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You should probably not go trying to fix a bunch of poo poo for free in a place that you rent. Even if the outlet covers are $1 do you really not value your time at all? You're also making yourself liable if something goes horribly wrong.
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Jul 22, 2016 20:38
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Yeah and if you have two old A/C units working together then I'd expect one failing to sometimes be a "straw that broke the camel's back" for the other. It's too bad but doesn't actually seem that improbable The one that was looked at by the repair guy probably just needs to be looked at again, he may have missed something or done something improperly.
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Jul 23, 2016 05:31
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OSU_Matthew posted:Personally, I've had both the nest thermostat and protect for two years now, and I seriously couldn't be happier with both systems. I've smoked out my kitchen on several occasions, one of which caused the nest to warn me the kitchen alarm was about to go off before actually going off, which gave me time to cancel it without an ear piercing screech. The monthly verbal tests are wrist great, and I also really like that I can monitor/get alerts from anywhere. Best part is, the mobile app is far better than FLIR's cameras or Smart Things or any other smart home thingy I've tried so far. Worth every penny, in my opinion. Especially because previously I had battery detectors that just died, without any notice, and I had no idea I was living with dead detectors for who knows how long, since they worked fine when I bought the house. Now that I've had a wired nest for awhile, I'm never going back to dumb detectors. I think this is a good endorsement for having wired detectors, period, but I'd like to emphasize that the Nest detectors are about $100 each whereas most wired smoke detectors are only $20. If you're willing to pay extra to get alerts sent to your phone then that's fine, I just want people to be aware that lower-tech wired smoke detectors exist and work really well
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Jul 23, 2016 05:38
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Oh so two days ago my backyard had some minor flooding, which I assumed was because I had just hosed up some piece of the drip irrigation system that I've been messing around with in that same area. It's all hooked up to a timer on the hose spout so easy enough to just close everything up, set up a hose to siphon the water out, and then let the rest dry out. Well this morning the area was more flooded than ever, like water up to just below the ankles in a few spots. It looks like maybe there's a leak near one of the sprinkler heads. I shut off the main valve to the irrigation system, setup the siphon again, and now the whole area is basically dry. I'm really hoping that it's just a problem with one of the sprinkler valves not closing all the way and that I won't have to dig up anything or mess with the knotted mess of loving wires (holy gently caress there's a huge concrete slab separating the valves from the sprinkler timer, the wires appear to go below the god drat slab, why why why why why). The sprinkler valves are all above-ground so it'll be really easy to fix if that's the case.
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Jul 23, 2016 09:13
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Economic Sinkhole posted:Another recommendation for Nest Protect. Yes they are $100 smoke detectors and yes, they are worth that much. Wireless interconnect between wired and battery smokes means I don't have to run wires when I add smokes in the bedrooms. They test themselves monthly when I'm not home using a built in microphone so I don't have to hear it. Low battery alerts are sent to the app instead of chirping at 3 AM. I've never had a false alarm. They detect CO. The app gives me a little peace of mind- I always think I'm going to come home from vacation to a smoking crater. It is moderately comforting knowing that I'll at least get a notification if my house burns down while I'm away without having to pay for alarm monitoring. Oh yeah, it ties in with my Rachio sprinkler controller to turn on the sprinklers if the alarm goes off to try to prevent the fire from spreading (lol). I've heard some bad stories about the battery-only nests, apparently they're notorious for either going off for no reason and then ignoring silence commands, or they suddenly die and the network just silently ignores it. I think that you're always safer with wired smoke detectors that have as little software in them as possible. As these are safety devices, you want a failure state to be noticeable and obvious, and you want to eliminate the possibility of a failure state going unnoticed. Silently sending a notification to your phone is a convenience and will be fine in the vast majority of cases, but it also poses an unnecessary risk should your phone become inaccessible when a key alarm fails. I will acknowledge that we're firmly in paranoid territory here, but statistically speaking this does mean that nests are slightly less safe
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Jul 26, 2016 04:56
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moana posted:Also had to tear out the insulation that the dumbass previous owners had installed right up against the roofing in the garage; so that's how moisture builds up to rot roofs from the inside out! But at least it kept the garage a little warmer in the winter for them! Huh, learned something new today
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Jul 26, 2016 10:46
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GameCube posted:The house I bought is full of spiders. I realize that this means I need to take care of the bugs that are luring the spiders in, but I also need to get rid of all these loving spiders, because I cannot do any laundry or store anything in the basement until these loving spiders are gone. The Internet says to vacuum them up, but what do I do once I have a vacuum filled with a teeming mass of hairy legs and mandibles? Set it on fire? You throw the vacuum bag away. The suggestion only works if you don't have a bagless vacuum
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Aug 3, 2016 19:56
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Pryor on Fire posted:What the hell are you guys talking about do the spiders breed in the vacuum bag and then millions burst out and overwhelm your house or something oh god oh god oh god No, calm down. The suggestion was to use a vacuum cleaner to suck up the spiders and then dispose of the vacuum bag in the garbage; then the spiders are gone.
