Homeowners: I own 8 different power saws, primarily to attract a mate.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Homeowners: I own 8 different power saws, primarily to attract a mate.

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

slap me silly posted:

Good luck with that. I worked with three different ones, not to mention housekeepers and recycling pickup and other things, and every single one of them had at least one ball they would drop.

Yeah, I gave up on maid services. None of the three I tried at various times(move out cleaning, move in cleaning, etc) have been worth a drat. And contractors in general, just not calling back, not showing up, not billing, etc I just don't understand how any of them stay in business.

And keep in mind, this is after already filtering these people through things like Angie's list, google reviews, etc. I hate to think about how much worse they could be.

# ¿ May 4, 2016 23:24

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 05:01

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

GoGoGadgetChris posted:

Where do you live? I use franchise http://www.maidbrigade.com/ which has locations in every state of the USA. I love them. They do a great job, don't break or steal my poo poo, and don't mind that I have two cats that get in their poo poo while they clean.

Looks like they exist and have decent reviews in my area, but the couple bad reviews are indicative of my experience with the others. Still, I'll give them a go if I'm ever up for trying again.

# ¿ May 5, 2016 03:26

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

So selling our old house and no one is currently living there. Someone filled up the Trash and Recycling containers with dirt and ash, probably our horrible across the street neighbors who suck in every way and are part of the reason we moved. Neither dirt nor ash are acceptable in either container. Who do I even call for this?

# ¿ Sep 23, 2016 05:46

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

Thufir posted:

City public works folks can be surprisingly helpful sometimes, though they might also just tell you tough poo poo, should have secured your bins better.

Alternately, you could get a shovel and go unload the dirt and ash back into your neighbor's yard.

Yeah, I mean, if I could prove it was them, that would be my go to.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2016 16:53

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

It could be worse.

Check out this "Unique one of a kind finishing completed by a professional!"

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/24-Brentwood-Dr-Avon-CT-06001/59011376_zpid/

# ¿ Oct 17, 2016 19:49

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

surf rock posted:

This time next month, I'm going to have about two weeks between getting the keys to my new home and when I need to start moving into it because my apartment lease ends. Here's what I want to get done in terms of repairs and remodeling during that time span:

*Get an electrician in to fix some minor items from the inspection report
*Get a plumber in to fix some minor items from the inspection report
*Get an HVAC person in to do some routine servicing
*Hire someone to install new carpeting (about 350 sq. ft.) in the bedrooms/hallway and new wood laminate or vinyl flooring (about 500 sq. ft.) in the living room, kitchen, and entryway
*Hire someone to paint all interior walls for a 1,000 sq. ft. home
*Paint kitchen cabinetry (small galley kitchen) myself
*Hire someone to replace kitchen countertops

It strikes me that this is probably unrealistic to get done in that time span, and that I need to delay a few of these things. I really, really want to get all of the flooring and painting done before moving my poo poo in, even if it means touching up some scratches and nicks from the moving process itself. If I cut things down to painting, floors, and the plumber for that two week span, does that seem more realistic?

Also, for the wall painting and flooring, putting aside materials, what would be a reasonable labor cost to pay in a mid-sized city? Ballpark is fine, I'm mainly looking to figure out which is in the $250 range, $500 range, $1,000 range, and so on.

Lastly, is it weird or totally normal to have multiple contractors working at the same time if they're not working in the same area? Might be a way to get either the electric or HVAC work done while the plumber is in if the scheduling works out.

Thanks for any advice you may have!

There isn't any reason specifically that you couldn't get all that done in that time frame, the issue is mostly if you can get people scheduled for the time frame and whether or not if you manage to do that, the close will happen on the day you expect and it doesn't get pushed out farther throwing off your scheduling. Generally, you can find a plumber/electrician/hvac person/etc with room on their schedule for you within a week or two(depending on your area/choosiness), so all of those items can be scheduled once you are more sure of your time table most likely. But flooring and painting and replacing countertops are going to require more scheduling lead time, so you potentially need to start scheduling now and hope you don't have to push it out. And if possible, painting should really be the last thing done to avoid having to revisit as a result of things the other contractors do.

Depending on your area, other factors can include irresponsible contractors that don't actually show up as scheduled/reschedule on you because another job went long/etc. So just be prepared for the worst so you don't stress out if things don't align.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2017 00:08

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

H110Hawk posted:

This is your skin in the game. Remember that the time you're most going to want your homeowners (aka Fire) insurance is when your house burns down. During this time you will have the clothes on your back assuming you were lucky enough to pull some on before running outside. How comfortable are you going to be (literally) cutting a $5,000 check to get the process started? During this time you're going to be paying out of pocket to remediation people, cleaning, medical costs, heading to target to buy underwear and a toothbrush, etc. This is going to be on credit cards and out of your immediate-access checking account.

