|
Diva Cupcake posted:Anyone know anything about home security systems? If so what are your thoughts on managed services versus the DIY self-managed Ring systems. I know nothing about home security systems, but I do know that Amazon allows the FBI and police to spy through Ring without a warrant and identify people via AI and all that. So if you have any reservations about strengthening the police state, you might not wanna go that route.
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2021 19:17
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 9, 2024 06:05 |
|
|
GoGoGadgetChris posted:Google leads me to believe this is not accurate. Are you certain? https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/31/22258856/amazon-ring-partners-police-fire-security-privacy-cameras https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/08/police-can-get-your-ring-doorbell-footage-without-a-warrant-report-says/ That, plus pretty much any time a tech company is dabbling in that kind of poo poo, they are giving away *way* more information than they are publicly admitting. I can guarantee it. That said, I'm not judging anyone if they want a Ring or anything, I just personally would never want one. Do whatever you need to do! m0therfux0r fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Apr 22, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2021 19:31
|
|
|
GoGoGadgetChris posted:Both these articles came up in my googling and both indicate user consent is required, though. Just depends how much you trust them, I guess. I personally wouldn't trust any big tech company about information privacy any farther than I can throw the combined weight of their entire workforce.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2021 19:45
|
|
|
My original "without a warrant" comment was me remembering an article incorrectly, my bad. Wasn't trying to backtrack there- just basically meant "they might be lying about this".
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2021 19:51
|
|
|
So I'm moving into my first house at the beginning of July. There's extremely limited parking on the street- enough for my partner and I to park, but any guests would need to park a couple blocks away. It's not the end of the world, as most of our friends/potential guests are capable of walking that distance, but it'd really be nice to have more options. The property is surrounded by city-owned land to the north, which extends around the back of the house to the east. There's maybe 10-15 feet or so between the end of our property line in the back yard and a very accessible alley. The seller used to be a realtor and is currently a lawyer. We asked him if he knew if it was possible to put a parking pad in the back and he said he believes so- apparently there was a state court case (Pennsylvania) within the past few years and the result was a ruling that states that you can basically just claim up to 1/4 acre of city/state land if it borders your property and isn't slated for some different kind of use or future project. The land is definitely not being used (it's basically "the woods" to the north and just some weeds to the east), so we think it might be possible. Does anyone have any experience with something like this? Where does someone typically start calling to get permission for this kind of thing? Does the seller even know what he's talking about? I made a little crude diagram below- the blue is our soon-to-be property, the green is city land, and the gray is the road. The left shows the (roughly) the current property line and the right shows (also roughly) about the amount of land we'd be taking for the parking pad.  Note: This is in no way a deal-breaker if it turns out this isn't possible. It'd just be really nice to be able to do that.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2021 21:19
|
|
|
Queen Victorian posted:In the meantime, is there anything stopping you from just going ahead and parking on it? Or would you need to make alterations to make it parkable? Just some high grass/weeds- I'm sure we could park there but it'd seem kind of like a "house with two cars on the front lawn"-esque. It's actually quite hard to tell where the property ends just from looking at it without a drawing of the lot. It's also likely a main path for rainwater, so I'd be worried about a car starting to sink into the ground if it rained really hard. Obviously that may be an issue with a pad, but we'd likely use gravel and just keep filling it in if that happens. Doesn't need to be fancy. I can probably give a better evaluation once the house is actually ours- just trying to think ahead.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2021 22:21
|
|
|
We explicitly asked out of curiosity- he didn't bring it up on his own. The seller and his wife have been extremely honest and accomodating- encouraging us to not skip inspection, paying for some stuff I thought was a longshot following inspection (which went super well- in this kind of seller's market they absolutely could have told us to gently caress off with the couple repairs we asked for and they agreed to all of them). Regardless, I do know that they are trying to sell their house so I take everything they say with a grain of salt and wouldn't proceed without verification from a third party. I in no way plan on just going rogue and making a parking spot back there without making that it's 100% legal and verifying that with the city- I was mostly asking to see if anyone had any experience with anything like that and where to start first re: contacting a lawyer or some sort of city department to see if it's even possible. If it's not possible, that's fine- parking and no central air were literally the only two cons of this house- it's by far the nicest one we've looked at and we lucked out in getting it. (I know a lot of people in the house buying thread consider no central air as a deal-breaker, but in Pittsburgh we have a huge amount of houses built in the 1920s-30s and a good bit don't have central air- even the nicer ones.) Extremely excited to move in regardless of whether or not we eventually have a parking pad.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 23, 2021 14:23
