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Making your own screens isn't that hard.
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May 8, 2016 16:10
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QuarkJets posted:You could hypothetically use an IR camera but that's really only going to work for interior walls, where it doesn't really matter That's backwards, it will only really work for exterior walls (or walls with a substantial temperature difference across them, if you want to be pedantic - which I do). You can do it with an IR thermometer too, though it will be more work.
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May 8, 2016 17:32
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Bozart posted:Cover it with black plastic sheets for a couple weeks, everything dies. It's a running species of bamboo, I'd have to cover my entire yard. Plus I have no doubt that it can shoot through it. Bamboo is the worst.
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May 8, 2016 17:54
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QuarkJets posted:For the ceiling, do you have an attic or any sort of space above the rooms you care about that you can reach? That's probably the safest bet.
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May 8, 2016 19:16
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Zhentar posted:That's backwards, it will only really work for exterior walls (or walls with a substantial temperature difference across them, if you want to be pedantic - which I do). You can do it with an IR thermometer too, though it will be more work. No... no, it's not backwards, for the reason that you've pointed out. I actually use IR cameras (gently caress FLIR forever, seriously their software is bad), and you can spot poorly-installed insulation on an exterior wall without too much effort, but a wall with well-installed insulation doesn't look too different from a wall with no insulation at all. For interior walls, drywall is a poo poo insulator on its own so you just need to stick a heat source on the other side and see how much of it "shines" through. The heat source trick doesn't work with the exterior walls out here because the houses all have thick wood siding, which fucks with the measurement enough that it's hard to tell whether or not the wall is insulated, thereby ruining the heat source trick. So you're left with trying to uniformly heat or cool the house (on a cool or hot day) in order to detect insulation in the exterior walls, which is fine if your wall has insulation gaps but not fine if your wall looks relatively uniform (it could be uniformly insulated, or it could be completely uninsulated) QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 20:33 on May 8, 2016 |
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May 8, 2016 20:22
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Okay, yeah, in mild weather it will be harder to induce a sufficient gradient. Yard Chat: I wish I knew what magic the PO did to keep poo poo in order. Was he really cleaning out that gutter after every single rain? And my yard is being accosted by a horde of chipmunks and moles, how were they kept at bay!? And the woodpeckers... they've put at least a dozen holes in my siding in over the past two years but there's no evidence of any holes or repairs from the 20 years before that, what am I doing wrong!?
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May 8, 2016 23:46
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I once saw a listing where the homeowner was a serious busybody and had meticulously documented all of the maintenance tasks in a huge illustrated binder. He offered it up for the listing because he thought that it might make his house sell better (but I'm not sure if it worked)
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May 8, 2016 23:50
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QuarkJets posted:I once saw a listing where the homeowner was a serious busybody and had meticulously documented all of the maintenance tasks in a huge illustrated binder. He offered it up for the listing because he thought that it might make his house sell better (but I'm not sure if it worked) I would personally appreciate this. I've thought about writing a short document about where the weird pipes/drainage stuff was installed, the rarer plants used for landscaping due to specific situations, etc. Stuff specific to the house I would want to know. You always hear about how houses were poorly maintained and that's why they're poo poo or falling apart. I'm not remotely familiar with that kind of poo poo so I'd just find it helpful.
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May 9, 2016 00:10
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All I got was a note that said that the pipes tend to freeze when the temperature drops below 20F and to leave them dripping to try to fend that off. She was right.
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May 9, 2016 00:12
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The PO did leave me this pole with a bristle thing on the end, which I'm guessing was for clearing that gutter that constantly clogs... but I haven't figured out a way to actually use it to do that.
