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Motherfucking attic air handler drip pan loving overflowed into the ceiling for the loving nursery. gently caress.
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Aug 7, 2018 00:58
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Ewwww RIP
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Aug 7, 2018 02:09
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Hey uh I think you're supposed to have some water detecting shutoff feature for those? RIP
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Aug 7, 2018 16:51
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The outflow pipe clogged, I'm guessing. We'll see more when I have the chance to cut out some ceiling drywall and do a postmortem. Other than the sheer WTF MOTHERFUCKER aspect of it (had stressful things to do today that 100% could not be rescheduled), it's not that big of a deal. Rip out some ceiling, clear out some wet insulation, fix the root cause, replace the drywall, skim coat and paint. But gently caress the timing of it. Thank god the lower two levels have their own A/C, it's hot as hell outside. I've been kicking around an attic renovation that would reduce the floor space in unusable areas (low knee walls) but increase access to ducting, etc. Maybe it's time to go ahead on it, if other poo poo ends up needing to be addressed.
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Aug 7, 2018 19:07
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So a few weeks back I posted in the crappy construction thread about the state of my new home. I'm finally done with work on it and I'll move in over the weekend. list of what was done(to the living room): -pulled off all seven layers of old wallpaper -removed the mold from the walls -patched the 100+ holes in the walls -sand anything and everything except for the walls and prep for paint -patched the cracks and tears in the ceiling -put two layers of fresh paint on the ceiling -wallpapered the walls with glass fiber wallpaper -two coats of paint on top of the wallpaper -three coats of paint on the doors -threw out the powerstrips that were used as electric sockets -two coats of paint on the windowframe and plinths -threw down a new floor Total cost: €561 left to do: -put the smoke detector that randomly fell from the ceiling back up there -install one or two electric sockets to replace the powerstrips I took pictures before and after, and I'll see about uploading them. Unfortunately no pictures of the holes.
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Aug 7, 2018 19:11
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This is the rental that we couldn’t fathom the idea of investing money in, right?
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Aug 7, 2018 19:30
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The very same.
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Aug 7, 2018 19:44
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The floor of my garage is below ground level at the rear (i.e. there is a slope), and there's loads of white salts leeching out of the concrete below the damp course (but the floor itself and the concrete blocks above are fine) - is this just a factor of the heatwave we've been getting?
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Aug 7, 2018 20:09
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Is there a thread for solar panel discussion, or can someone point me in the direction of an informational site that isn't run by some scammy-sounding solar leasing company? My house faces south/south west and gets about 8-10 hours of sunlight a day, I'm mainly curious if solar panels are a viable investment, if I'll save that much money. Like can I buy the panels and have an electrician install them and set up the system, or do you *have* to use one of these dime a dozen solar companies?
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Aug 9, 2018 20:01
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red19fire posted:Is there a thread for solar panel discussion, or can someone point me in the direction of an informational site that isn't run by some scammy-sounding solar leasing company? My house faces south/south west and gets about 8-10 hours of sunlight a day, I'm mainly curious if solar panels are a viable investment, if I'll save that much money. Like can I buy the panels and have an electrician install them and set up the system, or do you *have* to use one of these dime a dozen solar companies? Any electrician that knows what they’re doing should be able to wire you up. It gets more complicated if you want battery systems or things like that. And you still would want to use an electrician you trust or one who has some knowledge of solar. First step is to reach out to your power company and make sure they buy back electricity. If they don’t, or if the rate is low, you probably would be making a bad investment. Next, you may want to reach out to a solar city type company and see what the deal is. Typically what happens is that you trade your roof real estate for cheaper electric bills. They keep the RECs and any profit over what you agree to. But since you lease the panels, it’s a pretty low cost way to get in. (At least this is how it worked when I looked into it a few years ago) ROI on a full solar array can be a long rear end time, like 10 years +. Leasing might be what you actually want.
