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Sirotan posted:The door/window company guy I am paying to install a new patio door in my house just now: Lol if you don't have a full BIM model of your home
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Apr 21, 2023 00:35
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Motronic posted:I don't know how much of this you need to see at a time, but have you tried a target and/or glasses? The cheap one I got had both of those, the glasses were worthless, but you could find the lines with the target. In the shade. I imagine actual glasses would help, but  IOwnCalculus posted:Aside from the other bureaucratic bullshit... you have to get permitting from your town and county separately? Where I'm at, if you live in an incorporated town/city/etc, their planning and permitting supercedes the county's. County permitting only has to deal with people who live in the county but outside any other municipality. The town that literally borders my property line even uses the idea of not having to drive ~1hr to the center of the county to deal with permitting as an incentive to get your neighborhood to apply for annexation Yep, have to get HOA approval for any alterations. Still waiting on that, when the architect told me last Thursday that he'd have it done that night. The County Building Safety department oversees and inspects the actual project, but before they permit, I had to get a Township Zoning permit to include with the County's application. $80 to the HOA, $50 to the Township, $211 to the County. HOA hasn't approved, but the County has, so... progress:  But I'm renting a jackhammer today. Edit: Jackhammering the other 5 footings took just about as long as hand-breaking the first one. Very good choice. 
meatpimp fucked around with this message at 16:28 on Apr 21, 2023 |
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Apr 21, 2023 11:48
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Hi.  We bought a townhouse in December and have pretty quickly racked up a list of changes and fixes to make, even though it’s in good shape overall. I’ve never been in a position to plan renovations before. I have no idea what’s urgent or what order we should do things in, or who we would even contact to figure this stuff out. Our handy friend just had a baby otherwise they’d be all over this, but we’re on our own for now. Please tell me what sets off alarm bells.Stuff that got done already based on our home inspection - replaced the clothes washer lines with braided stuff - the fireplace pilot light wasn’t working properly and needed a replacement part - had a gas fitter/plumber flush our water lines and do…whatever the fireplace maintenance is (I’m sorry I’m way out of my depth here) - replaced the water expansion tank (failed seal) and actually secured it to the wall this time - fixed the garage door motor - not related to the inspection but we double-checked we didn’t have a gas leak since friends and family kept worrying about us (it was the regulator for the dryer we were smelling, since it’s in a closet) - fire alarm testing and battery replacement was arranged for all the units; this was done in January Stuff we’ve since discovered or otherwise need to address We keep tripping one of the breakers in the bedroom. There isn’t much on it? The closet light, a power bar charging my phone, a table lamp, and my electric blanket. The electric blanket has to be the worst offender there but still. How worried should we be? There are funky exposed wires of some kind in the storage space under the stairs, where most of our utilities are. We think it’s for the doorbell? We have cats so I’d kind of like to secure this. We’ve been keeping the door shut for now. Hot water is SLOW. It was the first thing the plumber asked about. Our tankless hot water heater is under-specced. I didn’t really understand our options to fix this, but I know that all of them were expensive and one of them involved cutting holes in the walls and ceiling. There’s a bunch of minor water damage. The POs apparently let it drip all over the cabinet fronts below the sink in the kitchen. Also never ran their bathroom fan, but I think we can just wash the walls to fix the evidence of condensation. And we have a mini-split heat pump - one of the wall units has had likely condensation from AC dripping down the wall and led to a damaged baseboard. The baseboard under the water heater has similar damage from a leaking gasket (leak has been fixed). The carpet is poorly installed and I also hate it. I want to rip it all out. The main level has vinyl plank and I think this is also poorly done, with a couple of spots that noticeably compress when I step on them. These are in the middle of nowhere so it shouldn’t be a “soft spot” (water damage), at least I sure hope not. I want to put wood flooring everywhere but I have no idea what that would cost other than A Lot. The POs painted the living room and den. Great colour, didn’t bother to remove the switch plates or tape anywhere. When I tried to clean spills they left on the walls from drinks or whatever, some of the colour came off on the damp cloth I was using.  