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Rexxed posted:I tried to unclog a slow drain with the "turbo snake" as seen on tv. The old galvanized drain pipe is obviously paper thin at this point and I managed to bust right through the bottom of the p-trap with a tiny flexible wire mini snake thing. I think all the 60 year old galvanized is coming out and PVC is going in. If I hadn't touched it, it might've held on a bit longer! Yeah, basically don't touch or inspect anything old or you're in for it. Half the yard dug up right now since we decided to see just what kind of shape the sewer pipe was in with a camera, and, well... At the same time we learned that the water to the house was 1960s highly suspect plastic into 1930s original iron into 1980s galvanized steel.
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Nov 7, 2020 19:38
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Elder Postsman posted:Yeah, the water pipes in my house make some interesting tapping and popping noises once the weather starts cooling down. 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). So you have a radiator system being fed with say 30-35C water during late fall / early winter, and a hot water tank you want to keep at 60-70C. The switch between heating the two is via a electronically controlled three way valve. The problem is that if you are heating the hot water tank and the system switches over to the radiator circuit, for a short period of time you're dumping 60-70C water into the radiator system. As that extra hot water wanders around it causes a lot of expansion and contraction, and the whole house will tap and knock like crazy until it settles down again. Annoying as gently caress. The solution is to install a tank at the start of the radiator circuit that will buffer this hot water and let the temp even out a bit before it goes into the system. But few installers bother with this since it technically works and they're not the ones having to live with it.
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Nov 8, 2020 12:28
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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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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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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: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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Hard to tell from that pic, but is it possible to just use a plastic sheet to cut off the area of the garage where your workout gear is, and heat that? Obviously not a permanent solution but might be a quick and easy thing to do for the cold season. It'll be inefficient as hell still but at least you're reducing the volume a bit. I'm dealing with a similar situation in Sweden but I ended up framing (with steel studs) half the garage and building a wall. Obviously it makes it useless to park cars in at this point but it's a 1930s garage that was useless to begin with. Now I have a heated home gym (that doesn't use a lot of energy) and an unheated space for tools and poo poo. That part stays above freezing still, but the gym I keep at 18C or so all winter. The method I used (steel studs, insulation between them, plastic sheet and then board) is one of those that some people swear by and other insist will do terrible things, but our old house's basement was done this way back in the 1980s and is still fresh as a daisy so I'm not too concerned. Clayton Bigsby fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Nov 14, 2020 |
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Nov 14, 2020 20:42
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Hed posted:You can't leave a splice in the ceiling, but you could re-terminate / re-run your cable so that there are none aside from your new boxes. Depending on how it was wired and daisy-chained, you could get lucky and only have to tear out the drywall between those joist bays and where the lights continue down towards the sink. Do you guys not pull cable in conduits over there? If there is one you could just add on another piece of conduit and rerun the cable to the box it's connected to. Today's fun. Fan for circulating air under the floor in the basement stopped working. Popped open the fan controller and found the below. Pretty sure deformed and melty plastic around a transformer is bad, yes? 
Clayton Bigsby fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Nov 19, 2020 |
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Nov 19, 2020 20:10
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Elviscat posted:Only one municipality (Chicago) that I know of requires conduit for branch circuits, everywhere else is non metallic cable ("Romex") Jesus christ you guys are a bunch of savages.
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Nov 19, 2020 20:21
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H110Hawk posted:For our next trick, we will also make everything harder by only sending 120V down the wire. But at least there aren't ring mains. Ring mains, positive ground cars, Lucas electronics, the list goes on  But seriously, conduits are great. For instance when I switched to LED lights I had a couple of dimmers that caused some problems, and needed to switch them out. The new ones required both a positive and negative wire. The existing one just had two wires, the positive in, and the positive out to the light. Took a couple of minutes to just throw another wire in there. Didn't even have to rip out any drywall!
