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Sundae posted:Which brings us to the thread's second favorite topic: This is how I know I'm getting old, I had to talk myself down from the $5,000 Toto bidet to the $2,000 one.
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Mar 27, 2021 17:59
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Maggie Fletcher posted:This is how I know I'm getting old, I had to talk myself down from the $5,000 Toto bidet to the $2,000 one. What could the $5k model possibly do?
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Mar 27, 2021 18:05
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Residency Evil posted:What could the $5k model possibly do? Probably massage your genitals gently while drying?
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Mar 27, 2021 18:46
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Maggie Fletcher posted:Probably massage your genitals gently while drying? Well it can’t be that because that’d be worth it and he’d obviously buy it. Residency Evil fucked around with this message at 18:49 on Mar 27, 2021 |
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Mar 27, 2021 18:47
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Real talk, I can't tell the difference between most of the models. Some of the toilets are close to $20k. But their washlet bidets are between $1-2k. For me it's worth it to have the lady parts setting. It never made sense to me to spray from the back.
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Mar 27, 2021 19:04
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About to close on a house and need to update the bathrooms. How does everyone feel about tile vs LVP flooring for a bathroom? Both are waterproof and function fine, and it looks like tile would offer better resale (slightly), which we don't really care about. No child winters so cold feet aren't a concern. Just go with whichever looks better or are there any hidden concerns to think over? I also swear there was a thread specifically for flooring here but I can't find it anymore.
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Mar 27, 2021 19:59
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PageMaster posted:About to close on a house and need to update the bathrooms. How does everyone feel about tile vs LVP flooring for a bathroom? Both are waterproof and function fine, and it looks like tile would offer better resale (slightly), which we don't really care about. No child winters so cold feet aren't a concern. Just go with whichever looks better or are there any hidden concerns to think over? I’d go with tile, personally. Tile (or stone) reads as “this floor is supposed to get wet so don’t worry” while LVT (especially if it’s wood look), to me, reads more “I know rationally that this floor is waterproof but it doesn’t look it”.
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Mar 27, 2021 20:39
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Tile is way classier.
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Mar 27, 2021 21:37
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My current place someone put down stick on vinyl tiles and grouted them in. One is damaged but I can’t just peel it up and put a new one down because they were all grouted in and I don’t have time to redo it.
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Mar 27, 2021 22:08
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Reasons to do yard work: -10% I hate looking at dead or overgrown plants -10% I know the old neighbor who is always in her yard is judging me -80% the post-yard work shower beer
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Mar 27, 2021 23:26
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Sundae posted:Can anyone refer me to a good resource for learning about speaker installations, etc, for surround sound stuff? My living room came pre-wired for 7:1 with a wall panel to the ceiling speaker panels, but I don't know anything beyond "rectangular ceiling ports with the wire connections in them" and want to learn more to eventually install stuff. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3384469 Post some pics of what you have and the space as well so people can talk to it directly. The short answer is going to be "go to a store and listen. Use banana plugs if you aren't a savage."
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Mar 27, 2021 23:48
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 I spent my afternoon vacuuming 30 years worth of dust out of my ADU's crawlspace so I could seal some things. My radon levels are borderline high but I'm hoping sealing the few penetrations in the slab will let me avoid an active system.  Vacuuming what looked like shallow indentations revealed four 1" round holes all the way through the slab that were stuffed with mostly wood shavings. I can see down to the gravel underneath. They're contained in maybe a 1' square. Is there a product that would be able to patch that without thermal expansion popping them out? Everything I'm reading talks about cutting out a bigger area, undercutting, concrete adhesive, and a bunch of other stuff that sounds unpleasant.
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Mar 28, 2021 03:05
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Personally? I'd spray foam the holes mostly full and then use the foam as a backer for some hydraulic cement.
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Mar 28, 2021 12:38
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The radon crew who installed the mitigation system at my house just spray foamed every gap and it dropped to nearly undetectable levels.
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Mar 28, 2021 14:59
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Put 4 1 inch pipes in and run them outside? Bonus passive radon mitigation system! If you're measuring radon in the house, you might consider sealing up all that ductwork with some mastic, so it doesn't pull air in.
