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Queen Victorian posted:We bought a proper pipe snake for $50 at Home Depot and it has saved us untold money and countless plumber visits. We did try Drano once or twice (we’re going to replace the plumbing when we redo the bathroom so whatever), but it didn’t work as well as just snaking it. This is the key. If it works and doesn't corrode your pipes you're lucky. If it doesn't then you have a pipe full of caustic solution dissolving away everything, including the plumber who comes to fix it. If you just use the snake to begin with you're likely to just solve the problem. Strainers, learning to clean a ptrap, and using a snake will save you money and actually be reliable.
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Jan 3, 2021 01:16
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I'm trying to figure out if there's some sort of contractor we can hire for this: We want to get a home office built in the backyard - we have plenty of space, and were thinking of just finishing the interior of a decent shed (like one from shedsunlimited.net). The problem comes in that we need to get zoning/building approval. The process for that seems super confusing - we can't even figure out what category something like this would be under. Is there like a 'permit consultant' or similar that would be able to help us with the applications? I think the project is too small for a GC to really be interested in it (our town limits us to a max of 25x25, 1 story).
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Jan 3, 2021 03:03
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devicenull posted:I'm trying to figure out if there's some sort of contractor we can hire for this: You think the project is too small because you think it should cost less than it will. It won't. You want to built a permitted and conditioned outbuilding. This will not be cheap. Buying a prefab shed might not even be a good way to go. You absolutely should be talking to GCs.
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Jan 3, 2021 03:10
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Motronic posted:You think the project is too small because you think it should cost less than it will. It won't. You want to built a permitted and conditioned outbuilding. This will not be cheap. Buying a prefab shed might not even be a good way to go. You absolutely should be talking to GCs. Just curious: if we want to rebuild a separate garage and put a nanny suite/office above it, how much are we thinking, ballpark wise?
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Jan 3, 2021 03:41
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Motronic posted:You think the project is too small because you think it should cost less than it will. It won't. You want to built a permitted and conditioned outbuilding. This will not be cheap. Buying a prefab shed might not even be a good way to go. You absolutely should be talking to GCs. 14x20 shed is ~$7k delivered. I have no idea what the foundation costs would be, but I'm capable of doing all the interior work. I'd only hire out hvac (previous mini-split quote was $10k) and the electrical for the sub panel (maybe another $10k?). We're still only talking ~$30k + foundation work. I'm not at all sure this is big enough that I could get a GC interested, especially given what I've heard about how busy contractors are during COVID.
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Jan 3, 2021 03:43
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Shaking my head at both of you. I'm not gonna deal with this tonight. If at all.
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Jan 3, 2021 03:49
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Why wouldn't you just put a proper building on a foundation?
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Jan 3, 2021 03:52
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Motronic posted:Shaking my head at both of you. I'm not gonna deal with this tonight. If at all. Fwiw, I’m assuming the number starts with a 1. 
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Jan 3, 2021 03:57
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Residency Evil posted:Fwiw, I’m assuming the number starts with a 1. That's optimistic.
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Jan 3, 2021 04:00
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Bi-la kaifa posted:Why wouldn't you just put a proper building on a foundation? Can I get a building built for $7k, including roofing, siding, windows, and plywood floor? I'm not really seeing that as a reasonable price to get something built on site. Shed I'm looking at... honestly doesn't look much different then standard house construction.
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Jan 3, 2021 04:02
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Motronic posted:That's optimistic.  that’s what I secretly knew in my heart but was hoping wasn’t true.
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Jan 3, 2021 04:03
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Motronic posted:That's optimistic. He didn't say how many digits AFTER the 1!
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Jan 3, 2021 04:23
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devicenull posted:Can I get a building built for $7k, including roofing, siding, windows, and plywood floor? I'm not really seeing that as a reasonable price to get something built on site. You're probably right but it might be worth investigating if you're willing to spend 30k plus a foundation. If you're going to power it, heat/cool it, and spend time in it, why wouldn't you build a proper building for all those nice, expensive things?
