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Inner Light posted:This is unfortunate news for a number of reasons, their trucks are easily available and affordable, and their cardboard is of sound quality. I may have to start looking elsewhere. Yeah, they're awful and I give their offices and distribution center the finger every time I drive by to or from Chicago. That said, they can be handy to find the name and description of what you want and then go buy it from a hopefully less shitass retailer.
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Dec 15, 2022 02:58
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I can't get over that the company is named after them. It's like finding out George W. Bush was funded by the Hömmedepughs.
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Dec 15, 2022 05:29
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Enos Cabell posted:I thought this was a joke at first, but nope https://www.propublica.org/article/uline-uihlein-election-denial Well god drat I didn’t know this gently caress them 
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Dec 15, 2022 15:21
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I'm going to remodel my garage into a more useable space. Currently the side of the garage is just redwood siding nailed on with some super old and torn paper (tar paper? building wrap from the 70s?) to keep air and moisture out. I know the absolute best way would be to tear off the old siding and replace with sheathing/wrap/new siding, but gently caress me that's too much effort for an art studio, so: Can I replace this torn lovely stuff with new building paper/house wrap/whatever before putting in insulation? What should I use?
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Dec 16, 2022 04:44
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moana posted:I'm going to remodel my garage into a more useable space. Currently the side of the garage is just redwood siding nailed on with some super old and torn paper (tar paper? building wrap from the 70s?) to keep air and moisture out. I know the absolute best way would be to tear off the old siding and replace with sheathing/wrap/new siding, but gently caress me that's too much effort for an art studio, so: So you'd just put it between the studs on the inside face of the outside wall? It won't keep air and moisture out. It's going to be better than torn and ripped paper yet it'll still not do the job. Right now without any interior sheathing if breathes at least and has a chance to dry. I'm making an assumption that you want to put insulation in and then drywall the interior. You will end up trapping moisture in the walls and it will cause damage. This may take a long time. It's wrong and bad and can cause structural and mold and mildew problems. Consider putting housewrap and building paper and new siding on over the top of the old stuff. Or just having it be the way it is. You could paint it to brighten it up, or put loose boards up inside and paint those like a stall.
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Dec 16, 2022 05:01
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StormDrain posted:So you'd just put it between the studs on the inside face of the outside wall? quote:It won't keep air and moisture out. It's going to be better than torn and ripped paper yet it'll still not do the job. Right now without any interior sheathing if breathes at least and has a chance to dry. I'm making an assumption that you want to put insulation in and then drywall the interior. You will end up trapping moisture in the walls and it will cause damage. This may take a long time. It's wrong and bad and can cause structural and mold and mildew problems.
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Dec 16, 2022 05:19
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Welp, here we are. The masonry crew came by and tore down the brick wall in this section this evening.  Rim joist isn’t hosed thankfully, just the studs/footer/subfloor/sheathing bits that I expected from my interior exploration back in October. For now, cut off all the rotted OSB and slapped up a temporary piece of plywood and some flashing tape to help with air sealing over the weekend until I can get to it on Monday. devmd01 fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Dec 17, 2022 |
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Dec 17, 2022 02:01
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devmd01 posted:Welp, here we are. The masonry crew came by and tore down the brick wall in this section this evening. Hey sorry you're dealing with this. I'm bad at knowing what I'm looking at, what was the original cause of your leak? Just masonry age/condition or something else, and where did water"proofing" fail? The location specifically is the window sealing yes? Or nothing at all and it's plumbing. Inner Light fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Dec 17, 2022 |
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Dec 17, 2022 02:07
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House was built in 1997 and had the original windows until we replaced them in 2020 but by then the damage was done. Either the windows were leaking in the frame corner or the caulking had not been kept up on, it was in bad shape when I re-did a ton of caulking all around the house in 2019. Didn’t discover the damage until a couple months ago, over time the moisture and what I assume was the drywall getting bumped by the window installers ended up with a nasty crack and the surface paper peeling off. devmd01 posted:Alright, did more exploratory digging and this is what I have to deal with:
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Dec 17, 2022 02:13
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Oh now I understand better, your house literally rotted. I think I had never seen it in quite that way before IRL (maybe quite common) but now I see, we're looking at the same place inside and outside in those pics. Hope it is an easy repair process for you at least. 
