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Motronic posted:Well, yeah......when you add "with a ridge vent' to the equation. I thought it was a known thing that you don't install attic fans under roofs with ridge venting. It seems exceedingly obvious how a fan won't work in that situation. Our 1987 house was built like this, as all are the others in the neighborhood (same builder). So dumb. We removed the attic fan and replaced that piece of sheathing when we were getting a new roof.
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Jul 9, 2021 16:07
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Is there a trick to finding out the best way to remove wallpaper? Friend who did some housework said spray it with water, scrape off. Googling returns a wallpaper steamer to first remove the wallpaper, then again to scrape the glue off. House was built in '89, POs lived there for ~23 years, if that provides any info on wallpaper.. type? Glue type? 
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Jul 9, 2021 16:50
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Johnny Truant posted:Is there a trick to finding out the best way to remove wallpaper? Friend who did some housework said spray it with water, scrape off. Googling returns a wallpaper steamer to first remove the wallpaper, then again to scrape the glue off. I've always used a steamer, which sucks, but every method does. My last go round was with wallpaper potentially from the early 90's and it took a lot of steaming, scraping, more steaming, more scraping. Make sure you have a lot of towels or plastic to put on the floor for the water that will get everywhere.
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Jul 9, 2021 17:56
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Johnny Truant posted:Is there a trick to finding out the best way to remove wallpaper? Friend who did some housework said spray it with water, scrape off. Googling returns a wallpaper steamer to first remove the wallpaper, then again to scrape the glue off. Depends on the wallpaper and the glue. But one thing that seems to work great for me in most situations is a spray bottle of hot water with some dish soap in it. Soak about 2-3 sq ft and give it a couple minutes. The edges should be peelable now. If it's shiny wallpaper you may only be able to tear the front shiny part off. That's okay. Go after it with a plastic scraper. Once you get all you can easily get off, spray again and wait. You'll eventually get all of the paper off and just have some glue remaining. Once you've done this to the entire wall scrub it with hot water and TSP to remove the remaining glue. This method also works with multiple layers of wallpaper, but obviously takes longer.
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Jul 9, 2021 18:23
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I have a distant relative that opted (back in the 1990's) to say "gently caress it" and buy a bunch of whatever the thinnest drywall available at the time was, remove the trim at the ceiling and floor, cover the wallpaper with drywall, mud and paint it all over and put up new trim (that they wanted to change anyway) and to hell with the mess of cleaning up the wallpaper sludge. This was some ugly drat wallpaper that was floor-to-ceiling orange and yellow teardrop/oval patterns (no idea what it was called, I just remember it looking absolutely ugly as poo poo--the room in question also had that butt-ugly shag carpet from the 70s). Probably some kind of aesthetic that would be worth money to someone with a fetish for decorating from that era but if you really hate the idea of spraying water/steam everywhere to remove the wallpaper maybe something like that is an option?
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Jul 9, 2021 18:27
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When we redid our spare we found that the previous owners had put two layers of wallpaper over painted wallpaper which was over another two layers... We just redid the drywall. Not worth the effort. Don't feel bad if you get knee deep in tiny pieces of paper and decide you don't want to do it anymore.
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Jul 9, 2021 19:52
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Heavy rains this morning, now in the basement I just saw water actively bubbling up from this drain I've never seen do anything. Anyone know what's going on here? Water came out for a minute or two, then subsided. Does that seem like something I need to pay someone to look at, or just something working more or less as it should, plus some heavy rain stuff? Drain now:  Water bubbling up: https://www.dropbox.com/s/55ixlhovb51tk13/2021-07-09%2014.12.08.mov?dl=0 Academician Nomad fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Jul 9, 2021 |
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Jul 9, 2021 19:53
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Thanks for the wallpaper tips, y'all. Probably will delay that project, as an electrician just came and pointed out numerous illegal poo poo the POs did on top of saying I need to replace the entire box because of visible scorching. God loving damnit! What are the benefits of a 200A versus 100A box? Electrician said that 100 should be fine for a house our size(1500sqft, 3b/1.5ba, two floors and basement) but I asked for a quote for both 100 and an upgrade to 200 just to compare.