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May 9, 2016 00:52
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Zhentar posted:Okay, yeah, in mild weather it will be harder to induce a sufficient gradient. Take this with salt. In my experience, until a home is going to get listed for sale, people hardly maintain anything, unless they really love it. I've seen shitholes turned into a wonderful facade, and sold. Rarely do you find a home that was; well built, well maintained and information passed onto the next owner to do as such. Because sometimes the next owner is simply looking for a place to flip or their own self interest and couldn't give a gently caress less, which leads me back to point a. Your house is going to be maintained on what your level of "care" is.
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May 9, 2016 00:59
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Zhentar posted:And the woodpeckers... they've put at least a dozen holes in my siding in over the past two years but there's no evidence of any holes or repairs from the 20 years before that, what am I doing wrong!? You may have some insects behind your walls. It might be a good idea to hire an exterminator. I'd be looking out for carpenter bees in particular.
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May 9, 2016 01:31
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Our PO left us half-full paint buckets (with legible color codes), we were thankful for that. Plus the original manuals for all of the appliances Didn't leave us the alarm code though, the fuckers, so we had do disable the whole system while I figured out how to convert it into a DIY alarm system (which was surprisingly not too hard)
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May 9, 2016 02:13
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I used to bitch about home ownership a lot in this forum but it turns out owning a home is actually pretty cool. When it's a condo and you don't have to cut your own grass or clean the gutters.
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May 9, 2016 02:16
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Sephiroth_IRA posted:I used to bitch about home ownership a lot in this forum but it turns out owning a home is actually pretty cool. Eh, your $25k roof assessment is coming soon enough.
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May 9, 2016 02:26
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But then he won't have to worry about how to spend that $25k, which just reduces stress even further. Home ownership is truly a magical thing
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May 9, 2016 02:27
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Making screens is surprisingly cheap and easy! For people asking about cleaning gutters, get you some gutter guards! Just finished putting these in today, and they are worth every penny. Much better quality than the other expanded metal guards I tried previously, and they just slip right into place. A+, would absolutely buy again. Probably the best thing short of a custom system. Re: Home checklists, I'd just make sure you have freeze proof water spigots. Also clean gutters so ice dams don't build up before winter. Google calender for furnace filter replacements. Try not to put too much crap down your drains, especially rice and potatoes down the kitchen garbage disposal. A hair strainer is great for the shower too, prevents crap from building up in the first place and causing you bigger problems down the road. Clean your dryer lint trap every time and exhaust line every so often! Keep painted surfaces painted, and watch out for roof damage, eg wavy, missing or lifted shingles. Great idea to know where your main water shutoff is, and tag that. Try and drain your water heater once a year. Yardwork is basically constant, so there's that. Anything more falls under home maintenance/improvement. Honestly it's not too hard, just try and have some familiarity with stuff around the house. Black and Decker's guide books, such as guide to home wiring or Popular Mechanics Complete Home How To are both excellent guides with lots of pictures and simple instructions. Doing stuff yourself really helps you understand how things work, and gives you a great feeling of competency, really honestly a perk to owning a home.
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May 9, 2016 03:01
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Anybody here planted a tree and had success with it/any advice they could pass on? I'd like to plant a small ornamental tree out front once I rip out the retaining wall, and a few Paw Paw or other fruit trees in the back. I'm just a bit nervous since it's a fairly big investment (relatively) and I've known my fair share of planted trees to not make it.
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May 9, 2016 03:24
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Thanks for the screen tips, I'll look into DIY. As to checking the insulation: there's no attic on this part, and all the lighting is track lighting. I know that there's a lot of inefficiency - most of the house is on top of a basement, while this is on top of a slab. It gets really cold at night, and really hot during the day, and it doesn't have any vents from the furnace - just a unit in it that does ac + heat depending on what you want. Every building in the subdivision has this type of room, but no one seems to really know what's up with them. It could be no insulation, or it could be the incredibly old (likely original to 1948) windows - they're double paned but the caulk? on the interior of every one is broken apart. The windows are weird - they're side by side, and to open them one slides back at an angle then alongside the other, on a track, and then the other one can glide over as well but there's not much point to that.