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Nov 19, 2020 20:41
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Motronic posted:Yes, we understand what conduit allows you to do. It's not disallowed from use, and is even required in some situations outside of Chicago. But it's simply not used much because of the difficulty and cost of building for very little payback. Even in safety, because of how we wire and what devices are used as a whole and the codes enforced are predicated on each other. Well, there's also the option of rewiring the house decades later without tearing into things. We just replaced all the electrical in our house that was built in 1936 and didn't have to rip anything open. Surprised it'd be that expensive compared to just stapling cable to the studs. When I built our shed I just bought "preloaded" conduit so I didn't even have to pull wires through it. Maybe we're talking about different kinds? The old school stuff here was rigid metal conduit which I can imagine took some effort to put in properly, but the modern stuff is just a flexible plastic hose kind of thing that takes about as long to put in place as it would running a cable. Here's an example I found:  You generally let the conduit "float" a bit, and the wires inside aren't crammed into the space so they can move around as well. The idea being that it's very unlikely you'd manage to actually pierce one even if you drove a nail right into it. 
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Nov 19, 2020 21:02
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DaveSauce posted:I think your in-use box is upside-down. I think it's mounted in the eaves.
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Nov 20, 2020 21:00
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dakana posted:Trying to choose between laminate and vinyl flooring for our soon-to-be finished basement. It's a newer house - built in '06 - and the basement has been pretty dry in the six years we've been here, so I'm not overly concerned about water coming up through the slab. Famous last words, I'm sure. In either case, I'll have a moisture barrier as part of the underlayment anyway. You guys don't have the option of ventilated subflooring? I put that poo poo in the basement and it's amazing. Needed about 10cm of height though so if your ceilings are low-ish to begin with obviously not the best option.
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Dec 4, 2020 20:01
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dakana posted:Link me to / tell me more? Googled a bit and found this stuff which looks interesting. The ceilings aren't super high, and ducting makes it lower in some places, but we are leaving the joists exposed and just painting to maximize the headroom. That looks similar in function to what I can get over here. Should work fine as long as the concrete's reasonably level. Can't tell if it has the option for mechanical ventilation though, which I would want. The stuff I used here in Sweden is from the company Nivell (there's also Granab, Subfloor and a few other options that are basically identical though some use steel instead of wood for the framing). It looks like this:  Basically you have a bunch of 45x45mm studs with holes in them. In these holes there are large plastic screws. You attach those to the floor (drilling into concrete and driving down a heavy duty steel screw) and then you can adjust the height of the screw to level out the stud (which is handy when the concrete floor is a bit uneven). Then you have precut sheets of insulation with a foil backer that slot in between the studs, suspended from hangers. So you basically have an air gap (we have around 2cm), then the 45mm thick grid of studs and insulation, then you do whatever is suitable on top of that. We used this prerouted subflooring (22mm particle board):  The routing is to run subfloor heating (water based, so a 17mm diameter plastic hose basically). We also put heat spreaders in there (basically flashing) to make the heat more evenly distributed. On top of that a vapor barrier and then a floating hardwood floor. Along one side there's a long perforated pipe that's connected to an extractor fan. Along the other side there are two air inlets. The floor is then sealed against the wall along the edges. So you get room air pulled down and under the floor and out of the house, meaning that any moisture that might creep up in the concrete dries out quickly. If you have issues with radon and poo poo it will help as well. The entire mess I think added 11cm from the concrete. It made the basement feel like any other room, with a nice heated hardwood floor and fresh, healthy air. Took some effort and money but totally worth it. The stuff you posted seems similar to the Platon system we can get here:  Those don't add as much height, and can still be ventilated via a fan. You can throw laminate and stuff right on top of it I think, or possibly use some sort of foam insulation. Clayton Bigsby fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Dec 4, 2020 |
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Dec 4, 2020 20:32
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I admittedly have not followed the whole garage door saga, but if you are trying to reduce space usage from it, why not just use a roll up model?
