Only recommendation I would make if you do this is to be willing to buy some scrap material to practice. The shark bite adapters are really great although expensive.
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Homeowner Thread |OT| A Thread for Homeowners
- Thread starter vacantseas
- Start date
Only recommendation I would make if you do this is to be willing to buy some scrap material to practice. The shark bite adapters are really great although expensive.
I've already done some piping, just not the entire thing. I've fixed some and installed some lines, one to my fridge. Pex has their own crimp connectors, but I've soldered and also used shark bites on copper.
thanks. I need to tear out a couple sections of ceiling to access a few sections of pipe. I think I may just redesign the flow to make it the shortest possible to every location. I can run the entire network of pipes and not switch over until everything is complete.
Just remember to cash the old pipe in at a scrap metal place. Might as well get some money for it.
Great I didn't extend the ladder enough, now I'm stuck on the roof cause I have nothing to hold on to go down lol
It was still there. Thankfully a friend wasn't too far so he came to help and extended it further. If it wasn't for him I would still be there!
I'm not sure how much I could get for old clogged galvanized pipe, but good point thanks.
There's a soaked spot in my yard about where I think my water supply line comes through. Stressed my spouse out by Googling what those sorts of things cost and talking about it. Hopefully I can get someone out to get a confirmation and estimate soon.
Worth talking to the water company. They may cover it if its before the meter, but not after.
It's right next to the house, and the meter is over in the sidewalk. Unless they've got the pipes doing loops, it's after the meter.
EDIT: I called and they said call a plumber or fix it yourself.
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I asked earlier but go no reply, maybe I'll make a thread about it, and I can't find the cooking OT: anyone has an induction range? They sound amazing but seem unreliable according to reviews. I'm also worried about spillage as often they aren't depressed to contain spillage, but it seems that good models should be able to avoid that to begin with with smart temp adjustment. Big energy savings too.
We used one for a whole summer and while it worked fine from a cooking perspective, it had very obnoxious controls. To maintain the sleek appearance, they were touch controls so to turn something on you had to press button to unlock the button pad, then press another button for which burner you wanted, then press another and hold as the setting climbed from 1 to 10 and let go where you wanted to end up. Once it was on, you could then press on the number 1-10 for each burner to go up and down, but only after pressing a button to unlock the button pad. The locking was not optional, as it was a safety issue.
So it was fine aesthetically and functionally but awful ergonomically. If it was our place, I would have torn it out and replaced it regardless the cost. We cook everyday and having to press multiple buttons all the time resulted in fingerprints and smudges everywhere and a significant effort to clean. And it did not perform better than our "classic" gas range at home that we ever noticed.
Edit: Totally forgot until I saw the picture below, since it had concentric surfaces, you also had to select whether you wanted small, medium or large surface, so an additional button press to get it going.
This is very similar to what we used except the controls were not knobs but subsurface. I don't remember the brand, but it was one of the big names you hear all the time.
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Haha that's fucking absurdWe used one for a whole summer and while it worked fine from a cooking perspective, it had very obnoxious controls. To maintain the sleek appearance, they were touch controls so to turn something on you had to press button to unlock the button pad, then press another button for which burner you wanted, then press another and hold as the setting climbed from 1 to 10 and let go where you wanted to end up. Once it was on, you could then press on the number 1-10 for each burner to go up and down, but only after pressing a button to unlock the button pad. The locking was not optional, as it was a safety issue.
So it was fine aesthetically and functionally but awful ergonomically. If it was our place, I would have torn it out and replaced it regardless the cost. We cook everyday and having to press multiple buttons all the time resulted in fingerprints and smudges everywhere and a significant effort to clean. And it did not perform better than our "classic" gas range at home that we ever noticed.
Edit: Totally forgot until I saw the picture below, since it had concentric surfaces, you also had to select whether you wanted small, medium or large surface, so an additional button press to get it going.
This is very similar to what we used except the controls were not knobs but subsurface. I don't remember the brand, but it was one of the big names you hear all the time.