Personally I pay the extra couple bucks per year to (hopefully) cap my loss at $1,000.

Yeah, this is where I'm at too.

Even if I'm not claiming the small stuff, I'd still rather have the lower deductible.

Also, we just had our roof replaced due to hail damage. This is the type of thing you'll actually claim on your insurance, and having to pay out 5k to get that done rather than 1k is a huge difference.

# ¿ Sep 21, 2017 18:42

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

So who do I call if I need a new dryer vent/dryer vent rerouted? HVAC folks? Or?

My new dryer is super complainy and the existing vent is completely clean(it just bends a lot of times and goes all the way up to the roof in a 2 story)

# ¿ Jun 18, 2018 05:45

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

SpartanIvy posted:

I mean their posts are about people breaking into cars, people checking in car windows at 3am with shirts over their heads, and a pair of armed home robbers. So not going to assume racism based on that.

I know crime happens everywhere so I'm just kind of wondering if other people have this kind of activity on their various neighborhood groups and I'm just being made more aware of it, or if I live in an actually bad area.

I did as much research as I could before buying and the crime stats I could find seemed low but who knows how much goes unreported.

E: the thieves tried the car doors but only ended up stealing the volume knob off a Jeep's radio.

Yeah, this is pretty normal. Most of the time you are just blind to this kind of thing unless you have cameras or are personally hit. Remember also that the "neighborhood" definition can be pretty wide though, normally those camera posts of people looking in/breaking into cars and such also have a general location, so if you pay attention to those you can see if they are actually happening on or near your street or if they are in another area. Like my street seems to get activity like that a couple times a year at most. But a few streets away seems to get hit a ton.

It's true you have to sometimes take what happens on there with a grain of salt if you have especially paranoid/racist/what have you people in your neighborhood. Since they'll post up videos of like, the city meter readers walking through yards or something and be like "who is this suspicious guy?"

If you want to confirm for yourself what the area looks like from a police perspective, many cities can be found on something like https://www.crimemapping.com/

You could try typing in your address there and look at any data it gives you. Default date range is normally the last week, but you can change all the filters to get a better picture of what is happening in your area.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2018 23:10

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

Ok, I've haphazardly acquired various smart lights/switches and I've decided it is time to do this smarter. Please help.

I had a Lutron Caseta Wireless Smart Lighting Dimmer Switch in my game room. It worked great, but I decided I need smart control over colored lighting in that room. So I grabbed some of these: Novostella 13W 1300LM Smart LED Light Bulbs. So in addition to having two different apps controlling what happens in that room, I've also discovered that a dimmer switch does not play nicely with these smart bulbs(all smart bulbs?).

While I can switch back to a normal switch in that room to solve my current problem, which will work fine if we leave it on all the time, I'd still like to be able to allow people to turn lights on/off in that room with a light switch.

So bottom line. Is there a way for me to have smart bulbs in this room that I do all my color changing with while also allowing my wife to walk into this room and flip a switch to turn the light on or off? Bonus if I could also control both things with one app?

# ¿ Jan 31, 2020 19:48

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

DaveSauce posted:

OK so electrically speaking, the dimmer switch is controlling the voltage going out to your bulb. The smart dimmer switches are meant to be connected to NON-smart bulbs that are dimmable (incandescent, certain LED, etc.). The point of these is so that you can add smart features to your non-smart bulbs.

The point of a smart bulb, on the other hand, is to add dimming/color/whatever control without having to change your switches.

The issue is that smart bulbs require full voltage. In reality they'll probably work with less depending on the circuitry, but that's not the point. By changing the voltage that is put out to them, you're screwing with their circuitry. Dim it too far and it'll freak out.

So what you need is a remote switch.

I can't help much further, only to say that for my Philips Hue lights, I have the following options:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lutron-aurora-smart-bulb-dimmer-switch-for-philips-hue-smart-lighting-white/

https://www.amazon.com/Philips-Dimm...469140926&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/Philips-Hue-...591SVYSN6ZQJ8FM

These are all battery powered devices that integrate in to your smart system to control whatever bulbs you want. The Lutron actually goes OVER the switch (to prevent someone from flipping the switch and cutting power to the bulb). The other two just stick to your wall and you use it instead of the switch.

I think, however, that they will only work with Hue bulbs. I dunno if someone makes a "universal" option, but hopefully this will at least guide you in the right direction.

edit:

So this is a crash course I guess in the downside of smart bulbs. They're fun and great until you get in to the logistics of controlling them. Kids/guests/etc. will have a hard time if they don't know how to use the smart speaker, or if they don't have an app. That's why all these remote switches exist.