|
|
|
skipdogg posted:A 90 day rate lock is the longest I'm familiar with, and it'll cost you 0.5% to possibly 1% of the loan amount to do it depending on a bunch of factors. To be honest I'm not sure what the options even are at the $ level of home you'll be shopping, this is for normal loans. I had to do an extended lock rate because we had an offer accepted back in March, but the sellers couldn't close until July (I realize this seems insane but their particular situation makes sense). I forget the exact days until closing, but it was somewhere between 110 and 120. The week I started setting up my mortgage was a week that rates went up, so I did an extended rate lock. It ended up being ~1600 bucks for a 261k loan, which actually seemed like a drop in the ocean compared to our down payment and closing costs. I knew it was a gamble at the time, but the gamble seemed worth it since rates seemed to be creeping up. Now that I'm actually 60 days out and it hasn't crept up, it seemed like I tossed that money out and lost the gamble. Though my mortgage dude called me other day to say they were knocking .25% off my interest rate randomly, so hey, I'll take it. In the end the peace of mind was worth the 1600, regardless. m0therfux0r fucked around with this message at 17:00 on May 7, 2021 |
|
#
¿
May 7, 2021 16:58
|
|
|
Anonymous Zebra posted:So I need an opinion on order of operations here. My wife wants to replace our gas stove/oven with a electric convection version. Obviously this is somewhat of a matter of preference, but have you ever had an electric stove before? They're awful. (Unless you're talking about one that has induction burners). Just curious what possessed your wife to want an electric stove. Maybe you're both just better at using them than I was in past apartments.
|
|
#
¿
May 28, 2021 17:20
|
|
|
I have no idea if you have one near you, but we have an Anthropologie outlet in the Pittsburgh area and recently bought a chair there- they didn't deliver, but did allow delivery by third party services if you arranged for it yourself. It cost us 100 bucks (plus tip) to have someone drive it out here a few days later. But yeah, local furniture stores that have stock in-store definitely work if you can arrange a delivery. You'll have to wait a few days to get your stuff instead of weeks. As far as which ones are good, I couldn't say. That Anthropologie outlet was pretty great, but it isn't cheap (even though it's an outlet).
|
|
#
¿
Jun 9, 2021 22:10
|
|
|
Sirotan posted:The crack basically follows the transition from finished space to knee-wall attic space on my 2nd floor. There was a roof leak once (which I discovered <1 week after closing on the home) and water came through the crack in one spot at which point I noticed old water stains, so I'm going to have a look into the attic the next time it rains just to make sure I don't have water getting in again. I would guess it is probably just temperature and old house related though. 80yo house with 1" thick plaster and cement board walls, the crack is where the conditioned space meets the poorly insulated, southern facing attic space which gets really hot in the afternoons. Fixing that is on my to-do list. I'm in Pittsburgh and we have a ton of houses here with plaster walls- the cracks go away in the summer for the most part when everything expands and then come back in the winter. That said... it's summer now and if water had been coming through that crack since an unknown time, there might be more to it than just seasonal expansion/contraction.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 24, 2021 19:48
|
|
|
Johnny Truant posted:I am ignorant of paint styles/textures - is this what would be considered a textured wall? Or is it just a lovely paint job from the PO? That's definitely the wall. Based on the pattern in the first pic I'd guess plaster- that's what it's been like in about half the apartments I've lived in.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2021 15:48
|
|
|
The house I just moved into has some trees on two sides of it starting to touch the roof and gutters. I have an arborist coming over tomorrow to scope it out and give a quote. Is there any BS I should look out for when he's describing what needs to be done? This will be the first professional I've called over for any work on house ever, so it's all totally new to me. From the looks of things, he's just going to need to cut a decent number of branches, but I have no idea if they are known to try to pitch unnecessary stuff or anything. Out of all the local arborist companies, this one seems to be one of the 5 most highly rated according to the research that I've done (and were also the only ones that called me back).