I fucking hate touch controls on appliances. They never work with the tip of my finger so I end up bending my pinky and using the intermediate phalanges of it and they're always dirty from touching them.
We used one for a whole summer and while it worked fine from a cooking perspective, it had very obnoxious controls. To maintain the sleek appearance, they were touch controls so to turn something on you had to press button to unlock the button pad, then press another button for which burner you wanted, then press another and hold as the setting climbed from 1 to 10 and let go where you wanted to end up. Once it was on, you could then press on the number 1-10 for each burner to go up and down, but only after pressing a button to unlock the button pad. The locking was not optional, as it was a safety issue.
So it was fine aesthetically and functionally but awful ergonomically. If it was our place, I would have torn it out and replaced it regardless the cost. We cook everyday and having to press multiple buttons all the time resulted in fingerprints and smudges everywhere and a significant effort to clean. And it did not perform better than our "classic" gas range at home that we ever noticed.
Edit: Totally forgot until I saw the picture below, since it had concentric surfaces, you also had to select whether you wanted small, medium or large surface, so an additional button press to get it going.
This is very similar to what we used except the controls were not knobs but subsurface. I don't remember the brand, but it was one of the big names you hear all the time.
Weird. They are supposed to be safe since it's induction so I don't see why they would do that, you can put your hand on it and not feel a thing.
The surface can still be hot. And since it's integrated into the counter, the idea is that you can put other stuff on it casually, like say your purse that might have metallic things in it, or a spoon might roll over or a knife if you're chopping something near it.
I don't know if any of you worked with an architect before but it has been a bit draining for me, although I think it has more to do with the ones I'm working with. They are poor on communication and I feel they lack trust so I'm mostly left in the dark, given few options, so I constantly have to challenge them. They also have zero interest from what I can see in the interior design, unless it's something they'll design outright, unlike other firms that also do interior design, so that's another part I constantly have to handle. They try to build-in storage or other fixed stuff everywhere like furniture doesn't exist. Thankfully it's moving and I'm close to a finished plan, but I am probably going with another firm if I ever hire one again. Good thing I didn't accept the first plan they gave me.
Can't wait for this to be over and move on to the construction phase even if that won't be easy either.
Ah I see.
Can't wait for this to be over and move on to the construction phase even if that won't be easy either.
Ah I see.
Well to be honest you sound very particular and like things a certain way which is totally fine. Have you ever heard the saying "20% of the clients take up 80% of your time"? You sound like you're in that 20%. Most architects do things a certain way because that's how the vast majority of those client list likes it. To be fair to you you strike me as the type of person who would probably have been totally upfront with your opinions and ideas about your project but it didn't get through to the architect which sucks.
House renovations are stressful, they always will be. Good luck though and keep posting, I've really enjoyed reading about your progress
My thermostat says it's 74 in the house but sure as hell doesn't feel like 74. (It's hitting 100 here in Texas). I have an ac window unit that runs at 77 in my kids room upstairs that feels like it's freezing cold.
Had new siding installed this year and our insulation is up to Code so it may be time to look into air leakage in the ducts which I've always worried about. The air in a second room upstairs (no ac window unit) seeps into the room 7-9 seconds after the central ac kicks off but nowhere cold enough to cool the room.
Home ownership stinks sometimes.
My thermostat has helped me curb my bill. I keep it steady at 74 and my bill came out to $260 this month . I used to mess with the thermostat temp so much that it took my house a lot of work to cool off heat and my bills would frequently hit $400-$500 a month around this same time of the year
Had new siding installed this year and our insulation is up to Code so it may be time to look into air leakage in the ducts which I've always worried about. The air in a second room upstairs (no ac window unit) seeps into the room 7-9 seconds after the central ac kicks off but nowhere cold enough to cool the room.
Home ownership stinks sometimes.
My thermostat has helped me curb my bill. I keep it steady at 74 and my bill came out to $260 this month . I used to mess with the thermostat temp so much that it took my house a lot of work to cool off heat and my bills would frequently hit $400-$500 a month around this same time of the year
You can generally trust thermometers to do their jobs properly, but never trust two of them to agree with each other.