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Dec 17, 2022 02:23
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Taste check because a single Goon figures asking here is as good as anywhere. My 1930s home has a crack across the tiling in one of the bathrooms. The other tiles are in good shape and underneath looks fine- guessing it’s from settling. I’m fond of the tile and hate tiling - if I kintsugi the crack would this be too whimsical?
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Dec 17, 2022 22:38
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If you have the good, old wet-bed tile, cool color & in good shape: yes, by all means. It is technically feasible if extremely challenging to (deep) cut out the cracked tile using a rotary or oscillating tool to remove them at the grout lines & mud in new ones, or pull tiles from a less-conspicuous spot (or where you might install, say, a towel rack with ceramic bases) if the tile cannot be sourced. I'd attempt it on my own house because I am insane, but I wouldn't trust 99% of ceramic jobbers to go anywhere near it. Your solution sounds like a great idea and if you do it, post pictures
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Dec 18, 2022 02:04
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Bobcats posted:Taste check because a single Goon figures asking here is as good as anywhere. Seconded that sounds like a great idea.
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Dec 18, 2022 06:28
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lmao Been limping our 10 year old Samsung oven along. Came with the house, only taken a few parts to keep it going, so far $200 worth for something we can't replace for less than $600. This time had to replace the front right burner control, which near as I can tell is just a big variable resistor. Works great otherwise, so we're thinking this will get us at least a year to ponder its replacement. Order the part per the diagram on the website, and received it yesterday... immediately concerned because the box has multiple stickers on it. Looks like 3 of the seller's inventory stickers stacked, with the "correct" part number on top. Couldn't pry them apart with tearing, so I dunno what the bottom 2 stickers say. However, the manufacturer's sticker is also there and has the part number for the back burner control on it. So right away this isn't looking good. Open the box and the part is... unrecognizable. Not obviously wrong, but there are no markings that match what's on the box... it's clearly a burner control, but very suspicious. Doesn't look like any of the pictures I saw, but who knows, maybe it's a fit/form/function replacement and the old one is obsolete, I dunno. So I Google the number printed on the part and find the manufacturer's part number, which of course matches precisely none of the part numbers stuck to the box I got. No note anywhere about it being a replacement for what originally shipped with the oven. So now I'm concerned that I used the wrong diagram, so I pull the oven out and double check and sure enough, I ordered the correct part, and somehow the seller put the wrong sticker on the wrong box with an even more wrong part inside. It is in fact for a Samsung oven, at least, so it's got that going for it! Worst part is the seller I bought form (searspartsdirect.com) doesn't have any sort of online customer support that I can find. No e-mail, no chat, but they do have a phone number. So now I have to call them up to do something that should be a 5 minute e-mail.
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Dec 18, 2022 20:04
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Goondolances on having to make a telephone call and having to interact with another human being.
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Dec 18, 2022 20:46
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skipdogg posted:Goondolances on having to make a telephone call and having to interact with another human being. It's not the phone call that's annoying, it's the 20 minute wait listening to bad music. This is assuming that their customer support is actually people who are knowledgeable about the thing you're calling about and not some off-shored call center working from a script. In that case it's 50/50 between "you could get away with murder just by saying it arrived defective" vs. "you will argue with people for two hours before you finally get escalated to someone who can actually help you." In that case, yeah, the phone call is annoying. The online chat stuff is generally better because a) being on hold isn't as annoying and b) you can pretty quickly figure out if it's going to be worthwhile or not and if not try a different angle of attack. These days I always default to the online thing and if their chat service can't help I grab the phone.
