Residency Evil posted:

Ugh, good morning, fridge is broken.

skipdogg posted:

Samsung?

Residency Evil posted:

Ugh, good morning, fridge is broken.

Medullah posted:

What's everyone's recommendations for covering up a central air unit during the winter? I heard that it's not a good idea to completely cover it up since animals will make it their home if it's nice and warm.

Rexxed posted:

My HVAC guys say not to completely cover it because you can trap water in the condenser and cause corrosion more readily. They just recommend something to cover the top and leave the sides open. My father had bought a full cover thing online but now he's just got a piece of plywood with plastic on it and some bricks, although I'm sure there's more aesthetic choices.

Anonymous Zebra posted:

I'm becoming more and more upset dealing with contractors and in trying to keep my home in working order, and I just need to vent. Please feel free to ignore this post if you don't want to see a random goon bitching.

I read this thread, the crappy construction thread, and read a number of the books that have been recommended across these threads. I'm trying to make sure that I have enough information to know what is wrong, and can at least recognize the vocabulary of different home maintenance topics. But I know that I'm not qualified to do most work on my home, and I don't particularly want to do a lovely job taking the cheap route either DIY shoddy work, or hiring unlicensed guys out of the Home Depot parking lot.

I've made every attempt to hire licensed & bonded contractors whose license fits the job and whose companies are well established and seemingly reputable. For every job I've researched many companies, called a subset, compared quotes, researched what they suggested, and resisted going for the cheapest quote unless I felt they were offering a comparable service to the more expensive quotes. I've basically tried my best to not have lovely work done in my home, but it's all just completely pointless because I always discover a new way each company or contractor hosed things up along the way.

I started by getting my old roof replaced. Prices were all over the place but I picked an established company that offered a guarantee through the roofing material maker (GAF), so even if their company went tits up GAF would still pay for defects in how it was installed. I guess they did a good job, who really knows...except when I had the gas company come by to check for a natural gas leak we discovered that they had basically moved the carbon monoxide vent tubes off the water heater and CO was just building up in the water heater closest and kind of just going...somewhere? Had to turn off the water heater and emergency call a plumber to reset the vent tube and relight the pilot.

The roofing company suggested an insulation company to remove our ancient, badly laid blown-in insulation with new bats. We were doing this because we intended to install a whole house fan and blown insulation apparently gets...blown around when there is a giant fan in the attic. That company, again, appeared reputable and did the job at the same time the roofers were working. Everything seemed fine, but apparently they never bothered rodent proofing the attic so now all of that insulation is covered in rat urine and likely needs to be ripped out. The also apparently overcharged us severely for the quality and amount of insulation that they ended up using...

My loving shower pan was leaking into the subfloor and we needed to demo the shower (I posted about this in this thread awhile back). Since the shower is getting torn up, we figure why not remodel the whole bathroom since it's not that large anyway. I spent months calling places until I settle on a General Contractor who does bathroom remodels. His company seems legit, his quote was in the middle of the range, he got along really well with my wife and I. I figure we're good...It takes him 4 weeks to finish the remodel. Two days of demo, less than a day to replace the old water and termite damaged subfloor boards (I never even saw this happen because it was done so fast), and maybe 4 days to lay out the material the shower and floor tiles will be attached to. Then 3 whole weeks to tile the floor and shower. I've asked around, and this amount of time seems insane. The bathroom we remodeled is tiny. It has a toilet and a shower. The end product looks shoddy as hell and I sometimes shake my head looking at my shower because someone is going to think it's DIY in however many years it takes me to sell this place.

The termite guys come to inspect my place. They find the bathroom remodelers just left stuff in the crawlspace under the bathroom. Just boxes, and drink bottles and other junk....As far as I know the termite guys did a good job. We'll see if any gently caress-ups on their part become apparent over the coming months.

