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Also, at least my spigot isn't this bad, which I saw today at my uncle's neighbor's house/duplex/apartment/tenement. 
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Oct 29, 2018 00:57
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Lmao toss that baby in the Crappy Construction thread please.
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Oct 29, 2018 01:17
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n0tqu1tesane posted:Also, at least my spigot isn't this bad, which I saw today at my uncle's neighbor's house/duplex/apartment/tenement. Amazing.
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Oct 29, 2018 01:20
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n0tqu1tesane posted:Also, at least my spigot isn't this bad, which I saw today at my uncle's neighbor's house/duplex/apartment/tenement. At least that Pex isn’t load bearing!
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Oct 29, 2018 01:29
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My basement has just an...old wood smell. We keep the humidify at 45 and it's not wet. I am renovating it but I want to get rid of the old wood smell. Has anyone done this before? I read online I should use a vinegar mix to kill the bacteria in the wood. I would just hate to put the new insulation & drywall in just for it to continue smelling
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Oct 29, 2018 01:36
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Just had a roach come from behind the dishwasher. I need to pull it out tomorrow to see where the hole is. How difficult of a task is this? Can it be done by one person? Do I need to shut off the main water valve, or is simply disconnecting the dishwasher's water line (along with drain pipe and power) sufficient?
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Oct 30, 2018 10:00
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enraged_camel posted:Just had a roach come from behind the dishwasher. I need to pull it out tomorrow to see where the hole is. Assuming the dishwasher shutoff works, you can just disconnect the hose. There's no reason to turn off water to the whole house. This should be a one person job, dishwashers generally have wheels so they slide in and out pretty easily. I'd suggest you make sure the main house shutoff actually works before starting. You don't really want to be in the position where you've disconnected the dishwasher and now there's water going everywhere and you can't turn it off.
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Oct 30, 2018 13:25
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Is it common for wasps/bees to come into the house (guessing through roof eaves?) in the winter? Past 2 nights we've found some slow/sleepy wasps in my daughter's room on the second floor. I don't hear any buzzing or anything in the walls, and I recently had my attic insulated over the summer so I don't know if they're just hatching now or something. This is in New England, in a 100yr old house.
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Oct 30, 2018 13:29
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Do you have a fireplace with a chimney? We would always get the occasional lazy wasp in the house during the winter, and tracked it down to them nesting in the chimney and a few would venture down to the flue into the house.
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Oct 30, 2018 14:14
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The last few years we've had slow paper or mud wasps show up occasionally in the winter, which I assume are coming from the basement, probably in the crawlspace vents or chimney. They never sting, I just kill em with a paper towel. This is in a 115 year old house as well. Might have something to do with this nest I found abandoned a few years ago: 
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Oct 30, 2018 14:48
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I do have a fireplace with a chimney! I haven't used it yet this season. Would running a fire....smoke them out?
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Oct 30, 2018 15:40
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BoyBlunder posted:I do have a fireplace with a chimney! I haven't used it yet this season. Would running a fire....smoke them out? When is the last time it was cleaned and inspected? If it's been more than a year I'd suggest doing that first.
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Oct 30, 2018 16:02
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Motronic posted:When is the last time it was cleaned and inspected? If it's been more than a year I'd suggest doing that first. I had it inspected when we moved in, about May or so. There wasn't a cleaning done persay, he only suggested that we use a creosote sweeping log every 5 fires or so to keep it clean as it already looked OK. The inspection consisted of looking up the flue with a light, and down the chimney from the roof and all seemed OK then.
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Oct 30, 2018 16:20
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BoyBlunder posted:I had it inspected when we moved in, about May or so. Meh, that's not so bad. Light it up.
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Oct 30, 2018 16:34
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enraged_camel posted:Just had a roach come from behind the dishwasher. I need to pull it out tomorrow to see where the hole is. devicenull posted:Assuming the dishwasher shutoff works, you can just disconnect the hose. There's no reason to turn off water to the whole house. Pulled the dishwasher out and found the culprit:  I guess the previous owner wasn't joking when he said he didn't have time to put the "finishing touches" on everything.  Anyways, I sealed all the cracks with expanding foam too while I was in there. If a roach still manages to come in through here, I'll give it a loving medal.  
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Oct 31, 2018 00:54
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That's nasty, and I do judge people that use mesh tape rather than paper for new work.