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2021 18:08
|
|
|
Based on what it's like to get contractors (or anything contractor/landscaping adjacent here), that tree is going to grow through my entire house before I can get someone to call me back and schedule a second appointment (seriously- this was one of the two places I found that had reviews that weren't 80% just people saying "they never called me back"). I have a price range in mind based on some research I did online though, so if he quotes me way higher than that I'll at least make the attempt. Mostly just wanted to know what other crap they might try to add on or claim I need to do- I literally just want the branches cut down. The owner of this company is my friend's neighbor, so hopefully they won't try to pull anything lovely.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2021 20:14
|
|
|
Pittsburgh always feels so drat small- the tree guy that came over that I was posting about ended up being good friends with the previous owner of my house and was super familiar with the property. Gave me a quote that was right in line with what I was expecting, also just told us that one of the trees we were worried about was small enough that we should just saw it down ourselves instead of paying extra for it. So, not particularly worried about getting ripped off at all!
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2021 18:32
|
|
|
Is it normal for a hot water heater pressure relief valve to do this or does it probably need to be replaced? It's definitely not a constant stream (I can see that parts of the water trail have dried). The tank is only 4 years old so I doubt the whole thing is failing, but I'm not sure if I should call someone or if this is a normal thing I just happened to notice today.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2021 00:49
|
|
|
tater_salad posted:Prv needs a replacement. Okay cool. I was planning on calling a plumber tomorrow. Just wanted to make sure this wasn't a "YOU NEED TO CALL IMMEDIATELY" type deal. Thanks!
|
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2021 01:08
|
|
|
Motronic posted:Same. I didn't mean to be all gloom and doom. Just pointing out what could happen, and without knowing what a bunch of water could do in that space it may matter more or less. I'm calling the plumber today and nothing happened overnight- regardless, that water trail in the picture leads directly to the basement drain, so I'm not super worried about flooding unless the whole tank blows open, which seems... unlikely. Update: Plumbers came. Water coming into my house was 117 psi- so the PRV was functioning correctly. They just turned down the regulator and tested it again and now it's at 70 psi. Dumb fix, but now my mind is at peace. m0therfux0r fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Aug 5, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2021 14:10
|
|
|
I have a weird (not at all urgent) window question. I've noticed that when it rains, if the wind is blowing towards my house, one of my outer window frames drips water from a screw hole onto the (outside) sill. I'm not super concerned about it, because the bottom half of the window on the outside is a screen, so water gets on that part of the sill anyway, but it does mean that water is somehow getting inside the frame (the other identical window across the room doesn't do that). I've looked all around the window and can't see anywhere that water could possibly be getting in there. These windows are relatively new- they were either installed while the immediate previous owner lived here or were installed by the owner prior to that to sell the house- the earliest they would have been installed would be 2016. Just trying to see if this is something I can fix myself. If not, I'll live with it unless it looks like it's starting to cause damage (the damage would only be to that upper window itself since it's dripping outside). I put two pictures below- the first shows where it drips from (the empty screw hole on the right) and the second shows the area above where that screw hole is- I don't see anything that looks like water is getting in from the top. It's not coming in from where the screen meets the top window either- the water is definitely dripping *out* of that screw hold. As of right now it's just marginally annoying after it rains at the right angle, but if I can stop it from happening it'd be great.  
