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Post by Buon Funerale Amigos on Dec 18, 2018 8:15:03 GMT -5
The whole thing only cost about $100 and 4 trips to the hardware store after I thought I had everything. A few years ago I went to the hardware store with my dad, and when we went up to pay, the cashier said, "Ah, working on some plumbing. See you again in an hour." Sure enough... |
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Dec 18, 2018 9:35:56 GMT -5
So, a question for the crowd...
Since Saturday night we've been hearing very intermittent electronic squeaks/chirps in the middle of the night. It may be happening at other times, since night is the only time we're upstairs completely silent, but who even knows.
They have not been regular - so we're pretty sure it's not the smoke detector or CO detector dying; those would be much more persistent. I heard it once last night; my husband a few times, but definitely not every 5 minutes or anything.
Besides replacing the CO detectors, which we were doing anyway (they're about 7 years old), any ideas on what it might be?
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Post by WKRP Jimmy Drop on Dec 19, 2018 9:37:43 GMT -5
So, a question for the crowd... Since Saturday night we've been hearing very intermittent electronic squeaks/chirps in the middle of the night. It may be happening at other times, since night is the only time we're upstairs completely silent, but who even knows. They have not been regular - so we're pretty sure it's not the smoke detector or CO detector dying; those would be much more persistent. I heard it once last night; my husband a few times, but definitely not every 5 minutes or anything. Besides replacing the CO detectors, which we were doing anyway (they're about 7 years old), any ideas on what it might be?
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Dec 19, 2018 9:59:31 GMT -5
So, a question for the crowd... Since Saturday night we've been hearing very intermittent electronic squeaks/chirps in the middle of the night. It may be happening at other times, since night is the only time we're upstairs completely silent, but who even knows. They have not been regular - so we're pretty sure it's not the smoke detector or CO detector dying; those would be much more persistent. I heard it once last night; my husband a few times, but definitely not every 5 minutes or anything. Besides replacing the CO detectors, which we were doing anyway (they're about 7 years old), any ideas on what it might be?
Sadly, the only R2 in the house is my French Press, so if that's come to life... |
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Post by WKRP Jimmy Drop on Dec 19, 2018 15:31:30 GMT -5
Sadly, the only R2 in the house is my French Press, so if that's come to life... It would be a Christmas miracle! |
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Dec 20, 2018 10:29:29 GMT -5
Sadly, the only R2 in the house is my French Press, so if that's come to life... It would be a Christmas miracle! Indeed! Weirdly, it hasn't happened again - at least not that I've heard - so now I wonder if it was somehow related to my dad and brother being here. I dunno. They didn't bring anything out of the ordinary with them. |
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Post by nowimnothing on Jan 15, 2019 19:18:15 GMT -5
Got the tub, shower and new windows in over the holidays. I just paid for it, no real work on my end. Last weekend I noticed some wetness in the basement wall below the new bathroom. I hoped it was just left over from the construction but this past weekend it was much worse. I spent half a day tearing through the ceiling and walls tracking it down to the drain pipe from the bath sink. It had rusted through in several places. The second half of the day was spent getting parts and trying to wedge a new pipe in there. I had to run it 4' horizontally through the studs which meant cutting a few access holes in my dining room wall. Seems to be working now, guess I will be putting up dry wall next weekend.   |
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Jan 15, 2019 22:03:13 GMT -5
We got a Roomba for Christmas, finally used it the first time today (it took 18 days to get here), and I have to say it did a good job. It just sorta wanders around, without much of a pattern, but the actual cleaning is good. Got up against the baseboards, fit under the coffee table, etc. it did get stuck on some cords, but I can move those. I did lead it back to its home, we'll see if it can find that on its own next time.
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Baron von Costume
TI Forumite
Like an iron maiden made of pillows... the punishment is decadence!
Posts: 4,684 
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Post by Baron von Costume on Jan 16, 2019 15:22:13 GMT -5
So I finally managed to find some lead paint testers (Canada banned lead paint earlier than the US so they are very hard to find here) and sure enough one of the base layers on my banister is lead as I worried it might be.
Now I have to decide if I'm going to pay for a professional to remove it... or give up on my hopes of seeing if there's a nice wood banister under there and just painting the 8th or 9th layer over it.