So now we're at present day. There is at least one hole in my AC ducting. I know there is a rodent in there. A guy visits my home today. He is a licensed GC from an insulation and rodent-proofing company. His company is very new (no Yelp/Angies List/HomeAdvisor reviews), but I figure why not just a free inspection while I'm home on Sunday anyway. At minimum I should get some idea of what needs to be done. He shows up and doesn't go under the house. He just looks through the entrances to the crawlspace. Am I crazy here, or shouldn't a crawlspace and attic company be willing to go under the house to inspect? Anyway, he really wants to go into the attic (even though that's not my priority). He goes up there, takes lots of video and pictures. Basically shows that a lot of my new insulation is rodent-piss soaked and says it needs to go. Also shows that the only rodent proofing up there was somebody jamming a blind (like a literal window blind) into cracks to the outside wall and so rodents have been able to go in and out without any hindrance. For the crawlspace he suggests completely closing it off (WTF?) including closing all vents and entrances and surrounding the whole crawlspace with a vapor barrier (in SoCal?) and install floor insulation. Tells me that whole house fans are bad (wrong!) and that I should be making sure no air is going into my crawlspace or attic. So this guy is nuts right? All of my piping, sewer, and HVAC ductwork is under the house. Conduit to outside electrical sockets are under the house. Why would anyone literally seal up their crawlspace?! A whole house fan is great in SoCal when it cools off at night and I can cool my attic down from 120F back down to 75 and cool my house as well. My 1940's house doesn't have wall insulation and still has single-pane windows, so it's not like closing off my crawlspace and attic is going to do poo poo about temperature controlling my house. Meanwhile, all I wanted was a guy to count how many freaking holes there were in my ductwork and tell me how to fix that and rodent proof the drat house!


Okay, done venting. I'm the designated contractor-searcher in my house, so all of this poo poo has been on me, but it seems like no matter how hard I prep, absolutely no contractor is trust-worthy.

Motronic posted:

Is this too long to be a thread title?

Anonymous Zebra posted:

A whole house fan is great in SoCal when it cools off at night and I can cool my attic down from 120F back down to 75 and cool my house as well. My 1940's house doesn't have wall insulation and still has single-pane windows, so it's not like closing off my crawlspace and attic is going to do poo poo about temperature controlling my house. Meanwhile, all I wanted was a guy to count how many freaking holes there were in my ductwork and tell me how to fix that and rodent proof the drat house!


Okay, done venting. I'm the designated contractor-searcher in my house, so all of this poo poo has been on me, but it seems like no matter how hard I prep, absolutely no contractor is trust-worthy.

H110Hawk posted:

If you're in my area of SoCal I can give you my list of not awful contractors. Where abouts are you?

Anonymous Zebra posted:

Riverside. Thank you! For some reason most of my co-workers don't seem to ever call contractors, and those that do never reccomend using the people they have used. I have a good electrician and plumber, nobody else thus far.

Also SpartanIvy, what you said lines up with what I've found online as well. My crawlspace and attic are already dry as a bone, I don't need encapsulation to stop moisture from getting in when humidity hits 6% sometimes, but I could certainly see water getting stuck in there if I suddenly seal it off. I just need proper mesh across all the cracks and holes that rodents can get in.

howdoesishotweb posted:

Since we’re in year X of a financial boom everyone has plenty of work and is unavailable, even the lovely contractors.

I think it was GGGC who said that lawn changes are slow. Good changes are slow. Bad ones happen real fast when you gently caress em up real good with an excavator:





Area drain in the corner of my asphalt court running through 6” pipe to the street. Removed giant rocks from the soil in the process. Excavator dude just piled the loose rubble on top, and now I get to hire a landscaper to fix it! At least my sons got to ride the machine for a bit.

If that doesn’t stop the floods next year I’m building a wall

Bird in a Blender posted:

Shouldn't that cleanout be looking up and stubbed up to ground level so you can actually get at it without digging up your lawn?

Residency Evil posted:

Ugh, good morning, fridge is broken.

Anonymous Zebra posted:

ntan1 posted:

1) The likely order that you did your termite inspection/spraying is incorrect if the issues are as big as you seem to make them out. There is a good chance that the termite company came out, saw the issue was big, and wanted to make a quick profit by spraying your house and then left. Since it's likely you're doing other work to possibly the framing, wood portions of your house, there is a chance that any flooring + wood that you bring in from the lumber yard has termites. If the termite problem was as large a you had thought, then it's probably best to tent the house. However, since you are doing a bunch of other work, it's best for the tenting/termite proofing to happen once you are mostly done with the work.

ntan1 posted:

2) You're correct on your assessment of your attic and your crawlspace (I'm from Northern California, and understand the weather patterns in Southern California as well). Ultimately, since you have a rat problem, the real gut of the issue is that you need to find how the rats are coming into your house. This first requires an external assessment of the house structure: Are there any crawlspace entrances that are not completely sealed off?

