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Frinkahedron posted:I have a birds nest above one of my porch lights right where it meets the wall. I'm afraid to move it because it's little birds season, but I don't want these rear end in a top hat birds messing with my walls, do I just wait them out until the winter then take down the nest? If they're native (like Barn Swallows, which often nest in mud nests in places like this) then they're technically protected by federal law. If they're invasive (like European Starlings, which frequently nest in "cavities" in houses) then loving kill them all. Devian666 posted:They only understand the same location, and even gloves would likely change the smell so it would reject them. With a few notable exceptions (Vultures, Albatrosses/Petrels/Etc.), most birds have terrible senses of smell and would have no idea you touched their eggs. I think this common belief must have come from other animal species which may exhibit that behavior.
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May 24, 2016 05:53
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gently caress rats. Is there any reason why a homeowner shouldn't just go buy some of those rat bait stations and place them in their garage/attic/crawlspace? Obviously keeping the spaces from having spots for pests to infiltrate is priority, but killing the fuckers as soon as they show up versus waiting for them to set up shop, raise families, etc. seems like a good goal? Can't wait to vacuum up a ton of rat poo poo in a 30in crawlspace before we sell this place.
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Jun 7, 2016 06:27
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Axiem posted:Re: mower chat. drat. Electric sounds pretty tempting until you see the prices and realize you also probably have to buy $100+ batteries ever few years. Gas is loud, but i change the oil once a year and use about 3gal of gas a year. BeastOfExmoor fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Jun 26, 2016 |
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Jun 26, 2016 05:50
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Aquatic Giraffe posted:My problem isn't the outlets themselves being loose, it's the holes for the prongs having zero grip. I can plug something in and it will literally fall back out of the outlet. Vacuuming is an overwhelmingly frustrating experience since the tiniest tug of the cord has it tumbling out of the wall. Trying to charge something? Come back after a few hours to find you have zero charge after several hours because the charger fell out of the wall. I'm sure someone will come tell me why this is a horrible idea, but with most electrical cords, you can bend the prongs a few millimeters out to get them to stay in loose outlets. Doesn't work so well on most wall warts though.
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Jul 22, 2016 22:20
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So, long story short, the previous owner of my house was leasing the hot water heater from the local energy company and did not disclose this until a couple days before closing when they offhandedly mentioned it to me while I was dropping off some money for some furniture we were buying from them. At that time they told me it was like $2 a month and that they come out and replace it at any point if it fails. Seemed like a good deal for that money, but we finally got the lease in our hands and the actual price is over $14 a month, not nearly as good of a deal. I'm trying to figure out if I should just cancel the least and have a new unit installed, or just bite the bullet. I think technically I could make a fuss with the former owners, but they were fairly cool about other things so I'm hesitant to do so. We're planning on being here for several decades, and that Rheem Marathon tank looks pretty awesome, but apparently is electric only and we're gas. My break-even point for a good quality (Rheem "9 year") model with installation (assuming roughly $400 for install) is about 6 years, which seems fairly reasonable. Anything else I should be considering?
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Aug 2, 2016 20:29
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Sperg Victorious posted:You could go tankless and take endless showers. We haven't taken over ownership yet so any fees would go to them. The contract says they have to notify the company prior to ownership change, which they apparently didn't do.
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Aug 2, 2016 23:41
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OSU_Matthew posted:Option C: Just don't pay it, it's their lease, their problem I dunno. His reasoning was that it's a somewhat tricky spot to get a hot water heater into (bottom floor, probably 50ft below street level), but I think it can be done without too many problems. If my $400 estimate is near correct then even if I had to replace it every eight years I'll be $300 ahead of leasing though. They owned the house for 28 years and owed over $200k on it (I think that would've been about what it cost initially) so its possible they don't make great money decisions. I don't think I've ever managed to run a gas hot water heater out of hot water, although I've admittedly been in one bathroom places until this house. Devian666 posted:The lease is their problem and the fact they haven't notified them of ownership change any problems have been created by them. Yea, I suspect I could really make myself a pain and make them pay for a new hot water heater (and be in the right, since they said the heater was included), but I'll just terminate the lease and get a new one installed.
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Aug 3, 2016 05:52
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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? Go buy those spider glue traps they sell at hardware stores, etc. They're fairly cheap and work well at trapping at least a portion of your spiders.
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Aug 3, 2016 18:40
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LawfulWaffle posted:I was kind of excited about finally having a lawn to take care of The most new homeowner thing ever. In the spring I typically have to bag and dump (the old lawn was more moss than grass in the spring), but in the summer I can mulch away without much issue. Obviously YMMV depending on location, watering, etc.
