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Recommendations for programmable thermostats? The tenants in the house I just bought took the one that was here when I saw the place, and it looked pretty nice.
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Aug 29, 2020 18:45
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Alarbus posted:The wifi Honeywell ones aren't bad, you can even lock the screen but still control it from your phone easily enough. We have two at the beach house and I put my house on the same login for convenience, but I also trust my dad not to gently caress with me. Motronic posted:What are you looking for? The regular rear end $45 Honewell at LowesDepot does just fine for basic scheduling. If you want/need something fancier you may be into IoT junk. I don’t really want much IoT junk but it would be nice to be able to program from my phone because my fiancée is cold-blooded and also forgetful. The Honeywell T5 looked pretty nice and reasonably priced (especially at 11% off from Menards in the form of a rebate) but i was worried it was as you say IoT junk. Thanks for the advice. I’m sure I’ll be around here more. Moving in this week and it’s my first home ownership experience.
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Aug 29, 2020 21:44
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After rebates my power company is selling a Honeywell T9 thermostat with one room sensor for $120 so I grabbed one of those. They also offer some of the Phillips Hue lights at a discount, which was another relatively minor IoT thing I have been considering for a few lights in the house. I have absolutely no interest in networking a bunch of systems together, though.
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Aug 30, 2020 17:15
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I read somewhere recently that gas mowers are responsible for some obscene amount of yearly greenhouse gas emissions in the US. The house I bought had a gas mower in the garage that runs fine and I’ll use for the foreseeable future, but if I was buying new I’d probably get the best electric I could afford for that reason.
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Oct 19, 2020 17:26
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We bought a couch from ikea in April last year and tossed it to the curb when we moved in September of this year. We have pets that are hard on our furniture but even I was surprised at how dingy and saggy the whole thing looked after just one year. We replaced it with something my parents gave us from their house then covered it with a stretch cover and throw blankets so it would match our new house.
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Nov 28, 2020 17:20
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Cyrano4747 posted:Lol when I saw "CO2" I was about to make a snarky comment about how using ye olde neck breaker is about as humane as asphyxiation because I just assumed that the gas was the method and the conversation seemed to be going in the ethical kill direction what with throwing shade on glue traps. Then I clicked through the site. Don’t even give the mouse a chance and have them call a coin flip?
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Jan 13, 2021 16:54
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Speaking of kitchen exhaust, I currently have a very crappy, unvented microwave. I can’t realistically put a microwave anywhere else, but it does need replacing and I’m probably going to have someone out to run an external duct. Any recommendations for over-the-range microwaves with the best exhaust performance?
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Jan 22, 2021 20:39
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Tezer posted:IRC 2015 requires makeup air for all "Exhaust hood systems capable of exhausting in excess of 400 cubic feet per minute" (M1503.4). The makeup air cannot be a window, because the makeup air supply requires one gravity or electrically operated damper (ie - not a window) to ensure automatic operation. I quote 2015 because I think that's where most USA states are. In the 2018 IRC that requirement is dropped if everything in the house is sealed combustion - but as I'm writing that I'm kind of curious how a fireplace is categorized under the 2018 code, so that's something to keep in mind. I'm assuming natural gas stoves aren't considered "sealed combustion," or does that term only apply to HVAC-type air handling systems?
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Jan 23, 2021 03:42
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When I closed on my house last year, I asked for the keys and the sellers didn’t have any. Everything was just on codes. I was assured the batteries were fresh and I had nothing to worry about... and a week later I was locked out of my new house as one exterior keypad was non-functional and the battery died in the other. Among a sea of PO bullshit, this one stung the most because I just knew I was going to get hosed by the keypad at closing. Never going to have a smart lock. Keys for life.
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Apr 13, 2021 20:01
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Costco has a CR-recommended whirlpool French door fridge for $1350 right now. If I had my poo poo together and had a place in the garage for the current kitchen fridge I’d have probably bought one by now.
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Apr 15, 2021 18:47
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H110Hawk posted:In my town I can call the police on this person and have them arrested for a misdemeanor. It's lovely. Ask your city council. Please do not call the police because someone who gets paid too little to do a terrible job annoyed you and wasted some of your time.
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Apr 26, 2021 19:27
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I have a tuft and needle and while it was perfectly comfortable out of the box, I had heard that if you call and say there’s just something you can’t quite put your finger on that’s off about it, they’ll send you a memory foam topper for free. And they did, and it made a nice mattress into one that punches well above its weight. It’s also held up extremely well to 2 people and a dog every night for 2 years, you can hardly tell it’s been slept on. Dog: 
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Apr 28, 2021 00:43
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Inner Light posted:Looks like Tuft & Needle like others has several options for the mattress. Are you talking original, mint, or hybrid? I would assume original... Yeah, original.