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Post by nowimnothing on Jan 16, 2019 18:51:09 GMT -5
We got a Roomba for Christmas, finally used it the first time today (it took 18 days to get here), and I have to say it did a good job. It just sorta wanders around, without much of a pattern, but the actual cleaning is good. Got up against the baseboards, fit under the coffee table, etc. it did get stuck on some cords, but I can move those. I did lead it back to its home, we'll see if it can find that on its own next time. We got a Deebot for Christmas which is like a cheap Roomba but with decent reviews. I have been pleasantly surprised at how good it is. It won't replace a traditional vacuum but it certainly means we have to vacuum a lot less often. I love coming home and seeing the little tracks where it cleaned up the crumbs the kids left the night before. A little slave robot that cleans up while you are at work, what is there not to love? |
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Jan 16, 2019 20:33:12 GMT -5
We got a Roomba for Christmas, finally used it the first time today (it took 18 days to get here), and I have to say it did a good job. It just sorta wanders around, without much of a pattern, but the actual cleaning is good. Got up against the baseboards, fit under the coffee table, etc. it did get stuck on some cords, but I can move those. I did lead it back to its home, we'll see if it can find that on its own next time. We got a Deebot for Christmas which is like a cheap Roomba but with decent reviews. I have been pleasantly surprised at how good it is. It won't replace a traditional vacuum but it certainly means we have to vacuum a lot less often. I love coming home and seeing the little tracks where it cleaned up the crumbs the kids left the night before. A little slave robot that cleans up while you are at work, what is there not to love? Quite honestly we don’t vacuum nearly as often as we should so this will help pick up the slack. We’ll still thoroughly mop and vacuum every so often though. |
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Post by ganews on Jan 17, 2019 16:03:14 GMT -5
I replaced my kitchen sink disposal, and it didn't require any extra trips to Lowes. I had been planning to do it after the shutdown so I could borrow a lab jack from work, but it wasn't so bad. Now I have to find a place to store the old unit; I can't have the county pick it up until they take my old basement couch a week from Friday.
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Post by Buon Funerale Amigos on Jan 17, 2019 23:08:39 GMT -5
So I finally managed to find some lead paint testers (Canada banned lead paint earlier than the US so they are very hard to find here) and sure enough one of the base layers on my banister is lead as I worried it might be. Now I have to decide if I'm going to pay for a professional to remove it... or give up on my hopes of seeing if there's a nice wood banister under there and just painting the 8th or 9th layer over it. There's a soy-based stripper specifically designed for removing lead paint safely which renders the lead non-toxic for safe disposal. I've seen it demoed, but haven't actually used it myself and I don't know how easy it is to get in Canada. products.franmar.com/products/690pb-lead-paint-remover-lead-out |
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Baron von Costume
TI Forumite
Like an iron maiden made of pillows... the punishment is decadence!
Posts: 4,684
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Post by Baron von Costume on Jan 18, 2019 10:43:52 GMT -5
So I finally managed to find some lead paint testers (Canada banned lead paint earlier than the US so they are very hard to find here) and sure enough one of the base layers on my banister is lead as I worried it might be. Now I have to decide if I'm going to pay for a professional to remove it... or give up on my hopes of seeing if there's a nice wood banister under there and just painting the 8th or 9th layer over it. There's a soy-based stripper specifically designed for removing lead paint safely which renders the lead non-toxic for safe disposal. I've seen it demoed, but haven't actually used it myself and I don't know how easy it is to get in Canada. products.franmar.com/products/690pb-lead-paint-remover-lead-outinteresting, though to be truly safe you'd still have to tent the area for any little bits. still worth a look. |
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Jan 23, 2019 10:05:41 GMT -5
You guys, I ordered a Hoover Spotless carpet/upholstery cleaner and it came yesterday and I used it on a few spots on our living room carpet last night. It was truly amazing and gross how much dirty water came out. I ALMOST wish I had gotten a full upright steam cleaner, but that didn't seem necessary. I mostly wanted it for high traffic areas and pet stains.