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Aug 4, 2016 20:37
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GameCube posted:Are GFIs/GFCIs really prohibitively expensive for some people? It seems expensive when other outlets are a dollar, but a lot cheaper than literally any of the many issues not having one could cause. For some reason the house we just bought (built in 1988) didn't have any GFCIs in bathrooms or outside. It's a pain, but it's a pretty cheap safety measure as they go.
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Aug 12, 2016 18:31
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melon cat posted:Water heater question- how many of you rent your water heaters? I'm just trying to figure out if it's more worthwhile to buy ours outright instead of continuing with our rental. And have the costs of tankless water heaters come down enough that it's finally worthwhile to consider going tankless? It's a page or two back, but I found out my house's hot water heater was rented after purchase. I did the math and figured out that it would cost me about $1000 to have a high quality gas heater purchased and installed, which worked out to about six years of the lease rate. Seemed like a no brainer to purchase since we're planning on being here a long time, but when I called to have them pull the current heater they gave me a "payoff" amount equivalent to about two years of lease payments, so I just took that. Whenever I've looked into tankless it's sounded like more pain than it's worth. You have to have large gas lines running to the right location or a giant electrical circuit. They also, from what I read, need more maintenance.
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Sep 6, 2016 20:24
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Leperflesh posted:My hot water heater already runs on gas, so it'll be easy to replace it with tankless when it finally dies. Just make sure you have large enough natural gas pipes. That is the biggest issue I saw when I researched putting one in. You need a lot more gas to heat water on the fly than over time in a tank. HEY NONG MAN posted:That's right. I bought a house in the year 2014 that still uses oil. A guy pulls up and fills a huge tank under my front porch every four months or so. What loving year is it. I bought a house with in wall heaters and analog thermostats in each room and a gas fireplace at one end. Interested to see how I feel about that once winter hits.
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Sep 6, 2016 21:53
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I have a rodent or rodents in my attic. There were rodent issues up there when we had the home inspected and they cleaned it up and, I thought, fixed entry points. But last night we had one of our first rainy and cold nights and my wife definitely heard something up there. I went up there for the first time and the good news is that we have more insulation than I knew could exist. The bad news is that this, combined with the vaulted ceiling mean I have very little access to most of the square footage up there. I checked all the access points I could find without finding any issues from the outside, but I'm at a loss for what to do next. I threw a rat trap and a bait station up there, but solving the access issue seems like the best course.
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Sep 19, 2016 06:23
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Seems like they have some legal recourse there? Edit: Nevermind, I didn't realize the was more to the article. BeastOfExmoor fucked around with this message at 02:46 on Oct 14, 2016 |
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Oct 14, 2016 02:37
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If anyone is in the market for smoke detectors or CO detectors Costco has the ones with ten year batteries in them for sale at the moment. life is killing me posted:I'll check it tonight when I get home. I'm just lucky it's not in the living room, where I have an 18ft ceiling and would basically need scaffolding to get up there. Hopefully those are hardwired, if I'm understanding correctly hardwired means it doesn't need batteries? Or does it mean it's connected through the house to the other smoke detectors? Hopefully I don't ever have to change any batteries on that thing because it's extremely hard to get to. At least with the one in the kitchen I can use a step ladder. The lovely thing about hard-wired smoke detectors is they still have batteries for when you lose power and they tell you to change the batteries once a year. I suspect the batteries last a while and they're just covering their asses, but what's the advantage of being hard wired if you still need to change a battery annually?
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Oct 14, 2016 20:49
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I finally broke down and bought a cordless drill and impact driver. I'd been holding on to the fantasy that my 20yr old garage sale Bosch and some extension cords could do what I needed, but man is it nice to be able to go anywhere with ease.
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Oct 15, 2016 05:36
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SiGmA_X posted:Buy decent paint. It goes on easier. You may want to prime, some yellows are pretty bright and peek through and will need a third coat - ask your paint shop. Sherman Williams or Miller are my go-to brands. We used Behr's top of the line no primer needed to go over a light blue and it took 4 coats. I'll never use Behr again. A contractor friend warned me, but reviews (including consumer reports) said Behr was good stuff...pass. You couldn't pay me to use it again. Most brands have different levels. When I last bought paint I assumed that I could get by with the cheapest (going from white to gray) Sherwin Williams or whatever, but it was a terrible waste of money. The more expensive paint is so worth the additional cost. I believe some brands will sell/give you testers which might help you judge how well the paint is going to cover and how the color will look before you start buying by the gallon.
