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What's the rule on primer for interior walls? I've got a lot of painting to do in the new house but most of it's over top of muted, light colors.
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Mar 4, 2009 15:36
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You can paint over old paint, just sand it a bit. E: And washing it won't hurt either. Use some lightly soaped warm water.
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Mar 4, 2009 16:44
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I am trying to glue back together a thin piece of plastic. It's an X-box 360 headset. It snapped clean off at the thinnest part. All the gunk on it is my attempt to use generic super glue to repair it, but as soon as I put pressure on it, It snaps right off again. Any suggestions to get this thing to hold well enough to hang on my head?
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Mar 4, 2009 21:06
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For something like that, I'd take a tiny drill bit, and make two holes in each piece that line up when it's together. Then I'd find a stiff piece of metal to act as a pin to hold it together. That combined with some glue (including glue in the holes for the pin) will probably do the trick. If you don't have a little drill bit, you can also heat a piece of metal up with a lighter, and push it into the pieces to make a hole. Don't breath in the smoke from the plastic. Do it near a window and a fan or outside or something. For the piece of metal, a common item that has pretty stiff properties are those paper clip things that look like this:  Need to cut it with a good pair of dykes, or a dremel. ease fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Mar 4, 2009 |
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Mar 4, 2009 21:08
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Great ideas, going to look for a tiny drill bit. Thanks.
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Mar 4, 2009 21:17
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This friend of my mom recently had some trouble with her hot water heater. I don't know the specifics, but apparently the temperature got up in the 200s, and I guess the relief valve blew. This sent water spraying out all over the basement. They just had it redone, laminate flooring was ruined when the water got under it, sheetrock soaked up a lot of water, it's all got to go. So she said that with this new heater, they'd have the relief valve plumbed to the drain. So I'm wondering why you wouldn't always do this. My guess is that if you have some drainage issue way down the line, there's a chance of it coming back into the water heater. I know nothing about this stuff though. So why is a water heater designed to send water gushing everywhere in the first place? It's a risk to anyone in the area if you have temperature problems, and I'm just guessing the water damage would be more than the cost of a new water heater and all of its accessories. Sure, I guess it has to go somewhere -- is this a screwup by the plumber for not hooking up the drain, or just unlucky homeowners?
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Mar 5, 2009 04:31
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:This. Cut the loop. Connect a wire to the 2 ends you just made with a wire nut. Get a bigger wire nut if you have to (probably a red one). Thanks, if this was some random thing I was wiring I wouldn't have thought twice about just cutting the wire at the loop, but I have no experience with home wiring and wanted to make sure it wasn't a bad idea.
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Mar 5, 2009 06:26
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Internet Cliche posted:So why is a water heater designed to send water gushing everywhere in the first place? Because most people don't like having hot water bombs in their house. I've seen them plumbed to a drain line, but that means you have to run a drain line to it, so most people forgo it and accept the chance of leaks. I'd say it's a negligent owner problem because hot water heaters are a maintenance item. The relief valve rusts out or is never tested and fails to reclose once the temperature drops back to safe levels. People buy crawlspace/basement leak detectors for this reason. Internet Cliche posted:It's a risk to anyone in the area if you have temperature problems, and I'm just guessing the water damage would be more than the cost of a new water heater and all of its accessories. Most people don't have a water heater in a finished living area. It's in the garage or the basement or a storeroom. There's a reason you typically see weird water spots on the sheetrock around the water heater, and it's overtemperature venting.
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Mar 5, 2009 15:05
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A better question about water heaters is why is there a water heater tank in the first place. Once you have lived in a foreign country you realize there'a a bunch of stupid stuff that are done just because no one has bothered thinking about. Tankless water heaters never run out of hot water, and never use energy except when you are actually using hot water. Living in houses in Japan make some American house building practices feel really stupid once you come back to America, especially in the bathroom area. But that one is just incredibly frustrating to deal with: Why the gently caress do American houses have a hot water source that never meets demand, and constantly uses energy?* (Don't worry there is stupid poo poo they do in Japan for stupid inertial reasons too. Dragging the fill hose from the bathtub to the washing machine to run a load with hot water is stupid. And not having clothes-dryers makes it fun freezing your shirts solid in winter when you hang them out to dry.)
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Mar 5, 2009 23:17
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EVERYTHING I SAY ABOUT JAPAN OR LIVING IN JAPAN IS COMPLETELY WRONG, BUT YOU BETTER BELIEVE I'LL 
ABOUT IT.
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Tankless water heaters use more power for shorter periods of time, and are more expensive. Although they can be more economical as far as use of electricity, some people's homes don't enough amps to provide power to them. I have hot water off my boiler in my own home, but I grew up in a house with a electric tank. Tanks do indeed suck.