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Jan 3, 2021 04:28
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I'll bite.Residency Evil posted:Just curious: if we want to rebuild a separate garage and put a nanny suite/office above it, how much are we thinking, ballpark wise? A nanny suite above a separate garage is going to require a structural, MPE (Mechanical/Plumbing/Electrical) plan, and potentially an energy related plan. Formerly, a lot of in-law units used to be above garages when the structural requirements were way less strict. However, this is less common now because it's been noted that living spaces above garages have a structural weakness to earthquakes in many cases. Additionally, there are more fire-proofing requirements and difficult issues to consider from a mechanical perspective. Finally, in a case like this you are talking about a new roof above a 2nd story, which already adds more complexity to the project. So now you have a full structural plan (3000-4000), architectural fees (7000-10,000), Plumbing/Electrical/Mechanical (Let's say 16,000), permit fees (varies), foundation fee (10-15k), finishing, drywall, roofing (13k-18k), framing (10-20k), and that's on the cheap side. That's assuming a rebuild on the same location. This is before the material overhead, garbage disposal, and any other issues that may arise and you can see why the numbers go up. Mind you, this is the the price that a DIY GC would pay. devicenull posted:14x20 shed is ~$7k delivered. I have no idea what the foundation costs would be, but I'm capable of doing all the interior work. I'd only hire out hvac (previous mini-split quote was $10k) and the electrical for the sub panel (maybe another $10k?). We're still only talking ~$30k + foundation work. Lol, no. You are undervaluing the work that architects and GCs do, along with the work to construct a valid livable building. Sorry, if you were a person who was in the construction industry, then this could be doable for relatively cheap. However, because you are not, you must pay the consultant fee and the price for living for other folks who are knowledgeable in this area.
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Jan 3, 2021 04:35
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devicenull posted:I'm trying to figure out if there's some sort of contractor we can hire for this: This is definitely GC territory. They make prefab-ish things that you can do just what you're describing that are even made to do. Do you want to have water+sewer? If so, see if your city has expedited permitting for ADU's. Also $10k to minisplit a 625 sqft box is a ripoff, even with Fujitsu Halcyon top of the line ultra low temp units. If you can skip sewer+water it's probably trivial to get this permitted. Sketch out what you're thinking on tracing paper to approximate scale. Don't own tracing paper? Print some out (measure it to make sure it's scaled right.) Don't own a printer? Buy tracing paper. Draw your property line, your existing structures, and your proposed structure. Measure and mark the setbacks from the property line, and calculate the approximate % of land covered by structures. Email your city planner and ask if this sort of thing would pass the sniff test for permitting, include if it's going to be lived in, water+sewer, that sort of thing. Ask if you could call them to have a chat, this lets them answer you without putting things in writing. If you can wait out lumber + labor pricing to go back down (a year+) I bet you can get this done around $30k as a literal square room that isn't "habitable" but is conditioned. If you want sewer, "done now", that sort of thing then $50-60k isn't going to be crazy. Edit: ntan1 posted:So now you have a full structural plan (3000-4000), architectural fees (7000-10,000) Save money here by buying an off the shelf ADU or similar plan. Probably a few grand and comes stamped. Residency Evil posted:Just curious: if we want to rebuild a separate garage and put a nanny suite/office above it, how much are we thinking, ballpark wise? Tree fiddy. I would triple the estimate above due to the second story. $120k doesn't seem crazy. H110Hawk fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Jan 3, 2021 |
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Jan 3, 2021 04:37
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Queen Victorian posted:From what I understand, it’s really rough on older iron and lead pipes. At my old apartment building (built 1915), maintenance had to add a sleeve to our tub drain pipe (called them after I went into the basement while husband was in the shower and water was just falling out of the ceiling) because a section of it had just disintegrated. Drain cleaner chemicals will exacerbate this badly. We were told to never use Drano and to just call maintenance if our drain got slow so they could snake it (it frequently did because everything would catch in the pocked corroded pipes). From what I understand most newer formulations are enzyme based and won’t damage cast iron pipes like the old stuff. I don’t think there’s any problems using drain opener on a slow drain. But if there’s standing water, yeah, you don’t want to be disassembling a u bend and getting caustic drain cleaner pouring over your hands. The real answer is preventative—tub strainer, sink strainer, garbage disposal, and no flushing sanitary products, congealable fat, or stuff like rice down the drains will solve 90% of problems. The other 8% can be done with a drain snake, and then a plumber for the real lovely stuff like pipe problems or roots
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Jan 3, 2021 08:35
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Is there consensus on whether or not the Bosch 800 dishwasher is worth the price increase over the 300?
