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Sirotan posted:Filled 14 leaf bags yesterday, 8 last weekend, and I've still got two trees with leaves so I'll probably be at it again later this week. A hard barrier really isn't required for blowing leaves around, just make several manageable piles and then pick them up from there. Get an electric blower and a 100' extension cord and make your life easier. Where's you get those hinges? They match my houses originals perfectly.
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Nov 9, 2020 17:49
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SpartanIvy posted:Where's you get those hinges? They match my houses originals perfectly. https://www.houseofantiquehardware.com/door-hinges-satin-nickel-butt-ball-tip-steel-4 It is the only one I could ever find with the correct zig-zag screw pattern. The original hinges were identical, except brass. Screw holes were just a tad bit off but I made it work, though I did strip one screw and now gotta figure out where I can find a replacement. Edit: Neat, I just called House of Antique Hardware and they're gonna just send me some new screws for free. Sirotan fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Nov 9, 2020 |
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Nov 9, 2020 18:22
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PCjr sidecar posted:loving maples. I feel your pain, I have sycamores the other side of my property line, we cross our fingers every year that the wind blows South for the 2 weeks it takes for the leaves to drop, no such luck this year.
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Nov 9, 2020 18:35
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OSU_Matthew posted:Same... I just mulch right back into the lawn with my battery powered mower and it’s excellent. Plus it’s real good for the lawn from what I understand. I leave a healthy amount of leaves to mulch back in, I'm actually about to mow it in a little bit, but this was too much to leaf (  ), it would have resulted in dead grass.But like someone else said upthread, I now have several bags of brown/carbon to add my my compost to balance out all the greens from the kitchen scraps and such. I was using shredded newspaper during the end of summer/early fall because I ran out of the previous seasons chopped leaves. I prefer to use more "natural" things, even though in theory newspaper is ok? But also my paper shredder is tiny so it takes a WHILE to shred enough paper. DrBouvenstein fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Nov 9, 2020 |
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Nov 9, 2020 18:36
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Is this the advice thread? I don't know where else to post this but I wanna know how hosed I am and what I should do. I bought and moved into a condo in February and for the last month or so we've had a hopefully small roach problem. We called an exterminator who sprayed something along all the baseboards but still saw one every 4 or 5 days after. About half were dead, half were alive saw about 10 total after he came the first time. Since we kept seeing them we called him back to spray again this past week. In the 6 days since he came we've found 2 dead and 2 alive roaches. Kind of concerning, but maybe just bad/worse luck than last time. We share walls with two other condos, and I highly suspect the roaches are coming from a specific one of our neighbors. When I found the first one I called the Condo board and they pretty much said, "that's gross sorry about that, good luck." So I'm not sure if the exterminator we found is effective, I don't know if it matters since the neighbor might be the root and until they fix it nothing will change, and I don't know if I should press the HOA for more assistance. If it matters I'm on LI in NY and we think they're brown banded cockroaches.
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Nov 9, 2020 19:56
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What's a good way to figure out how much weight I can hang from the rafters in my garage? I've got a kayak hanging there now and want to hang a large ladder. Both weigh about 50lbs each.
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Nov 9, 2020 20:07
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Epi Lepi posted:Is this the advice thread? I don't know where else to post this but I wanna know how hosed I am and what I should do. I would say if you've got a hoarder neighbor that's infested you're pretty boned. You can poison and bait but if you can't cut the roaches off from food and optimal living conditions you'll never stop them. I guess your best bet in that situation (short of moving) would be to try and seal that wall up as best as you can to keep them from coming through, but that's a formidable task. I wish you the best with it. I lived in an apartment once where our neighbors were destitute and had packed 8 people into a 2 bedroom and not only had a roache infestation but bedbugs. Both of which came through the walls for my roommate and I.
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Nov 9, 2020 21:46
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porkface posted:What's a good way to figure out how much weight I can hang from the rafters in my garage? Hang heavier and heavier things from it until it collapses, then rebuild it and weigh the last thing you hung from it.