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Apr 28, 2021 02:18
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Inner Light posted:Thanks!! From doing the research rounds, this looks to be my lucky ticket. I have it ready in my cart for when I pull the trigger in a month or so. I'll pick up this frame too: https://www.tuftandneedle.com/frame/?size=BF-003-OAK-Q I have a $100 platform that came from Amazon, works great but does admittedly need some gussying up not to look like a batchelor bedroom, which I’ve yet to do with mine. Just need to find a head and footboard at an antique place this summer, though, and it should look a lot better.
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Apr 28, 2021 03:44
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Yeah, you definitely should buy all the least appealing leftovers you can get at the store and let the kids go at it
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May 2, 2021 16:23
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I ordered a whirlpool fridge recently with an interior water dispenser and an ice maker in the that dumps into a bucket in the drawer. I think it’s about the least moving parts you can get in a standard consumer-grade fridge and still have water and ice making. Now I just need to find a plumber who thinks it’s worth their time to come out and install a proper water line and shutoff behind the fridge, instead of the copper tube that comes up from a hole in the vinyl tile.
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May 4, 2021 22:58
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Lawnie posted:I ordered a whirlpool fridge recently with an interior water dispenser and an ice maker in the that dumps into a bucket in the drawer. I think it’s about the least moving parts you can get in a standard consumer-grade fridge and still have water and ice making. Okay, I talked to a local plumber today and he said he could just put a valve on the 1/8th inch (I think) copper tube from the floor for about $100, and putting the shutoff in the wall would be significantly more expensive since it would need new pipe run and drywall cut, which makes sense. This isn’t my forever home so I’m more interested in making sure that the fridge installers will hook up the water line for the fridge to whatever the plumber hooks up, but I also don’t want to have a flood in my kitchen because capping the line and putting a valve on is the dipshit cheapskate way to do it. The other thing I had quoted was installing an exterior faucet through my crawlspace foundation in the backyard. There’s a water line running parallel to the wall I want to put the faucet on, so I don’t imagine it would be too terribly complicated of a job, and the plumber quoted me at least $350 and probably more like $500 for this job. I’m getting another estimate tomorrow so I’ll see how competitive that price is, but I’m interested in opinions on whether I’m getting ripped off for a pretty simple job. Pics of the crawl along the wall I want to put the faucet in. Faucet goes on the same wall as the crawlspace entrance, first pic shows looking left along that wall from the entrance and the 2nd pic shows the same wall looking right from the entrance. The first pic shows the water heater plumbing, and the 2nd pic shows the kitchen sink plumbing. Lawnie fucked around with this message at 18:21 on May 5, 2021 |
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May 5, 2021 18:18
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NomNomNom posted:Is there a reason you're not doing both of those things? Seems pretty easy and would cost less than $100 in parts and tools if you have absolutely nothing. I have no plumbing experience and only 1 bathroom in my house, so if I gently caress something up my 3 months pregnant wife is not going to be very happy she no longer has access to a working shower or toilet. It’s not that I don’t think I could do it, but I also don’t really know WHAT I would be doing, particularly with the outdoor faucet installation. I could probably handle shutting off the water to the fridge, cutting the line near the floor, and installing a new fitting just fine, and I might just do that to give myself some confidence in doing plumbing. Drilling through the masonry, cutting the water supply line to my hot water heater and being unable to reconnect it, loving up the joint in the crawlspace or at the faucet so it leaks into my crawlspace are my main fears with trying the faucet install myself. If I’m just being a baby, and any idiot can cut three inches out of a water supply line, solder in a t-fitting, and run a foot of copper pipe through a foundation in an afternoon, then I might talk to my wife and see if she’ll let me try it. If I only need a few tools and the only thing wasted will be a bit of my time, she might go for it. My dad always hated doing plumbing when I was growing up, maybe I’ve internalized that without realizing it.
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May 5, 2021 19:42
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Sputnik posted:Is there a reason you're thinking of soldering and not Sharkbites? Any idiot can use sharkbites. Total lack of experience, more than anything. If this is what the plumber would do at both the supply split and the faucet, then maybe there isn’t really a very good reason not to do it myself. I assume I can drill a hole through the masonry just fine on my own, but I assume I would need to fill around the pipe in the hole and again, not something I’ve ever done before. Suppose I should do some research on sharkbites.