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May 9, 2016 03:30
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Do I need to worry about cleaning out my gutters if there aren't any trees over them, and I have a taller house than the ones on either side? What's going to get stuck up there?
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May 9, 2016 03:59
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minivanmegafun posted:Do I need to worry about cleaning out my gutters if there aren't any trees over them, and I have a taller house than the ones on either side? What's going to get stuck up there? Leaves. Still clean them out at least once a year and you'll be a lot safer.
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May 9, 2016 04:18
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Bozart posted:Leaves. Still clean them out at least once a year and you'll be a lot safer. This. poo poo, sometimes a sludge, of unknown origins, builds up in there. Get gutter guards and spend the few hours installing them yourself. It's fifteen minutes per year inspecting them/cleaning them and so on, versus getting elbow deep in poo poo.
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May 9, 2016 04:31
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Any suggestions on how to do that on a two-floor house, or is it just “don’t be scared of heights, and have a tall ladder”?
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May 9, 2016 04:33
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OSU_Matthew posted:Anybody here planted a tree and had success with it/any advice they could pass on? If you can't figure it out just go for a drive around and look for trees that you like and are doing well in your area, take a photo in to your local plant store like "I want that".
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May 9, 2016 04:47
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mastershakeman posted:Thanks for the screen tips, I'll look into DIY. As to checking the insulation: there's no attic on this part, and all the lighting is track lighting. With big daily temperature swings and a standalone AC/heater unit, there's a very good chance that the room isn't insulated at all.
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May 9, 2016 05:33
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Bozart posted:You may have some insects behind your walls. It might be a good idea to hire an exterminator. I'd be looking out for carpenter bees in particular. It's probably the box elder bugs that swarm the area every fall. But did the PO get the house sprayed every single year? Or did he just cast a magical ward against woodpeckers? QuarkJets posted:Our PO left us half-full paint buckets (with legible color codes), we were thankful for that. Plus the original manuals for all of the appliances I got all that, plus a sticky note explaining why the mystery light switch didn't do anything and the phone number of the guy who plowed their driveway  (good thing too, because they didn't tell him they moved)
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May 9, 2016 05:43
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Zhentar posted:It's probably the box elder bugs that swarm the area every fall. But did the PO get the house sprayed every single year? Or did he just cast a magical ward against woodpeckers? You might be able to cast the spell yourself if you are a wizard or warlock but I am not an expert - consult your high priestess. It might be more effective to get up on a ladder and inspect where they are pecking to see if there is some hole the bugs are using to get in, and then seal it up. The PO here got a fake owl to keep woodpeckers away but it probably doesn't work. And yeah you might want to spray once or twice so the birds don't see any food for awhile.
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May 9, 2016 14:31
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mastershakeman posted:Thanks for the screen tips, I'll look into DIY. I made my own screens, Home depot has a section with everything you need. Frame material, corners, rolls of screen material in various flavors, spring clips, spline and spline tools (which you should go ahead and get because spline tools are cheap and make applying the spline a lot easier). Measure the size frame you need, cut the pieces (minus 1.5 inches to allow for the width of the corners!), attach to eachother with corners, roll screen over frame, push spline into frame, cut off excess screen. It's pretty simple, but a little time consuming and kind of a pain in the rear end.
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May 9, 2016 16:26
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The wife has a mini meltdown back in early April about some of the projects that hadn't been completed, so we sat down and made a list and estimated costs and time commitments. Among the things we have completed in the past 6 weeks are:
It's been exhausting and somewhat expensive, but doing the work ourselves and buying tools that we'll get more use out will make future projects cheaper. I'm always way more successful with projects when I make a list and a plan beforehand. YouTube and Google are awesome resources for DIY projects and inspiration. Every home is a fixer-upper!