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Nov 9, 2020 22:14
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Clayton Bigsby posted:You should hear some of the houses here in Sweden. Most houses use a water based heating system where warm-ish (with bigger pipes and radiators maybe up to 45C in the winter, with thinner shittier ones up to 70C) water is used. Traditionally the water was heated with a wood, coal or oil burner. In the past 20-30 years it's become far more common to use air/water heat pumps or geothermal heat pumps. Of course most people opt to have a tank heated by the heat pump instead of a water heater (since it's far more efficient). Huh, I'm about to move into a Swedish house with an air pump and water-based heating, so this is good to know!
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Nov 9, 2020 22:45
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Probably not the right thread but I've got a crew coming in to install a water conditioner this Wednesday. I've got almost $2k on my FSA Visa that I have to use this year and was curious if anyone had tried to claim this as a medically necessary expense - my wife has notoriously fickle psoriasis so it's not trying anything dishonest. Just curious if anyone had been down that road or anything similar.
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Nov 9, 2020 23:25
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mischief posted:Probably not the right thread but I've got a crew coming in to install a water conditioner this Wednesday. I've got almost $2k on my FSA Visa that I have to use this year and was curious if anyone had tried to claim this as a medically necessary expense - my wife has notoriously fickle psoriasis so it's not trying anything dishonest. Just curious if anyone had been down that road or anything similar. You would need a doctor to write a letter of medical recommendation for it. Good luck! Also the rules are pretty relaxed this year so double check your receipts for things like otc medicine and feminine hygiene products. Also stock up. Ask your doctor for an otc prescription for fsa - mine gave me a 8x11 printed page with like 20 or 30 things on it "as needed." (advil, Tylenol, Sudafed, etc.)
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Nov 9, 2020 23:32
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Epi Lepi posted:Is this the advice thread? I don't know where else to post this but I wanna know how hosed I am and what I should do. There is a pest control thread here which may help: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3944991
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Nov 10, 2020 04:13
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The heating element on our old rear end in-wall oven busted. It basically flared up/caught on fire at one of the corner bends. It's a GE. Model number: J KS06 003AD I've found this: https://www.appliancepartspros.com/search.aspx?model=jks06%20003ad But not sure about the site. Any other reliable sites you guys use for old spare parts?
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Nov 10, 2020 16:32
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BonoMan posted:The heating element on our old rear end in-wall oven busted. It basically flared up/caught on fire at one of the corner bends. Repair Clinic for sure, but I might be biased as their warehouse is a short drive from me. They have a ton of great walkthrough videos for doing repairs to just about everything. Here's everything for the model number you listed: https://www.repairclinic.com/ProductDetail/56199
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Nov 10, 2020 17:06
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Darkrenown posted:Huh, I'm about to move into a Swedish house with an air pump and water-based heating, so this is good to know! Hit me up if you have any questions, we've renovated a couple places from the ground up now so have seen some poo poo.
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Nov 10, 2020 18:26
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Sirotan posted:Repair Clinic for sure, but I might be biased as their warehouse is a short drive from me. They have a ton of great walkthrough videos for doing repairs to just about everything. Here's everything for the model number you listed: awesome, ordered - thanks! (and it's going to be here day after tomorrow - dang that's fast)
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Nov 10, 2020 18:31
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H110Hawk posted:Yup. And  My neighbor just took down all the wire mesh because surprise surprise, the squirrels gave 0 fucks. He put so much of it up, including around his patio cover, etc. It's all gone. Those super fat squirrels who ate all of our sunflower seeds now can run along the fence with glee.
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Nov 11, 2020 02:23
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Clayton Bigsby posted:Hit me up if you have any questions, we've renovated a couple places from the ground up now so have seen some poo poo. Thanks! I don't have any specific questions yet, but I do have a vague goal of installing District heating and Solar panels at some point, so if you, or anyone else, has tips in that area they'd be welcome. The air pump is 17 years old, it seemed fine in the inspection but it's getting towards the end of its lifespan as far as I know. The roof is the same age but should be good for 15+ years for the solar panels.