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Jul 9, 2021 20:16
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Johnny Truant posted:Thanks for the wallpaper tips, y'all. Useful if you might add solar, electric car charging, a hot tub, or other heavy use in the future. Not really relevant otherwise.
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Jul 9, 2021 20:23
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Johnny Truant posted:What are the benefits of a 200A versus 100A box? Electrician said that 100 should be fine for a house our size(1500sqft, 3b/1.5ba, two floors and basement) but I asked for a quote for both 100 and an upgrade to 200 just to compare. What do you use for furnace/water heater/dryer/range? If you have natural gas, you can easily get by with 100A by using the gas for all you main heating sources. 200A starts to become a requirement if you use heat pumps, electric stove/dryer, and some fast electric car chargers.
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Jul 9, 2021 20:25
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I will be upgrading to 200a from 100a for an electric car charger, an electric garage heater, and 220v garage outlets for various high draw tools. The cost will be marginal for you now, imagine if you have to pay to upgrade it again.
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Jul 9, 2021 20:34
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StormDrain posted:I will be upgrading to 200a from 100a for an electric car charger, an electric garage heater, and 220v garage outlets for various high draw tools. The cost will be marginal for you now, imagine if you have to pay to upgrade it again. Yeah it was something like a $200 difference for me when I just replaced my service panel and went from 100A to 200A, a no brainer.
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Jul 9, 2021 20:48
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Awesome, thanks for all the info y'all. I'm not really planning on most of the things mentioned above that require a 200A box, but might as well see about the quote. Just reached out to another electrician to get a second quote. Guy that came today said the difference between 100/200A was pretty big? Don't think I can get a quote from the cat I just called for almost 1.5 weeks, and I called another to get a quote but they're a 2-person job so who knows if they'll even get back to me. Do never buy indeed 
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Jul 9, 2021 21:16
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The only difference between 100 and 200 amp service is the box on your house and the service wires from the pole. The wires cost a little bit more and you'll have to pay to get your house disconnected at the pole while the work is being done but it's small potatoes in the long run.
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Jul 9, 2021 21:43
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Johnny Truant posted:What are the benefits of a 200A versus 100A box? Electrician said that 100 should be fine for a house our size(1500sqft, 3b/1.5ba, two floors and basement) but I asked for a quote for both 100 and an upgrade to 200 just to compare. Don't not get 200A if you're paying for it already. Right now is the time to decide if you will want solar - if yes get a solar ready panel. Make sure you will have plenty of open positions when you're done at a minimum, the labor cost is identical so the material cost is all you're paying which is 10-20% of the invoice.
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Jul 9, 2021 21:50
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I'm getting a whole house rewire soon (yay knob & tube!) and currently have 100amp service (installed in 1965 baby!). In theory it would be about $3000 to swap what I've got with a new 100 panel. But the service box outside is a 1965 original, and only the power company can look inside so we can't know what kind of shape it's in because only the electric company can open that box. But with the box that old the electrician said there's a good chance that when the electrician doing the work gets a look in there he'll just be like "nah that's gotta be replaced." And while we're at it the service mast coming into the house is way too low, so we should replace that to get the required clearance. So no matter what I should really just replace the service entrance and run new wires from the electric pole to a new service mast, and at that point the difference between 200 amp and 100 amp is like $200. So the moral of the story is figure out what they're going to replace with a 100 amp upgrade vs a 200 amp upgrade. If they need to replace everything to the utility pole no matter what, then just get the bigger service. If it's a matter of swapping out the panel vs replacing everything to the utility pole, 100 amp could be lot cheaper for you. I'm telling myself I'm getting 200 amp so I can install a hot tub in part of my 4 car garage and turn it into a 3 season rec room that opens up onto the back yard. Someday. Once I rewire the house and replace the boiler and the water heater and do a gut reno on the kitchen. H110Hawk posted:Right now is the time to decide if you will want solar - if yes get a solar ready panel. Oh hey yes I wanna do solar some day, tell me more on what makes it solar ready.