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Oct 17, 2016 19:45
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:Speaking of hardware stores - has anybody here done their own TV mount? I've wall mounted a computer monitor, but never a TV. Also, I would want to run the cables through the wall. Is it worth it to just pay somebody $200 or are the tools I'd need (I really ONLY have a drill) useful in the future for other projects? Yes, I wall mounted my heavy 42" plasma when we moved in about six months ago. As far as I'm concerned you need two tools, a drill and a studfinder, one of which you have and the other of which is cheap and very useful as a homeowner. To do the cables through the wall I think you'd need a sheetrock saw as well (less than $10). A level and measuring tape would be useful as well, but again cheap and useful. I used the Monoprice wall mount which was cheap and worked well.
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Nov 4, 2016 03:08
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Cheesus posted:Maybe that's true about older appliances being better? I was shocked when this house, built in the early 1970s had what had to be the original refrigerator, still running if old and smelly. And using god knows how much power. To some extent, this doesn't really mean that much. 99 out of 100 of that make and model may have failed after the the first x years, but because the other 99 are in a landfill somewhere and not in your kitchen it seems like they really lasted. That said, our last house came with a burnt orange washer and dryer. Based on the color I knew they were old, but one day I happened to be looking through a book of vintage photos and found one with my exact washer and dryer that was from the early 70s. By the time we replaced them with a newer one that was given to us they were about 40 years old. Still worked fine, but didn't clean nearly as well as a newer model.
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Nov 22, 2016 22:28
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Rurutia posted:I was just quoted $1400 for a basic 6yr warranty gas water heater from the company State. Apparently going for the higher quality 10yr warranty one. Does that sound right? Googling around is giving me much lower quotes. Do they have to hand carry the thing up a small mountain to reach your house? That's the only way I can see that price being competitive.
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Dec 2, 2016 06:32
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Droo posted:Did you check with home depot for a full installation quote? A 50 gallon 6 year Rheem gas water heater by itself costs about $500, so someone is charging you almost $1000 to install that water heater. That is definitely not correct - replacing an existing gas water heater is maybe a 2 hour job on a bad day, and installation should be more in the $200-$400 range. Agree. If it's just replacing an existing gas unit it should be fairly straightforward. The hardest part is getting the drat thing to where it's going to live, which is obviously going to vary. Where are you located, Droo? Some place where labor or parts are artificially high?
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Dec 2, 2016 17:41
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Rurutia posted:it's a plumber exclusive. Rurutia posted:I'm not sure how this is different/better than their Performance Platinum line which has 50gal capacity at 40k BTU and is available at home depot for $654.00... I'm not an expert, but I'd say the difference is that your plumber gets to pocket an extra $200+ in profit while being able to claim that you're getting a better product. I get that this plumber has come highly recommended, but even if he's amazing it's the equivalent of hiring a mechanic who rebuilds engines to change your oil. If you live close to Home Depot, get them to get you a quote for install. At the very least you can use it as bargaining power to bring the other guy's quote down if you're truly dead set on him doing it. My dad and I swapped out the gas hot water heater at our last house. Took maybe 4 hours, including a trip back to Lowes because the first one we get had a giant dent in it when we opened it up. He'd replaced at least one electric gas water heater about 20 years prior, and perhaps a gas one since, but that was the total of our hot water heater experience prior to that day.
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Dec 3, 2016 02:30
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More grill chat. I've looked at those Webers and I'm sure they're great grills, but they are pricey. Do they offer a significant advantage over the cheaper propane grills as far as cooking ability or longevity? I have a fairly cheap 3 burner unit that was used to me about 5 years ago and although I've had to improvise some fixes and replace a couple parts I've definitely gotten my money's worth. Honestly, if I can buy a $200 grill every 5 years I don't see the point of a $600 grill that lasts 10 years, but I feel I may be missing something.
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Jan 25, 2017 01:17
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Leperflesh posted:Charcoal superiority, by the way, I have a gas stove and oven in my kitchen and see no point cooking with gas outside. I use my grill when I want smoke in my food. It's a trade off. Charcoal probably does taste better, but propane is way easier and typically cheaper. Heck, I find grilling outside with propane faster and easier than cooking in my kitchen in many ways. OSU_Matthew posted:I think with grills, you leave anything outside, it's going to go to poo poo with exposure to the elements, from moisture, temperature, uv, etc. If you buy a nice 200$ propane grill, and actually cover it or store it in your garage, it'll last years, even more so if you clean it once a year or something. Plus you can buy replacement hoses, burners, etc for that kind of thing really cheap. Yea, come to think of it, my grill lived a hard life for the first few years. Outdoors in Seattle (where it's perma-damp in the winter) without even a rain cover for most of its life. The fact that it still works at all is actually probably evidence in favor of cheap grills longevity.