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Aug 4, 2016 04:04
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But vacuums aren't brooms Like you don't think that the spiders are going to escape while the vacuum is running, do you? Spiders wind up in the bottom of the bag, and once there they're very unlikely to escape easily because there's only a small opening that they're probably not going to find, and they definitely won't be able to escape while the vacuum is running. Turn off the vacuum, take the bag to the trash, take the trash to the curb
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Aug 4, 2016 06:54
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Thufir posted:I like mulching and/or chuting because I am lazy. Same. When I mowed as a kid my parents always had me bag, but I don't think that any of us realized that mulching is even an option. But it doesn't just save time, it's also better for the lawn. I'm interested in getting rid of my lawn entirely but I have so many other things going on that we haven't even started really planning or looking at what we might want to do instead.
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Aug 4, 2016 23:12
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Over the winter (I live in a warm place) I managed to get my lawn watering levels to just the right point such that I never had to mow but the grass didn't turn brown. But now I have to turn off the whole irrigation system because there's a huge leak somewhere and I'm going to have to dig out and replace that section of pipe
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Aug 5, 2016 19:08
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HiHo ChiRho posted:Oh poo poo I bought a short sale that just blew all the leaves to the edges of the property. From the 9 years they had the house and then a year of vacancy. I have sections where I have to shovel up soggy cardboard thick leaves. Do not set your yard on fire unless you really know what you're doing. Like you could maybe dig a fire break and burn the leaves safely but that would take more effort than just picking up the leaves. If you're interested in gardening at all, you could try setting up the leaves for compost. Look on the bright side, if picking up a bunch of old leaves is the worst that you have to deal with in a short sale house, that's really great!
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Aug 6, 2016 06:36
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uwaeve posted:I splurged for a roomba 650 2 weeks ago, Target and Amazon had them on sale for 325. Maybe there's a psychological component here, like you know that the floor has to be tidy in order for the roomba to work well so maybe you're keeping the floor tidier as a result? That'd be a neat benefit
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Aug 6, 2016 06:37
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Yeah if you juice them then making good cider is exceptionally easy, cheap, and delicious. Juicing apples is pretty simple but does take some effort
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Aug 8, 2016 23:04
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Nessa posted:We've just been putting the apples in our friend's dumpster because there's so many of them. How are you supposed to turn all the apples into tasty things if you're being bombarded by hundreds of them per day? It's a lot of hard work, but that's the whole point of preserving / juicing / fermenting them. It sucks that you'll have to peel most of them because of scab but if you get an apple peeler then that should at least make the process a bit faster. Realistically you probably won't have time to use them all without some help, and that's okay too.
