Motronic posted:

https://www.amazon.com/d/RV-Portabl...+fuel+generator

That's got a knock off of a Honda motor in it. Some goon who I won't out here works for them in an engineering capacity.

I have a gas only one and it works great.

I would not choose this for an off the grid/construction site. But for an occasional power outage it's fine. Last time I had to use it I was out of power for 3 days, and it was shut down when we went to sleep and for refueling......and that one time when I hit the hours for an oil change (yes, you should do this if you want your stuff to last). Still running great.

Fallom posted:

What should I look up if I want someone to tell me whether or not it’s ok to bust out a wall or column in my house? “Structural engineer” just gets me foundation repair companies.

BadSamaritan posted:

If you’re mowing a small, flat lawn, have you considered a good quality push mower? Our lawn is smaller than yours (a bit under 1/10th of an acre), but it’s quick to use. No fuel reserve to keep, very little noise, no startup hassles- it basically gets rid of all the reasons why I can’t just go do the lawn right now.

I’m not sure how practical it would be for a larger lawn, but it’s genuinely more pleasant to deal with than a gas mower if you oil and sharpen it each season.

KKKLIP ART posted:

So I want to get some under cabinet LED lights for my rental because there is absoutly no over head task lighting and its pretty anoying. I was looking at this kit:

https://www.amazon.com/Albrillo-Cabinet-Lighting-Dimmable-Counter/dp/B06Y46JKL6/

Any other opinions or thoughts? Maybe someone else has used one that they like and is easy to install?

KKKLIP ART posted:

Good to know. I always heard you wanted more white light for food but I think it would stand out s whole lot. I’ll have to think about that.

glynnenstein posted:

I mostly use 2700 or 3000 except in my basement shop and the garage where 4100 is good for me.

devmd01 posted:

Bought a $30 LED light kit and installed it above the workbench, it’s actually usable now.

Next step is to revamp the garage lighting with LEDs and add another light above the workbench area.

Hubis posted:

What happens when you get rain -- does it pool at all? Looking at the pictures my first guess is that line of bare spots is along a small local depression that holds water a little bit longer than others, which drowns the grass and then leads to compaction. If that's the case then buy a few bags of good quality top-soil and Paver Sand (NOT "Play Sand" -- you want the coarse stuff), mix them 50/50, and rake that over the area to level. Then seed, cover with a little peat moss, water religiously (but LIGHTLY) and let it fill in.

Other guesses: Were there any trees in the area? Could be subterranian roots.

What happens if you try to stick a slot-head screwdriver in the bare spots? Is it harder than the surrounding areas? That would also indicate compaction.

More concerning: Fungus. Did that area look healthy when you moved in? What happened? Do you see other patches of grass that are yellowing/look unhealthy? You can treat this with a couple spring fungicide treatments and then patch it up in the fall.

If you have Bluegrass (which you might in RI, not sure) then you can shove nitrogen down it's throat in the fall -- Bluegrass is Rhizomatic and will respond by sending out roots and spreading aggressively. It doesn't like heat so doing this now can lead to it getting stressed out going into summer (or getting a fungus problem due to excess N) but fall is the perfect time. In this case you want to aim for about 1 lb of N / 1k sqft every month once the soil temps dip below 75'F or so down to about 50'F.

- 1 lb/1k SqFt means 5 lbs of 20-0-0 (for example)
- You probably want to break up the application so more like 0.5 Lb/K every 2 weeks
- Make sure the grass is getting enough water (0.75-1.5in/wk) if you try and push N into it
- a fall Fungicide application probably isn't a bad idea if you are feeding and irrigating, although it's less important as the grass will be going into its dominant season instead of its stressful one
- Likewise a fall pre-emergent application would be good since you have these bare spots. If you are seeding then you don't want to do this (unless you use something like the Scott's Starter with the grass-safe pre-emergent in it)


This didn't cause those bare patches,, but my personal preference is to mulch the grass and bag when there's a lot of leaves on the ground (and either compost or apply as mulch in my beds). The leaves break down surprisingly slowly and they don't get chopped up nearly as finely as grass does so if they are mulched into the lawn in large numbers then they can suffocate the turf underneath. If you have dense grass then this is less of a problem as the grass itself will inhibit the leaves matting together; however, if you have thin/bare areas like this then I would avoid mulching leaves in large numbers as they will collect in those bare spots very easily. I definitely wouldn't do it if I have new seed on the ground.


This., but like I've personally recommended elsewhere I'd make sure you're scratching up the bare spots really well with a gravel rake or tiller as well as the core aeration -- the cores aren't really that useful for seeding in and of themselves.

I'd also throw in a humic acid treatment to restore carbon to the soil. Anything that has HA in it is good -- Jonathan Greene makes one, there's lots of others on Amazon as well. HA can also help with compaction.

Hubis posted:

Awesome advice.

Jaded Burnout posted:

Really the answer to "what do I do if I have an empty room I don't have a use for" is "move somewhere smaller" or "get a lodger".

kimcicle posted:

Slowly fixing things up around the house after one and a half years of ownership and I'm not really sure what to do about this door splitting. During the winter months it's fine, but when it warms up the lockset starts to undo itself out of the door and causes it to be super hard to open because the screws are catching against the strike / frame. I'm inclined to take the lock set out, shoot a whole lot of wood glue in here, and clamp it shut for X number of hours but I'm wondering if there's another course of action short of replacing the whole door.



Door + lockset is probably a good 40 years old at this point so it might be worth replacing anyways.

beep-beep car is go posted:

I've found that quite a few Europeans don't realize what a variation in temperatures the US gets even in the same region over a year. In my area (northeast) the summers can be up in the 90s F (30s C) and the winters can get down to below 0f (-17 C) and that's not counting the highs and lows I've seen in my area. There have been over 100F (38C) for highs and I've seen -20F (-29C) for lows. That doesn't even begin to account for humidity. Summers in the northeast are humid.