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Mar 5, 2009 23:29
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ease posted:Tankless water heaters are more expensive. Not as expensive as Tank Style Water Heater are in Japan. (Meaning they are not actually more expensive. They just appear so because Americans (American Contractors?) don't like change, so there is no market for them.) As far as the current drain goes, Japan houses are wired with pipe cleaners running 100 volts (as opposed to 120 in the US). If their wiring can handle the amp drain, American houses, which run much, much larger appliances, and truly high drain appliances like electric clother dryers, and whole house electric heaters, can handle them. The fact that the US usually has 220 wiring to support those monstrous appliances makes it even more of a disparity. I imagine the current draw is one of those things that get put out there once people have decided not to change, as a back rationalization.
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Mar 6, 2009 00:43
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Tankless are picking up in popularity, I've seen lots of little news pieces on them recently.
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Mar 6, 2009 00:49
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On the other hand, I have plenty of hot water from my tank whenever the power goes down, because my gas hot-water heater keeps my water nice and hot. Also, in the event of a water-supply-disrupting earthquake, I have lots of good water available for a while. I prefer tankless, but I think that having the tankless as supplement (or primary) alongside a tank is probably a good idea, given the additional benefits provided by a tank. That way, you can use the efficiency of the tankless system when power is available (most of the time), and have the benefit of useful hot water from the tank when it isn't.
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Mar 6, 2009 00:58
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While many in America would love to have a tankless system, we don't knock down perfectly good buildings to rebuild them, and therefor have less chances to renovate a perfectly fine, if inefficient, existing system. The efficiency gains are marginal over new tank units, but the initial cost is still higher. That's the main reason there isn't more adoption. As long as you don't need endless hot water, the two systems are very compareable.
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Mar 6, 2009 01:07
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I'm taking down wallpaper off my condo walls. It would appear that most of the walls were at least primed, but I have a question. Basically, they didn't bother to prime the corners of the drywall, so I was taking the glue off of the corners(the seams I guess) and I am now seeing just metal. What can I do to fix that? Just spackle it? Also, under some of the wallpaper, there is paint. When the glue comes off, of course so does the lovely paint, so if I want to paint over that, do I have to scrape off all the paint? Can I just prime over it?
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Mar 8, 2009 01:58
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Definitely not worth its own thread, but I have the need to vent and want some suggestions. Our landlord didn't grade our lawn/driveway properly, so when it rains, the rain doesn't drain anywhere. It's been snowing recently. Well, the snow has melted and we just had some great warm days. Because of this, the driveway (dirt) is loving trashed. The whole thing is mud and pulling into the driveway is just trashing it more. Rain is expected tonight, which isn't going to help the mud situation. When we pull our cars in, the tires push the mud out so the tires sit about 2 inches into the ground, pushing the mud to the side and creating a loving mess. Is there anything I could put down to help this, or am I just hosed? Like, if there was some way to put dry dirt on top just to mix with the wet stuff, it would be fine, but that's not exactly realistic. Luckily, we have less than a month in this place, but it's going to suck having a heavy rear end U-haul sitting in that mud while we load it up.
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Mar 9, 2009 01:52
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nwin posted:Definitely not worth its own thread, but I have the need to vent and want some suggestions. What about a sheet of plywood? Or some 2x10's for the wheels to sit on. Beyond that, I have no idea.
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Mar 9, 2009 01:58
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nwin posted:Definitely not worth its own thread, but I have the need to vent and want some suggestions. There's really nothing you can do. Hopefully by the time you move out the driveway will have firmed up.
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Mar 9, 2009 03:58
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Are you in New England? I just had about a 1' of snow melt in 48 hours, and now its raining. It's muddy. It's why they call it the mud season here. In the summer time, my driveway is fine, but for the next month or too, we'll just suck it up.
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Mar 9, 2009 19:32
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How about coarse gravel? I don't know how cost effective it would be, but you would certainly have much better traction.
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Mar 9, 2009 22:06
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stubblyhead posted:How about coarse gravel? I don't know how cost effective it would be, but you would certainly have much better traction. There is nothing you can put down that won't become a soupy mess in a couple days. Gravel will smoosh right into the base. Think of it like putting marbles over a piece of playdoh and walking on it - the marbles just sink right in. Since the base is not stable, you can't compact it either. Most likely what's happening is that there's frost a couple inches down that's preventing the water from draining. The top layer gets soft and jello-like. If this is the case, then even proper drainage won't help, as the water can't permeate the frost line to drain off. Really, he'll just have to suck it up for a month. Us New Englanders do it every year!