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Nov 11, 2020 03:13
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Darkrenown posted:Thanks! I don't have any specific questions yet, but I do have a vague goal of installing District heating and Solar panels at some point, so if you, or anyone else, has tips in that area they'd be welcome. The air pump is 17 years old, it seemed fine in the inspection but it's getting towards the end of its lifespan as far as I know. The roof is the same age but should be good for 15+ years for the solar panels. If by district heating you mean fjärrvärme, ehhhhh... I'd pass. Would much rather have full control over my system. If you have an air/water heat pump (I assume you do if you have water based heating) consider replacing it or going with geothermal/bergvärme if possible. At least that's what I would do. Fjärrvärme is convenient but in my experience it rarely makes more financial sense. At least in this part of the country, perhaps you get a better deal where you are.
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Nov 11, 2020 21:23
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I do mean fjärrvärme, yes. I'm not against geothermal, but it costs a lot more to set up. The current setup is an airpump and an electric boiler for waterborne heat and hot water, plus electric underfloor heating in a couple of places. I'm not against just getting a new pump either, I just thought fjärrvärme would make sense with water based heating. I'll need to look into it more carefully, but it seems like Geothermal would be around 150k, fjärrvärme 60k, new air pump 20-30k.
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Nov 12, 2020 13:03
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Darkrenown posted:I do mean fjärrvärme, yes. I'm not against geothermal, but it costs a lot more to set up. The current setup is an airpump and an electric boiler for waterborne heat and hot water, plus electric underfloor heating in a couple of places. I'm not against just getting a new pump either, I just thought fjärrvärme would make sense with water based heating. I'll need to look into it more carefully, but it seems like Geothermal would be around 150k, fjärrvärme 60k, new air pump 20-30k. Holy poo poo, you guys are talking about actual drill down to the hot stuff geothermal, not just a heatpump? Is that something that’s only viable in certain areas?
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Nov 12, 2020 13:27
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They are probably talking about "bergvärme" which is hard to translate to english, but from a swedish language perspective it tends to get translated into geothermal. But not really geothermal, more like a borehole 130-200m deep with a loop of brine in it, that is hooked to a special heat pump.
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Nov 12, 2020 13:42
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His Divine Shadow posted:They are probably talking about "bergvärme" which is hard to translate to english, but from a swedish language perspective it tends to get translated into geothermal. But not really geothermal, more like a borehole 130-200m deep with a loop of brine in it, that is hooked to a special heat pump. That's a downhole or borehole heat exchanger and they exist in the US as well. They're uncommon because it's rare for them to be economically viable (cost of the electricity for circulating the water). Although that's a thing with the type of geothermal most people are thinking about too.
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Nov 12, 2020 16:40
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His Divine Shadow posted:They are probably talking about "bergvärme" which is hard to translate to english, but from a swedish language perspective it tends to get translated into geothermal. But not really geothermal, more like a borehole 130-200m deep with a loop of brine in it, that is hooked to a special heat pump. yeah, that *can* be called "Geothermal" in English, although clearer term I've seen used for that is "Ground Loop Heat Pump".
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Nov 12, 2020 16:42
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Hubis posted:yeah, that *can* be called "Geothermal" in English, although clearer term I've seen used for that is "Ground Loop Heat Pump". Ground loop geothermal is not the same as borehole. Ground loop is only a few feet deep, spread out over a fairly large area.
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Nov 12, 2020 16:59
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It's quite popular in the nordic countries at any rate. Considered to be very economical to run over here, cost of installation is the big deal. Our house is heated by one at any rate.