If you want to know if one room is hotter or colder than another, get a portable thermometer and physically carry it from one room to another. Note: A third thermometer might disagree with your existing two thermometers, and you'll have no way of knowing which thermometer is "right", but the portable thermometer will at least be able to tell you which room is hotter/colder.
Ha, yeah so I bought two sensors , one for the upstairs room and then i used the second to test every other room in the house, including the living room where my main ecobee is installed. The hottest room is the one upstairs that I mentioned earlier. The sensors taught me the temp I need to have my main thermostat set to to average the entire house temp at my desired number. It was very educational. I returned them after I learned all that I needed to know (I need my thermostat down here to remain at 74 to keep that room upstairs to hit 79)
I should get a different device to get a third opinion
When the hvac is running what does the air feel like when it comes out of a air vent? It should be rather cold like 55-60 degrees. If it doesn't feel cold you have something wrong with your system and should call a ac person.
Also where at in TX? I'm in Houston.
Austin.
I had a guy come out and test everything to a T. Took a lot of temperatures in the vents etc. he gave me three options
He said I could replace the evaporator coil for just under $3000 but he felt that would be a bandaid fix. He then has a note for "cond + cool prices at $7403
Option 2 was an entire new unit for $10K
Option 3 is hard to read but it says "Payne 3.5 SY's $7762" I guess another type of AC unit
The vents downstairs do feel like cold air is coming through but not the ones upstairs and I suspect duct work issues there (in fact, I can feel cold spots in the floor upstairs
Our bedroom downstairs is frigid but then it is the room closest to the ac unit. The living room has a vaulted ceiling (20 ft) and I suspect hot air is trapped up there and doesn't help
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it sounds like you just need it better balanced and more return airs.
get other quotes though. I put a brand new AC unit in an old 1960s ranch and it was 5500.
for our new house the entire HVAC install, ducks, vents, 2 ac condensors two blowers/furnance was 17k
they sort of do, you use HVAC dampers but not ideal.
but yea for upstairs downstairs there's no way to balance without two units.
I'll look into it, thanks. 17K for two units and the rest? Damn sounds good
Do brands matter ? I've had different "professionals" talk up different brands but I always assumed this was for kick backs or some shit.
any of the big ones should be fine, carrier, trane, etc. just get a warranty from the company doing the install and see how long they've been in business.
Nice view!sod installed. Backyard finally done-ish
And can I tell you how much I love underground utilities?
we completely lucked out with the view (was the last lot available).
And yeah...underground utilities are godly. I grew up in Atlanta, aka the forest moon of Endor. Heavy thunderstorm? Ice? Fuck your power lines.
I live in the hurricane-prone southeast coast and I can't figure out why power lines are above ground. Our power was out for over a month last year because of Florence.
So good news, I redid my floor plan and it's AWESOME; every room is "impactful" and roomy. Like I originally wanted, every room (except the bathroom) is also a sort of living room. Really helps to break the routine, and allows the living spaces to not be taxed by someone or the kids at the expense of other people. I joined the kitchen and the dining room by extending the kitchen counter into it, which is such a no brainer I should have thought about it from the start (and so should the architects, it changes everything!). Now the old chimney will be visible from all sides, nothing hiding it, and they should do something design-y for the range hood and its duct passing through it and out of the house on the other side, making it a sort of stand out piece like I saw in many references. Plus I made some storage counter-height but counter-depth instead of barely a foot deep but reaching the ceiling like they had done (and they could never really tell me what it would be used for), which is what allows me to make it all continuous with the kitchen and all of sudden I don't feel like I'm lacking any space at all: no more 18" dishwasher, no more 15cu fridge! 20cu, 24", and wine cooler will go from 12 bottles to 27 and I still got plenty of rooms for appliance storage and food storage. And all that without having ANY storage above the counters, only tablets which will be used to showcase nice stuff, a mix of practical and art, and some hanging copper pans on the walls and such.