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Mar 9, 2009 22:20
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ease posted:Are you in New England? I just had about a 1' of snow melt in 48 hours, and now its raining. It's muddy. It's why they call it the mud season here. In the summer time, my driveway is fine, but for the next month or too, we'll just suck it up. Yep. Cape Cod. Luckily, the house next door that is vacant and owned by the same landlord has a paved driveway, so we're just using that now.
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Mar 9, 2009 23:00
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I drunkenly shot my new bb gun inside the house. The good news is it's really powerful: tore straight through a beer can, ricocheted off my desk, and lodged in the wall. As impressed as I was, it took a pretty big chunk out of my Ikea desk. I know I'll never be able to perfectly match the birch veneer, but is there any easy way to make it look and feel relatively decent? I doubt just smearing birch colored wood putty on the nick will produce satisfactory results.
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Mar 10, 2009 00:12
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Take a picture of your desk, print it out, and just put it over the hole.
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Mar 10, 2009 01:41
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If it bothers you that much you could always chip off veneer from another part of the desk and put it on top. I can't imagine it looks any shittier than it already did, so it's probably not worth the effort.
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Mar 10, 2009 02:09
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My Asian Grandma posted:I know I'll never be able to perfectly match the birch veneer, but is there any easy way to make it look and feel relatively decent? I doubt just smearing birch colored wood putty on the nick will produce satisfactory results.  Putty it up and then put a sticker on top of it. Let us know if you need a recommendation on what sticker. And stop messing around with the BB gun. You'll shoot your eye out, kid!
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Mar 10, 2009 05:55
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I'm having some annoying problems with my shower valve. It's a 4 year old Kohler shower/tub valve (not sure of the exact model, it's a basic contractor grade model installed by the builder), and it's not getting as hot as it used to. The temperature problem is limited to the shower, the rest of the fixtures in my house get very hot, including a sink that tees off the same hot water line that feeds the shower. When my wife and I first bought the house, the shower was nice and hot. You only had to turn the valve up about 3/4 of the way to get a nice, comfortable temp. But in the past couple months, it's gotten cooler and cooler, to the point where even at full blast, it's barely lukewarm. I pulled the handle off and tried both the small temp adjustment with the set screw, then removing the o-ring and turning the entire limiter. That helped briefly, maybe for a week, but now it's cooling off again. I'm going to try turning the limiter again, but I'm guessing it won't do any good. Is there something else in these Kohler valves that can cause them to run cold? I have plenty of water pressure throughout the house, and none of the screens on my faucets have large amounts of sediment in them. I'm really confused, and getting annoyed. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
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Mar 11, 2009 02:13
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Maybe the next valve up the hot water line is getting clogged with sediment? There's most likely a set of shutoff valves right behind your actual faucet fixture, odds are the hot water valve in that is getting clogged. Other than that, maybe check the Kohler fixture that the valve assembly sits in, the feed pipe on the hot water side could be cruddy? Bathtub fixtures seem to crud up first, in my experience, probably because they strike the balance of sitting still to let crud settle, and being opened often enough to bring fresh crud in. Greasy, goat-rear end-smelling types never have plumbing problems, QED.
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Mar 11, 2009 04:02
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I was having the same problem, more or less. Stopped getting hot water at only the kitchen sink. I removed and replaced the narrowest link in the system (4" of quarter inch flexible pvc, I can't believe this was in the system at all), and I think that problem is fixed. New problem. I figured it was time to replace the valve or angle stop. Wrenching on it, I can't remove the thing. So I put things back together with the old valve in place, turned the mains on, went to turn the angle stop back on and...the valve is toast. The plastic bits inside are stripped beyond all usefullness. Now I'm stuck with a broken angle stop valve on the end of the pipe. I've got the replacement in hand, but I can't reasonably get the old one off. I fear that I'll break things if I torque on it any harder. Basically, I guess I've got a threaded joint that I need to remove, but can't get it. Any tricks I can try? Is heating it up with a torch a dangerous idea? I'd appreciate a timely response on this, as I can't turn the mains back on until I get that valve replaced.
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Mar 16, 2009 00:33
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Update: Yes, a torch will help get those angle stops loosened up. I've replaced the valves. The galvanized steel lines coming in had some pretty nasty corrosion on the inside, I can see why I may have a flake of rust somewhere in the line. While I was able to get plenty of water pressure at the valve, it still isn't getting to the faucet. I've got one more joint that I want to check, but I'm getting demoralized by this project. That, and one of my joints has a very slow leak, like a drop every 20 minutes. It was brass on steel, and I used teflon tape on the threads, torqued it down pretty hard...I'm out of ideas. Is there something else I can do to make a better seal? I know nothing of all that soldering/brazing stuff, but I think that's only for nice copper pipes.