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Mar 29, 2021 00:08
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Is it weird for a 20 year old house to have precisely 0 permits pulled for it? Our town has an online search system and nothing comes up for our address. We're almost to the point of applying for permits for our deck/porch, and I got curious so I checked. I'm sure the system doesn't go back the full 20 years, but it goes back far enough to know there should probably be something there. Spot checked a few of the neighbors and most of them have had a few permits pulled for various things, and they were done for things that the PO definitely had done (main thing being both HVAC units). Checked the county too, nothing in their system either. Nothing really wrong, but it's more of a curiosity than anything else. Just seems odd to me. Not sure if the permit search system sucks, if the neighbors pulled unnecessary permits (e.g. permit isn't needed if certain work is done by a licensed trade), or if PO was doing some sketchy poo poo. Or maybe all 3!
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Mar 29, 2021 13:10
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DaveSauce posted:Is it weird for a 20 year old house to have precisely 0 permits pulled for it? 20 years it might have been lucky. How much stuff is original to the home? All mechanical stuff has date tags on it. Any obvious renovation? Additions? Roof original? Look up an older house - something 50 years old - and see if you can find older permits. Or just call the city and ask how far back permits online go. Either way it's not a red flag like it would be for say a 50 year old house with a 10 year old roof. Or an addition.
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Mar 29, 2021 18:13
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It depends on your location too. My city gives no fucks about a lot of things, like I did not need a permit for a fence or a roof replacement.
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Mar 29, 2021 18:48
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DaveSauce posted:Is it weird for a 20 year old house to have precisely 0 permits pulled for it? Texas only recently (2007?) started requiring permits for stuff like hot water heaters, which IMO is excessive. Depending on where you're at it can be higher or lower. In my city anything beyond painting your interior walls anything besides white requires a permit.
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Mar 29, 2021 18:54
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So the roof was just done a few months ago by us, which did NOT require a permit. PO did water heater and both HVAC zones (gas pack for one, separate furnace/ac for the other). Not sure if the water heater needed a permit, but I'm pretty sure the mechanical did based on what neighbors are showing in searches for their addresses. There's also a stupid irrigation thing they put in that we've never used... have to run a hose from the system to a silcock they blasted through the siding (very obviously not original, wildly different construction). Just runs up via PVC to 2 sprinkler heads that watered the builder grade foundation cover (which you couldn't kill if you tried)... yeah. No clue why that's there, but I'm pretty sure that would have required a permit. I mainly wanted a sanity check to see how weird it is. Everything else appears original, but the main concern is that you never know what else the did if they didn't bother to get permits for normal stuff. But we're 5 years in to this place so we're stuck.
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Mar 29, 2021 19:16
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Some contractors will just not pull permits by default, and not everyone knows that replacing water heaters / hvac units require permits in their locality. At least where I am, it's not uncommon to look up a property on the online search and find 0 permits, though I'm also not sure exactly how far back it goes.
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Mar 29, 2021 19:42
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Literally called an electrician in Austin for a job and when I asked if he pulled permit he said "oh I will pass on this job I don't do permits." Most of the contractors/trades I talk to here bitch about the city permit office but I assume that is par for the course everywhere. I did think it was funny that this guy has no issue keeping a full schedule while explicitly not permitting any of his work.
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Mar 29, 2021 21:13
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Infinotize posted:Literally called an electrician in Austin for a job and when I asked if he pulled permit he said "oh I will pass on this job I don't do permits." Most of the contractors/trades I talk to here bitch about the city permit office but I assume that is par for the course everywhere. I did think it was funny that this guy has no issue keeping a full schedule while explicitly not permitting any of his work. It's not like that up here in Fort Worth. I've had my water heater, plumbing, and electrical all permitted by the contractor. The roof wasn't, but only needs to be if they replace decking or other wood, which they didn't.
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Mar 29, 2021 21:38
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Is it one of those technically illegal things for a contractor to perform work that requires a permit and not pull one?
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Mar 29, 2021 21:44
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House across the street from me is being flipped, and someone from the county came the other day and slapped a big old STOP WORK order on the door. Sounds like maybe someone messed up some permits...
