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I'm moving in a few months into a place where the walls are about 90% brick on the inside, and I'm gonna need to hang stuff of varying sizes and weights. I'm renting and will eventually have to leave the place in good shape - so how do I go about securing my various racks, picture frames, and bookshelves to a brick wall without leaving giant holes all over the place when I'm gone?
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Feb 14, 2008 22:39
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| # ¿ May 6, 2024 21:01 |
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I've got an oil furnace with a 250 gallon tank outside. I got a fill-up of 200 gallons on January 4, and just a few minutes ago my furnace hiccupped and shut itself off prematurely. I was able to get it going again, but I'm just wondering if there's any way possible that I'm scraping the bottom of the tank, meaning I somehow used 200 loving gallons of $3.20 oil in the past six weeks. I'm in a one floor apartment, about 800 square feet, and I keep the thermostat around 70 when I'm home, 65 when I'm not. And there was a one week stretch where I didn't use heat at all because it was really warm. I'm trying like hell to find some kind of heating oil estimate calculator, but I can't find anything; could anyone take a guess on how much oil I'm using? Edit: To answer the obvious question, I can't really tell how much oil is in the tank. It's an old rusted piece of poo poo and there's no meter or anything, just a hole in the top and a rock tied to a rope used as a dipstick. Not very trustworthy.
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Feb 21, 2008 02:07
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I just looked at a house today that has an ancient electric stove but a propane fireplace (with tank out back). Would it be possible to replace the stove with a gas one and just run it to the propane tank?
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Jan 21, 2009 06:47
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:if you post a picture of the plug, we can tell you if you can convert it yourself even more easily.
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Jan 21, 2009 16:50
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What makes a good oven? I'm shopping for one, and all I know to look for is electric flat-top, no coils (or at least that's what I've heard?). They go in price from in the $400s up to whatever you want to pay, and aside from the appearance (Stainless? That'll be +$150, please) they're mostly the same. What's the difference between this and this, for instance?
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Feb 4, 2009 22:37
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Ended up buying a ceramic top stove, because everyone I talked to said avoid coils like the plague. Would have loved to get gas, but the neighborhood doesn't have it. Next question: is there a general rule for how many smoke detectors a house should have? 1,740sqft, three bedrooms.
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Feb 6, 2009 17:49
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^ Will do, thanks. We've already been through inspection and the guy didn't point out how many there had to be, just that the ones that are there now need to be replaced...and I don't think there's currently one in each bedroom. We'll be sure and do that. Yeah, that makes sense; downstairs is open, but upstairs it won't hurt to have a bunch more. Except for all those damned batteries! 
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Feb 6, 2009 19:08
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What's the rule on primer for interior walls? I've got a lot of painting to do in the new house but most of it's over top of muted, light colors.
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Mar 4, 2009 15:36
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What do I need to re-caulk my tub? I've got a leak around the faucets and handles and I'm going to do everything just to be safe. I know I've got to get it all out and clean the area, but what tools should I be using? Anything in general I should know before caulking, besides letting it dry for a day before getting it wet?
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Apr 9, 2009 21:39
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Thanks for the caulking tips, I'll most likely be putting them to use tomorrow. Next question: I bought a new shower head to install, but the old one won't come off. I've got the pipe coming out of the wall, and at the end of that is a metal piece with a ball at the end - the old shower head swiveled around the ball, see? The metal ball piece at the end of the pipe won't loving come off. I've tried gripping it with two channel-locks, one to loosen the ball and one to try to hold the pipe in place (I feel like if I yank too hard on the pipe I'll pull it right out of the wall or something; I'm putting a lot of pressure on it and it's not even budging), but that doesn't work. The previous owners have shown themselves to be near fuckwits when it comes to plumbing - is it possible they had trouble getting a tight seal on their new (in 1992) showerhead and so they somehow puttied or glued it in place? How do I get this thing off?
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Apr 11, 2009 06:02
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Fire Storm posted:Fire. OR, more specifically, a blowtorch. IF they epoxied, glued or soldered the old one on, a plumbing torch could loosen the shower head but will likely make the old one drat useless and non-recoverable. NWS   Click here for the full 800x533 image.  Click here for the full 800x533 image.