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Aug 9, 2016 08:35
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lwoodio posted:I've been cockblocked from installing my own shower head by a literal metal dick. What the hell is this, there is no threading on it. what in the gently caress
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Aug 16, 2016 02:01
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Sometimes I encounter houses with those tacky white plastic office blinds. Why? Why are these here, in a house? They're completely ineffective at blocking light and they look like poo poo. Why were they even installed in the first place? Where I live it's also popular to install wire shelves in closets, which I think is awesome. They're extremely functional, they're cheap, they're easy to install, all of the hardware stores carry them... it's basically ideal for a tiny room that stores stuff. It's the epitome of "substance over style" but I still think they look good. Wooden shelves are fine too, but when I see closets that are using some exotic wood for closet shelves it just makes me want to gag
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Aug 29, 2016 18:25
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I think for the same price (or not much more) you could do cheap drapes that would provide privacy but would also look 1000 times better. Cheap drape bars cost almost nothing, likewise for cheap cloth drapes
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Sep 1, 2016 07:32
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I've been meaning to upgrade one of our bathroom outlets to GFCI and your post has inspired me to actually get this done, and now I'm considering replacing all of our floor-level outlets with tamper-resistant outlets (because we have a baby on the way and it turns out that tamper-resistant outlets actually aren't that expensive) One question though, why would you need wire nuts to replace an outlet? Isn't it just a matter of moving the same wires from the old outlet to the new outlet?
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Sep 5, 2016 05:04
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Just installed my first outlet, which has tamper-resistant receptacles and 2 USB port. Plugged the receptacle tester into each receptacle, everything's good! I was also really careful about cutting off any exposed copper (because this outlet had push-in-and-then-tighten receptacles instead of the loop-around-a-screw thing that the older outlet used), so I'm not worried about my amateur skills resulting in a fire starting behind the wall Most of the ground wire was covered in white paint, aside from a small length on the end. How does that even happen?
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Sep 11, 2016 02:45
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Call the township and tell them that his weeds are overgrown
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Sep 13, 2016 11:06
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He's probably a serial killer no big deal
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Sep 14, 2016 06:54
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Irritated Goat posted:I recently bought a house, may god have mercy on my soul. We starting moving in the following Wednesday. Half of what the house is worth, or half of what the house + land is worth?
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Sep 14, 2016 23:13
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"You'll have to pay back all 3 months at the end of the forbearance though" 
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Is the insurance company just cutting you a check or will they be paying the contractors? It could be that your contractor was just telling you that it's a lowball estimate because he's hoping to get more money. I'm sure that the insurance company wants to pay as little as possible but $60k might be an okay amount for appliances, doors, and walls. The countertops probably wouldn't be much more to replace, if they need replacing
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Sep 15, 2016 19:54
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lol nice tripping hazard
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Sep 29, 2016 07:16
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Also, I like buying lovely-looking but comfortable-feeling couches on the cheap and then throwing a nice slipcover on them.