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Jul 9, 2021 22:58
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I have no idea other than I've seen panels advertised as solar ready. I think it just comes with the necessary breaker positions and warning labels. 
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Jul 10, 2021 00:20
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I have a new roof and newish 125 amp panel for my 1700 sq ft house. Solar is still a ponder to me as the payback is like 14 years at my current kw usage AVG per month of 675 (low 540, high 1236) with a great local utility (not PG&E). It would be nice though to have it along with a bigass battery.
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Jul 10, 2021 02:10
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Speaking of buying $300 in tools, we have a new thread over in DIY about painting, for the one or two of you who somehow don't manage to only know about the BFC homeownership thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3972382 Come learn how to pick a color and why you definitely should be spending $65/gallon on interior ceiling paint.
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Jul 10, 2021 04:02
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H110Hawk posted:Speaking of buying $300 in tools, we have a new thread over in DIY about painting, for the one or two of you who somehow don't manage to only know about the BFC homeownership thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3972382 Hell yeahhhhhh. Great timing, I just went to Sherwin Williams today to buy paint stripper, primer, and the semi-gloss white for my cabinets/trim.
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Jul 10, 2021 04:07
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Johnny Truant posted:Hell yeahhhhhh. Great timing, I just went to Sherwin Williams today to buy paint stripper, primer, and the semi-gloss white for my cabinets/trim. Did they have any?
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Jul 10, 2021 04:30
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StormDrain posted:Did they have any? I got everything I needed, including advice on how to deal with my PO's incredibly lovely painting of literally anything, so yup! Gonna have to go back next weekend, when my partner is off work, so we can start picking out colours; for now it's just the standard white and primer. 
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Jul 10, 2021 04:35
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How do home upgrades work when it comes to homeowners insurance? We have semi custom cabinets and quartz countertops throughout, and a walk in tile shower; Our dwelling coverage is 10% over their auto calculated 'above average' estimate, and we have 50% extended dwelling with 25% L&O on a broker recommendation, so we are well covered technically from the total dollar amount. If we had to rebuild for whatever reason, do I need to keep pictures and receipts of everything for proof? Does the insurance company fight and scrutinize every construction detail? Or do they just pay the total policy and we build whatever we can with that? All their agents keep saying is we have the best policy and don't need to worry about any of that but looking at the amount of money sunk into this place I want to make sure we're protected.
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Jul 10, 2021 06:00
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PageMaster posted:How do home upgrades work when it comes to homeowners insurance? We have semi custom cabinets and quartz countertops throughout, and a walk in tile shower; Our dwelling coverage is 10% over their auto calculated 'above average' estimate, and we have 50% extended dwelling with 25% L&O on a broker recommendation, so we are well covered technically from the total dollar amount. If we had to rebuild for whatever reason, do I need to keep pictures and receipts of everything for proof? Does the insurance company fight and scrutinize every construction detail? Or do they just pay the total policy and we build whatever we can with that? All their agents keep saying is we have the best policy and don't need to worry about any of that but looking at the amount of money sunk into this place I want to make sure we're protected. Having documentation of what was in your home won't hurt you, and you're clearly concerned about it, so do it. Photos, videos, receipts, invoices, whatever. Upload it all online somewhere of course, since a file folder with it isn't likely to survive whatever levels your home. And then pray it doesn't burn down the next day making you a prime suspect.
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Jul 10, 2021 13:54
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StormDrain posted:And then pray it doesn't burn down the next day making you a prime suspect. It's our first year though through CA wildfire season since buying which is why we might be overthinking it; your comment on the online folder reminded me that a fireproof safe is probably also next on our buy list...