|
|
#
¿
Apr 14, 2022 17:24
|
|
|
Motronic posted:I wouldn't count on that. How is the water even getting into that sash? Can you pull it down and look at the top of it? And also inspect the window frame? Now that it's stopped raining, I just fully pulled down the window and looked at the sash and frame everywhere I could without physically removing the window itself. No signs of water entry or damage anywhere. I'm wondering if maybe there's just some water getting in at the bottom of the sash where the fabric stuff is (sorry I have no idea what that is actually called). If that's the case the water is traveling like a half an inch max before it drips out of that hole. I'll keep an eye on it. It's been like that since we moved in almost a year ago- I noticed the drip but didn't notice it was coming out of that hole until today. We had a lot of severe storms last summer so I think if it was rotting anything out we'd have noticed by now. m0therfux0r fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Apr 15, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Apr 15, 2022 00:40
|
|
|
m0therfux0r posted:I have a weird (not at all urgent) window question. I've noticed that when it rains, if the wind is blowing towards my house, one of my outer window frames drips water from a screw hole onto the (outside) sill. I'm not super concerned about it, because the bottom half of the window on the outside is a screen, so water gets on that part of the sill anyway, but it does mean that water is somehow getting inside the frame (the other identical window across the room doesn't do that). I've looked all around the window and can't see anywhere that water could possibly be getting in there. These windows are relatively new- they were either installed while the immediate previous owner lived here or were installed by the owner prior to that to sell the house- the earliest they would have been installed would be 2016. So, I usually don't lock this particular window because it's in a spot that would be *extremely* difficult to get to and it's the window I open the most in that room. I've since tried locking it, which revealed the problem- the water was getting in between the screen and the bottom of the top window sash. With it locked, the water drips from the screen and not through the hole since the lock puts extra pressure on the point where it was coming through- I'm also thinking that it's possible it wasn't actually coming *out* of that hole, but that the surface tension on the water was making it look like it was. It would be ideal if this didn't happen at all, but I'm not particularly concerned about water traveling half an inch between two pieces of metal that were built to withstand rain. TL;DR- if you have an issue like this just try locking your drat window. m0therfux0r fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Apr 19, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Apr 19, 2022 18:38
|
|
|
So, we've had unusually bad wind the past two weekends. A few days after the first instance, I noticed a bunch of shingles had blown off of my house and we had rain coming in the next couple days, so I called the first (well-reviewed) roofing contractor I could find that had availability in the next couple days. He was able to put a temporary patch on the spot with the missing shingles, which held up super well through that second weekend of wind, so that's all good for now until we move forward with a permanent repair. While he was up there, he basically immediately said "you should definitely make a claim" and that most of, if not the entire roof, would need to be replaced. He did actually show me *tons* of shingles that had come loose while he was up there- what he showed me pretty much matched exactly what I saw in every video online about when you should file a claim/when you need a new roof (zippering, failed adhesive, all that good stuff). I want to clarify that I was able to see the damage as he discussed it- it wasn't like he was up there, then came back down, and made a bunch of stuff up. I also called *him*- this wasn't a situation where those scam roofers call around/make visits after a storm. The guy handling my insurance claim is coming out tomorrow to inspect the roof. The contractor will also be here at the same time (a friend of mine recommended I try to have them both there). My question here- is there anything I should look out for or specifically ask while that inspection is happening? I realize the contractor is there to argue as to why certain work needs to be done to repair the work correctly, but I know that insurance in general likes to deny paying for as much as they can. If it helps, I have Travelers as my home insurance, which the contractor said is actually one of the better ones as far as allowing claims goes, but I still want to make sure I pay as little out-of-pocket beyond the deductible as I can (I'm sure I'll have to pay at least a little bit extra). Any tips? m0therfux0r fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Apr 4, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Apr 4, 2023 15:02
|
|
|
Thanks! I'll ask about the brittle test. I have a feeling that enough shingles are damaged/lifting/etc that it may fall into the "not cost effective to repair" category, but I'll make sure. I forgot to mention it in my previous post, but my roof is approximately 12 years old- less than the normal 20-25 year life of an asphalt roof, but I'm on a hill and am exposed to more wind in general than the average home in the area. When I bought the house in 2021, the previous owner listed that some shingles had been replaced on the disclosure a few years ago, but that the rest of the roof was totally fine and didn't require any more work. The past year and a half have been exceptionally windy for the area, so it honestly wouldn't surprise me if a lot has changed since that happened. My insurance did ask about flashing and metals (I called them to start the claim while the roofer was there) and the roofer's response was that none of the flashing was damaged, but because of the way the flashing is installed on the chimney, it'd likely need to be replaced if the shingles around the chimney need to be replaced. Dunno about the ice and water shield status- the roofer did mention that some of the decking may need to be replaced because it seemed like it wasn't up to code. Apparently current code is that there shouldn't be more than a 1/4" gap between the decking and he said he was hitting a lot of empty spots when he nailed the temporary patch so maybe both of those can be rolled into the "this needs to be up to code" part. Anyway, I'll keep an eye all for all of this stuff- thanks!