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Oct 31, 2018 01:09
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Heh, you should see what they did with the plumbing. They installed a utility sink behind the bar in the main living area, and connected its pipes directly to the incoming/outgoing pipes of the laundry room on the other side of the wall, and didn't install an exhaust for it. So whenever the washer is draining, briefly backs up into the utility sink.  Oh, and the water heater is from 1989, and was described by the plumber as a "ticking timebomb", and the original workers installed it in such a way that, even though it's located in the laundry room in the garage, if it bursts it will flood the house. So I'm going to get that changed ASAP with a tankless one. Just trying to decide whether it's worth fighting the battle with the home warranty firm to get them to pay for it.  Homeownership is fun!!!
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Oct 31, 2018 01:27
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Nice, I'm looking at 180 degrees of bend and no air gap on a pressure relief line. I'm gonna bet it'a PVC all the way up to the valve too (also wrong). Bomb indeed, probably ticking.
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Oct 31, 2018 01:59
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Just had a big black roach run up the wall next to me while I was brushing my teeth. I got the fly swatter and when I hit him he fell right into the toilet  It was also an Oriental roach and the first I've seen in my house, but now, just like pokemon, I've caught them all. German, American, and Oriental! Im 90% sure he came through the big hole in the wall I have in a cabinet from some plumbing work so I'm not too worried about an all out infestation, I think I just need to patch the hole. The crawlspace poison should have gotten him otherwise.
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Nov 3, 2018 05:40
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We have german roaches, they live in the soil and basically act like earthworms and really don't like going inside so we're cool buddies
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Nov 3, 2018 06:05
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enraged_camel posted:Heh, you should see what they did with the plumbing. They installed a utility sink behind the bar in the main living area, and connected its pipes directly to the incoming/outgoing pipes of the laundry room on the other side of the wall, and didn't install an exhaust for it. So whenever the washer is draining, briefly backs up into the utility sink. Weird I had that exact same water heater from that year. Also told by the inspector that it was a ticking timebomb. And a plumber said to never try to drain it because that valve is such garbage it will likely never close completely again if you open it. I decided not to replace it when I bought. I just kept an eye on it and one day noticed it leaking slowly at the bottom, replaced the next day. Hopefully you have similar good luck.
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Nov 6, 2018 23:03
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Pryor on Fire posted:Weird I had that exact same water heater from that year. Also told by the inspector that it was a ticking timebomb. And a plumber said to never try to drain it because that valve is such garbage it will likely never close completely again if you open it. Yeah, the plumber suggested getting a water sensor and putting it on the floor next to the heater so that it starts beeping if it detects water. Suffice it to say, I'm getting quotes for a new water heater now. How much do they go for usually? The plumber suggested getting a "tankless" one, I know nothing about water heaters though so I figured I'd ask here first.
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Nov 6, 2018 23:10
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I replaced mine with another same sized tank gas heater, and got the plumbing done right so it wasn't all out of code and mildly dangerous for $800 I think. Tankless doesn't make sense economically if you already have a gas water heater, or at least it didn't a few years ago.
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Nov 6, 2018 23:27
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enraged_camel posted:Yeah, the plumber suggested getting a water sensor and putting it on the floor next to the heater so that it starts beeping if it detects water. For what it's worth I just got informal quotes for $1300/$1800/$2300 for a 50 gallon / 50 gallon high recovery / 75 gallon installed. Those quotes are probably about 25% too high because I wasn't really negotiating and plumbers are all busy here now so they can charge whatever they want. In the past I have paid a contractor friend $500 and a more annoying but less professional plumber $600 to replace a cheap 50 gallon water heater, both times that included them taking my old one to some magic warranty place where they just got to drive away with a free replacement. A tankless installation will probably run close to $3,000.
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Nov 6, 2018 23:32
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ok well the estimate i got is a 50 gal, it turns out but the work is a bit more complex because they also need to have a roofing company install a vent on that pipe line so total came down to $3,300 for me oh well, welcome to home ownership right?
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Nov 6, 2018 23:51
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Tankless saves a lot of space at the cost of not having immediately hot water at the furthest points of your water supply. I mounted my tankless on the wall above the utility sink and reclaimed an entire closet below my basement stairs when I ditched the 50gl tank.
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Nov 6, 2018 23:58
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poo poo POST MALONE posted:Tankless saves a lot of space at the cost of not having immediately hot water at the furthest points of your water supply. I mounted my tankless on the wall above the utility sink and reclaimed an entire closet below my basement stairs when I ditched the 50gl tank. Even with a tank, I don’t have hot water immediately at the edges of my supply, because the cold water in the pipes needs to be flushed. How does tankless make that worse?