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Aug 9, 2018 23:18
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While trying to diagnose ways to make my A/C more efficient I ran into an issue and I'm not sure what to do. We have an old Payne central furnace (late 70s) that has a really odd filter size. The previous owner shoved in a 20 x 30 filter that doesn't fit well (doesn't seal with the bottom) because, as marked by the furnace, the filter size should be 16-5/8 x 27-3/4. Due to the oddball size of the furnace filter, would it make sense to change the current air return vent that has no filter to one that takes a filter of a standard size and then stop using a filter inside the furnace itself? Or just live with the fact that I will need to get custom sized filters forever?
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Aug 10, 2018 05:35
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Perhaps... replace the whole dang thing because it's 40 years old.
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Aug 10, 2018 06:30
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Just redid all the windows / sliding doors in the house so there's no budget for a new one at the moment.
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Aug 10, 2018 08:35
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red19fire posted:Is there a thread for solar panel discussion, or can someone point me in the direction of an informational site that isn't run by some scammy-sounding solar leasing company? My house faces south/south west and gets about 8-10 hours of sunlight a day, I'm mainly curious if solar panels are a viable investment, if I'll save that much money. Like can I buy the panels and have an electrician install them and set up the system, or do you *have* to use one of these dime a dozen solar companies? From what I understand solar water heating systems have a much better ROI than solar electricity panels so might be worth looking into that as well.
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Aug 10, 2018 09:45
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Ebola Dog posted:From what I understand solar water heating systems have a much better ROI than solar electricity panels so might be worth looking into that as well. Yeah, passive solar is slick. PV is a lot riskier.
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Aug 10, 2018 10:27
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BigFactory posted:Yeah, passive solar is slick. PV is a lot riskier. If you want to see some passive solar in action, this video has been around a while, the guy takes a bunch of clear water tanks and adds blue dye so they absorb an insane amount of the sun's heat in the day, and continue to radiate it through the night. He says each tube was $300 so it could actually have a pretty good ROI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=534n-Qu2oqo http://misterhouse.blogspot.com/2015/03/passive-solar-water-wall-battery.html The other way of doing solar heating without PV, it to set up some Vacuum Tubes (also known as solar evacuated tubes), and pump antifreeze through them, into a loop of PEX tubing in your floor, like this:  Doing this can give you hot water for showers and heat the entire house, but the pump system can have a lot more maintenance and expensive malfunctions vs solar panels.
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Aug 10, 2018 21:02
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What sort of climates is a setup like that good for? I think about doing that kind of poo poo a lot, but I don't think they'd be effective at all at temperatures below -20 C
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Aug 11, 2018 02:05
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autism ZX spectrum posted:What sort of climates is a setup like that good for? I think about doing that kind of poo poo a lot, but I don't think they'd be effective at all at temperatures below -20 C Are you talking sustained daytime temps of -20 year round? Maybe think about moving.
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Aug 11, 2018 03:26
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LOL no it's not that bad. What I mean is there are maybe 3-4 months in a year where that system would be useful here because it's cold but not freezing. In the winter when you'd need it most it's cold enough for passive solar to not work. It doesn't make sense to install any passive systems here as a retrofit because you'd never break even monetarily. There's no way to heat a (regular) house at those temps without electric/natural gas heating as far as I know.
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Aug 11, 2018 15:36
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autism ZX spectrum posted:There's no way to heat a (regular) house at those temps without electric/natural gas heating as far as I know. Yet my Kickstarter for giant 100' Fresnel lenses goes unbacked.