The Wonder Weapon posted:

How dumb would it be to do this with my double door driveway gate? I figure I could put the actual center of the gate (and the latch) where the red line is, and then extend the planks various lengths into the other gate. It would mean that you'd need to open and close them in a specific order, but other than that, would it be a terribly bad idea?

In the interest in sharing, here's my mid-process driveway gate beams. 6x6, each about 4' deep with a load of gravel underneath. Please do not tell me there's anything wrong with what I've done because they are now encased in 1,000 lbs of concrete each and there is absolutely no way either of them is moving a hair's breadth.

Hubis posted:

Those are sheet metal pegboard

beep-beep car is go posted:

My house has a bell!


the "Control panel" under it

(I haven't dared flip the switch there yet)

The KeY oPeRaTeD acrtivation


Brand


It's either an ancient burglar alarm or ancient fire alarm, I have no idea which and I have no idea if any of it is still live or active. Wanna flip that on switch though and see what happens.

SetPhazers2Funk posted:

I would not attempt a first time DIY solar project unless you have some meaningful experience with electrical work and you're not planning on connecting it with the grid. If it's a small project for something like a standalone shed with some light bulbs+sockets then that's a bit more manageable, but the consequences for screwing up a full house project w/inverter and some sort of net metering setup are high, potentially much higher than the relatively cheap (and getting cheaper) cost of hiring a professional. One thing to remember for those who haven't priced these out before- if you're in the US the state + federal incentives can frequently cover the majority of the cost of installing the system.

-guy who has a 4kw system on his roof that was ~85% subsidized

quote:

The federal ITC was originally established by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and was set to expire at the end of 2007. A series of extensions pushed the expiration date back to the end of 2016, but experts believed that an additional five-year extension would bring the solar industry to its full maturity. Thanks to the spending bill that Congress passed in late December 2015, the tax credit is now available to homeowners in some form through 2021. Here are the specifics:

2016 – 2019: The tax credit remains at 30 percent of the cost of the system. This means that in 2017, you can still get a major discounted price for your solar panel system.
2020: Owners of new residential and commercial solar can deduct 26 percent of the cost of the system from their taxes.
2021: Owners of new residential and commercial solar can deduct 22 percent of the cost of the system from their taxes.
2022 onwards: Owners of new commercial solar energy systems can deduct 10 percent of the cost of the system from their taxes. There is no federal credit for residential solar energy systems.

Pigsfeet on Rye posted:

Were Hearthstone stoves too tall? I know they have both top and rear exhaust exit options, and some of the smaller stoves might fit into the current fireplace.
http://hearthstonestoves.com/wood-products/4594643898

That Works posted:

Motronic posted:

Your fireplace is not an insert.

You would have to demo all the tile/stone out from around it and, depending on how you want to build shelves/cubbies, demo the fire brick and parts of the chimney.

Jaded Burnout posted:

They're all kinda fiddly tasks so you can expect it to take much longer than a bevy of pros with experience, and/or it might not wind up with a perfect finish, but you're not going to collapse the chimney or anything.

The only note I'd give is that it's apparently necessary to provide venting from the chimney into the room via any closed up fireplaces to prevent that section of the chimney developing mould issues.

Motronic posted:

IF they ID'd it as an insert than go with that. From your pic it looks like a regular built fireplace with a screen door pasted on the outside (very common). That should make things significantly easier on you.


A cubby on the floor where the fireplace used to be? Might look a bit odd, but yeah.....should be pretty easy. The worst thing you have to deal with here is the chimney, which is probably nothing more than galvanized double or triple wall pipe in an OSB box.

Kaiser Schnitzel posted:

I'm sure there are Reasons that aren't clear to me, but it seems way easier/cheaper to run whatever chimney pipe you need for the wood stove up the existing chimney? Put the wood stove on the current stone hearth (replace/expand it if needed since the stove will stick out in the room) and then remove/replace the existing mantel with whatever stone/tile you need to have around the woodstove.

H110Hawk posted:

Bosch with the third rack. I think ours was right about $700.

H110Hawk posted:

Around us I would check Pacific Sales, but basically look at everyone who sells them and price track them. It seems they're up to around $900 MSRP right now but I know they knocked off money just for saying I wanted one. Seems the fancier models now have a leak detection system. I regret getting front controls and wish I had gotten "top" controls. I only use "auto" and "sanitize" (lots of raw-chicken jous, baby bottles). I strongly suggest using rinse aid (cuts 30 minutes off the cycle time) and brand name pods (I use cascade platinum, the mid-range ones work fine but the platinum ones really knock the grease off the baby bottles.)

I would not suggest screwing around with any other cycle. Half-load can shave 30 minutes and *1* gallon of water off of the 5-6 gallon load, but sometimes I swear it leaves a little soap on there because it's still the same amount of input detergent.

H110Hawk posted:

Buy an expensive German appliance filled with plastic parts they said, it will have superior German adhesives they said,



It's a little hard to see but the plastic little teeth/clip things on the left of the picture are chewed/ground down significantly compared to the other side. Tried just re-seating it and running it on rinse, fell off again. Not sure if my toddler closing the door on the open basket caused it to fail the rest of the way or if it was already in the bottom of the basket before, either way it's toast. $31 shipped from some random parts website for the whole assembly to the back of the basin.

Nevvy Z posted:

The stupid fucks who used to own our house didn't insulate the cold water pipes to the bathroom. At least, I'm pretty sure that's the reason for gradual water accumulation in our ceiling. Now I've gotta fix the ceiling and rip out the bathroom floor to insulate the pipes. loving hell.