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Apr 11, 2009 16:18
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kid sinister posted:You know if it's giving you that much trouble, you could try unscrewing the shower head arm from the wall and replacing it. You can get a shower head arm for $10.
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Apr 11, 2009 17:50
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Fire Storm posted:This, and if it doesn't work, use a blowtorch on the head of the Maybe while he's there he can also fix our clogged kitchen sink. And whatever else goes wrong in the meantime. [Cue the 'welcome to the joys of home ownership!' jokes]
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Apr 13, 2009 17:22
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kid sinister posted:edit: As for your other home problems, patching drywall is easy enough to do yourself, depending on the size of the hole. It just takes time, waiting for one coat to dry before you put up the next, etc.  As for the drywall, it's a 2x4 foot hole in the living room ceiling, where the plumber busted into it to see where the leak was coming from. As for the sink, it's a 2 tub sink, the disposal is on the right side. Sometimes it doesn't clog, most of the time it does (and I can't tell if I'm doing anything different during the times it doesn't clog). When it clogs, the two sinks seem to equalize, so the water level is the same in each. If I turn on the disposal, the water immediately goes down in the right while the left sink level goes up (when I turn it off they equalize again). The left sink trap is easy to get to, but I opened it up and it's clear. The right side trap (disposal side) is easy to see, but there's not much room to work and I haven't messed with it yet. I doubt it's that one, though, because both sinks feed into one big drainage pipe, and if the right side was blocked I figure the left sink would always flow fine. Seems like something's causing a block further down the line. I'm thinking about trying a plunger, if I can find a good way to seal up the other sink when I'm using it; I've tried it once, but obviously it just blows air in the one sink and out the other.
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Apr 13, 2009 21:41
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Got a leak in my new showerhead. An oh-so-loving-small leak, but it's there. I've got teflon tape wrapped around the threads three or four times, and it's wrench-tightened as far as I can go without putting all my weight on it. And still, drip...drip...drip. Every three seconds or so.
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Apr 23, 2009 20:59
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ease posted:Too much teflon tape can cause leaks sometimes. Try using half what you used the first time. I've tried re-wrapping it about four times, each time using a little less or more than the time before. I haven't gone as far as wrapping it 8 times yet, I'll give it a try.
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Apr 24, 2009 19:10
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 Here's my shower faucets. I'm about to caulk them because there's no seal to keep water from going behind them, but the one in the middle (controls the flow between the showerhead and tub faucet) leaks. I thought if I peeled off the front cap I'd be able to get where I need to tighten it up or something, but all I've got is this green thing blocking my way. How should I go about this? Is that something I can take a hooked coat hanger and remove, or should it stay there or what?
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Apr 25, 2009 23:07
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I've got this doorway in my kitchen, it's currently your standard quadrilateral with 90 degree angles, i.e. a "rectangle." We're in the process of painting the room, and it occurred to me that with just a little bit of effort I could take this ordinary doorway and give it some personality. What I want to do is give the roof of the doorway a bit of an arch. Not an all-the-way arch, just a little curve at the corners. And I figure the easiest way to do this would be to nail/glue/somehow attach a wedge in each corner, then just spackle 'em up and sand them to match the rest of the wall. See the before/after pics below. The question to you is, is this how it's normally done? Can I buy pre-made wedges at a hardware store? I can easily have some made, dad's good at woodworking. How would you go about doing this?
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May 26, 2009 06:32
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Excellent, thanks!
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May 26, 2009 20:46
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I know this is probably unanswerable, but my shower is a piece of poo poo and I'm looking at getting it replaced (the shower walls are tiled, and they leak, and the tub is an old and ugly piece of poo poo). So it'll basically involve a new tub, tearing out the tile and putting up one of those plastic three-walled thingers, and installation. Anyone want to hazard a guess what this might run me? If location matters it's Richmond, VA.