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Dec 18, 2022 20:54
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it was literally the worst  Honestly that's not the part that annoys me. The thing is, I can fire off an e-mail and move on with my life. But for a phone call I have to wait until they're open, find time to sit down and call during those hours, navigate an annoying phone tree that's intentionally trying to prevent me from talking to someone, and then sit on hold while I wait for the person they don't want me to talk to. Thankfully they're actually open today, so I was able to take care of it. But drat, it's 2022. I could have sent an e-mail last night, and they could have replied whenever they got around to it.
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Dec 18, 2022 20:56
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Plus you're going to wait on hold for 20 min, explain the problem, get told they can transfer you to the right department, wait 20 more minutes, and find out they sent you to the wrong person anyway.
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Dec 18, 2022 21:14
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You know, the new Google phones have a "hold for me" feature where you can hang up and your phone will ring once a human answers. It's the greatest invention.
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Dec 18, 2022 21:24
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this is fine, everything is under control 
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Dec 19, 2022 16:13
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This is why I hate OSB. poo poo falls apart at water penetration that would only discolor plywood. Make sure that they pay attention to the elevation at the inside corner where the downspout comes in (opposite the window). To my mind, the damage pattern in your earlier photos taken from outside indicate penetration from that side, through or behind the masonry, possibly due to the incorrect application of grout and/or seal material at the inside corner of the masonry. That entire inside corner is suspect - the full height of it. Be sure that they check all of the mortar lines there.  Red is the area of entry & damage at that left (as seen from the front of the house, facing the house) corner. The yellow line is where water is coming in, probably even higher than that as water will travel down past its point of entry and not get hung up there so it may leave a very slight trace of its passage, but not pool or soak enough to create the damage you have. Where the water gets trapped is where the damage starts & only gets worse as it collects further down. Note that the damage starts higher at the left edge than it does with the right / window opening; it was penetrating both sides. PainterofCrap fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Dec 19, 2022 |
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Dec 19, 2022 16:36
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Any advice on the best way to balance indoor humidity during the winter between comfort and moisture control? It's been pretty dry and staticky in our house. We have a humidifier on our HVAC and can adjust the level of humidity, but I don't know enough to know where we should have it set. I had it set to 35 and a couple clocks we have with (probably lovely) humidity displays showed low 30s on one and high 30s on the other, so the setting seems relatively accurate. We've been a little more comfortable since I set it to that (from 20 when we moved in), but this morning had some condensation on our windows. Not a lot - maybe .5 to 1 inch at the bottom of them, but I feel like I've seen that window condensation is a warning sign. Notably, it was pretty cold (single digits) last night, so that also has probably influenced it. Should I turn it down? Just wipe the windows in the morning? Constantly readjust based on the weather forecast?
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Dec 19, 2022 17:49
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Also, I just want to reiterate that this thread is awesome. I have read the entire thread now, and feel simultaneously incredibly prepared and terrified.
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Dec 19, 2022 17:50
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Dr. Eldarion posted:Also, I feel simultaneously incredibly prepared and terrified. Ignorance truly is bliss isn't it?
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Dec 19, 2022 18:01
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Dr. Eldarion posted:Any advice on the best way to balance indoor humidity during the winter between comfort and moisture control? You probably need to turn it down when it's this cold out as your windows aren't insulated enough. You could also try leaving the fan on and see if that helps. Depending on the system it should be adjustable in a way that you don't have to chase it around, but that assumes it was installed correctly. All too often installers are too lazy to install the outdoor thermometer so the humidistat has no idea of outdoor temp and you just have to do this manually.
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Dec 19, 2022 18:05
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Our furnace is brand new, but the HVAC is ~15 years old. It still runs well, probably since it doesn't get that much use. What's the relative cost of a humidifier to get installed to an existing system? It would be nice to not have to set up so many room humidifiers in the winter. And then in the future can that be adapted to a new HVAC when we have to replace it? Or should I just wait and do the humidifier when I replace the HVAC? Lastly what's the approximate added cost of running the whole home humidifier? It's it like adding on running the AC to the furnace or less?