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Dec 6, 2020 18:24
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The Dave posted:My gym is in an industrial basement and has more or less no concept of insulation (the hallway leads to a loading dock) and I’m not even sure where the heat source is outside of some open flame heaters in the other walkway. Cold air is probably nowhere near as big an issue as cold gear. Gripping a freezing olympic bar is not pleasant.
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Dec 7, 2020 16:16
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Network42 posted:This is the tub in question: Can't you just rip out the tub and get a shower stall big enough to cover the area where it was? You should be able to get away with doing that for a couple of grand at most. Not the nicest solution but if you're working on a budget... I've seen some huge loving models so should be possible to find one that covers the whole area.  Hell, you could get one of these monstrosities as well: https://www.aquapeutics.com/caribbean.html Mind you, I know nothing about what brands in the US are worth looking at, but here in Sweden you can get something like that steam shower / tub for $3-4k and install it yourself. Clayton Bigsby fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Dec 14, 2020 |
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Dec 14, 2020 19:58
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Motronic posted:Again, the drain is in the wrong spot for any of those, so are the supply lines, and that tile on the wall is going to be problematic. There aren't really any reasonable solutions to this that don't involve a plumber and some amount of tile work. Minimizing that so you don't have to retile the entire floor or match it is a good starting point, but that's just one of the many small expenses that add up to this job being something to save for when you're ready to gut that bathroom to the studs and start over again. Granted I am not familiar with the US models, but ones I can get here have a flexible drain hose so the drain can be located pretty much anywhere underneath the footprint (the "tub" has a decent amount of clearance below it), and the water can be solved pretty easily as well. Remove the tub, stick this where it stood, leave the rest of the tile as-is and accept that it won't be as visually pleasing as a proper remodel but perhaps something to live with for a few years until there's room in the budget for one. The supply lines for the existing tub have got to be from the floor or the wall, and either can be dealt with if you are willing to get a bit creative.
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Dec 14, 2020 21:24
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Darkrenown posted:It might be because bathrooms here are normally sealed wetrooms, so if the flexible drain from shower the breaks it's only going to leak onto the wetroom floor and drain into the same floor drain anyway. Not ideal, of course, but not a disaster either. Many showers don't even have a base, you just stand on the floor and the water drains into the floor drain, and even a cabinet or curtain around it isn't universal. It's worth however pointing out that the standards and methods for "wetroom" construction have changed a number of times and not necessarily for the better. There was some test a decade or so ago where they had professionals install all the different types of barriers available and I think something like 75-80% didn't hold up properly afterwards. I redid a half bath in my old house, the requirements there was for the barrier to cover the floor and I think 10-15cm up the walls. Used the stuff from Casco and it was a loving pain in the rear end to work with since the adhesive set so quick you had seconds to get the material in place. But generally it's a good setup if you have a competent installer and the right stuff. We had a "shower corner" in the old house that just had a couple swinging glass doors keeping the spray from going all over the place. Assuming you have the correct slope towards the drain(s) and a decent threshold not too many terrible things can happen either.
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Dec 16, 2020 20:27
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ntan1 posted:If it's not the moisture type of bubbling, usually the two causes are either not cleaning off the surface before painting or not priming the surface. Why not just borrow/rent one of these? https://www.homedepot.com/p/Porter-Cable-4-7-Amp-Corded-8-7-8-in-Drywall-Sander-with-13-ft-Long-Dust-Collection-Hose-7800/100609443 I own a similar one (renovated two houses from the ground up so it's seen some use) and it's a breeze to use. Obviously the dust evac won't catch all the particles, but it makes a massive difference there too.
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Dec 20, 2020 11:03
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falz posted:So I've started this project for realz. Habitat for Humanity took my old kitchen on Dec 23 (except sink, keeping until last moment), I patched and painted yesterday, and today hung rails and am 'test driving' upper cabinets. 1) Get someone else to do it? 2) No 3) You can build just about anything from IKEA components. We modded several parts of our kitchen and it turned out great. Shelves, "Förbättra" cover panels, whatever, you can make it work. 4) Stainless steel backsplash from range to microwave. Add a few hooks for hanging poo poo.