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Sep 29, 2016 07:18
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DrBouvenstein posted:Fences are surprisingly more expensive than I thought. Agreed, we researched the cost of a new fence when we bought our house because the fence had some rotted boards (which were definitely just pine boards that were hastily put up and then primed+painted, so the boards began to rot between the cracks where the paint didn't get in so well). The cost of a good fence is so exorbitant that we opted to replace the rotted boards with boards that we painted ourselves, so the fence at least looks nice until we can save up for something better. Vinyl sounds really convenient, so that's something that we considered, but another economical option was to buy a bunch of SimTek ecostone panels and do the installation ourselves. We thought the panels look good and are light enough for 2 people to handle (60 lbs), and you can just pick them up at Home Depot. Sounds like a huge pain in the rear end and a nightmare if you do it wrong, but you could feasibly save a lot of money. I think we've settled on saving up for some kind of stone fence
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Sep 30, 2016 06:41
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It's also not necessary to check what model the old one was, it's fine to replace ionization alarms with photoelectric alarms. It's recommended, even. Pull it off of the ceiling and see if it's hard-wired or not. The International Association of Fire Alarms only endorses photoelectric alarms, for what it's worth. They say that ionization alarms suck, and combination alarms are a lot more expensive and don't provide much additional benefit over photoelectric alarms. They're also well-known for being good kitchen alarms, they're less susceptible to going off from a tiny bit of cooking vapor
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Oct 12, 2016 19:58
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life is killing me posted:My house was built in 2014, and yeah I think the whole house goes off at once just from the one in the kitchen, which is why neither me nor my wife can do much else but sob uncontrollably every time we try to cook breakfast. Replacing your ionization alarm in the kitchen with a photoelectric alarm could solve that problem
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Oct 15, 2016 01:26
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Yeah the lithium ion batteries in a smoke detector can last a decade before you need to replace them, which is great. All that you need to do at that point is test them monthly (which no one ever does, but that's the recommendation). But having a redundant power source just makes sense; if the house power goes off or the battery suddenly dies, you still want the smoke detectors to work
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Oct 15, 2016 20:33
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HEY NONG MAN posted:But if the power goes out and the battery is dead then you die. What then??? Doomsday prepper backup generators, you fool
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Oct 15, 2016 20:37
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OSU_Matthew posted:Bingo, you set up a couple of gas generators in your basement so you can power your monoxide detector It's perfect. Like the circle of life
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Oct 16, 2016 00:05
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King Burgundy posted:It could be worse. Ugh that's so ugly, whoever did this has no taste. Every single picture is like a collage of "we wanted to make our house look as ugly and tacky as possible"
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Oct 18, 2016 10:05
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Hughlander posted:Yah sorry, it was an art project http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-viral-real-estate-ad-featuring-worlds-most-horrifying-interior-design-was-an-art-project That doesn't make it less ugly or less stupid
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Oct 18, 2016 19:53
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With rates less than 4%, you're probably better off investing rather than paying the mortgage off early. That said, paying the mortgage down obviously carries less risk and is still a good choice Probably you should make sure that you are making a maximum yearly contribution to an IRA and to your 401k before you start paying extra into your mortgage
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Oct 20, 2016 20:28
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Grumpwagon posted:Tax benefits and the ability to roll it over to Vanguard when you move companies probably still make it worth it. It sounds like they might all be active funds, which IIRC tend to underperform by a few percent vs index funds. If the performance of those funds is poor, then he might be better off investing in index funds with a taxable account. I think the answer between "contribute to 401k cap" and "invest in taxable accounts instead" would depend on how poorly those funds perform, how much higher their expense ratios are, and your tax bracket. And it also depends on how much you value liquidity
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Oct 20, 2016 22:19
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Yeah I think it's best to max out your 401k employer match and make sure that you have 3-6 months of living expenses saved up, beyond that paying down your mortgage early and investing more for retirement are both good options
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Oct 21, 2016 03:37
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LogisticEarth posted:Re: leaf raking. Why is everyone raking their entire yard? I've always read it was way better to just mow them over, mulching them into the grass and improving soil health. There are definitely limiting returns to doing that; we wind up with a thick mat of leaves and twigs covering (and killing) the grass if we just mow. Eventually they still need to get raked
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Nov 22, 2016 23:47
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baquerd posted:It sounds like you have a crap mower for mulching leaves. My grass is basically spotless going from full leaf cover after a pass with a mulching mower. That's what happens with our grass too, but eventually we get so many leaf fragments that the leaves (combined with water and cut grass) wind up creating a cover of organic matter after a couple of months. I don't think that getting a better mulcher would really change that, as the issue is the amount of material, not the fineness of the mulch
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Nov 23, 2016 03:23
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AC maintenance guy told me today that our R22 AC will probably die in 5-10 years, but maybe sooner, and that replacing it is probably $15k in today's dollars because of the additional work involved. Didn't seem like he was trying to sell us anything, just wanted us to be aware Time to adjust those long term maintenance numbers!
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Nov 28, 2016 21:40
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