|
|
#
¿
Apr 4, 2023 16:23
|
|
|
It's not a rot issue. The roofer said he's been successful in the past about having people's insurance cover that decking issue I mentioned so I may not have explained it properly (this is all pretty new to me).
|
|
#
¿
Apr 4, 2023 16:57
|
|
|
Really glad I had the contractor present while the insurance inspectors were here. The inspectors did their entire inspection with a drone and were only going to pay to replace the side of the roof with the very obvious damage, but then the contractor made them actually go up on the roof with him. They came back down agreeing to cover an entirely new roof, including the addition of ice/water shields and fixing the decking issue I mentioned. Seems like I got lucky and had a good insurance/contractor combo.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2023 16:13
|
|
|
PainterofCrap posted:I'm very surprised that they included the rotted decking. Plywood is very, very resistant to water damage. It wasn't a rotting issue, it was just an installation/coding issue- my house was built in 1930. While the current (soon-to-be-replaced) roof is only 12 years old, there was a building code updated at some point in time (unsure how localized the code is) to say that decking needed to be installed so that there was less than a 1/4" gap between each board. My decking had more than that- all they needed to cover it was a picture of the attic, which they took yesterday and immediately said "oh yeah that's not up to code". I'm not certain when that code update went into effect, but it either didn't exist when my current roof was installed 12 years ago or the contractor didn't bring it up to code. When my current contractor talked with my claim officer yesterday and explained that, they agreed to cover it right away. The fix isn't entirely new decking- it just fills in those gaps with smaller boards (if I understood him correctly anyway). Regardless if my understanding of the fix is correct, it'll be up to code and insurance is covering it. *Forgive me if any of my terminology is wrong. I understand what they're doing to my roof conceptually, but I don't know the correct roofing terms. m0therfux0r fucked around with this message at 15:16 on Apr 6, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Apr 6, 2023 15:07
|
|
|
Potentially dumb question: I have original hardwood floors in my house (from 1930). Overall, they're in pretty great shape, but we have a few spots around the house where the floorboards are loose or cracked. I definitely don't need a full refinish- visually everything *looks* great, but I'd like someone to come by and fix the loose/broken boards along with checking out one particular room that seems to have more issues than the other. There were a couple boards that had fallen through to the subfloor while we were buying the house and the PO hired a handyman to fix those prior to closing. For the most part, his work is fine, though it seems like it might be more of a band-aid than a full-on fix (that said, nothing he worked on has broken again). What kind of contractor/business do I call for this? Most places that specialize in floors seem to focus on refinishing, though maybe that's just what they like to advertise up front. Based on the work the prior handyman did, I think I'd like to hire someone that is a little more specialized. This is in no way urgent- only one board that has an issue is in a main walking path, and we've put something in the way so that no one steps on it- so I have plenty of time to look around for someone.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 10, 2023 18:42
|
|
|
Yeah some of these water numbers seem wild to me. I take blood pressure medication that makes me pee a lot so there are a lot of flushes in my house, plus my wife is a self-employed massage therapist and washes all of her sheets at our house, so we're doing laundry a lot as well. We average between 60-70 gallons a day (granted, it is just the two of us).