Thanks, that is helpful. Yeah, I think this is the only room I'll have to deal with the smart bulbs in, but I definitely don't want to give up the color control in there now that I've seen how great it can be for my needs.

It's a shame, because those smart bulbs I got are the brightest I could find which is something I'm going to be sad to lose, but if I have to give those away and buy something like the above to get this working, then so be it.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2020 20:39

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

DaveSauce posted:

What I got out of it is that he currently has a smart dimmer controlling his smart bulbs (which is not good). But also that he wants smart control AND the ability for someone without the smart control to be able to turn the lights on/off.

Without special hardware, these are competing interests. The core problem is that once you kill power to the smart bulb, it's not there anymore... so you have to flip the switch again to regain smart control.

If you can live with that, great, but I feel like half the point of smart bulbs is being able to turn them on/off without flipping the switch.

Yup, this. When I get a moment I'll put something more refined in the other thread to see if anyone has ideas on anything universal that might apply to the things I already have, but otherwise I'll probably just get some Hue stuff.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2020 22:32

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

ToxicFrog posted:

Anyone have good pointers to information about saltless water conditioning systems? I live in southern Ontario and we have extremely hard water (350-550 ppm), so some sort of mitigation is necessary. Right now we have an ion-exchange conditioner, but it's getting on in years and it would be nice to replace it with something that doesn't require periodic re-salting and doesn't flush huge amounts of brine into the wastewater.

What I know so far:

Template-Assisted Crystallization
- installed inline
- water flows through a substrate of nucleation sites that encourage crystal formation; as crystals get larger they break off back into the flow
- high iron levels� can clog the substrate, so you need an iron filter in front of it
- no power requirements or moving parts
- substrate needs to be replaced every ~5 years

Electromagnetic Crystallization
- installed as a bracket around existing pipes; does not directly contact the water
- uses electromagnetic fields to encourage nucleation in the flowing water
- requires mains power but has no consumable parts
- maybe a scam�
- also needs an iron filter, except maybe it doesn't, or even works better on iron-rich water, who the gently caress knows

It turns out to be surprisingly difficult to find discussions of or reviews of these that aren't either (a) written by the companies that make them, and thus say that they're awesome and will solve all your problems, or (b) written by the companies that make ion-exchange softeners, and thus say that they're poo poo and a waste of money.

Further complicating matters, there's lots of "magnetic water conditioners are a scam" pages out there, but the ones that aren't written by ion-exchange manufacturers all cite the same batch of papers from the 70s-90s looking at the effects of a different and much older technology, and more recent papers look more promising.

---
� We might have high iron, but it ranges from 5 ppb to 1800 ppb depending on where you are in the city, so we'd have to actually test to be sure.
� "Magnets will solve all your problems" is a classic scam and consumer reviews on e.g. Amazon are so unreliable that I can't really draw any conclusions from them

If you ever get this question answered/take the plunge, I'd love to hear the results. Because yeah, same experience here when I was looking.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2020 04:59

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

NomNomNom posted:

We have an LG front loader and you just have to wipe off the gasket after every load. Keep a washcloth next to the detergent, wipe it off. Takes 5 seconds. Never had any mold or mildew.

This is what I do, also no problems.

I do wonder if some of it is related to location though based on some of the horror stories out there. I live in a really dry climate, so that has to help with things like this.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2020 20:30

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

Motronic posted:

What exactly is the use case for this (other than dimming)? I mean, "I want it because it looks cool" is a fine answer, but I'm having a hard time coming up with anything past that. I guess these are the kind of things a renter can use because they don't require anything more than changing a lightbulb, but that's not relevant here.

I use them in my gaming room for mood lighting/setting the scene when I run RPGs.

Can do cool things like campfire light or thunder storm too, with the right automation/apps.

---

Also, just having temp control is nice depending on what you need lighting for. But like most of you, I probably won't use them outside of this room.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2021 04:35

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

DaveSauce posted:

But also:

https://www.lutron.com/en-US/products/pages/standalonecontrols/dimmers-switches/smartbulbdimmer/overview.aspx

It integrates directly in to the Hue app (if you want it to). No wires, just install it over the switch and instantly becomes guest-friendly.

Not cheap though, like $40/ea.

This is what I use. Works great.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2021 18:35

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

I have some pella french patio doors that the lock mechanism seems to be having problems on. It is very difficult to get it locked again after unlocking. Anyone dealt with something like this? I think it is probably alignment related since it seems to work fine if I do it with the door open.

First instinct was to call a locksmith, but of course, the former owners have bought into some kind of closed ecosystem that locksmiths can't deal with. Yay.