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Jan 3, 2021 18:43
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ScooterMcTiny posted:Is there consensus on whether or not the Bosch 800 dishwasher is worth the price increase over the 300? From my understanding it now has the extra drying heat sink thing in it like the benchmark series/thermador ones do. So that alone would be worth it to me.
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Jan 3, 2021 19:05
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ScooterMcTiny posted:Is there consensus on whether or not the Bosch 800 dishwasher is worth the price increase over the 300? Yes.
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Jan 3, 2021 19:33
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Perfect, thanks both.
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Jan 3, 2021 20:41
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ntan1 posted:Lol, no. You are undervaluing the work that architects and GCs do, along with the work to construct a valid livable building. Sorry, if you were a person who was in the construction industry, then this could be doable for relatively cheap. However, because you are not, you must pay the consultant fee and the price for living for other folks who are knowledgeable in this area. Huh? I'm not really seeing why I'd need an architect - this is a pretty simple square box, there's not a ton going on. After some of the replies here, it's probably worth me talking to a GC anyway - no real point halfassing this when I could spend a little more to get a bunch more features. H110Hawk posted:This is definitely GC territory. They make prefab-ish things that you can do just what you're describing that are even made to do. Do you want to have water+sewer? If so, see if your city has expedited permitting for ADU's. Also $10k to minisplit a 625 sqft box is a ripoff, even with Fujitsu Halcyon top of the line ultra low temp units. If you can skip sewer+water it's probably trivial to get this permitted. Sketch out what you're thinking on tracing paper to approximate scale. Don't own tracing paper? Print some out (measure it to make sure it's scaled right.) Don't own a printer? Buy tracing paper. Draw your property line, your existing structures, and your proposed structure. Measure and mark the setbacks from the property line, and calculate the approximate % of land covered by structures. Email your city planner and ask if this sort of thing would pass the sniff test for permitting, include if it's going to be lived in, water+sewer, that sort of thing. Ask if you could call them to have a chat, this lets them answer you without putting things in writing. Yea - the $10k quote came from a HVAC contractor for installing a mini-split in a room in our house. It seemed pretty high to me. The ADU option is interesting. I can't find any references to it in my town's zoning ordinances, but maybe it's still permitted? I'd probably have to do a bunch more research.
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Jan 4, 2021 02:40
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devicenull posted:The ADU option is interesting. I can't find any references to it in my town's zoning ordinances, but maybe it's still permitted? I'd probably have to do a bunch more research. Just call and ask. You can even go the opposite way and just ask if you can put in an ADU as long as you maintain setback and % built on limits. From there start looking for plans or see if there are gc's around that you like. Overall what you want to do is very straightforward and is very likely to be approved. (Assuming there isn't some zoning gotcha. Apparently a friend of mine has a lot that because he never rebuilt his house he can put 2 adu's on it. It's all the original 1890ish zoning stuff from when the city was founded. Kinda nuts.)
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Jan 4, 2021 02:54
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This looks to be the right thread for this sort of question. I'm expecting a kid in roughly 7 months, our first. We'd like to finally finish our basement to have more room so that we can move our bedroom to the 1st floor where our only current bathroom is. With interest rates as low as they are I am thinking about taking out some sort of home improvement loan to do this. I have no idea on the costs of this sort of project. Friends who had a similarly rough basement but a smaller house had theirs fully finished for $25k. Ball park I would guess $30-40K to do the same to my house. Is that a stupid amount to borrow for this sort of thing? What type of loans do I look for? I only have about 20% equity in my house right now (no PMI). Is it way to early to even think about borrowing for this? With our current savings rate we could pay to do this out of pocket in about 5 years, of course thats our current savings rate without paying $1k+ a month for future childcare.