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Dec 19, 2022 20:06
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Douche4Sale posted:Our furnace is brand new, but the HVAC is ~15 years old. What does this mean? A furnace is part of an HVAC system. A good steam humidifier is about $1k in parts. How long it takes to install primarily relies on the ease of access to sufficient electrical power for the size of your home/required output, ease of access to supply water, and what it will take to provide for a drain. If you have a forced air system with an air conditioner you already have a drain and a place to put the humidifier. At to you other questions it depends on what you're talking about "replacing" and running costs depend on the size of your house and your climate.
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Dec 19, 2022 20:21
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Motronic posted:You probably need to turn it down when it's this cold out as your windows aren't insulated enough. You could also try leaving the fan on and see if that helps. Thanks for the advice! I don't think ours has any ability to monitor outside temps at all, so it looks like I'll just be modifying the setting as the weather changes and wiping down the windows if I happen to guess incorrectly. Thankfully the condensation seems to only be on the top windows above the join with the bottoms (at least so far) so it's not dripping down into wood or anything. Given where it is I wonder if a little bit of cold air is coming in somehow and if there's any reasonable way to address that. Dr. Eldarion fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Dec 19, 2022 |
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Dec 19, 2022 20:34
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We keep ours set between 25-35% RH inside depending on the outdoor temps. Our temps took a nosedive from upper 20s/low 30s to single digits below zero on Sunday AM, and I had to spend an hour wiping condensation off of some of the windows. Dropping the humidistat to 25% has it better, just very small spots in some of the glass corners. I wish I'd sprung for one of the fancy autoadjusting humidistats that automatically adjust based on the outdoor temp, but maybe that'll be a project for next fall. Your humidistat probably has suggested settings on the front for different outdoor temps. They seem pretty accurate based on my experience.
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Dec 19, 2022 21:15
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PitViper posted:I wish I'd sprung for one of the fancy autoadjusting humidistats that automatically adjust based on the outdoor temp, but maybe that'll be a project for next fall. If you have the standard Aprilaire 800 humidifier with the included model 60 humidistat it literally came with everything you need. If you can find 2 wires to the outside (perhaps some unused wires going from your furnace to the outdoor compressor) you can get a replacement thermometer wire it up, flip the switch in the stat off of manual and peel the sticker off with the temperatures on it that's around the adjustment knob.
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Dec 19, 2022 21:21
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Unfortunately I've got a Honeywell 360 with the manual humidistat. But knowing the Aprilaire 60 will do manual or auto is helpful, when I get time to replace said manual humidistat.
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Dec 19, 2022 21:26
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Motronic posted:What does this mean? A furnace is part of an HVAC system. Sorry, phone typing and not thinking. New furnace, old ac is what I meant.
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Dec 19, 2022 22:25
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Douche4Sale posted:Sorry, phone typing and not thinking. New furnace, old ac is what I meant. So if you're ductwork is going to remain the same (and it almost certainly will) then it doesn't matter. The steam disperser part goes just past your furnace/AC coil and the humidistat goes right in your return trunk just before the furnace.
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Dec 19, 2022 22:58
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Inspired by Motronic's Joke Post in the investing thread, but sincere question - what home ownership-adjacent professionals would you say should get a holiday/christmas/whatever 'bonus' or tip? My neighbor mentioned that he wanted to track down our landscaper to give him a Christmas Bonus, and said he usually gives the mailman a little something too. In the past he has given a tip to the UPS and Fedex guys around the holidays as a thanks for handling all the packages and parcels, but he quit doing it when Amazon starting doing deliveries with a gig economy system & people chucking packages out of their Nissan Versas and such The only one of those that seems even remotely reasonable is the gardener/landscaper. An extra month or half-month of the usual rate, under the table?
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Dec 19, 2022 23:19
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We have a housekeeper that comes by every two weeks for deep cleaning and whatnot so I add extra to her normal payment around the holidays.