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Nov 6, 2018 23:59
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Subjunctive posted:Even with a tank, I don’t have hot water immediately at the edges of my supply, because the cold water in the pipes needs to be flushed. How does tankless make that worse? It has to heat the water as you demand it. There isn't 50 gallons of already-heated water ready to go. It takes 30 seconds to get hot water anywhere upstairs in my house. Downstairs (where the tankless heater is) it's more like 5 seconds.
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Nov 7, 2018 00:00
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poo poo POST MALONE posted:It has to heat the water as you demand it. There isn't 50 gallons of already-heated water ready to go. The whole point is that it can heat water as fast as it flows through. Otherwise it would just be a heater with a small tank, and you’d get a few liters of hot water every 5 seconds with cold in between. It sounds like with a hot water tank you’d still have to wait 30 seconds to get hot water upstairs, because that’s how long it takes water to transit from heater to tap — whether that water was heated a second or an hour earlier, it’s the same pipe flow problem.
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Nov 7, 2018 00:04
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i have that issue too, and the plumber said you can get something like a water cycler or something (i forget the term he used) that runs occasionally and pushes the hot water to the edges of your supply seems a bit gimmicky though, i mean i can wait 30 seconds for hot water, it wont kill me
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Nov 7, 2018 00:04
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It can heat water as fast as it flows through but it isn't instantaneous. At least mine isn't.
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Nov 7, 2018 00:05
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The big advantages of tankless are that they don't waste energy keeping 50+ gallons of water hot 100% of the time, and that they don't run out of hot water. Oh and they don't have as many risky failure modes. You can use a water circulator to keep the water in your pipes hot, but you can also do that with a tank system, so that's sorta irrelevant. It's also wasteful in that it adds a bunch of surface area for the heat to escape through at all times to use up lots more energy (not as bad if you have modern plastic plumbing instead of copper pipe which is a magnificent heat sink).
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Nov 7, 2018 00:07
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How can it not be instantaneous if it heats as fast as it flows? If it’s heating some up before sending it or something, how does it keep up with the flow? The new water can’t sit for a while in the heater, because it’s flowing into the pipe continuously. It’s getting hot water to one of your tap a little ways away in 5 seconds, and I bet if you sampled it right at the exit of the heater it would be virtually instantaneous.
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Nov 7, 2018 00:07
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enraged_camel posted:i have that issue too, and the plumber said you can get something like a water cycler or something (i forget the term he used) that runs occasionally and pushes the hot water to the edges of your supply They're really nice if you have a huge ranch house as it can be minutes to get hot water then. Tankless still has to get the heating element/fire up to temp before it's pumping hot through the system. I don't know if this is legal but my dad did this by plumbing in a instant hot water heater inline with the shower hot tap.
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Nov 7, 2018 00:11
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I hadn’t considered needing time to get a fire up to temperature, and I’m not sure that’s a thing. Certainly my gas range element is instantly at full heat...because it’s a fire?
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Nov 7, 2018 00:14
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Subjunctive posted:I hadn’t considered needing time to get a fire up to temperature, and I’m not sure that’s a thing. Certainly my gas range element is instantly at full heat...because it’s a fire? Gotta blow air for combustion+exhaust, detect it's blowing, start gas flow, spark+ignition, then likely 2-3 seconds to get up to full flame/get rid of the "cold" in the pipes. All of that takes time, converting 30 seconds into 45-60 seconds.
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Nov 7, 2018 00:47
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30 seconds seems like a really long time for the system to have water to temperature after it starts up. Is that really what you’re seeing? The other poster is saying they get hot water within 5 seconds at one of their taps (which is presumably not directly attached to the heater), which is more in line with what I would expect.
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Nov 7, 2018 00:53
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It also has to flush all of the cold water out of the pipes first. If I haven't used hot water in the last 20 minutes then all of that water is cold. I should do a test and see how much cold water actually comes out because that would give me an idea of how much pex is actually in my house.
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Nov 7, 2018 01:10
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poo poo POST MALONE posted:It also has to flush all of the cold water out of the pipes first. If I haven't used hot water in the last 20 minutes then all of that water is cold. Wouldn’t that be a great prank, add a whole coil of pex at someone’s water heater while they’re out of town.
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Nov 7, 2018 03:37
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Taking thread title ideas, since I changed a bunch of them for halloween. Or I can just change it back
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Nov 7, 2018 03:59
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