Guessing they also didn’t prime correctly or used the cheapest paint known to man. I didn’t want to redo their work but I think we have to. I also want to paint other rooms and put up wallpaper (this is a sickness I’m aware but I’m still going to do it).They took (stole) fixtures they installed, like the curtain rods, hooks for artwork, and a couple of ceiling hooks where they had plants hung up, so we have a bunch of holes to patch in the drywall. Plenty of nicks in the drywall from them moving their furniture out, too. And the drywall on the stairs has a spot where it just doesn’t reach all the way to the ground, no idea what’s up with that but like half an inch is missing and the carpet goes underneath the drywall. (???) I guess related to that, I want to put curtains back up again. Guessing “fix the paint” should come first though! The POs removed the chandelier above the dining area. I hope this was done correctly, because we’d like to put one back in because it’s dark there (they were candle people, I found lots of evidence of this washing out the bathroom drawers), but the ceiling is 9ft tall and I get vertigo so I haven’t checked. I actually hate all of the light fixtures and want to replace every single one, but I don’t think this is urgent. Anyway I’m scared of what the innocuous plastic cover on the ceiling is hiding from us and who did the work. They installed shelving in the garage that protrudes into the single car entrance, giving us maybe 6” of clearance to get our car in. We have to saw off the end of this or remove it entirely because parking sucks right now. We don’t own any tools otherwise this should have been easy/free to tackle. They also installed interior shelving which I really like except they used, again, cheap materials, and they obviously changed their minds about how many brackets they needed and where to put them.  They wanted floating shelves but with nothing on them it’s obviously amateur hour: visible drywall patches, unevenly spaced and numbered brackets, and unfinished ends of the shelves. They also built custom shelves for under the stairs but it turns out they just stacked components on top of each other without securing a single thing.  We live in an earthquake zone, mentioning this for no reason.The toilets are super cheap. I could replace the plastic seats but maybe I should just nuke the whole thing? They bent the interior of the dishwasher all out of shape but we’ve made our peace with that and figured out ways of loading it that work. Probably need to replace this at some point. All the appliances are GE. The dishwasher is tiny for some reason. The oven is enormous, and gas, but at least seems to have a good hood? The POs only lived here for 3 years and they were the original owners so I just don’t understand the amount of wear and tear already lol rip to us in future I guess. And some of these are build defects. But the location, size, and layout are A+ so I’m not really regretting our choice. tl;dr We don’t know what to do next. Improve the hot water, get an electrician in, replace the flooring, paint the walls, fix the water-damaged baseboards? Or maybe it’s not worth ripping apart the walls and we can live with slow hot water. Would we want to talk to a general contractor to figure out what order to tackle things in? We own next to no furniture, and some things might be easier to do now before we fix that problem. Budget might have to dictate the order we move in anyway.
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Apr 21, 2023 23:20
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I would start hot water → lights (address the breaker while you're doing electrics) → walls → floors → other. Curtains can be any fabric draped over a tension pole until you're ready to commit.
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Apr 21, 2023 23:42
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I think generally "risk of death" then "risk of damage" then "current ugly" is a pretty good order of operations
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Apr 22, 2023 00:00
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That was way too much of a dump for me to read through it all, but your hot water is likely a water quality issue. "Slow" isn't about an under capacity tankless, it's about a restriction. Plenty of ways for that to happen, including the tankless never being properly maintained and/or needing a water softener. Did you get a water test done? What did it say about hardness and total dissolved solids?
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Apr 22, 2023 00:36
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Based on everything PO I’d guess it wasn’t being maintained. I also do not know how to do that beyond what the plumber did when they were here (they did say it looked overdue). We didn’t have the water tested - would a plumber do that? Risk of death, risk of damage… we aren’t using the unsecured shelving until we address that problem. So probably electric and water first, maybe order there doesn’t matter. Motronic posted:That was way too much of a dump for me to read through it all I started typing it out and it just kept going and going… all good.