The bedroom and office are now one room on the sunny side, which is ideal since I'll be increasingly working from home in the future, and the former bedroom (on the architect's plan) is made bigger by moving the bathroom a bit further right (we're already moving the bathroom from where it used to be, so it should be a non-issue) and becomes the living room. I'm going to go for a tankless water-heater too, so I save some closet space in the hall's closet.
Everything flows great, and I could easily turn the living room into a second bedroom if I wanted; the space for a closet is already there. If I did that, I would move the TV to the dining room above the counter where art will be for now, since it's a big room and already sort of feels like a living room.
If anyone of you ever have to redesign/layout a house and you have little space or want to save space, my advice is try to design the dining room as a living room-dining room combo. It is totally doable and makes perfect sense, especially if you make some L-shaped restaurant bench-like seating place which can serve as the equivalent of a living room's sectional. We spend a lot of time in the kitchen and dining area and if you make it comfy it totally works, and it's often a well lit area of the house. But do be mindful that you will have to deal with kitchen noise. If you want a secluded space then of course it doesn't work, but when I was looking to buy a house the number of houses that had non-functional living rooms with no place for a TV or no TV at all was the majority: people are unable to use their living rooms, they're just there to be there but are essentially never used. To be honest, having thought about this from the start, maybe I wouldn't even have made the extension! But I'm still glad I'm doing it because at the end of the day I wouldn't get the opportunity to add a room on this floor again.
I also secured the place in the living room that could eventually have a spiral staircase to a new floor, and that floor could hold a nice bathroom and two small rooms + an exterior spot. Adding the stairs would just make me lose a piece of furniture or two, if they aren't just moving above.
Now, I have to wait and see what the architects will say......
That is the single weakpoint that hits at me with the place I bought: I will never have a view on the sunset because of the damn three-story building next to mine, even though I can build on my roof my building is two story. I wonder if I could at least get access to the roof legally if I did build on top though... that would be killer. I gotta check with the municipality but they have been making it more difficult to build in general, idiots.
The bedroom and office are now one room on the sunny side, which is ideal since I'll be increasingly working from home in the future, and the former bedroom (on the architect's plan) is made bigger by moving the bathroom a bit further right (we're already moving the bathroom from where it used to be, so it should be a non-issue) and becomes the living room. I'm going to go for a tankless water-heater too, so I save some closet space in the hall's closet.
Everything flows great, and I could easily turn the living room into a second bedroom if I wanted; the space for a closet is already there. If I did that, I would move the TV to the dining room above the counter where art will be for now, since it's a big room and already sort of feels like a living room.
If anyone of you ever have to redesign/layout a house and you have little space or want to save space, my advice is try to design the dining room as a living room-dining room combo. It is totally doable and makes perfect sense, especially if you make some L-shaped restaurant bench-like seating place which can serve as the equivalent of a living room's sectional. We spend a lot of time in the kitchen and dining area and if you make it comfy it totally works, and it's often a well lit area of the house. But do be mindful that you will have to deal with kitchen noise. If you want a secluded space then of course it doesn't work, but when I was looking to buy a house the number of houses that had non-functional living rooms with no place for a TV or no TV at all was the majority: people are unable to use their living rooms, they're just there to be there but are essentially never used. To be honest, having thought about this from the start, maybe I wouldn't even have made the extension! But I'm still glad I'm doing it because at the end of the day I wouldn't get the opportunity to add a room on this floor again.
I also secured the place in the living room that could eventually have a spiral staircase to a new floor, and that floor could hold a nice bathroom and two small rooms + an exterior spot. Adding the stairs would just make me lose a piece of furniture or two, if they aren't just moving above.
Now, I have to wait and see what the architects will say......
Nice view!sod installed. Backyard finally done-ish
That is the single weakpoint that hits at me with the place I bought: I will never have a view on the sunset because of the damn three-story building next to mine, even though I can build on my roof my building is two story. I wonder if I could at least get access to the roof legally if I did build on top though... that would be killer. I gotta check with the municipality but they have been making it more difficult to build in general, idiots.