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Aug 11, 2018 15:55
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autism ZX spectrum posted:LOL no it's not that bad. What I mean is there are maybe 3-4 months in a year where that system would be useful here because it's cold but not freezing. In the winter when you'd need it most it's cold enough for passive solar to not work. It doesn't make sense to install any passive systems here as a retrofit because you'd never break even monetarily. There's no way to heat a (regular) house at those temps without electric/natural gas heating as far as I know. The bottom diagram I posted, with the solar collectors and hot antifreeze loop, is incredibly effective in the winter. The solar collectors are vacuum insulated tubes with iron on the inside of the glass. The sun's heat gets trapped inside with Thermos-bottle levels of insulation and can only make it out via the antifreeze. Edit: here's a guy using a single one of those vacuum tubes to boil water when it's -25 degrees out: https://youtube.com/watch?v=rtm1dnUR0wo Now imagine what a whole array of them can do. And they're pretty cheap from China (maybe not so much post trade-war) Zero VGS fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Aug 11, 2018 |
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Aug 11, 2018 16:20
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autism ZX spectrum posted:LOL no it's not that bad. What I mean is there are maybe 3-4 months in a year where that system would be useful here because it's cold but not freezing. In the winter when you'd need it most it's cold enough for passive solar to not work. It doesn't make sense to install any passive systems here as a retrofit because you'd never break even monetarily. There's no way to heat a (regular) house at those temps without electric/natural gas heating as far as I know. You’re not heating your home exclusively with a passive solar system. You’re preheating your water before it gets to your boiler so it has a few degrees less to heat it up to temperature (or many degrees less in the summer). It saves energy. You would be better off with geothermal heating in your area, perhaps.
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Aug 11, 2018 16:24
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Zero VGS posted:The bottom diagram I posted, with the solar collectors and hot antifreeze loop, is incredibly effective in the winter. The solar collectors are vacuum insulated tubes with iron on the inside of the glass. The sun's heat gets trapped inside with Thermos-bottle levels of insulation and can only make it out via the antifreeze. -25 is the average here, a few months it definitely dips lower. There's like, 6 hours of sunlight too and it really isn't at ideal angles. I really would like to see a breakdown of efficiency losses from frost buildup/snow buildup on the tubes and the effects it has on the sun's light. My biggest gripe is that I don't think I'd ever recover the costs. If I built a house with passive solar pre-heating worked into the costs it would be a different story. Unless I can move exclusively to solar it makes more economic sense to just ration the existing electric/gas energy I have and invest in better insulation. I just rewired my house and I thought about moving to solar for lighting and other low-draw stuff but after moving to LED bulbs the added cost of batteries and panels just doesn't make sense. If I were to replace my boiler now it would be way cheaper to just get the same gas unit, save a pile of money not installing passive heating and then just pay more in energy costs. Should really be subsidies for this poo poo, honestly.
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Aug 11, 2018 16:32
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tangy yet delightful posted:Hey uh I think you're supposed to have some water detecting shutoff feature for those? RIP So, now that I am back from Much More Important Business, I took a 2.5" hole saw through the ceiling. It looks like the renovation entailed putting 0.5" drywall and skimcoat over the original ceiling, which according to my peerhole/core sample was lathe, horsehair plaster, and finishing coat. This complicated my plan, which was "Rip out poo poo that got wet, replace the drywall, skimcoat and paint." I went back up into the Attic Murder Room where the air handler is hidden ... ... and looking at the subfloor there I noticed a) that there was still original diagonal subfloor under the air handler but not where I was standing, and b) that about a five foot square of the new plywood subfloor wasn't screwed down.  And there we go. I can't easily get at everywhere that water may have gone, but I can certainly pull out what appears to be original wool insulation (and garbage the renovator threw in the joist spaces as he was working.) As it happens, a guy I lift with on occasion is a structural engineer with a water damage side gig, so I can curbside him or formally consult/hire. I also took three weeks off of work for this last week's stuff, so I should easily be able to get the HVAC guy in. So all in all it could be worse.
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Aug 11, 2018 17:23
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kimcicle posted:Just redid all the windows / sliding doors in the house so there's no budget for a new one at the moment. Just wait for the heat exchanger to get a rust hole in it and force you to replace the system at that point. You mention custom sized filters. If you can find a place that makes those I would just order a large batch and do that. Should be easier and cheaper or equal cost to building a filter box outside the furnace and connecting it.