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Dec 26, 2020 20:22
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That GE story reminds me of a Whirpool dishwasher I bought new around 2009. Kept having weird issues, techs kept coming out and replacing parts, finally one tech pointed out how the inside of the door wasn't molded properly but he couldn't explain how and suggested just giving up and returning it. Have owned some Siemens/Bosch poo poo both while I lived in the US and now here in Sweden and gotta say I have been very pleased with their stuff. I temporarily strayed when we build the new kitchen and I wanted to use Samsung fridge/freezer since they were nice and quiet and very roomy. But one was DOA so back they went and I got another pair of Siemens instead.
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Jan 11, 2021 21:01
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I bit the bullet and replaced every single thing in my 1937 vintage house, and I can tell you I sleep a _lot_ better after having yanked out all that aging poo poo together with various creative add-ons that had been done during the decades. Then again, it was a pretty simple operation since I live in a civilized country where even in an 80 year old house there's conduit running between everything.
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Jan 13, 2021 19:27
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:That's the issue, those long bolts weren't holding the light; the electrical cables and wood screws in the drywall were. The fixture fell out of the ceiling when i applied any pressure to it. The box that was up there was secured by a single bolt in the middle of the bracket, and was jammed up between the longer bolts, which have been cut too short to reach anything. I've tried to get a new box up there and the bolts don't reach far enough to mount it up. It looks like you can loosen the nuts holding the longer bolts in place and slide them inwards a bit then retighten. If that works you can probably score a box that you can make them work with.
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Jan 25, 2021 21:31
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Toebone posted:Speaking of kitchen flooring, mine looks like it installed by a drunk chimp. ??? Was it cheap flooring that just came apart or did they just open up a box of laminate and kind of tossed it out on the subfloor?
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Feb 1, 2021 21:06
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Toebone posted:Well, you all made me curious so I removed a screw and pulled up a board. At this point you just have to sort of admire it. Maybe it's some performance art project?
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Feb 2, 2021 21:16
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All this chat reminded me of how regular wire tracers suddenly got relabeled as "robot mower boundary wire break locator" and sold with a 100-200% markup. You want a regular wire tracer? That's like $20 here. You want the Husqvarna Automower Break Tracer that somehow looks 110% identical? Yeah, fifty bucks.
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Apr 26, 2021 19:16
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The Slack Lagoon posted:Between the front and the back it's off by a 1/2 inch. Sure it is not some composite poo poo like Silestone? Not sure what kind of range you have but I’d probably try to get creative with some trim if it is stainless. Just get something that runs down the side and wraps around the front and top of the countertop an inch or so and hide the uneven gap that way. Hard to say without seeing it in person. Could look like poo poo, just tossing out some ideas. My local shop could knock something like that out for me in an hour for a small amount. Clayton Bigsby fucked around with this message at 20:32 on May 10, 2021 |
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May 10, 2021 20:28
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Motronic posted:You're jumping the gun here. Are the gutters discharges extended far enough away from the foundation in an a way/slope that the water isn't piling back up against the house? Yes, the "waterproofer" will do that, along with the other $14,900 worth of work. And it may just be that last bit that actually needed to be done. Even if the slope is disagreeable, what we do here is dig a hole and bury a decent size plastic mesh box wrapped in fabric or go old school and use a big pile of rocks instead of the box, then lead the drain into that underground. Gets it down and away from the house and out of sight. Of course if you have slow draining soil you need a big volume so it might become a significant project. I found that a m3 or so hole per downspout (5 of them) was enough here. Materials were cheap and the exercise free. (Maybe it’s a terrible idea in the US for some reason I am unaware of though) Clayton Bigsby fucked around with this message at 20:54 on May 10, 2021 |
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May 10, 2021 20:50
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Ball Tazeman posted:Worked on grounding the office outlet today and holy gently caress whoever wired that place is an idiot. The entire house except the kitchen and the basement is on a single circuit. Half the three pronged outlets have no grounding. Halfway through the circuit they flipped the hot and neutral, and we had to pull out a ton of stray wire that connected to...nothing. So, at some point we will have to do a total rewire. Very cool. We redid all the wiring in our 1930s house when we moved in. Was a mix between original and weird poo poo done by previous owners. Had a light switch in the kitchen that didn't do anything. Finally found that someone had just cut off the wires and then put some wallboard over them. They were still live. Found _7_ junction boxes that had been wallpapered or boarded over. An outlet had been added in the bedroom using 0.75mm2 wire (suitable for lamps basically) since it could be tucked in under the baseboards. Good chance of causing a fire if you'd plugged in e.g. a vacuum cleaner into that one. Blows my mind how clueless people can be when it comes to electrical.