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Mar 29, 2021 21:53
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Inner Light posted:Is it one of those technically illegal things for a contractor to perform work that requires a permit and not pull one? No, it's one of those actually illegal things that can get the job stopped, the contractor and homeowner fined. Inspections are there to help the property owner, who probably doesn't know poo poo about poo poo or it wouldn't be getting hired out to make sure that a job is done to a very minimum standard of workmanship and safety.
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Mar 29, 2021 21:55
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Motronic posted:No, it's one of those actually illegal things that can get the job stopped, the contractor and homeowner fined. This. Sure, there are things that shouldn't require a permit (or require only the most basic of reviews, maybe), like how my town requires a building permit for hanging even a temporary banner or painting the exterior of your building, but for every vaguely pointless thing like that (where I assume one fucker ruined it for everyone) you have an unpermitted garage addition get turned into an unpermitted bedroom which then isn't up to electrical code and then kills your kid in a fire. Minus the fire part, that's basically only part of what was wrong with this property, as an example: https://www.zillow.com/homes/1044-Montgomery-Ave-San-Bruno,-CA,-94066_rb/15488977_zpid/ Most of the pictures are gone now that it sold (for OVER LIST), but the garage door is an external decoration only now, because that garage is an un-permitted third bedroom with un-permitted electrical and plumbing work. The driveway remodel was done without permits as well, and the back yard is ENORMOUS for this area. Why is it so enormous? Well, because there was a 1,200 sqft extension on the back of it which was... you guessed it... un-permitted. The city made the previous owner tear it down, so he turned it into a yard and put in a gazebo and an above-ground pool, plus a dog run and what appeared to be chicken coops. It was also next to an auto-body shop, right on the edge of a residential/commercial zoning divide. It listed for $799K and went for $850K in spite of all of that. 
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Mar 29, 2021 22:28
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I think the question is- what proportion of jobs that should have a permit pulled, do? Are there compliance estimates out there?
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Mar 29, 2021 22:33
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Epitope posted:I think the question is- what proportion of jobs that should have a permit pulled, do? Are there compliance estimates out there? That is very much jurisdiction-specific because some jurisdictions are great to work with, don't have usurious fees, and show up on time to keep jobs from getting derailed. Some people in these jurisdictions even accept photos of work from contractors with a good track record as interim inspection points so they aren't stuck waiting for a day or more to schedule appointments. Then you have other jurisdictions where it's a money grab and an impediment. Contractors and homeowners alike are incentivized to skirt every last rule they can. Then there's the third type: unpermitted additions that you couldn't possibly get zoning approval to do legally, meaning you can't pull permits for them either. So markets like the Bay Area.
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Mar 29, 2021 22:39
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I would wager that most remodels are likely to be done without a permit (above 50%) in major cities like the bay area. Remember that there are degrees of permitting - in the case of replacing or adding one electrical outlet, most folks wouldn't request a permit from the city because it's bureaucracy. Frequently, work is done to a bathroom or kitchen without permit, and then people do not notice when the property sells (or give the excuse of AFAIK a permit is not needed). However, in the case of a full addition, because it's so noticeable most people would actually get the permit. There are some really insane exceptions though to what things people will do. BTW, my supplemental tax for "substantially equivalent construction" for a remodel of 3 bedrooms, full changing of layout of kitchen, structural changes, and two completely new bathrooms with wall teardown involved came back, and the county has determined that my cost for improvements (including labor + materials) is $31,000! 
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Mar 29, 2021 23:08
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Epitope posted:I think the question is- what proportion of jobs that should have a permit pulled, do? Are there compliance estimates out there? It's the semi-rural south, so I'm guessing the reason was redlining and Jim Crow bullshit.
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Mar 30, 2021 00:52
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Dik Hz posted:My old city had a massive loophole where anything done for repairs didn't require a permit. Shower leaking? Gotta replace the whole bathroom. They didn't have the resources to check and nobody gave a poo poo. But it was on the books. Most reasonable jurisdictions have retro permits for that kind of thing. Go fix you drat leak. If you can leave it open for a permit+inspection great, but at least take pictures if you can't.
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Mar 30, 2021 00:58
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What is the rationale / incentive for homeowners to ask a contractor to skip permits, is it cheaper or something?