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Jul 10, 2021 15:40
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PageMaster posted:It's our first year though through CA wildfire season since buying which is why we might be overthinking it; your comment on the online folder reminded me that a fireproof safe is probably also next on our buy list... Keep in mind that fireproof safes all have a giant asterisk next to them. The tl;dr is that they're rated at a certain temperature for a certain period of time. this random SenrySafe I googled, for example, is rated for 1 hour at 1700 degrees. From what I recall doing my own search on this kind of thing, 1700 degrees is considered an "average" house fire temperature, although that's highly dependent on the construction of the house (as in the shape, how air flows, etc) and the materials involved. I don't know what the temperatures of a full out wild fire blowing through your living room are, but I'd assume they might be on the hotter end of that spectrum. I've also read that a lot of the materials that constitute the "fireproof" bit of the safe will give up moisture while they're being heated that much, which means your poo poo is getting steamed. So papers etc aren't going to come out if it perfectly unscathed. If it's legal documents and the fire stays under that temp/duration threshold they'll still be readable and usable, but they're not going to look like when they came out of the courthouse or whatever. The tl;dr on them is that they're useful and having one is still probably a good idea for random little things that you have to keep in your home and wouldn't want to burn, but if it's something that you don't need access to every day (say a copy of a will, a birth or marriage certificate, etc) you're better off with originals in a safe deposit box and copies stored at home - perhaps in the fireproof safe. If it's something where condition matters, or it's truly irreplaceable, I wouldn't count on them. Edit: that said, not all housefires are equal. They're a lot more useful in smaller fires that never get up to full blown whole-structure fire temperatures. edit 2: another thing to consider is that they put all your valuables into one relatively small, relatively easy to move (depending on size) box. Gowning up my mom had one that an adult could carry under one arm. This could be a good or a bad thing. Good if you're trying to evacuate ahead of a fire and know all your important poo poo is in one place. Bad if someone breaks into your house and finds it at the back of the closet while looking for guns and jewelry and decides to take it home to crack and figure out what you thought was so valuable.
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Jul 10, 2021 16:14
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If by crack you mean hit with a circular saw. In addition to the asterisks above they don't provide any physical security beyond being heavy. If you bolt it into place it will probably be annoying enough for the thief to move on, but if they decide to walk off with it they will be in it before their beer warms up. There are ones obviously that provide higher ratings, but not at target. I use it to store stuff centrally and hope it won't be destroyed entirely in a fire, and keep copies of papers in our safe deposit box. It also keeps the kids out.
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Jul 10, 2021 16:21
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I missed mini split chat, but I wanted to chime in that ceiling cassette mini splits are a thing. We got them installed in our dormered 1880s(?) upstairs, ran the drain line down an unused central duct (possibly from an old coal heating system?) and now have a cooling system that lacks a lot of the aesthetic issues of mini splits and doesn’t punch holes in our house. The ceiling units are less common in the US and are trickier to install, but they’ve been a huge improvement. also stick vacs are a cleaning game changer
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Jul 10, 2021 20:15
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StormDrain posted:Did they have any? I've been to six SW stores over the past 2 weeks trying to find a specific paint to match existing for a repair job but it simply does not exist. Paint store guy said might get some by the end of the month but he's not sure.
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Jul 10, 2021 20:22
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FCKGW posted:I've been to six SW stores over the past 2 weeks trying to find a specific paint to match existing for a repair job but it simply does not exist. SW manufacturing capacity is still pretty boned from the texas freeze as far as I know.
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Jul 10, 2021 21:51
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BadSamaritan posted:I missed mini split chat, but I wanted to chime in that ceiling cassette mini splits are a thing. We got them installed in our dormered 1880s(?) upstairs, ran the drain line down an unused central duct (possibly from an old coal heating system?) and now have a cooling system that lacks a lot of the aesthetic issues of mini splits and doesn’t punch holes in our house. My guy told me ceiling units require a pump to get the confederation out so they can also be noisier. And yeah more expensive to install.