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Apr 22, 2023 00:46
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kaom posted:- not related to the inspection but we double-checked we didn’t have a gas leak since friends and family kept worrying about us (it was the regulator for the dryer we were smelling, since it’s in a closet) What? Natural gas regulators should not vent into enclosed spaces (and if it's not venting, it certainly shouldn't be leaking). Who did you get to check this? What exactly did you determine to be the source of the smell?
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Apr 22, 2023 00:52
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kaom posted:Based on everything PO I’d guess it wasn’t being maintained. I also do not know how to do that beyond what the plumber did when they were here (they did say it looked overdue). We didn’t have the water tested - would a plumber do that? No, not a plumber for a water test. In fact, this is the best time to contact your county ag extension and ask them about water testing. You can also get online kits, but the ag extensions are almost universally great and will answer your potential next questions about grass and landscape plants, etc.
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Apr 22, 2023 00:54
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We’re in Canada but I’ll figure out the equivalent, thanks!devicenull posted:What? Natural gas regulators should not vent into enclosed spaces (and if it's not venting, it certainly shouldn't be leaking). Who did you get to check this? I could be using the wrong term. We had a gas fitter come. They explained to me that the pressure needs to be stepped down for the appliance, which means the gas has to go somewhere so yes, venting, and that the same thing would be present on our gas range but undetectable since it’s in the kitchen and not a closet. They had a tool to check levels. The gas smell is faint, but you notice it every time you open the closet.
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Apr 22, 2023 00:59
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kaom posted:We’re in Canada but I’ll figure out the equivalent, thanks! Weird, maybe Canada has strange gas setups... in the US, you'd have a pressure regulator on the side of your house that drops street pressure down to what your house needs. If individual appliances need lower pressures, they have their own (non-venting) regulator built in.
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Apr 22, 2023 01:08
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Since we're on the topic: how safe is LP gas for household use like for the oven and dryer (specifically, compared to natural gas lines)?
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Apr 22, 2023 01:28
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It seems that at least Oregon has contemplated this https://up.codes/s/venting-of-gas-appliance-pressure-regulators quote:Appliance pressure regulators requiring access to the atmosphere for successful operation shall be equipped with vent piping leading outdoors or, if the regulator vent is an integral part of the appliance, into the combustion chamber adjacent to a continuous pilot, unless constructed or equipped with a vent limiting means to limit the escape of gas from the vent opening in the event of diaphragm failure.
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Apr 22, 2023 01:28
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Eason the Fifth posted:Since we're on the topic: how safe is LP gas for household use like for the oven and dryer (specifically, compared to natural gas lines)? In what respect specifically? It's more energy dense buy you don't want to gently caress around with ether of them. On of my first fire investigations was a house that literally exploded after it was filled with natural gas. A low order detonation is still a hell of a thing. The bilco doors from the basement that got blown off were stuck in a tree right around the second floor level.
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Apr 22, 2023 01:34
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Well, I live in MA, and back in 2018 we had natural gas explosions take out about forty homes in the Merrimack Valley. At the time I didn't think much about it because I was living in an apartment that didn't use gas, but I recently bought my first house and it came with a 120 gallon propane tank for the dryer and stove, and that got me to wondering the risk of having a tank of LP gas next to the house was just generally equivalent explosion-wise to the risk of natural gas and what happened up in North Andover. I mean, they're both obviously safe enough for millions of homes/apartments to use either kind for energy, but my kneejerk reaction is to say that natural gas access might be more dangerous compared to propane on account of e.g. the old piping/bad maintenance procedures that caused the explosions. But then again, if I have a hole in some copper tubing or something like that I don't know about and LP fills the house, I'd imagine that's just as dangerous. (edit for clarity: I don't know poo poo about gas)
Eason the Fifth fucked around with this message at 02:23 on Apr 22, 2023 |
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Apr 22, 2023 02:04
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My condo has a natural gas fireplace (no outlet for the BBQ sadly) and the previous owner left the noxious gas detector/alarm plugged into the wall outlet beside the fireplace. I tested it when I moved in, it alarmed, and I sleep happily in the condo feeling completely comfortable.