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May 31, 2021 06:35
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BonerGhost posted:The wall between the dining room and master bedroom in my house has only 1.5" inside between the backs of the drywall sheets. I do the opposite here and not only frame with our 2x4 equivalent (45x70mm) but put up OSB first, then drywall. It's wonderful just being able to screw into wood wherever you please.
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Jul 19, 2021 09:12
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meatpimp posted:Bosch appliance chat -- I've got a 18 month old 800 series dishwasher that error'd out on an E15, which is water in the tray. Had this on my two year old Siemens with Zeolite. Repair guy came out and said it was a poo poo design of a seal. The solution was to loosen everything from inside (under the filter mesh) and add another gasket that makes a better seal. Took maybe 10 minutes. Said he does this repair day in and day out. Tightening everything up can help for a bit but sooner or later you need the proper fix.
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Jul 24, 2021 20:47
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Johnny Truant posted:Hm, well guess I'll look into it a bit more seriously! Any recommended resources on doing this? Just keep in mind that you'll likely be removing all trim/baseboards/etc. And trim around doors/windows will need to be bumped out 1/4" and filled in (I usually use a 6x15mm or so piece of trim for this when I do it). We've done some of that here, and some tearing down all the loose poo poo, painting over with a good oil based primer, then spackling and sanding. Either works.
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Sep 16, 2021 19:59
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His Divine Shadow posted:Jesus my home owners insurance is like 250-300 euros a year I think, not sure. We pay around $500 here (Sweden). $8400 would be insane.
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Nov 2, 2021 20:28
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Rand Brittain posted:(The hatch is also about 25.5" by 54", where most of the covers I see on sale are 25 by 54; not sure how big a problem that's going to be.) About .5"
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Nov 12, 2021 19:56
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BIG-DICK-BUTT-gently caress posted:doorframes get fastened w little nails which can come loose with time and temp/humidity swings. try using 1-2 3" deck screws in the spot where it rubs to draw the door frame tight against the lumber again Uh, what? You don't use something like this? It's pretty much standard here, you use a hex shaped tool to move the spinny part around and can adjust the frame that way. 
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May 17, 2022 21:00
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PDP-1 posted:Anyone know of a good home security camera system that does not rely on cloud backup or having any internet connection at all? My parents live in a rural area and ditched their stupidly expensive DSL landline internet in favor of just using their phones years ago, but this summer they're planning on being gone a lot and apparently one of their neighbors house got broken into recently. We had a similar requirement for a scout cabin and ended up with a ReoLink setup. Paid $500 for 4 4k cameras and a 1TB NVR. Works well without an Internet connection (though you obviously get remote access and alerts and such if you have one), just needs a monitor and power.
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May 22, 2022 13:56
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mutata posted:Yeah don't caulk the toilet to your floor, ew. That's how we do it here (Sweden) since we're required to have a waterproof membrane layer and the fewer things that go through it (e.g. toilet bolts) the better. So you just slap a silicone bead around the base to attach it.
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Jun 8, 2022 21:48
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peanut posted:Yes, the water is beige. What kind of aerator would affect hot but not cold? If you have iron in the water it will show up when warm and agitated / aerated.
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Jul 18, 2022 02:11
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