or purchase taxes, getting a check from the Permanent Fund every year for approx. $1,000, having all this fresh air and clean water and room to roam. Then there's the gold mine that I own. What a hassle it is to throw back the small gold so it can grow bigger. Heck, I remember once, when it got to -20 below zero for a couple of days. I had to drive almost an hour to find good skiing.

Yep, I'm suffering here.

-cp-

Re:Too bad he's running the site off on 28.8 Kbps

[cyphem]

Google [google.de] offers some pictures, small but neat. Excellent story :-)

Re:What'll the neighbors think?

[nickstance]

Stallman said "Your freedom to throw your fist ends at the tip of my nose". Building ordnances are there for a reason, the same that forbids you from tanning in your underwear in the front lawn.
STALLMAN!?!?!?
Try Oliver Wendell Holmes [quotedb.com]

Re:I'm not a Californian

[Milican]

Since the site is having trouble I have coralized [nyud.net] it.

For those who don't know, coralizing is a lighting fast method of mirroring a site. Click here [coralcdn.org] to find out more details.

JOhn

Re:Private property

[poot_rootbeer]

Private property is private property.

And municipal housing codes are municipal housing codes.

When you buy a home, you're agreeing to abide by the rules in that location that pertain to home ownership. Some such rules are just common sense, like requiring a permit to dig around underground where the utility lines are. Some of them are excessively onerous, like Homeowners' Association bylaws. The rules in this case seem to fall somewhere in between.

Re:I'm not a Californian

[bkr1_2k]

There is absolutley nothing requiring natural light in every room. The only rooms required to have a window are bedrooms. Any other room in the house can be as closed off as you want it, you just can't call a 4 room house a 4 bedroom house unless all four rooms have a window. (Well, two exits actually, whether they are doors or windows or whatever.)

bkr

Re:Family Takes Down Metal That Covered Home

[whitehatlurker]

Check out the link [thekcrachannel.com] - there is a survey as to whether or not people think they should have been forced to remove the sheeting.