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Nov 12, 2020 17:01
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His Divine Shadow posted:It's quite popular in the nordic countries at any rate. Considered to be very economical to run over here, cost of installation is the big deal. Our house is heated by one at any rate. Yeah, you have the temperature differential (average temps vs. ground temp) to make it really worth it. That's simply not the case in most of the US.
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Nov 12, 2020 17:02
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Motronic posted:Ground loop geothermal is not the same as borehole. Ground loop is only a few feet deep, spread out over a fairly large area. Oh, interesting. I guess I'd always conflated the two in my head as being sort of the same thing.
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Nov 12, 2020 17:06
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Groundloop is done here too, but less commonly. I assume it works better in areas where the surface gets warmed by the sun more. In theory I could get borehole heat and then run the pump for it off of solar panel energy, but the setup costs would be around $30k, so it'd take a while to pay back. Another plus, boreholes can also provide cooling in the summer. Does the US have fjärrvärme/district heating as an option? To explain, certain power plants also make a lot of hot water, which is then sent through insulated pipes to people's homes to be used as hot water and for radiators rather than having your own boiler. It tends to also be hooked into various community heating/cooling systems too. A potentially nice thing about having fjärrvärme in the area even if you don't use the system yourself is that when you have your own power generation from solar or whatever, the power company lets you "store" power (really they just use the power and keep a tally) in the water heating system during the warmer part of the year and then they'll return an equal amount of free power during the winter. You could just sell your excess power, of course, but power prices tend to be lowest in the summer and highest in winter, so it seems like storing it is the better deal.
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Nov 12, 2020 18:39
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Hubis posted:Oh, interesting. I guess I'd always conflated the two in my head as being sort of the same thing. They are right? Just different options for the same method depending on what climate and geology it’s being installed in. Darkrenown posted:
Definitely don’t have it in the UK - it seems like a wonderful thing, though I guess you have to be fairly near to a power station for it to be an option? We don’t even have central hot water heating within blocks of flats here - every single 1 bed flat has its own electric or has boiler, which has always bugged me as being a massive waste of resources - not to mention space in all the flats.
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Nov 12, 2020 18:57
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Darkrenown posted:Groundloop is done here too, but less commonly. I assume it works better in areas where the surface gets warmed by the sun more. For residential I don't think it's very common here to do smart waste heat exchanging, sounds like socialism. Some states have "Net Energy Metering" which is what you described for solar. Your bill is reduced kwh for kwh for generation you provide. That is going away over time in favor of a more sustainable wholesale purchase / retail sale or other things which make small scale solar generation take a lot longer to pay off. As I recall a hospital in downtown los angeles started doing heat exchanging with datacenters as a way to pre-heat their water, and I think there is a law requiring some amount of waste heat scavenging from our booming datacenter industry. (It helps that in Los Angeles our DC's are nestled right up next to or literally inside of other high density buildings.)
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Nov 12, 2020 19:01
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Darkrenown posted:Does the US have fjärrvärme/district heating as an option? It used to be a thing in a few select places, might be a thing in some very odd little pockets somewhere but basically nowhere I'm aware of other than NYC. ConEd Steam is still being used for heat in some commercial buildings I think and also some crazy things you wouldn't have thought of like elevators and very old commercial dishwashers. Nearly 50% of the energy going into that steam is waste heat from other things last I heard.
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Nov 12, 2020 19:27
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When I lived in an apartment a decade ago it was heated by district heating, so the heating of water for all the apartments was centralized. The heat was the byproduct of some industry nearby.
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Nov 12, 2020 19:51
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Darkrenown posted:I do mean fjärrvärme, yes. I'm not against geothermal, but it costs a lot more to set up. The current setup is an airpump and an electric boiler for waterborne heat and hot water, plus electric underfloor heating in a couple of places. I'm not against just getting a new pump either, I just thought fjärrvärme would make sense with water based heating. I'll need to look into it more carefully, but it seems like Geothermal would be around 150k, fjärrvärme 60k, new air pump 20-30k. So you have an air/air heatpump (luftvärmepump) in addition to an electric boiler? One compromise would be an air/water heat pump (luftvattenvärmepump) which should be a fair bit cheaper than bergvärme but still highly efficient. Had one at the old house and it took our annual electric consumption from 40,000 kWh to around 18,000. (We had an electric boiler before which is terrible.)