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Post by ganews on Jan 23, 2019 10:22:32 GMT -5
Oh and despite my misgivings literally every company I talked to does internal drains unless you've got serious foundational damage issues. I picked what I think is a good price for a good service, now I'm just counting the days until mid-January when they'll actually do the work. I put in a claim with the homeowner's insurance, and now that the inspector has been out we can finally start to move things out of the basement space where they'll be working. We have to peel up the edge of the carpet too, otherwise they'll do it for us and probably less careful of a job than we'd like. When it's all over there will be a 2-foot cut out of the base of the drywall, which will require another contractor or some baseboard or something. Sigh. I'm very interested to learn how this comes out. I'm researching basement drainage and it's almost mind-boggling. I'd like to avoid digging but I'm not sure that's going to be possible since my old house is on a sandstone foundation rather than a modern block or pured concrete so that adds a layer of "it's always going to be more porous" to the mix.
My basement is at least only "semi-finished" (meaning, it had a really shitty finishing job by the previous owner that I've ended up tearing out piece by piece as I've needed to fix things hiding under the "finishing") so a more major digup of the basement wouldn't be huge. *mind drifts away to digging the basement a foot deeper to get more head room...*
The contractors got here 30 minutes late this morning and I can already tell this is going to be a nightmare. They were not aware the basement was carpeted. They have to go back to the office to pick up drop cloths and the new sump pump. They think this is going to take into tomorrow; the parent company assured me it was a one-day job. Massive rainfall predicted tonight. At least I convinced them to tie to the existing sump pump line. |
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patbat
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OK です か
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Post by patbat on Jan 23, 2019 13:47:02 GMT -5
My wife and I were homeless couch-surfers over the holidays due to a rewire job gone horribly off the rails, AMA
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Post by ganews on Jan 23, 2019 13:58:08 GMT -5
The contractors got here 30 minutes late this morning and I can already tell this is going to be a nightmare. They were not aware the basement was carpeted. They have to go back to the office to pick up drop cloths and the new sump pump. They think this is going to take into tomorrow; the parent company assured me it was a one-day job. Massive rainfall predicted tonight. At least I convinced them to tie to the existing sump pump line. Welp, they just left for the day, carpet pulled up and drywall cut. About 2.5 hours of actual work. The big damn rains tonight are going to seep and run over the slab to even more carpet. Tomorrow they will spend the whole day jackhammering and laying down the drains, which they project to take about 7 hours. Meaning the one-day promise from the company, which I just heard again this week, was a lie. |
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Post by Not a real doctor on Jan 23, 2019 14:24:07 GMT -5
My wife and I were homeless couch-surfers over the holidays due to a rewire job gone horribly off the rails, AMA Total rewire (like, knob and tube to romex), room job?
I need to get some work done in my kitchen and I'm sacred of both the cost, and the potential for "you know the rest of the wiring in this place is totally fucked, right?"
Maybe I don't have a question.
Wait, am I fucked?
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Post by Not a real doctor on Jan 23, 2019 14:25:48 GMT -5
The contractors got here 30 minutes late this morning and I can already tell this is going to be a nightmare. They were not aware the basement was carpeted. They have to go back to the office to pick up drop cloths and the new sump pump. They think this is going to take into tomorrow; the parent company assured me it was a one-day job. Massive rainfall predicted tonight. At least I convinced them to tie to the existing sump pump line. Welp, they just left for the day, carpet pulled up and drywall cut. About 2.5 hours of actual work. The big damn rains tonight are going to seep and run over the slab to even more carpet. Tomorrow they will spend the whole day jackhammering and laying down the drains, which they project to take about 7 hours. Meaning the one-day promise from the company, which I just heard again this week, was a lie. Care to share the parent company? I live in bumfuck nowhere so it's doubtful any of the national companies even serve where I am. |
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moimoi
AV Clubber
Posts: 5,091 
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Post by moimoi on Jan 23, 2019 15:34:30 GMT -5
You guys, I ordered a Hoover Spotless carpet/upholstery cleaner and it came yesterday and I used it on a few spots on our living room carpet last night. It was truly amazing and gross how much dirty water came out. I ALMOST wish I had gotten a full upright steam cleaner, but that didn't seem necessary. I mostly wanted it for high traffic areas and pet stains. I have one too! I love that thing, though it’s rather ear-splittingly loud. It has saved my car’s upholstery and (unfortunately) the mattress in my Airbnb suite. |
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Baron von Costume
TI Forumite
Like an iron maiden made of pillows... the punishment is decadence!