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May 5, 2021 20:03
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I'm having a hard time finding a Sharkbite valve that will go directly onto the 1/4 inch copper tubing supply line coming out of the floor behind my fridge. I'm beginning to think there's no such thing, and I would first need an adapter for the copper tubing to connect to whatever type of straight stop valve I choose to have there. At that point, I should just get this push-on adapter to put on the 1/4 inch copper tubing, then get a threaded valve with a 1/4 inch threaded output I can have the fridge line hooked up to at installation, right? Next, for the exterior faucet, I think I would want to have a valve inside the crawl to shutoff water to a frost-free sillcock. I drew it up in paint; my drawing could be flipped to go up from the supply line instead, which I think would result in the faucet coming out right at the bottom of the lowest layer of siding on the outside, and I might not need to go through masonry for that.  Should I just use very short runs of PEX in between the functional components, instead of trying to assemble all of them directly to each other? My instinct is to reduce the number of interfaces but maybe that's too conservative, and it would be much easier and just as good to just get some PEX to connect a few Sharkbite components. I live in Indiana, so I wasn't sure if there was any downside to using PEX in a location it might freeze. E: pretty sure I'm a huge dumbass and I just need a tee stop valve put into the supply line, then a line of PEX from there to the sillcock. For some reason I was thinking this type of valve switched between outputs instead of turning the T output on or off. Lawnie fucked around with this message at 02:48 on May 6, 2021 |
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May 6, 2021 02:18
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If you don’t want to get robbed, get a dog. The security system is nice and everything, but even dumb as rocks thieves know to be frightened of a dog.
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May 8, 2021 16:07
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I’ve used a plunger to un-stuck a garbage disposal stopper before (a couple times). The action happens when you pull up rather than push down, though.
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May 12, 2021 22:45
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Inner Light posted:Hey, I need a new small wood kitchen table and didn't think of using Etsy, thanks. Would rather my equivalent cash go to a small / medium sizes business rather than Pier One or whatever. Home Depot sells a husky adjustable-height worktable for half the price of the cheapest electric motor convertible desks online. It’s hand cranked, but made of sturdy butcher block and is easy to put together. I recommend it to everyone who wants an adjustable desk but doesn’t want to spend an absurd amount on a pretty simple piece of machinery. https://www.homedepot.com/p/Husky-62-in-Adjustable-Height-Work-Bench-Table-HOLT62XDB12/301810799
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Jun 11, 2021 01:15
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Cyrano4747 posted:Hit the bottom with a drill a few times and it's the cheapest large plant pot in the store. Just make sure you (or your wife, not that anyone is speaking about any specific experiences here) plans to use them as planters for more than one year, lest you end up with a dozen buckets that don’t hold water. This is a super good solution if you don’t care about looks, though. We’ve done tomatoes and peppers both in 5 gallon buckets - did you know you can pop your peppers into a closet in your house over winter and they’ll come back the next year better than ever?
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Sep 5, 2021 20:58
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Cyrano4747 posted:Ok, so I've read this a few places and how's that work? I've got like . . . six or seven buckets full of pepper plants and they're not going to over winter well here. Last year I just put them inside and called them houseplants over the winter, but I'd like to avoid that this time around. My fiancée trims most/all of the side shoots and then lops the top off about a foot above the soil. It gets a good watering and then we’ll dig it up, pop it into a bucket or pot, and tuck it away in a closet before the first frost. No water. Last year we did our seed starting in the same closet we kept an overwintering pepper and it came out of dormancy and even started fruiting in, like, April of this year, right in the closet. We’ll plant it out again with the rest of the pepper starts in the spring.
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Sep 6, 2021 16:02
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Cyrano4747 posted:Can’t emphasize this enough. A few months ago I had to cut one board with a circular saw and figured I’d be fine. To add another emphasis: look up how to use disposable earplugs. Almost no one does it correctly and they’re not getting the protection they think they are. It’s extremely important to straighten your ear canal and get full penetration with the plug.
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Sep 6, 2021 16:12
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Source4Leko posted:Wet your finger or glove with dawn dish soap. We have to seal poo poo with silicone at my job and one of the old timers showed me that trick, the silicon won't stick to your finger at all and you can get perfect lines. My dad told me to wet my pinky in my mouth to finish regular caulk around windows. Doesn’t taste too bad.