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Mar 16, 2009 04:07
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If you've got a drip you may have used too much teflon tape. You only need two turns to seal.
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Mar 16, 2009 04:13
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Vaporware posted:If you've got a drip you may have used too much teflon tape. You only need two turns to seal. Good idea. I just re-did nine joints making sure I used an appropriate amount of the tape. I found a big chunk in one of the lines, took it out....still not fixed. Now I'm kind of pissed. I can't find whatever is ruining our hot water pressure. How frustrating. I've had things apart and back together again too many times.
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Mar 16, 2009 05:39
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kapalama posted:Not as expensive as Tank Style Water Heater are in Japan. (Meaning they are not actually more expensive. They just appear so because Americans (American Contractors?) don't like change, so there is no market for them.) I'm not sure exactly why, but tankless are vastly more expensive here in the states, (at least for natural gas fired ones) because the supply lines and vents require costly upgrades due to the functional requirements and our building codes. I bought a tankless gas water heater for my new house when I moved in, because it was $600 vs $400 for a conventional one. Then I found out it was going to cost me around $800 in raw material costs alone for the high grade stainless chimney required. I didn't even get a quote for increasing my supply line from 1/2" to 3/4". I could have done that myself with pipe from Home Depot, but I'm not sure if I'm legally allowed to do the work. Anyway, after finding that out I returned the tankless heater and bought a conventional one. Even though I'm a part-time single dad and take one shower a day with one or two baths for the kid each week, and would have benefitted greatly from it, there was no practical way I was going to make back a cost difference like that in less time than the warranty on the thing. My entire gas/electric bill averages only $80 a month, I can't imagine how small the difference in hot water alone would have been. I could have done what my sister did, and just used regular galvanized chimney pipe ($50), but I am not interested in my house burning down. And I am not looking forward to saying "I told you so" when hers does.
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Mar 16, 2009 08:33
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At the expense of sounding like an idiot, is there a lawncare thread that I've missed? I skimmed the past several pages and didn't see anything but gardening and landscaping threads, but I could have simply overlooked it. This would be more appropriate there I think. I've recently moved into a new neighborhood and all up and down our street I see nothing but meticulous lawns and gardens, except of course for our lawn. It's infested with dandelions and henbit (that ugly purple flower as seen here). I've tried managing it with some turf builder/weed killer, but that didn't seem to do any good despite following the instructions to the letter. I don't want to have the lone ugly lawn on the block, but I'm not really sure what to do. If anyone has any advice or a quality forum recommendation I'd appreciate it.
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Mar 16, 2009 22:43
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Why don't you ask your neighbors?
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Mar 17, 2009 02:12
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Corla Plankun posted:Why don't you ask your neighbors? Could be a good way to make friends  Bring some baked goods or something, and chat grass.
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Mar 17, 2009 02:34
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Speaking of yards, what does one do with brush, leaves, bark, other organic waste when you've got a yard too small to justify a compost or fire pit? I've previously lived places where you could throw things deeper into the woods, or just burn it. Now I'm on my own teeny plot in suburbia, and I've got several enormous piles of stuff to get rid of. I've already filled about eight trash bags with it, but this seems wasteful, and is hardly a start on the volume I'm working with here (I have a feeling that I'm cleaning up 2.5 years worth of yard neglect from the last owners). I don't think I can justify having a dumpster dropped off just for this.
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Mar 17, 2009 04:47
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Local Yokel posted:Speaking of yards, what does one do with brush, leaves, bark, other organic waste when you've got a yard too small to justify a compost or fire pit? I've previously lived places where you could throw things deeper into the woods, or just burn it. Now I'm on my own teeny plot in suburbia, and I've got several enormous piles of stuff to get rid of. I've already filled about eight trash bags with it, but this seems wasteful, and is hardly a start on the volume I'm working with here (I have a feeling that I'm cleaning up 2.5 years worth of yard neglect from the last owners). Most suburbs have a yard waste pickup day, although it may not have started yet. Is there a reason you can't just leave it out front for regular trash pickup?
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Mar 17, 2009 13:48
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I think it's too much volume to leave out for the regular trash. I'll try to figure out if there's some kind of yard waste pick up day though.
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Mar 17, 2009 14:14
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Local Yokel posted:I think it's too much volume to leave out for the regular trash. I'll try to figure out if there's some kind of yard waste pick up day though. Most neighborhoods also have bulk trash pickup days. It's how I got rid of my couch. You could also just call the waste management folks and ask them directly. I mean these people are packing up entire neighborhoods worth of garbage, so I doubt you'll be taxing their capacity.
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Mar 17, 2009 14:38
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