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Aug 11, 2018 17:24
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autism ZX spectrum posted:-25 is the average here, a few months it definitely dips lower. There's like, 6 hours of sunlight too and it really isn't at ideal angles. I really would like to see a breakdown of efficiency losses from frost buildup/snow buildup on the tubes and the effects it has on the sun's light. Maybe humans were not cut out to live above the Arctic circle?
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Aug 11, 2018 17:57
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Is there a thread for appliance shopping? I want to replace my kitchen appliances, have never done so, and assume like everything nowadays 90% of it is cheap crap designed to fall apart as soon as the warranty ends. I’m interested in how to shop, things to look out for, reputable review sites, etc.
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Aug 11, 2018 20:23
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Leak resumed even with drip pan not overflowing. Sucks, but I found the leak point in the attic subfloor -- directly under the drip pan. That doesn't mean the drip pan is leaking directly above that, but it gave me the ability to stick a catch can under it. Given amount of water in drip pan, I assumed the main drain was clogged. Couldn't get at it by taking the panel off the air handler, but I COULD get to the exterior termination. It was raining but worth it: sucked out a clog and it drained and ton. So there were multiple failures. The main drain clogged, so all condensation went into the drip pan. The drip pan drain clogged as well, but either the drip pan also has a pinhole or a soldered joint fail, or some water somehow missed falling into the drip pan, because the second leak did not involve any overflow. Now we'll see if fixing the main drain issue is sufficient to run the unit without further damage, and figure out how to get that old wool out of there.
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Aug 11, 2018 21:47
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Sorry for the extremely dumb question, but attached is a photo of an interior window sill that's in really bad shape that I'm hoping to fix up. I'm assuming I need to remove the existing paint that's chipping off, perhaps treat the underlying raw surface in some way, and apply new paint - but I don't know the basics about any of those steps (the proper way to remove the existing paint, what kind of paint to buy, or if those general assumptions are even correct, etc). Can anyone point me in the right direction? https://imgur.com/a/EGuw5WI
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Aug 12, 2018 16:40
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Buy some LeadCheck swabs at the hardware store before doing anything. Ultimately I suspect the bet route will be to buy some Citristrip -- slap it all over the place, put Saran wrap over it, wait a day or two, then scrape off the resultant mess.
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Aug 12, 2018 17:37
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Does anyone know where one might buy gargoyles? Proper ones, not grotesques?FLOOR_MASTER posted:Sorry for the extremely dumb question, but attached is a photo of an interior window sill that's in really bad shape that I'm hoping to fix up. I'm assuming I need to remove the existing paint that's chipping off, perhaps treat the underlying raw surface in some way, and apply new paint - but I don't know the basics about any of those steps (the proper way to remove the existing paint, what kind of paint to buy, or if those general assumptions are even correct, etc). Can anyone point me in the right direction? Yeah, I don't know specific products for you, but the basic process is a) strip (or chip) the paint off b) sand the surface and fill any spots c) paint with basically any indoor paint, an emulsion probably, I don't think you'd need anything special. Maybe worth using a primer depending on the surface. Kobayashi posted:Is there a thread for appliance shopping? I want to replace my kitchen appliances, have never done so, and assume like everything nowadays 90% of it is cheap crap designed to fall apart as soon as the warranty ends. I’m interested in how to shop, things to look out for, reputable review sites, etc. I don't think there's a thread, this one is probs most appropriate. Where do you live? In the UK I tend to just hit the biggest online retailer (ao.com) and do some of the ol' comparison shopping, plus maybe reference a few review sites (e.g. reevoo or amazon in the UK). I've found that brands hold pretty strong in white goods; the cheap & cheerful / mid range / fancy brands tend to stick to what they're good at, and the prices usually reflect that. I'd say finding quality will not be too hard if you spend a decent amount from a decent brand, you tend to pretty well get what you pay for up to a point. More likely you'll be comparison shopping on features. For example, I went for a Miele washing machine and dishwasher because I wanted high quality there, but knowingly bought a cheap beko tumble dryer because they're not very complex things and don't need any fancy features. Jaded Burnout fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Aug 12, 2018 |
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Aug 12, 2018 18:27
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The blinds in this apartment are from the loving 90s or something and are super old and creaky and break with even the slightest touch. I want to replace them, but I have reason to believe the landlord won’t give one iota of a poo poo and cheap out on me. I started looking at new blind options, and took off one of the existing blinds, but they’ve got some sorta weird railing:  They sort of click into place (it’s a loving bitch to do tho). Would this fit any old blind, or would I need a special sort?