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Sep 14, 2021 17:20
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For whatever it’s worth I have two area rugs from Home Depot with rug pads and I love them for around $100. They are most certainly fake/knock-off patterns but the colors were appropriate and the style matches what my fiancée likes. You don’t have to buy a 5 figure rug, a decent pad for $100 will make whatever you have feel noticeably better.
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Oct 7, 2021 19:23
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I’m just about finished repainting my future kid’s nursery from an awful crimson fire truck red to a clean white. When I washed the walls with TSP before priming, the paint came off onto my rags like crazy. Not sure where you even find paint that cheap.
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Oct 11, 2021 16:59
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Motronic posted:That isn't necessarily a paint quality problem. That's usually a paint prep problem. Interesting. Hopefully that prep problem is something I managed to avoid, then.
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Oct 11, 2021 18:20
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CarForumPoster posted:I am still identifying which requirements could drive the design in a direction that limits practicality. Since you won’t tell us any more I’m allowed to call this project dumb. Anyway here’s a website with material property data for loving everything, searched for concrete. Have fun. http://www.matweb.com/Search/MaterialGroupSearch.aspx?GroupID=296
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Nov 5, 2021 17:30
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SpartanIvy posted:Pray for me thread, it looks like my dumbass neighbor is probably going to try burning a huge pile of leaves in her backyard which is heavily overgrown and has not been raked once the entire season. Her house is close enough to mine that if it does go up in flames it's taking my garage with it. Call the fire department so they can come out and tell her to knock it off. It’s free and she’s probably just a dumbass. My parents lost their garage and everything in it to dipshit neighbors burning leaves last year, it happens faster than you’d think.
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Jan 1, 2022 05:50
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I have a few cordless cellular blackout shades from Menard’s that were under $50 each for 27 inch blinds. They’ll even cut them to size for you there, I think for free. I’m very happy with them. I only wish there were a way to seal the sides of the blinds in the frame because there’s a street light outside my bedroom window that shines in and reflects off the sides of the frame into the room, but that’s not an issue unique to any one kind of blinds, I don’t think.
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Jan 4, 2022 14:43
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Inner Light posted:No valuable input on your questions from me, but good on you for looking through Abt. Heard nothing but positives, it's really nice when you can support a smaller non-giant business where the experience and even price can be legitimately better than a big box store. Not a lot of those around. After 15 years on this website I can finally say truthfully, my uncle works there. Really good customer service and they usually try to make it right instead of being weenies about everything, even if they don’t usually have the absolute lowest price.
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Jan 18, 2022 01:43
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There are private companies that do small animal control and are a lot less likely to summarily execute whatever you call about, at least where I’m from. Obviously it comes out of your pocket in that instance, but it might be worth it if, say, your kids couldn’t stomach having it euthanized.
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Jan 24, 2022 01:43
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Get a dog if you don’t want to get robbed.
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Feb 5, 2022 21:58
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Grumpwagon posted:
Those coastal elites don’t know what they’re missing in the upper Midwest. I am not joking.
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Apr 1, 2022 17:00
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Inner Light posted:Any deets on what to check out in Madison for a Chicago dude? I have only been by in passing but have not done a deep dive on the city and what it has to offer. Always looking for fun places to road trip. I’m not sure, I also have only been through in passing. It’s a gorgeous part of the country to drive through and camp, though.
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Apr 1, 2022 17:52
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Upgrade posted:OK THREAD, DILEMMA!! The brick might settle some but I would be shocked if your shrub is going to die because it has +\- 2 inches of soil around it. Maybe camellia is incredibly fragile, I don’t know.
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Apr 3, 2022 13:51
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$1100 to have a new outdoor faucet installed and to repair/replace another one that sprang a leak in January by replacing 6 feet or so of copper from where I cut and capped the line, both with shutoffs. I got quoted $450 to install the first faucet last summer from another place. Labor sure is expensive this year! I know I could probably do this job myself but it would take me two weekends to complete and I wouldn’t be sweating in fresh copper, either, so I don’t feel like I’m getting taken for too much of a ride. Will be nice to have water for my garden available inside the fence line this year, too. Does anyone have any experience putting in a small irrigation system in a home garden? We have about 1100 square feet of in-ground and raised beds. Last year I tried to use RainBird supplies but I accidentally laid pre-punched drip hose instead of the solid tubing that you pierce and install various distribution pieces onto, so it wasn’t very effective at getting water where it needed to be. I’m not needing a full controlled irrigation system buried throughout my yard, but I would like to try to run some permanent lines throughout the area that I can water as-needed and would be curious to see/hear about anyone else’s similar projects.
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Apr 13, 2022 15:19
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