Some issues with my dishwasher with a milky residue remaining on my dishes leads me to now believe my house has a problem with hard water . No drying air, rinsing aid , gallons of vinegar have helped.
I just read the symptoms to look for and a shower having problems getting water out, stains on toilets, a new tub , caulking and now the dishwasher is probably all related to hard water.
Man I'm too stressed and disguised to think what I'll have to pay to fix this but I suspect it's the water heater which I have not done a good job maintaining. Question is if it'll be salvageable
I just read the symptoms to look for and a shower having problems getting water out, stains on toilets, a new tub , caulking and now the dishwasher is probably all related to hard water.
Man I'm too stressed and disguised to think what I'll have to pay to fix this but I suspect it's the water heater which I have not done a good job maintaining. Question is if it'll be salvageable
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Anyone familiar with smart glass/windows? The tech is getting cheaper and I'd like to consider it, hopefully my architects are familiar with it but probably not. Curious to know how people who did install them feel.
Well my problems got worse haha.
Went to flush my water heater. Cold water valve snaps clean off. I shut the main line to the house and have a plumber. Looking at the valve, I'm thinking okay, he gets another one and it's a 30 minute fix at most.
Nope
Sure enough, the person who installed the water heater soldered the valve to the inline pipe on the left and to the line that connects to the cold water chamber. So now he has to remove the entire pipe and reinstall things
I hate homeownership sometimes
edit: fixed. took two plumbers. one to start and the other to fix and redo what the first started. $300 all together but things are back to normal so im not complaining.
Went to flush my water heater. Cold water valve snaps clean off. I shut the main line to the house and have a plumber. Looking at the valve, I'm thinking okay, he gets another one and it's a 30 minute fix at most.
Nope
Sure enough, the person who installed the water heater soldered the valve to the inline pipe on the left and to the line that connects to the cold water chamber. So now he has to remove the entire pipe and reinstall things
I hate homeownership sometimes
edit: fixed. took two plumbers. one to start and the other to fix and redo what the first started. $300 all together but things are back to normal so im not complaining.
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whats the deductible?
what does it cover?
how much did you pay for the house vs what they are saying the house is worth.
It's brand new
Paid 500k and deductible is 1%
Coverages
dwelling = 480k
Dwelling extension = 20k
Personal property =200k
Personal liability = 200k
Medical payments = 100k
Back up sewer / drain = 10% of dwelling
Wow, that sounds like a great deal. I am paying about $950 for about the same terms. Which company?
200k personal liability? Don't know if it's the same as here, here it's usually between 1-2 millions. Usually called civil liability or some such.
I'm going to get an estimation from a contractor soon. Anything I should make sure of is in the contract? I've been told to make sure there are delay penalties, so that their sum goes down every day they go beyond the deadline. Anything else?
I got two quotes for the water line replacement, $3100 and $4300. Higher priced company is better rated, and higher because they want to remove and replace some concrete while the other guys say they can work around it. I'll pick tomorrow. Either way, I'm a sad homeowner. And I'll have to pay an electrician who-knows-what to ground my house afterwards.
That's really simple.
Basically, they'll dig a 3-foot deep hole outside of your house, near where your electrical panel is and where the power comes into your house. Then they'll tie a heavy-duty cable to a "ground plate", drop the plate into the hole, and push the dirt back in. They'll drill a tiny hole in your wall and feed the cable through, then hook the cable up to ground your electric panel. Done.
Aside from digging the hole, it should take less than an hour, barely a service call, plus the cost of the ground plate and the cable.
You could do it before your water main gets worked on, because there's no harm in double-grounding your system (electricity will just take whatever path is easiest), and then you won't have any downtime while your house is left ungrounded.
Wouldn't running ground through all the electrical end points be a big job?
I don't even want to deal with that stuff. There's been so much rain this year, I have spent all my free time cutting shrubs, weeding, trimming trees and mowing. I have half a mind to salt the whole damn thing and put paving stones everywhere.