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Jan 4, 2021 16:21
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There might also be considerable savings to be had if you wait out the quarantine. Building supplies are still in high demand because everyone is stuck home wanting to fix things and by the end of 2021 that hopefully corrects itself.
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Jan 4, 2021 16:30
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BaseballPCHiker posted:I only have about 20% equity in my house right now (no PMI). Is it way to early to even think about borrowing for this? In the current lending climate and the concerns over job losses, etc I'm going to predict this makes your entire project a non-starter. Unless you can fund it otherwise. Also, it's not really clear how you arrived at your cost estimate. But it could be wildly off in either direction depending on a lot of things, the first of which is whether your basement is dry enough as it is right now and without any other work necessary to finish it. It's also the worst time to do this. Labor rates are high, material costs are high, supply chains are hosed.
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Jan 4, 2021 16:32
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The Dave posted:There might also be considerable savings to be had if you wait out the quarantine. Building supplies are still in high demand because everyone is stuck home wanting to fix things and by the end of 2021 that hopefully corrects itself. Thanks for mentioning this, I knew this from reading the news the past few months but with a kid on the way and being laser focused on trying to prep for that had completely forgotten about that. Motronic posted:In the current lending climate and the concerns over job losses, etc I'm going to predict this makes your entire project a non-starter. Unless you can fund it otherwise. Interesting about the lending climate. I just started a new job about a month ago as well which would probably make lenders even more picky so I guess I'll put this idea to rest for now. I just ballparked the estimate. My friends had a basement in similar shape and completely finished it last year for around $25k and their house is 2/3 the footprint of mine. Since we installed gutters early last year we havent had any water issues in the basement. But we were already planning on getting the grading redone around our house and installing french drains this spring to prepare our basement to be finished one day. Thats costing us $10k.... the joys of home ownership.
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Jan 4, 2021 16:45
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BaseballPCHiker posted:I just ballparked the estimate. My friends had a basement in similar shape and completely finished it last year for around $25k and their house is 2/3 the footprint of mine. FYI, that's not how you ballpark estimates like this. If I was building a 10x10 square room and upsized it to 20x10 the costs would not double. Assuming the same materials and finishes it's a medium increase in material costs and minor increase in labor. "Number of walls and corners" are what host you the most. When you're serious about this, and the world isn't upside down and contractors throwing out "FU estimates" of tripe and more on every job you should get a GC in to give you a realistic estimate. E: good news about this is you're likely closer to what it cost your neighbors than you think Motronic fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Jan 4, 2021 |
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Jan 4, 2021 17:26
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Thats good to hear as well. Yeah just sort of looking around for info at this point. I wasnt even expecting it to be done or started by the time the kid was born. We'll sit on this for now, maybe wait another year or two to see how much cash we have and go from there. The crazy thing is that if I wanted to just go buy a new house and spend another $100k on a mortgage I could probably do that and it'd be a cheap monthly payment. But we like where we are at and improving the house here and there as we can afford.
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Jan 4, 2021 17:37
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I'm filling out the homestead exemption form, but I need to know the number of acres. Where can I find this information? I look at the page on the appraisal district, but it just reads n/a in the total land area. What gives? Where can I find this? I've found it on Redfin and Zillow, but surely there has to be a better way?
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Jan 5, 2021 00:23
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Unless I’m misunderstanding you why not use your county / property tax jurisdiction’s plot lookup tool?
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Jan 5, 2021 00:47
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Hed posted:Unless I’m misunderstanding you why not use your county / property tax jurisdiction’s plot lookup tool? I did, but it just says "n/a" where it should list the size of the lot.