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Aug 13, 2018 03:14
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I don’t know much about blinds but I just put a cordless cellular one (Home Decorators from Home Depot) in a bathroom and I’m pretty sure that’s the exact same brackets they used.
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Aug 13, 2018 03:26
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Also, it's two little screws and whatever new blinds you buy will probably come with brackets
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Aug 13, 2018 05:15
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i like nice words
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This is perhaps more of an engineering question, but maybe someone has a bright idea. I have these two skylights sitting on raised frames, which at some point I need to add seals to. They sit on top of the frame like a shoebox lid. The “simple” option is to lift them off, move them aside, seal the frame, and put them back, but these things are 1x2m and thick enough to stand on; they are heavy as all gently caress and would require 4 people to move them. I could seal them from the inside provided I can prop them up a few inches all the way around, without sitting anything on the frame itself as it would get in the way of the seal. Any ideas how I might do that without damaging the fibreglass roof, which by the way is slightly sloped? 
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Aug 13, 2018 15:06
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Build a timber frame that sits under the lip on 2 sides, jack the frame up with bottle jacks or car jacks etc. Plywood under the jacks to protect the roof
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Aug 13, 2018 15:14
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cakesmith handyman posted:Build a timber frame that sits under the lip on 2 sides, jack the frame up with bottle jacks or car jacks etc. Plywood under the jacks to protect the roof So, what, two sides are in contact with the roof but wide enough that they're not on the immediate angled part, and the other two are under the window but thin enough that they're not touching the roof? Might work. I think there's going to be a bit of a clearance issue since we're talking about a few inches of height here, but still. I mean at that point I could probably do away with most of the frame and just have two strong but thin pieces beneath the shortest ends, with jacks on 4 corners.
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Aug 13, 2018 15:21
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autism ZX spectrum posted:-25 is the average here, a few months it definitely dips lower. There's like, 6 hours of sunlight too and it really isn't at ideal angles. Where you live sounds like something out of Game of Thrones. Can you get cheap/free firewood? There are a lot of clever solutions available in that arena. I'd be looking at wood, anthracite coal or just burning a lot of natural gas.
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Aug 13, 2018 20:21
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Jaded Burnout posted:So, what, two sides are in contact with the roof but wide enough that they're not on the immediate angled part, and the other two are under the window but thin enough that they're not touching the roof? Might work. I think there's going to be a bit of a clearance issue since we're talking about a few inches of height here, but still. No more like the second idea, a rectangular frame but extending out longer so you can put jacks on the flatter part of the roof. E: I only suggest a complete frame to avoid it dropping off and breaking. 2 pieces and a strap might also work.
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Aug 13, 2018 20:29
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cakesmith handyman posted:No more like the second idea, a rectangular frame but extending out longer so you can put jacks on the flatter part of the roof. E: I only suggest a complete frame to avoid it dropping off and breaking. 2 pieces and a strap might also work. I'll have to see what I can find. The only issue is that I don't know how to pick an appropriate piece of wood or steel that would both fit under it and not break, given I don't know either the exact weight of the window or how to figure that out even if I did.
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Aug 13, 2018 20:38
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