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Apr 19, 2010 22:23
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Doorknobs I've got a house built in 1949, most of the doors look like they came with the house. I'm looking around on ebay and etsy, and there are a lot of cool old doorknobs for sale; I think it would look neat to have a different, vintage doorknob on a lot of doors in the house. Some come with spindles, some don't, and I'm wondering what I should know before getting into this. Are doorknobs the sort of thing that's been standardized for decades? Because it seems to me that I could buy ten knobs and find out they're threaded ten different ways and won't be compatible with each other. I'm going to find a door in the house that I don't care about and take it apart to see how doorknobs "work"; is there anything I should know? I'm usually wary of anything with springs involved; in my experience they're an absolute bitch to put back together once they're taken apart. I'm hoping in this case that it'll be as easy as unscrewing one knob, then removing the other knob/spindle combo and replacing them the same way. But I could easily be getting over my head here. Much thanks for any advice you can give me.  Seriously, how loving cool is this? You'd feel like a king, taking a dump in a room opened by turning this thing (I don't want anyone making GBS threads in my pantry, so I'll be sure to actually put it on a bathroom door).
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Aug 23, 2010 15:05
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The good news is I took two doorknobs apart (just the knobs and spindle), one fairly old and one fairly new, and the threads were a match, so I'm assuming/hoping anything I buy will also fit. The bad news is I can't do anything with any of the locking doors in the house (bathrooms, bedrooms) unless I want to also install old-style deadbolt locks everywhere, since they're all using the push-button modern style and I don't feel like getting that serious about this. I can't believe I never noticed that until now; I guess I don't lock the doors much. Ha: Also, I just noticed one of my bathrooms has a push-button lock (I don't know the name for it, but it's this) on the inside but a keyed knob on the outside. Which we don't have the key for. Which means if someone ever accidentally bumps that lock button and shuts the door, I'm gonna be pulling the door off its hinges to get the drat thing open. Nice, I think I just found House Project #143.
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Aug 24, 2010 15:51
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Corla Plankun posted:Most bathroom locks can be opened with a safety pin, paper clip or credit card, so maybe give those a try before unhinging!  I totally forgot the door opens outward, so yeah, the credit card/butter knife will work.
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Aug 24, 2010 17:19
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I've got an oil-burning furnace with a 250 gallon tank located outside against the house. The thing about oil is, you've got to pay attention to how much is in the tank and not let it get too low, because the bottom ten inches or so is unusable due to the sludge that tends to accumulate on the bottom. If you let the furnace start sucking in that sludge it gums up the works and wham: no heat, call the repairman. So in the past two years I've let that happen three loving times, because I'm too stupid to make sure the tank is filled high enough. One thing we're doing to prevent this is to set aside money every month during the spring/summer so we can painlessly throw down ~$800 to have the tank completely filled come next winter. Normally we buy oil 100 gallons at a time and get refilled every three weeks (that's right: $400 a month heating bills in a 1,600sqft house, in not-exactly-the-Arctic Richmond, VA); I know we spend the same amount per winter whether we buy it in bulk or go month-to-month, but mentally it hurts less so I guess that's why we always did it. Beyond the obvious solution to my problem (don't let the oil tank go too low), my question is, is it possible to have my oil tank "serviced" in a way that would make this sludge issue less of a problem? Should we have been doing that all along? Or is this sludge bullshit just part of being the owner of an oil-burning furnace?
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Mar 2, 2011 18:31
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If it came to the point of replacing it and moving it inside (impossible anyway, there's just not enough space) we'd get an electric heat pump and be done with all this drat trouble. I hear some people say oil heat is more efficient, but at this point I'd definitely pay more money to not have to worry about this poo poo anymore.
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Mar 2, 2011 22:30
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Is it a wet-dog smell, or more like a sewage-y smell, like bad farts? If it's the latter you should try googling "stink pipe."Cakefool posted:What's the tank made from? It might be possible to have a thru-tank level sensor, wire 2 sensors up, 1 to a siren inside the house to let you know to fill up soon, the second to cut the boiler off as a least measure of defence. Crisis averted, anyway: got oil delivered today, and when we hit the switch to fire the boiler it actually worked.
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Mar 3, 2011 18:52
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stubblyhead posted:Is natural gas available in your area?
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Mar 3, 2011 20:14
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sixide posted:This is far from a "fix it fast" suggestion but you may want to look into getting some insulation. That's far too much money for even a 100-year-old house on the Canadian plains, let alone a house in Virginia.
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Mar 4, 2011 15:49
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Now that things are starting to grow in I'm just now noticing that my front lawn is complete poo poo, it's about 90% clover and 10% grass. I don't think this is a great time of year to be planting grass, but if I were to try are there any methods or kinds of grass that would be best? Alternatively, is there a lawn and garden thread?