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Dec 19, 2022 23:21
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Beef Of Ages posted:We have a housekeeper that comes by every two weeks for deep cleaning and whatnot so I add extra to her normal payment around the holidays. Hey I have been considering a cleaner for monthly ish or biweekly service for a while. Did you create a list of what is expected to be cleaned, did your cleaner provide something like that, or is it all working out without any real scope of work? I may still not do it since I just have a condo, and it’s super bougie, but if the scope is truly annoying stuff I don’t typically clean in a given month it might be worth it. To me it’s trivial to run the Roomba, clean toilets / counters, and gently wet swiffer my engineered wood floor, so I’ve put it off.
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Dec 19, 2022 23:24
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Inner Light posted:Hey I have been considering a cleaner for monthly ish or biweekly service for a while. Did you create a list of what is expected to be cleaned, did your cleaner provide something like that, or is it all working out without any real scope of work? Housekeepers are the single best exchange of money for happiness we do. It gives us back a lot of time, and it's things we don't like doing or are super lazy about. There are generally a couple of "levels" of it and how periodic you want. Once a month, every other week, and weekly for time interval, and then what they do. Ours is I think the most common at every other week. They do bathrooms (toilet, shower), kitchen (clean the counters, clean the stove top), linens (bed sheets, pillow cases, towels into the washer, replaced with stuff from the linen closet), vacuum, mop, and then something "extra." They will dust some stuff, maybe wash some windows, general tidying depending on how much time they have and how many people are with her. Some people do weekly and have them do all laundry, dishes, cleaning, organizing, dusting, etc. This isn't to say we don't like, spot clean between visits, or don't wipe down the counters nightly, etc, but we basically never have to run the vacuum, mop, scrub a toilet, etc. Never realize it's been an embarrassingly long time since we've changed the bed sheets (especially on our kids beds), the bathroom towels only have to be dealt with half as much, that sort of thing. It takes a few hours and it's done while we're gone. We just come home to a clean house and fresh linens. It's lovely. Could we do it ourselves? Sure but we don't like to and can afford it.
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Dec 20, 2022 01:01
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I agree completely on it being the best money:happiness exchange you can do, BUT! I had to stop using mine once I had a dog and a cat The housekeepers would accidentally let the animals out of the house, or into forbidden zones like the garage. My only request was "please push all doors shut all the way shut so that they latch" and that never seemed to happen. Doors would be ever-so-slightly pressed into the frames and the dog or cat would come along, open 'er up, and get into trouble. The company ("Maid Brigade") said there was nothing they could do about it unless I kept my pets in a crate on housekeeping day. For me, that wasn't an option. Not necessarily a problem for everyone though, and nowadays I guess I could make that work since I WFH
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Dec 20, 2022 01:13
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Yeah, it is also likely the best investment in your relationships too since the stuff neither person tolerates doing will invariably cause a fight over who has to do it or who does it most/least.
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Dec 20, 2022 01:30
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:The company ("Maid Brigade") said there was nothing they could do about it unless I kept my pets in a crate on housekeeping day. For me, that wasn't an option. I am surprised that any company tolerated animals being loose while they had workers in the home, especially if you weren't there. Maybe a cat, but certainly not a strange dog. We also don't use a big company, but a sole practitioner (who has now hired a couple of friends and made herself into a real business.) We found ours through our realtor, whom we are also casual acquaintances with outside of work. Previously we used someone recommended to us from coworkers. Always a personal connection. I never even considered using molly maid/maid brigade/etc. El Mero Mero posted:Yeah, it is also likely the best investment in your relationships too since the stuff neither person tolerates doing will invariably cause a fight over who has to do it or who does it most/least. My now-wife-then-girlfriend told me when we moved in together that a contingency of it was getting a housekeeper for precisely this reason. Neither of us are particularly good about half the chores, so it would just lead to us grousing at each other about it. This means she never has to get mad that I haven't scrubbed the toilet, and I didn't continue to live like a bachelor goon because lets be honest here. She just brought up yesterday how she wants to have the housekeeper over to scrub the cabinets in the kitchen because they're all getting dirty. Especially the one above the stove which is rarely opened or even looked at, and is beyond disgusting. I'm all for it.
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Dec 20, 2022 01:37
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