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Jan 26, 2017 21:46
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Sits on Pilster posted:Hey there 30-year fixed @ 3.375 buddy. Now let's just hope the bubble keeps inflating for a few more years. I'd be happier with a nice stable cooling of the market.
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Jan 27, 2017 03:51
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DJCobol posted:Weber Smokey Mountain. Go right for the 22" model, you won't regret having the extra grill space and can always get the smaller charcoal ring for smaller cook sessions. That'd be a nice mix if you like charcoal. There's also Masterbuilt and the like if you want a lower hassle electric. Current grill status: Propane grill that's held together partially by wire and should probably be replaced when they start putting grills on clearance in the fall. Trying to get a Masterbuilt smoker when I see a good price.
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Feb 20, 2017 16:40
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QuarkJets posted:Because centipedes are loving awful and like to bite people? Rats seem kind of innocent by comparison; at least they won't skitter up a wall and drop down and sting you while you sleep Do centipedes fill your crawlspace with feces, chew through walls, and carry the bubonic plague? I had a brief rat infestation (I think I ended up trapping about half a dozen inside) and it was the closest I've ever felt to insanity.
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Mar 26, 2017 01:35
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QuarkJets posted:It's a question of risk Where is this a thing, out of curiosity? I've lived in the most pest-free part of the country my whole life, so I guess I've lived blissfully unaware of this issue.
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Mar 26, 2017 17:41
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Since we're on the topic, the stove in our house is in the center of the room, with a vaulted ceiling maybe 10ft above it. So no range hood and no conventional way of getting one. The stove itself has a vent between the heating surfaces, but it is loving useless. Is there a solution for this situation if/when we redo the kitchen? edit: EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:So we're getting into the season where outdoors finally REALLY makes sense to grill. I don't do a lot of the cooking around the house and I was never really bitten by the grill bug as a kid. That said, our stove in the house doesn't have a working vent fan and so the best way to cook, well, every piece of meat is by throwing it out on a grill. I have a little Weber charcoal monster that's a real hassle to use for routine cooking. Gas seems like the way to go. 1) I had considered this as well, just because of the cost difference between propane and NG, but then I thought about how many tanks of propane I could buy for the several hundred bucks I'd spend doing the plumbing. I'd recommend having two propane tanks. When one goes empty, switch to the other one and get the first one filled. Getting a tank filled is way cheaper than those stupid swap-a-tank deals, btw. 2) Wherever it'll be easiest to use, IMO. The heat is at least two feet away from the surface it rests on, so if your concern is heat then it's a non issue. 3) Others already covered this. I'd have a hard time paying the money for a Weber, but the fact that you know replacement parts will be easily available for many years and that they tend to last a long time make it a little easier. I'd recommend getting a good cover. I left my non-Weber uncovered for several years and it aged pretty poorly. Grabbed a $15 heavy-duty cover off Amazon for it last year and it survived a wet Seattle winter like a champ. 4) I imagine things like a rotisserie would be available for any Weber, since they're so mainstream. BeastOfExmoor fucked around with this message at 05:04 on Apr 3, 2017 |
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Apr 3, 2017 04:43
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metztli posted:What do I need to know before getting gutters other than "aim water away from the house/foundation"? Might as well get them covered in one of the meshes/whatever the protects leaves from accumulating in there, unless you live in Vegas 100 ft from the nearest tree or something.
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Apr 4, 2017 05:05
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Elysium posted:This is on sale today. It's an older model, so not the latest and greatest, but looks like a pretty good buy? https://www.amazon.com/DEWALT-DCK281D2-Lithium-Brushless-Compact/dp/B00CSDIMXY/ref=bdl_pop_ttl_B00CSDIMXY I can't say I know a lot about the Dewalt line, but that seems like a good price for a brushless set.
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Apr 20, 2017 22:17
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:Are electric propelled mowers any good? I need a mower and I'd prefer to not deal with gas but my yard has a steep incline. It sounds like you're concerned about the self-propelled portion helping you up the hill. I'd be concerned about that as well, but I have no experience. They do appear to weigh a bit less though, so that's helpful.