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Nov 12, 2020 20:49
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wooger posted:Definitely don’t have it in the UK - it seems like a wonderful thing, though I guess you have to be fairly near to a power station for it to be an option? Depends on your definition of near. We just got a new plant here in town and it covers the entire city. Probably a good 10km or more from where I live, and people here get their heat from it. We have huge pipes running underground throughout the city and even outside it.
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Nov 12, 2020 20:50
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wooger posted:Definitely don’t have it in the UK - it seems like a wonderful thing, though I guess you have to be fairly near to a power station for it to be an option? I assume there's some distance requirement, but it's not like the power station is close enough to see. In fact, I think what they actually do is pump the hot water to a large accumulator tank in the city and then the water is sent out from that. And yeah, I'm from Scotland, so I've a lot of experience of UK flats. Included freezing my rear end off due to draughty 100 year old single pane windows, another nice thing about living in Sweden is double-glazing is almost universal and triple pane windows aren't uncommon. Clayton Bigsby posted:So you have an air/air heatpump (luftvärmepump) in addition to an electric boiler? One compromise would be an air/water heat pump (luftvattenvärmepump) which should be a fair bit cheaper than bergvärme but still highly efficient. Had one at the old house and it took our annual electric consumption from 40,000 kWh to around 18,000. (We had an electric boiler before which is terrible.) Yes. I'll look at luftvattenvärmepumps too then! Darkrenown fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Nov 12, 2020 |
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Nov 12, 2020 20:53
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Darkrenown posted:I assume there's some distance requirement, but it's not like the power station is close enough to see. In fact, I think what they actually do is pump the hot water to a large accumulator tank in the city and then the water is sent out from that. I get the sense that decent double and triple glazed windows are for some reason much cheaper in Scandinavian countries and Germany than in the UK. I see no reason for this. The majority of UK houses have the worst poo poo white PVC double glazing here, I’ve never seen a place in Sweden or Finland that didn’t at least have aluminium framed double glazing.
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Nov 12, 2020 21:05
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wooger posted:I get the sense that decent double and triple glazed windows are for some reason much cheaper in Scandinavian countries and Germany than in the UK. I see no reason for this. Aluminium is used a fair bit, but most older house have wood framed windows. If the house was built in the 20s/30s/40s the wood's likely heartwood and will last centuries if maintained reasonably well.
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Nov 12, 2020 21:10
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HingeChat finally inspired me to tackle my pantry door that scrapes the floor and welp, Previous Owner strikes again I guess when they went to rehang it they had lost the pins, so they just dropped some screws in and painted them to look like the ancient painted hinges  Sirotan posted:https://www.houseofantiquehardware.com/door-hinges-satin-nickel-butt-ball-tip-steel-4 these are also what I need so thanks!
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Nov 12, 2020 21:34
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His Divine Shadow posted:When I lived in an apartment a decade ago it was heated by district heating, so the heating of water for all the apartments was centralized. The heat was the byproduct of some industry nearby. I had district heating in all my apartments in Stockholm. Fairly instant, abundant hot water at high pressure? Sign me the gently caress up. Here in LA, we've got a gas-fired tankless heater that manages to take 1) 5 minutes to get hot water to the shower 2) run out of hot water somehow??? One of the more ingenious "because we can" projects the Stockholm energy co did was when they realized how relatively close the main sewage treatment plant for the city (Henriksdal) was from one of their combined district heating / power plants (Hammarbyverket). They bored a ~2km tunnel from the sewage plant to the heat plant, and sent the (relatively) warm treated effluent to the district heating plant. There they use industrial size heat pumps to recover the heat generated by the treatment process and heat a few neighborhoods.
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