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Mar 30, 2021 01:09
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Inner Light posted:What is the rationale / incentive for homeowners to ask a contractor to skip permits, is it cheaper or something? Faster and cheaper, yes. At what ultimate cost depends on the specific situation.
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Mar 30, 2021 01:23
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I got my AC condenser replaced 2 weeks ago. Modern code would have required it to be right in the middle of my walkway, so the HVAC guys just flagged it as a "repair" rather than "replacement". It was the exact same process as a replacement, except new code doesn't apply. The county inspector came and verified that it was all hooked up correctly and said ayup this is great Permits can be dumb
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Mar 30, 2021 01:30
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Motronic posted:Then you have other jurisdictions where it's a money grab and an impediment. Contractors and homeowners alike are incentivized to skirt every last rule they can. Some Bay Area jurisdictions are a combination of two and three and then some - onerous permit fees, not being able to get approval in the first place, and also not wanting to risk triggering a reassessment come together to form a perfect storm of everyone avoiding permits like the plague. Why would you want to pay four to five figures in fees and get your taxes hiked?
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Mar 30, 2021 06:56
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Most other countries don't require permits for most internal works and there doesn't seem to be an epidemic of baby killing fires in idk France. They might have other setups, like licensing for specific types of work or mandatory guarantees but it's dumb that the city has to authorize a kitchen remodel.
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Mar 30, 2021 07:05
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Queen Victorian posted:Some Bay Area jurisdictions are a combination of two and three and then some - onerous permit fees, not being able to get approval in the first place, and also not wanting to risk triggering a reassessment come together to form a perfect storm of everyone avoiding permits like the plague. Why would you want to pay four to five figures in fees and get your taxes hiked? It's not actually that bad in many circumstances when the building department is the one approving. The big issue is usually the planning dept, and places like Palo Alto, SF, and a couple of other places make this a PITA. Reassessment is also only done for the improvements that are considered equivalent to new construction, and most people who are filing permits under-report (and counties in the bay area tend to be lenient on the reassessment). The problem is that there is a bureaucratic process, and many people are not good at dealing with government.
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Mar 30, 2021 08:10
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Poldarn posted:I need some help understanding bathroom sink faucets. I'm going to be replacing my bathroom sink faucet and I'm looking online to find some that are compatible. I checked and my countertop has two holes, one for each supply line that goes into the faucet from below. I've managed to figure out that my faucet size is "centreset". Most of the faucets that I've looked at online that look compatible say you need minimum three holes, and it looks like the 3rd one is for the piece that connects to your drain, however I just use a push-in type drainstopper. There is a vastly smaller selection of centreset faucets with two holes. So if I use a three hole faucet and just don't connect the drain thingy (like one of these bad boys ) should it work fine or is that third hole somehow going start pouring water everywhere? Or am I overthinking this? Poldarn posted:Here you go Poldarn posted:This house is pretty old, and the owner before the owner I bought it from thought he was a handy dude (spoiler: he wasn't) so there are all sorts of weird things we uncover as we live here. Update if anyone cares: The middle hole is irrelevant because it's for the bit that stick out the back of the faucet the opens and closes the drain. Our drain has a push in/ push out plug so I just left that part out. New faucet is in and works great. Next question! The popcorn ceiling in one of the bedrooms has some water staining from a leak forever ago. Handyman brother-in-law says to just paint over it while other friends say I want to scrape off the whole ceiling, or the damaged part, and then respray on some more popcorn. Opinions? I'm leaning towards painting the ceiling as that seems like less work overall.
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Mar 30, 2021 08:36
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pointsofdata posted:Most other countries don't require permits for most internal works and there doesn't seem to be an epidemic of baby killing fires in idk France. They might have other setups, like licensing for specific types of work or mandatory guarantees but it's dumb that the city has to authorize a kitchen remodel. My town / state doesn't need a permit for a kitchen remodel up until I adjust where the plumbing or electric moves. I can replace an outlet or fixture but moving one requires a permit. I can go down to the studs and even remove non load bearing walls, I can't move outlets or my sink/ gas line without a permit / inspection
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Mar 30, 2021 11:25
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