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Jan 5, 2021 00:56
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Bioshuffle posted:I'm filling out the homestead exemption form, but I need to know the number of acres. Where can I find this information? I look at the page on the appraisal district, but it just reads n/a in the total land area. What gives? Where can I find this? I've found it on Redfin and Zillow, but surely there has to be a better way? Just use zillow. It's what I did and it's close enough for government work.
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Jan 5, 2021 02:57
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H110Hawk posted:Just call and ask. You can even go the opposite way and just ask if you can put in an ADU as long as you maintain setback and % built on limits. From there start looking for plans or see if there are gc's around that you like. Overall what you want to do is very straightforward and is very likely to be approved. (Assuming there isn't some zoning gotcha. Apparently a friend of mine has a lot that because he never rebuilt his house he can put 2 adu's on it. It's all the original 1890ish zoning stuff from when the city was founded. Kinda nuts.) Boo, they don't allow more then one residence per lot.
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Jan 5, 2021 21:32
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devicenull posted:Boo, they don't allow more then one residence per lot. Is your area facing any kind of housing crunch? Now is the time to be the hero your municipality needs, write your city counsel. Grandma needs a place to live. Or just put up a non-habitable hobby room. (We got very closely talked to about if anyone was going to be sleeping in ours - absolutely not, no water, no sewer.)
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Jan 5, 2021 21:47
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H110Hawk posted:Is your area facing any kind of housing crunch? Now is the time to be the hero your municipality needs, write your city counsel. Grandma needs a place to live. Or just put up a non-habitable hobby room. (We got very closely talked to about if anyone was going to be sleeping in ours - absolutely not, no water, no sewer.) The current city council + mayor are trying to basically become an annoying HOA - they love to pass stuff restricting what you can do (for example, I need a zoning permit to get a storage pod, even though I can only have it for 30d, and the mayor just put up signs on every road into town with his name on it). I've been talking to some political organizations here, but we haven't made a ton of progress. Going to call again tomorrow to see if I can put in a non-habitable office... didn't want to go from 'can I build an ADU' to 'ok, well how about an office' on the same call! Probably going to see if I can come up with a design that could be feasibly changed to an ADU in the future, if the laws ever change here. Comedy bonus option: My lot is big enough I could probably subdivide it and build an entire new house!
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Jan 5, 2021 23:47
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devicenull posted:The current city council + mayor are trying to basically become an annoying HOA - they love to pass stuff restricting what you can do (for example, I need a zoning permit to get a storage pod, even though I can only have it for 30d, and the mayor just put up signs on every road into town with his name on it). I would contribute to your gofundme if you decide to build a a spitehouse. But it must be full spitehouse, no half measures.
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Jan 5, 2021 23:49
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 Just discovered our kitchen sink started leaking (slowly) recently. The brown piece below the black gasket looks like it's maybe a cloth seal or something and that's where the water is coming out. Looks like maybe the whole piece is not level and more of the brown piece is exposed on the leak side? How do I fix this? Also discovered the GFCI outlet outside the PO said they fixed wasnt fixed? I was looking at the fuse box and didn't see any labels that it could have been, is it possible this outlet was never wired during construction? PO had it built. How do I test this?
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Jan 7, 2021 06:14
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That's plumber's putty: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Oatey-14-oz-Plumber-s-Putty-311662/202312407 Looks like you might be able to just take that apart and put in some new stuff. In taking it apart you will find out if something else is rusted out/fuckt. So don't do it on Sunday evening. Be ready to go back to LowesDepot at least once. E: this is not a great video, but it came up first and from a quick scan it's right. At least the putty part. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xra7T5x4swc Motronic fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Jan 7, 2021 |
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Jan 7, 2021 06:19
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Mr. Crow posted:Also discovered the GFCI outlet outside the PO said they fixed wasnt fixed? I was looking at the fuse box and didn't see any labels that it could have been, is it possible this outlet was never wired during construction? PO had it built. How do I test this? A lamp (line of sight) or a radio. Plug it in, flip switches until it turns off. If it doesn't turn on, press reset. If it still doesn't turn on there is more deep troubleshooting to be done.
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Jan 7, 2021 06:35
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Danke
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Jan 7, 2021 16:37
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