Any suggestions for fixing or any suggestions for non closed ecosystem replacements, would be welcome.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2021 04:01

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

Motronic posted:

It surely is. How and where are they installed (at a corner, mid span, etc)? Are there any other issues with your home that may be a part of this (sloping/soft floors), how long have they been installed, how old is the home, how about some pictures?

This may come down to some super minor and expected settling where we teach you how to shim a door hinge or move a striker. But it could be something else.

They are in the center of the wall in the room they are in. The tile guy did complain about how not level the floors were when we redid the floors a couple years ago, but outside that I didn't think so. Now that you mention it though, my 2nd story deck that is directly outside/over those doors is buckling a bit and I was treating that like a different problem to solve(the one guy I've had out to look at it so far said they made some mistakes building it which led to the problem on that).

I can't say for sure, but based on some records the previous owner left behind he probably installed these doors in 2008. House was built in 1980.

I'll take some pictures tomorrow during the day.

biracial bear for uncut posted:

Any chance the frame is warping around the doors? Saw that on one home earlier this year where the doors basically got full sun all day, every day and somebody didn't caulk/seal things properly for whenever rain came through (but the owner installed it themselves, in the spirit of this thread I guess?).

Edit: the frame had a slight swelling above one door in the example I'm talking about, that pushed the door down and out of alignment.

The owner was all "yeah I have to pick up on the door to close it".

Hmmm, I'm not going to rule it out since I'm not exactly a handy guy, but my previous experience with warped frames is them making the doors stick/hard to open/close. Everything about opening/closing seems totally fine still. But I'll look more explicitly for that while I'm taking pictures tomorrow and see if anything sticks out.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2021 06:14

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

Ok, so in taking pictures I discovered the problem was super dumb and it is now solved. The spot where the bottom shoot bolt is supposed to go had a bunch of debris in it. Removed that. Problem solved.

Here are bonus pictures of the buckling deck I mentioned though.

King Burgundy fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Jun 29, 2021

# ¿ Jun 29, 2021 22:14

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

Motronic posted:

That deck is not safe. Full stop.

Do not use it. Do not go under it again.

Oof that bad? GC we had out to quote us on the rebuild just said he wouldn't recommend multiple people go on the deck until it gets redone. He said there was no imminent danger outside that.

Still waiting on other companies to come out to quote. It is insanely hard to find someone to do this in our area right now.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2021 00:38

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

Motronic posted:

I'm not someone who saw it in person, was able to stand on it, jump on it, see if posts are moving, etc, so ......take his word for it if you like. But the whole thing is constructed wrong and failing. You don't need to be a structural engineer to see pictures of that and say "just don't".

Yup fair enough. Well get it scheduled as soon as we can find at least one other quote to compare.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2021 00:55

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

Some quick sanity check advice needed.

Water is seeping up from the laminate wood in the kitchen. I believe I've traced it to the fridge water line. Seems pretty slow so not sure how long it has taken to get to this point. Besides the obvious plumber call to fix the leak and the need to speed up our planned move to tile in the kitchen, (tear out the laminate and replace it now instead of on the original schedule) is there anything else I should be thinking of doing here?

# ¿ Mar 31, 2022 00:29

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

Hadlock posted:

In floor radiant heating?

Nope, nothing special like that going on.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2022 01:18

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

Tricky Ed posted:

Make sure to put in a new valve for the fridge water supply (because your old one is probably wearing out) and put a water hammer arrestor on it (to help keep everything working longer).

If you do tile, make sure you aren't entombing your dishwasher by making the floor too high to get it out.

Cool thanks for the tips!

# ¿ Mar 31, 2022 03:00

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

Hadlock posted:

Just sitting here staring at the wall in the dark waiting for the packers to arrive in like 6 hours, re-thinking through every decision that led up to this point and everything has been set in motion and there's no stopping or backing out now oh god

I'm fine, really

I'm feeling this.

This week I have to finalize getting everything out of the current house we are selling. Then we need to be homeless for a few weeks until we close on the one we are buying. And our stuff gets to float around in limbo.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2023 07:29

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

Is this what it looks like and the reason my house has such bad water pressure?

This is a few feet from where the water first comes into my house in the basement.

Only registered members can see post attachments!

# ¿ Feb 22, 2024 06:32

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 05:01

King Burgundy: Sep 17, 2003; I am the Burgundy King,
I can do anything!

Senor P. posted:

Without getting into the nitty gritty details, pressure is essentially constant.

But...
looking at that

I cannot tell if it is going from 3/4" to 1/2"
or if it is 3/4" to 1/4"

Getting it fixed might help.

Or you might have low pressure.
You can get a pressure gauge and affix to a sink or elsewhere and see what kind of pressure you have inside...

I think it is going from a 3/4 to a 1/2. So my whole house is on 1/2, essentially, right?

# ¿ Feb 22, 2024 09:31

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