To seal them off, you need to be using 1/4 inch steel mesh correctly stapled to those sections to close off the space. Then clean out the space and spray enzyme cleaner to help clear out the scent.

If you are not finding any entrances into the crawlspace, then they are entering through your attic. The roof is a very common place for rat entrances and is most commonly due to the type of roofing material making it easy to have penetrating holes. Before doing any additional work, this MUST be sealed off (or you will continue to have a further problem).

After this, you then take out all of the insulation, sanitize the area, then wait 2-4 weeks while trapping rats. Then, after things are verified sealed, you put insulation back in.

ntan1 posted:

4) 'Licensed and bonded contractors' in at least California tend to either be a super-minimum threshold or not really tied to whether a construction worker is actually good or not. The entire construction business is shady. What actually happens is every company has a license + bond under a single person in that company; that license takes like 1-2 years to get, is mostly a paperwork test + forms, and just proves that somebody can understand the bare minimum. Then, every other person in that company is unlicensed and 'works' for that single licensed worker.

This is further exacerbated by the fact that a good large chunk of construction in major metropolitan areas of California are non-permitted. This means that there have to be a huge ton of unlicensed people who are doing the unpermitted work or licensed people who are doing things in an unpermitted way. Not all of the unpermitted work is bad --- there are people who are doing unpermitted work because of the bureaucratic nightmare involved in actually filing for all of the permits in whatever city. Also, there are some people trying to avoid paying property taxes.

An example of this is my general contractor (who does electrical, plumbing, structural, and mechanical altogether and rarely hires outside people). My GC is a father-son combination, with the father having no license and the son having a contracting license. The son takes all of the permitted work, while the father takes all of the unpermitted work, but they all work on both of the projects. Their unpermitted work isn't necessarily bad, it's just that a bunch of clients dont want to deal with the paperwork and the city. Even though the father is unpermitted, he has way more construction experience than the son and basically leads all of the projects.

ntan1 posted:

7) You have to inspect things very carefully, or contractors will find a way to do way less work. This basically means watching their work almost daily. I've made random inspections and looked carefully through every part of the project as they did our second floor, including showing up unannounced at lunch every once in a while.

You shouldn't breathe behind somebody's back obviously, but it's important to see things very carefully. IE: Somebody leaving stuff in the crawlspace? I would have yelled at them as they were doing it and asked to see the internals of the subfloor *before* they covered it up, since who knows what other damage there could have been.

Yes, I know this sucks as a person who has a day work job .

howdoesishotweb posted:

Not sure what you mean. He left the dig area as a small ridge cause it would settle and collapse a bit with the rain, but mostly I’m assuming because he didn’t want to clear it all away

Anonymous Zebra posted:

Riverside. Thank you!

H110Hawk posted:

Sure thing here is my comprehensive list of contractors I don't want to strangle:

ntan1 posted:

I know that a lot of people who talk about culture sound racist

Bird in a Blender posted:

I mean this part of the sewer line I circled.


That white cap on the end is a cleanout. You use it to rod out your sewer line in case of blockages. They are usually required at every bend for underground lines. The issue is that this needs to be point up and flush with your grade. Otherwise, once you backfill over that pipe, how are you going to get to that cleanout without digging up your yard? Google yard cleanout.

Anonymous Zebra posted:

California puts a limit on the duration of warranties

Anonymous Zebra posted:

Sorry to double post, but what do people know about insulation under the floor in the crawlspace? Essentially putting batts between the joists and keeping the floor above warm as the crawlspace cools off.

My floor is cold as poo poo in the winter, but the internet seems greatly divided on this topic. Lots of sites are saying to just seal off the crawlspace (never!) because fiber baits are useless.

Anonymous Zebra posted:

Sorry to double post, but what do people know about insulation under the floor in the crawlspace? Essentially putting batts between the joists and keeping the floor above warm as the crawlspace cools off.

My floor is cold as poo poo in the winter, but the internet seems greatly divided on this topic. Lots of sites are saying to just seal off the crawlspace (never!) because fiber baits are useless.