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Apr 27, 2017 04:57
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RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:Yeah, exactly. I'm looking at one of those Ego deals. I wouldn't expect much out of self-propelled on hills. I have a gas self-propelled and it is useless going up hills. I'm kind of curious to try a higher end gas model to see if that helps though. Looks like Home Depot carries that Ego mower in stores though, so I don't see the harm in buying it to try and return if it sucks.
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Apr 28, 2017 21:37
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Elephanthead posted:I have declared war on thistles. Welding gloves are all I could find that were thorn proof. Stupid cheap rear end neighbors feeding birds thistle seed. It won't make them any easier to remove, but your neighbors are almost certainly feeding nyjer seed, which, although marketed as thistle seed sometimes, is actually not really anything like thistle seed. Also, it's one of the most expensive bird seeds you can buy.
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May 7, 2017 05:12
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I just bought a fridge yesterday to replace the one that stopped holding temperature yesterday morning. It's definitely worth it to see and touch them in person. We bought a stainless steel fridge at our last house and I was really unimpressed with how dirty it looked from fingerprints, etc. When we looked yesterday I noticed that some models had much better the finishes were on some stainless models than others. Also, the quality of the plastics, lighting, etc. varied greatly between makes/models even on similarly priced units.
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May 22, 2017 05:49
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TheManWithNoName posted:I have a Little Giant (Costco has the best deal) and a reel mower (Scotts 20"). But I also have a smaller house and yard so. From last page, but Costco has the 17ft Little Giant ladder for $119 until late October. https://www.costco.com/Little-Giant-MegaMax-17-Ladder-wAir-Deck--.product.100111832.html
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Oct 4, 2017 20:59
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Leperflesh posted:I like my GE. The complaints about it are that it's noisy, presumably from people who have never owned a fridge with an icemaker in it, becuase yes you loving idiots it's going to make ice-making noises while it makes loving ice. In other words, refrigerator reviews are mostly written by idiots. Basically verbatim what I was going to write, especially the last sentence. Leperflesh posted:In any case they made my fridge out of whatever they made it out of purely for aesthetic reasons, because shiny metal appliances are the thing these days. It's a fetish adopted from commercial-level appliances found in restaurants, which are made of metal presumably so they can be sterilized daily for 20 years, and then people started buying those commercial appliances for their expensive kitchen remodels and manufacturers noticed and started selling consumer-grade appliances with steel finishes so people could have the commercial-looking kitchen for consumer-level prices. And now here we are. I can't wait until my kids are shopping for houses and complaining about how the appliances were all dated "stainless" steel with rust marks galore just like I did with burnt orange appliances from the 70s. I replaced the fridge at my last house with a sub-$1000 fridge in stainless. Stainless is a pain in the rear end to keep looking decent. When I replaced my the fridge at my current house I noticed that a lot of the mid-range stainless fridges had some sort of coating over the stainless which seemed to help a lot. We ended up with this model and I'm happy with it. Just got our first filter warning. I'm sure the $50 filters are better than the third party ones I got on Amazon, but I drink water out of the tap without issue so I'm not sure why I should be concerned about having a special filter. One thing I'd look out for is an ice maker that stores the ice in the door itself. My parents bought a pretty pricey fridge that did this and the ice melts and refreezes into one big lump rendering the ice maker useless.
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Nov 25, 2017 07:17
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The weirdest part of replacing my toilet was stumbling upon some plumbing forum where people were adamant that anything less than a $600 toilet would not be able to handle your elephant-like bowel movements.
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Dec 13, 2017 00:05
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Leperflesh posted:I turn off autocorrect because it's loving horrible and I'm amazed everyone else doesn't. Well I can think of one really loving good reason at the moment.
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Dec 16, 2017 07:52
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Mower chat reminded me that I'd left my mower under a tarp below my back deck all winter and hadn't done anything to prep it for winter. I decided to go for broke, so I put some old fuel in it and it started after a half-dozen pulls. I think this fuel is from before we bought this house, so its over 18 months old. That said, I really need to get a new mower. My lawn is 90% on a fairly steep hill and the FWD doesn't really do anything to get up the hill. To make it worse, I'm in the pacific northwest and our grass is thick and wet in the spring and the first mow of spring can clog your mower every ten feet. I was interested in AWD mowers, but from what I can find they have limited utility over a decent RWD model. I'm currently eyeballing this model. H110Hawk posted:
I'm not sure of the PSI, but when I used a gas pressure washer at my old house with the 1 degree nozzle, it literally blew blacktop off the driveway and shot it 10 ft into the air.
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Feb 14, 2018 06:15
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That's a lot of PSI. The "1700" PSI harbor fright one cleans pretty well, but it is a fairly narrow stream.