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Apr 22, 2023 02:08
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kaom posted:We’re in Canada but I’ll figure out the equivalent, thanks! Pressure regulators don't work like that. They basically this:  There is a small valve which is attached to a diaphragm such that when the diaphragm moves up the valve closes. The "low" (regulated) pressure side presses up on a diaphragm, and a spring presses on the other side. Higher pressure causes the valve to close and the spring is set up so that when the regulated pressure gets to the set point the diaphragm closes the valve. There's no leakage from a properly functioning regulator.
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Apr 22, 2023 02:24
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Eason the Fifth posted:Since we're on the topic: how safe is LP gas for household use like for the oven and dryer (specifically, compared to natural gas lines)? This isn't what you asked, but isn't LP gas (in bottles, I assume) horrifically expensive? I can't see why you'd want a gas oven and dryer running off it. Stove maybe.
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Apr 22, 2023 03:26
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Shifty Pony posted:There's no leakage from a properly functioning regulator. That was my initial thought but reading a bit it seems this type of regulator is different ~somehow~ Needs to have atmospheric pressure as a reference or something
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Apr 22, 2023 04:27
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Eason the Fifth posted:Well, I live in MA, and back in 2018 we had natural gas explosions take out about forty homes in the Merrimack Valley. At the time I didn't think much about it because I was living in an apartment that didn't use gas, but I recently bought my first house and it came with a 120 gallon propane tank for the dryer and stove, and that got me to wondering the risk of having a tank of LP gas next to the house was just generally equivalent explosion-wise to the risk of natural gas and what happened up in North Andover. I mean, they're both obviously safe enough for millions of homes/apartments to use either kind for energy, but my kneejerk reaction is to say that natural gas access might be more dangerous compared to propane on account of e.g. the old piping/bad maintenance procedures that caused the explosions. But then again, if I have a hole in some copper tubing or something like that I don't know about and LP fills the house, I'd imagine that's just as dangerous. (edit for clarity: I don't know poo poo about gas) The tank next to the house isn't the dangerous part. It's the pipes going into your house full of flammable gas that might leak. This is true whether it's natural gas or propane. This is not a huge risk. All it takes is not doing real dumb stuff, occasional maintenance and now we even have detectors for these types of things. ~Coxy posted:This isn't what you asked, but isn't LP gas (in bottles, I assume) horrifically expensive? No. When you aren't buying it in 5 gallon bottle for your propane grill it's price per therm is on par with any other fuel source. Meaning sometimes it's more expensive, sometimes it cheaper, it all matters where you live. But in no place where it's used as a heating fuel is it "horrifically expensive." Understand people are installing 100 to 1000 gallon tanks that are then filled by a truck, just like fuel oil. They're not buying full tanks and moving them to their house.
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Apr 22, 2023 15:00
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Worth noting that propane cylinder exchange companies charge significantly more than a refill place would charge to fill an empty tank, and they don't fill their cylinders up all the way (15lbs vs ~18.7lbs or so). So you very screwed over if you use those.
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Apr 22, 2023 16:32
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Epitope posted:That was my initial thought but reading a bit it seems this type of regulator is different ~somehow~ So the initial replies were alarming, but seems like this is a thing? I think it’s weird, for the record, but apparently it’s okay? Instead of calling a gas fitter back stat, guess maybe I’ll pick up a sensor and slap it in the closet with the laundry or just outside, just for peace of mind. Actually I’m going to go inventory where all our sensors are right now to make sure we have something near the garage too. Thanks all.
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Apr 22, 2023 21:37
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Does anyone know why Lowes and Home Depot don't sell denatured or isopropyl alcohol? Did this become illegal in CA or something? They've got acetone, paint thinners and mineral spirits but nothing alcohol based.
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Apr 23, 2023 15:33
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Pretty sure you can still get isopropyl alcohol in drug stores here.