H110Hawk posted:

If your house is like mine I would just wear socks until you're ready to completely redo your floors. (Hardwood with either little or no subflooring.) You live in the same climate as me, if not hotter. I would absolutely not spend the money to have this done "right" until you've solved a lot of other problems in your house or are ready to R&R your floors. I wear wool socks all winter, I have you-would-think-I-have-a-circulation-problem cold feet in the winter months.

Anonymous Zebra posted:

My floors are already hardwood on a subfloor (unless you were saying that's the starting point for you).

https://www.saberfoundations.com/crawl-space-repair/vapor-barrier.html posted:

Steps to Installing A Crawl Space Vapor Barrier

Install Airtight Doors & Vent Covers: Sealing your crawl space doors and vents stops the cycle of cold, humidity, and moisture entering from the outside air. However, water can still enter your crawlspace in many ways.

Remove Any Standing Water Sources: The next step is to eliminate any sources of flooding in your crawl space by installing a crawl space drain and sump pump system. This eliminates flooding water from your crawl space, but moisture can still enter directly through the concrete and floor in the form of water vapor.

Repair The Structure: If your crawl space is sagging or damaged by prolonged mold and rot, the next step is to install crawl space support jacks to help restore your structure. This will help your floors stay even and stop any structural sagging upstairs.

Encapsulate & Insulate The Crawl Space: To stop moisture from passing through your floors and porous concrete walls, a crawl space vapor barrier should be installed. A durable liner will allow for servicemen to use the space without damage while transforming your crawl space into usable storage space. This is also the best time to install crawl space insulation on your walls or floors. Installing crawl space drainage matting underneath the crawl space liner will help direct water to the drainage system and sump pump.

Install A Dehumidifier: Installing an energy efficient, self-draining crawl space dehumidifier will keep your space dry. Our crawl space dehumidifier system includes a filter that removes particles from the air as small as 2 microns. This ensures that your crawl space is protected from mold, dust mites, and mildew damage -- permanently!

Anonymous Zebra posted:

I'm going to be silly and answer my own question. I spent the last 24 hours researching this question and came upon a lot of analysis back and forth on how crawlspace insulation should work. The best site to summarize the whole thing is this one: https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-009-new-light-in-crawlspaces?topic=resources/cond-crawlspaces

The short summary of that page is that old-style vented crawlspaces are working as intended when they are left uninsulated since warm humid air entering the colder crawlspace is going to condense somewhere. Uninsulated the joists and subfloor of the crawlspace will always be significantly warmer than the soil of the ground, so moisture will condense on the soil rather than on the wood. Since the actual air movement into crawlspaces is relatively low, most heat transfer going on in there is through radiation and conduction through the wood of the floor, so even on hot days the crawlspace will be cooler than the outside air (thus leading to condensation no matter what), but more importantly on cooler days the subfloor should be warmer than the soil (because the subfloor is being warmed by conduction from the warmer home).

This all goes to poo poo the moment you slap insulation batts on your subfloor. Now the warmth from your home is not making it's way down into the joists below the subfloor, which might seem good since that's kind of the point of insulating it, but now the bottom of the insulation and any wood sticking out below where the insulation stops is going to be significantly colder and will likely be closer in temperature to the soil floor. Moisture entering the crawlspace will now condense both on the soil as well as on the bottom of the insulation and that colder wood. If the insulation is cellulose or fiber this moisture will start loving it up and making it moldy, and your wood will also start to get moldy. Even worse, since the wood higher up in the house (above the insulation) is warmer it will also be dryer which will basically cause the moisture below to wick up into the protected wood, and onto the bottom of your floors.

So essentially the price you pay for a properly dry crawlspace is both cold floors in the winter and loosing a lot of heat/cold from ductwork that is in the crawlspace.

The take-away is that at the minimum to properly insulate your crawlspace you actually need to put up batts and then spray foam a thick layer over the the batts AND the wood so that moisture cannot access it (a moisture barrier), or use an insulation system that covers the wood and is not susceptible to being degraded by moisture (there is a suggestion of the type of insulation to use on that site). The actual no-poo poo best path seems to be completely encapsulating your crawlspace with the help of real professionals that will install sump pumps and proper sheeting to wick moisture out of the crawlspace. Ideally you want to insulate the WALLS of the crawlspace and not the floor.

That's my professional assessment from 24 hours of reading the internet. Take it with a grain of salt.