|
|
#
¿
May 31, 2023 18:21
|
|
|
And even before. I remember tipping furniture delivery drivers way back in 2013. I'm sure plenty of people don't do it, so it probably doesn't enrage the delivery guys if you don't, but you should still do it since they hauled some big-rear end thing up your steps and into your house.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 2, 2023 14:17
|
|
|
cr0y posted:Kind of a follow-up on this, The guy that I've been working with says that there is nothing you can do with a blocked house trap due to pipe corrosion, but you can hydrojet or descale sewer mains. Do we not have the technology to do something about traps? I also live in Pittsburgh and my house is almost 100 years old. I'm unsure how old our pipes are, but they're old as hell either way. I had a backup a couple years ago that also included a bunch of corrosion and the plumbers were telling me that I'd likely have to replace most of my piping. They ended up using a hydrojet (cost about $700) so that I'd be able to continue using water in the near term, but they ran a sewer camera afterward- turns out the pipes were actually in perfectly good condition after all of the buildup was jetted out. I even have clay pipes in the yard and they looked brand new on the video. So... they might be able to blast through your trap and clean all of your pipes. I'm not guaranteeing you'll have the same experience as I did, but there's a chance you won't need to replace anything. I will say that we had a new trap installed prior to us moving in as part of the inspection process, so our trap was clean and the rest of the pipes weren't. If they truly can't hydrojet a trap as the guy you're working with says, they might have to replace it- that was about 800 dollars if I remember correctly. If all you end up needing is a hydrojet and a new trap, you'll probably end up paying $1500-$2000 without using your insurance.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 15, 2023 15:38
|
|
|
devicenull posted:I don't quite understand what a house trap is supposed to do. All your fixtures already have traps on them, so why not remove it? Sorry to reply to this days later- in my case, I have a basement drain. So the trap there is doing the same thing it's doing on the other fixtures- preventing sewer gas/smell from coming back up through the drain.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 21, 2023 14:28
|
|
|
I have a water pressure question that I *think* has a simple answer, but it's tough to Google and find results that apply to the specifics of my question- I've recently noticed that sometimes our hot water pressure is initially high coming out of our faucets and falls back down to normal within a couple seconds. It is noticeably higher, but not disturbingly so- if you aren't looking for it you might not even notice it. It seems like it happens mostly after taking a shower or otherwise using a lot of hot water, which leads me to believe that it's almost certainly a result of the hot water heater doing its thing and heating up the water that's replacing what I used. A couple more details in case they help: - We had a new water pressure regulator installed for the house a couple years ago because the one that came with the house no longer worked (we were getting like 100psi before it was replaced). When I noticed this hot water issue, I did check the water pressure coming into the house and the regulator was still doing its job (it read ~50psi). So I don't think that's the issue. - The pressure relief valve (or TPR valve or whatever it's called) on the hot water heater definitely works. That's actually what made me realize out water pressure was too high years ago- the valve kept blowing off. That hasn't happened since they replaced the regulator. - There is an expansion tank installed on the hot water heater. - It is 100% possible that it's always been like this and I've never noticed it. It's most noticeable at the bathroom sink, but often times I'm using that sink right after flushing the toilet, which lowers the water pressure at the faucet a bit while it's filling up. This water pressure increase is only noticeable when no other water is running, so like 90% of the time I'm using that sink I wouldn't be able to notice because of the toilet running. So is the initial increase in hot water pressure a normal thing that happens while the water is being heated (or has recently been heated)? Or does that signify a bigger problem? I know I can always call a plumber to check it out, I just don't want to spend 50 bucks to have them come out here and be like "that's totally normal."
|
|
#
¿
Oct 24, 2023 15:32
|
|
|
Motronic posted:You expansion tank is broken (ruptured air bladder inside the tank), set to the incorrect pressure or least likely it's undersized. Thanks for the immediate response! Plumbers will be here tomorrow afternoon- that was enough to make me take the plunge. (And even if there's a way for me to fix this myself, I don't have confidence in myself to do it.)