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Apr 23, 2023 15:34
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spf3million posted:Does anyone know why Lowes and Home Depot don't sell denatured or isopropyl alcohol? Did this become illegal in CA or something? They've got acetone, paint thinners and mineral spirits but nothing alcohol based. It's not at my HD in Wisconsin either so not a state thing, at least
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Apr 23, 2023 15:51
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spf3million posted:Does anyone know why Lowes and Home Depot don't sell denatured or isopropyl alcohol? Did this become illegal in CA or something? They've got acetone, paint thinners and mineral spirits but nothing alcohol based. It was banned by the California Air Resource board because of the VOCs.
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Apr 23, 2023 16:20
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Iso was pulled but not MEK? Oh, wait, maybe that's out now too
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Apr 23, 2023 16:42
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I keep getting these offers from Dominion Energy to do the $5/month exterior water/sewer line insurance coverage. Are those worth it at all? Seems sort of scammy. I've thrown away the last 50 attempts to get us to use it. But I was just wondering if anyone from here has ever benefited from that.
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Apr 23, 2023 16:55
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spf3million posted:Does anyone know why Lowes and Home Depot don't sell denatured or isopropyl alcohol? Did this become illegal in CA or something? They've got acetone, paint thinners and mineral spirits but nothing alcohol based. Should have it as white gas or lantern fuel. In the paint thinners section. It’s 90% denatured alcohol.
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Apr 23, 2023 18:33
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BonoMan posted:I keep getting these offers from Dominion Energy to do the $5/month exterior water/sewer line insurance coverage. Are those worth it at all? Seems sort of scammy. I've thrown away the last 50 attempts to get us to use it. But I was just wondering if anyone from here has ever benefited from that. I have with sewer insurance but that is because my line is super god drat old and I know I can’t trust it. If everything works as intended and is in fairly good health then it’s like insurance on anything else, likely to spend more money on coverage than repairs.
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Apr 23, 2023 18:36
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Johnny Truant posted:It's not at my HD in Wisconsin either so not a state thing, at least Check drug stores, idopropyl is used for wound cleaning. I buy a poo poo ton for resin printing, up in Canada though Or Costco
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Apr 23, 2023 18:53
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BonoMan posted:I keep getting these offers from Dominion Energy to do the $5/month exterior water/sewer line insurance coverage. Are those worth it at all? Seems sort of scammy. I've thrown away the last 50 attempts to get us to use it. But I was just wondering if anyone from here has ever benefited from that. Check with your homeowner's insurance company. I have underground piping coverage on mine, just an additional rider to the existing policy.
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Apr 23, 2023 20:57
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I found 70% isopropyl at Ace in the paint thinner aisle.
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Apr 23, 2023 22:36
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Is there some sort of acquired brain rot you get after owning a house for years that causes you to completely forget that the dryer used to be able to dry a load of clothes in less than an hour and a half?
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Apr 23, 2023 23:09
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It's really easy to miss a gradual change over time.
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Apr 23, 2023 23:46
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Get a dryer vent cleaning kit and do it every year, it’s not hard at all unless you have like a second story vent exit or something.
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Apr 24, 2023 00:01
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spf3million posted:I found 70% isopropyl at Ace in the paint thinner aisle.
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Apr 24, 2023 00:25
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I am much older than the last time I spent the day tiling a floor. Ow.
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Apr 24, 2023 00:52
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Shifty Pony posted:Is there some sort of acquired brain rot you get after owning a house for years that causes you to completely forget that the dryer used to be able to dry a load of clothes in less than an hour and a half? Thank you for the reminder to clean out my dryer vent. It was mostly clear, but there was still several handfuls of lint in there. Bonus: I now have a nice big scratch on my finger! Good ol' sheet metal.
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Apr 24, 2023 01:29
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Idk what you need it for, but ispropyl and dentures alcohol are mostly but not completely interchangeable. Isopropyl usually has more water in it than denatured for instance and so isn’t as good a solvent for shellac as denatured, for instance.
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Apr 24, 2023 01:31
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