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Mar 14, 2011 19:49
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kid sinister posted:That depends on your climate and how much sun vs. shade your lawn gets, among other things. LTBS posted:poo poo. I don't know if the paint has ever been removed from there, so I'm not sure if there is lead or not. I'll probably try scraping (and collecting the bits) instead of sanding. I don't know how accurate they are, but lead paint test kits start at about $13, I'd think about buying one, just to be sure.
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Mar 15, 2011 14:50
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What do I need to know before buying and installing a new deadbolt and doorknob? I've currently got a separate deadbolt and doorknob (they're two separate pieces, and I think too far apart to replace with a one-piece set), do I have to worry about whether their sizes will match up with whatever I buy, or has this sort of thing been standard for a while? I'm thinking it'd be a pain in the rear end to buy a deadbolt and find out the hole I've already got is too big. Any installation issues I should know about, or is this pretty simple? I've currently got something like this (although not as tall), can I easily switch it to a regular doorknob? Also, I'd like to go electronic on the deadbolt - any general warnings about them (besides the whole "battery dies = locked out" thing) I should know about? Something like this: Schlage Single-Cylinder Deadbolt jackpot fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Mar 17, 2011 |
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Mar 17, 2011 14:34
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dwoloz posted:I wouldn't worry much about the hole size unless the door uses a mortise lock The only problem I've run into - something that's been a problem since we moved in - is that the door isn't perfectly aligned to the lock. So to lock/unlock the door you've got to pull it closed tightly then lock it. The motor in the electronic lock obviously can't do this, so if you let it try to lock itself it'll try for several seconds then just give up. Still, not a big deal.
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Mar 20, 2011 16:53
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Daggerpants posted:Turned out much better:
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Mar 29, 2011 17:28
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kid sinister posted:Nah, its just drywall mud slathered into a right angle corner.
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Mar 29, 2011 19:06
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Is there any kind of paintbrush that's built to get in between the slats of wood on a porch? Fairly deep, like 3" or so, with about a .5" gap. Or am I better off finding a sprayer?
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Jul 13, 2011 14:05
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coronaball posted:So I'm replacing the burners on my 4 year old Perfect Flame gas grill because the original burners crack and are under recall and can lead to this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp4ucQCjNvU Hey guys, lets build a grill out of magnesium. Amazing.
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Jul 21, 2011 20:18
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Two story house, 1,740sqft. Richmond, Virginia in the middle of summer is hot as hell, it's been upper 90's for most of the past month. Two outside AC units cooling it, info plate posted below. Put simply, they're doing a lovely job. There's a separate thermostat for each floor - both are set to 70, but the last time we saw 70 degrees in the house was when it was cloudy/rainy for about four days straight. Downstairs has floor vents, upstairs has ceiling vents. Upstairs is generally pretty comfortable, especially at night; I think it hits around 72. Downstairs loving sucks. Last night it was 80 when I went to bed. I can feel cold air coming out of the upstairs vents, but I can only feel a trickle of cool air coming out downstairs; mostly I only know the downstairs is working because the vents themselves are cool to the touch. The units seem to run all the time; our electric bill for last month was $400. The picture below is meaningless to me but hopefully not you guys; my question is, are we just screwed? Are our two small-ish units just physically incapable of cooling a house when daytime temps are consistently in the 90's for weeks at a time? 
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Aug 8, 2011 16:46
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You guys have asked me a bunch of great questions to which I have almost no answers. When I get home I'll take a look at it all and see what I can find out, thanks. All I know is, if any of this involves me going under the house then loving forget it. I poked my head down there yesterday and besides the requisite spiders we've got spider crickets the size of kittens...and I swear, they loving watch you. jackpot fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Aug 9, 2011 |
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Aug 9, 2011 22:02
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Cosmik Debris posted:camel crickets or spider crickets or whatever theyre called are completely harmless
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Aug 10, 2011 13:36
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| # ¿ May 6, 2024 21:01 |
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Cosmik Debris posted:Oh my bad. Ive seen people shriek in terror at the sight of them. My wife didn't trust my homeowning skills and called in the home warranty folks. Turns out the AC coils had about five years of grime on them, and after taking care of that we dropped 30 pounds of pressure downstairs, 40 pounds upstairs. According to the repairman that should help things a bit.
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Aug 10, 2011 19:01
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