|
|
#
¿
Oct 24, 2023 16:00
|
|
|
Motronic posted:You expansion tank is broken (ruptured air bladder inside the tank) That was it! The plumber just showed up and checked the valve on the expansion tank and it shot out tons of water. They're putting in a new one now.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 25, 2023 18:28
|
|
|
I have a weirdly specific toilet cleaning question: So, this is probably TMI, but whatever- back in January I started Jardiance for my type 2 diabetes, which makes you pee out *a lot* more sugar. Even though I'm not a "let it mellow" guy and flush every time, this appears to have jump-started some kind of bacteria/microbe/biofilm/whatever growth. Every other flush or so results in a tiny piece of some kind of bacterial gunk floating to the top of the toilet bowl (tiny enough that the first time I thought it was just a dead gnat or something). The toilet flushes fine- it's definitely just an aesthetic annoyance at this point, but I want to get rid of it. After observing where the stuff was floating up from, I determined it was coming from the bottom siphon jet (the hole opposite the side where the water is actually being flushed down). This isn't really a spot you can reach with a normal toilet brush/toilet bowl cleaner, so normal routine cleanings were doing nothing. I bought a long bottle brush and stuck it up the siphon jet hole to see if I could clean it out- this resulting in me pulling out *a lot* of the gunk- that's definitely where it's coming from. However, it seems impossible to get all of it with a brush- it's still floating up after flushing. The issue is that the hole I can put the brush into is basically a bottleneck for a much larger area (cavity? chamber? dunno what the right term would be) that the water flows through- there's no way I can get a brush in there that's small enough to fit through the hole, but large enough that it can actually scrape the sides of the entire siphon jet chamber. Everything I can find online suggests pouring something down the path to that second siphon jet through the toilet tank (I have one that has two flappers- I'd just be putting it into the one that leads directly to the jet), but the issue I'm anticipating is that it won't completely fill the chamber since it will just run through the toilet and straight out of the siphon jet (unless I can figure out a way to block the jet oulet?). So, one idea I just had was pouring some of that foaming pipe snake stuff down there- however, I want to make sure that won't destroy anything before I do it. I know I don't want that poo poo to touch any of the flappers or gaskets, but is the inside of the toilet okay? Is there a better way? This is annoying the hell out of me. And I feel like calling a plumber is overkill for this.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 14, 2024 15:14
|
|
|
Hadlock posted:Time to start using those tidy bowl 2000 blue water tank sanitizers. Sounds like you're introducing a ton of sugar and ammonia which is going to always cause problems unless the water parameters are actively hostile to algae Do those cause the same issues that the bleach tablets do? I keep reading about how a lot of those degrade the flappers/gaskets really quickly. I realize that's not an expensive fix when it happens, but I'd rather not deal with it all the time.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 14, 2024 15:47
|
|
|
SpartanIvy posted:You might try getting a bleach puck to put in the bowl of the toilet and only using one in the tank temporarily to kill what's there. I think a bleach puck in the bowl would keep anything new from growing with regular use, and would avoid degrading anything in the tank. I know the kind you mean- I'm just not sure that would actually get to my problem because of how the water mixes/moves around. I tried dumping a bunch of bleach into the toilet bowl water and let it sit for about a half an hour and it did absolutely nothing. It's possible that maybe 30 minutes wasn't long enough, but I think the issue is that it doesn't flow back into the siphon jet area enough to do anything.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 14, 2024 15:58
|
|
|
Are there any that don't use bleach that would kill that stuff though? Everything I see online says that the bleach tablets destroy all the components in your tank. I'd almost rather have this stuff floating in the bowl than have to constantly be replacing flappers and valves.
m0therfux0r fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Mar 14, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Mar 14, 2024 16:14
|
|
|
TooMuchAbstraction posted:One puck in your tank isn't going to destroy the components unless they were already near end of life. It's when you're always using the pucks, as a substitute for cleaning the toilet, that you run into issues. Gotcha- thanks! I was interpreting the other advice as me always having to have one in there- if treating as-needed is less likely to accelerate the degradation of the components, then that seems like a good option.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 14, 2024 16:20
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 9, 2024 06:05 |
|
|
PainterofCrap posted:The anal/nuclear option (talk about TMI!) you could try this: It's funny- I had already considered your nuclear option and was like "man that sounds like way too much of a pain in the rear end", which was exactly why I posted here in the first place. I'll try that out if it comes down to it though. As far as the Jardiance stuff goes, apparently it increasing toilet bowl grime is pretty common- I found a lot of people posting about it when I was looking it up online. The funny thing is a lot of them were like "I didn't know Jardiance would cause this problem!" accompanying a picture of like... a normal dirty toilet bowl (like what happens to every toilet if you don't clean it for a few weeks). Which made me wonder... had these people even been cleaning their toilet at all before?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 15, 2024 19:26
|
|