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Jul 10, 2021 22:34
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StormDrain posted:Having documentation of what was in your home won't hurt you, and you're clearly concerned about it, so do it. Photos, videos, receipts, invoices, whatever. Upload it all online somewhere of course, since a file folder with it isn't likely to survive whatever levels your home. I can't find the article (phone posting), but there was a great article from an insurance claims guy that specialized in house fires on how the calculations on how much to give you were done. Basically it came down to documentation - if you have a ultra high end toaster that costed $500 but no docs, you got $5 - for a low end generic toaster. Conversations would be like: Homeowner: I lost my tv in the fire! Insurance: here's $100 H: it was a flatscreen tv I: oh, here's $200 H: wtf it was 65"! I : fine, $600 H: $600 for a 65" panasonic plasma? You can see it in this picture! I : oh, that's $2000 H: ummm, it was gold plated? I: now I need to see the invoice. The more specific you can get (and eventually prove you bought if it was too high end) meant that they had to calculate to that item, otherwise generic labels would be used that's not in your favor.
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Jul 10, 2021 23:35
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Motronic posted:SW manufacturing capacity is still pretty boned from the texas freeze as far as I know. I had to drop your name to even get any service
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Jul 11, 2021 00:43
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Motronic posted:SW manufacturing capacity is still pretty boned from the texas freeze as far as I know. Yeah, and any capacity they do have now is going to fulfilling big commercial orders. Any "pro" paints 5+ gallons are easier to come by than the one gallons of their residential paints, and sample paints are going to be just non-existent until the whole supply line is back to normal. I would just go to the Dunn-Edwards store next door but I'm trying to match existing so I'm kinda stuck until things get unfucked. Luckily I'm not in any rush.
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Jul 11, 2021 00:59
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FISHMANPET posted:My guy told me ceiling units require a pump to get the confederation out so they can also be noisier. And yeah more expensive to install. Other models might be different, but our Mitsubishi ones are basically silent. Had them for about a year and we’re happy with them.
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Jul 11, 2021 01:06
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FISHMANPET posted:I'm getting a whole house rewire soon (yay knob & tube!) and currently have 100amp service (installed in 1965 baby!). In theory it would be about $3000 to swap what I've got with a new 100 panel. But the service box outside is a 1965 original, and only the power company can look inside so we can't know what kind of shape it's in because only the electric company can open that box. But with the box that old the electrician said there's a good chance that when the electrician doing the work gets a look in there he'll just be like "nah that's gotta be replaced." And while we're at it the service mast coming into the house is way too low, so we should replace that to get the required clearance. So no matter what I should really just replace the service entrance and run new wires from the electric pole to a new service mast, and at that point the difference between 200 amp and 100 amp is like $200. LOL, they won't replace everything to the utility pole either way. I went from a 1960's era 100a panel to 200, and the utility didn't even bother to come out and re-lock the meter. My electrician said it was pretty normal that they wouldn't bother to come out and upgrade the wires until I actually had a problem (all the horizontal wiring from the pole to my house is the utilities problem)
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Jul 11, 2021 02:33
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Had my first real “poo poo maybe that contractor’s price wasn’t so bad” moment this evening. Had to level out our ceilings before we sheetrock everything. We were chugging along just fine until we had to notch around some beams running perpendicular which caused the new studs to flex but we didn’t catch on immediately until we noticed a visible sag on the last two. Hopefully now that we know how to work around it the next two rooms will go smoothly but boy for about an hour there I was really second guessing my decisions.
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Jul 11, 2021 04:02
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unknown posted:I can't find the article (phone posting), but there was a great article from an insurance claims guy that specialized in house fires on how the calculations on how much to give you were done. I believe this fully. I might take a stroll around the house with my gopro later.
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Jul 11, 2021 06:01
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There was a reddit post from awhile ago I bookmarked for this purpose (living in NOLA makes me constantly aware of what's on our ground floor incase we have another catastrophic event). Kinda covers what was mentioned and more
couldcareless fucked around with this message at 13:58 on Jul 12, 2021 |
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Jul 11, 2021 08:07
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That link is dead for me; post might be deleted?
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Jul 11, 2021 15:47
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