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May 9, 2016 17:28
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Hey all, I have a question about home insurance... We are buying a pretty small house (~2000 sq ft) in Denver, Co for almost $600,000. Yes, I know it's ridiculous. It is what it is. I've talked to a few insurance companies and it looks like the max we can insure the structure for is around $320,000 or so, which is what they estimate the cost to rebuild is. I'm pretty worried we might be underinsured. I understand we are paying a premium for the location and the land, which can't be insured. We won't have a mortgage, so I don't need to worry about that aspect, and we'd be well covered for the cost of our belongings. I've done some reading and found some references to insuring for "market value", but talking with the insurance agents, they don't seem to think that's an option. Should I just push back on the cost to rebuild and argue that it should be a bit higher? Or is that an accurate estimate? So, though it is nice to pay less for insurance, we don't want to lose everything when our ridiculously expensive tiny house burns down 
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May 9, 2016 17:30
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newts posted:small house (~2000 sq ft) I have literally never lived in a house this big in 40 years.
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May 9, 2016 17:33
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It is small when you have 3 kids
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May 9, 2016 17:35
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newts posted:It is small when you have 3 kids While I don't have kids, yes, yes it would be. That's basically the square footage for a three bedroom two and a half bath, single family home.
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May 9, 2016 18:13
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newts posted:It is small when you have 3 kids No it's not, your kids just need to go outside or you need to not allow them to amass so much junk. Also, $600,000 w/ no mortgage? I hate you.
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May 9, 2016 18:18
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1000 would be small with 3 kids(doable with a bunkbed but still quite small especially for Americans), 2000 should be fine if they ever go outside and you don't think they all need their own massive room for some reason. While I only had one sibling, at one point my parents had a 3000 square foot house and my grandmother lived with us as well. We literally had 3+ giant rooms that never were used, and I had a room that basically I used myself to just play videogames, besides my bedroom. It was stupid as hell, houses don't need to be that big for families of 4-5. I wonder how much money my parents were pissing away on heating and cooling that ridiculous house, they were more sensible with the two after that. Nail Rat fucked around with this message at 18:28 on May 9, 2016 |
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May 9, 2016 18:25
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LogisticEarth posted:No it's not, your kids just need to go outside or you need to not allow them to amass so much junk. Also, $600,000 w/ no mortgage? I hate you. One of my childhood friends parents had a 9,000SF house for a family of four. It had two wings. It was fantastical but massively huge, especially for their small family. Her dad made bank selling a startup to Enron and cashing out right before Enron went tits up - he thought diversifying his assets was wise and did so as soon as he could! Talk about yardwork, too...
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May 9, 2016 18:27
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SiGmA_X posted:Sounds pretty small to me, and I only have one sibling and we had a dog growing up and were very active outside of the house. America loves big homes! Maybe it's an east coast or older home/poorer family thing, but a 2,000 sqft house could easily be 4-bed, 2-bath, etc. Which is fine and definitely not "small" for a family of five. Both my parents grew up in homes that were between 1200-1700 sqft, with their parents, two siblings, and intermittently uncle's and/or grandparents. With my wife and I, we're really trying to avoid going over 2,000 sqft. OK obviously this is all a personal taste thing, but having lived in larger homes before, we just don't need all that space and heating cost.
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May 9, 2016 18:50
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Can we not argue what we consider 'big' or 'small' or 'massive'? People have preferences for what they feel comfortable in and use their spaces in different ways.OSU_Matthew posted:Making screens is surprisingly cheap and easy! Good post. Thank you. 
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May 9, 2016 18:51
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Rurutia posted:Can we not argue what we consider 'big' or 'small' or 'massive'? People have preferences for what they feel comfortable in and use their spaces in different ways. This.... This is what a BFC argument looks like? I've met CPAs that get more fired up. 
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May 9, 2016 18:52
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2000 sqft is too small for even a family of two, you can't fit an indoor pool or servants quarters in such a small space! I suppose you expect me to share a bedroom with my spouse?? It's absurd!
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May 9, 2016 19:06
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