Posts: 4,684
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Post by Baron von Costume on Jan 23, 2019 15:47:45 GMT -5
I have my parents' old "little green machine" bissell but the hose is leaking now and I think it's time to buy one of my own.
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Jan 23, 2019 15:49:10 GMT -5
You guys, I ordered a Hoover Spotless carpet/upholstery cleaner and it came yesterday and I used it on a few spots on our living room carpet last night. It was truly amazing and gross how much dirty water came out. I ALMOST wish I had gotten a full upright steam cleaner, but that didn't seem necessary. I mostly wanted it for high traffic areas and pet stains. I have one too! I love that thing, though it’s rather ear-splittingly loud. It has saved my car’s upholstery and (unfortunately) the mattress in my Airbnb suite. It is a bit loud, though I didn't find it too obnoxious, about the same as our vacuum. But I am now kind of jazzed to use it more again tonight upstairs. Don't know why I waited so long to look for that sort of thing. (And yes, cleaning car upholstery too!) Also watching the hose self-clean is kinda spiffy. |
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Post by ganews on Jan 23, 2019 15:55:26 GMT -5
Welp, they just left for the day, carpet pulled up and drywall cut. About 2.5 hours of actual work. The big damn rains tonight are going to seep and run over the slab to even more carpet. Tomorrow they will spend the whole day jackhammering and laying down the drains, which they project to take about 7 hours. Meaning the one-day promise from the company, which I just heard again this week, was a lie. Care to share the parent company? I live in bumfuck nowhere so it's doubtful any of the national companies even serve where I am. Aquaguard, which I think is centered on Philly/Jersey/Baltimore zone. I'm probably being too hard on them, because I think this is just the reality of contractors and the whole project has me anxious. They haven't screwed up anything material yet, and the head guy agreed with my idea to connect to the existing sump pump line instead of digging a whole new thing. We'll see how this goes. About $7200 for 2 of 4 walls and the waiting list discount. The lowest bid I considered was $5k, and there was another even lower that I didn't have a good vibe from, but I ended up going with the bigger company on the idea of more reliability in a lifetime warranty. |
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patbat
TI Forumite
OK です か
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Post by patbat on Jan 23, 2019 16:07:58 GMT -5
My wife and I were homeless couch-surfers over the holidays due to a rewire job gone horribly off the rails, AMA Total rewire (like, knob and tube to romex), room job?
I need to get some work done in my kitchen and I'm sacred of both the cost, and the potential for "you know the rest of the wiring in this place is totally fucked, right?"
Maybe I don't have a question.
Wait, am I fucked?
Yep, total house rewire. We still had the original wiring from when the house was built in 1950--no grounded plugs or anything. If I'd plugged in my amplifier wrong, I could have killed myself. We got a low-ish quote from a retired electrician who told us he could do it room to room over a couple months while we still lived in the house, and a substantially higher (3 times higher) quote from a big, well-rated local company who told us if we vacated the house they could have it done in 5 days, and like optimistic idiots we went with the latter option. That 5 days turned into 12 days, then ended up being 7 weeks, primarily because the office kept pulling our electricians out of the house to go knock out smaller one-day jobs and not noticing that our job was dragging on as a result. Ultimately, we ended up crashing on various in-laws' couches and guest beds from mid-November until the first full week of January, and since there was no penalty clause for them not completing the job within the specified timeframe we still paid through the nose. I should also mention that in the course of the job our HVAC unexpectedly died, so the money we were reserving to have some plumbing work done was spent on a new unit, and that the utility company poked a fucking hole in our roof when they were moving the electrical mast and meter which was another chunk of money gone. tl;dr: Dude, you are SO fucked. |
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Baron von Costume
TI Forumite
Like an iron maiden made of pillows... the punishment is decadence!
Posts: 4,684
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Post by Baron von Costume on Jan 23, 2019 16:11:14 GMT -5
I have one too! I love that thing, though it’s rather ear-splittingly loud. It has saved my car’s upholstery and (unfortunately) the mattress in my Airbnb suite. It is a bit loud, though I didn't find it too obnoxious, about the same as our vacuum. But I am now kind of jazzed to use it more again tonight upstairs. Don't know why I waited so long to look for that sort of thing. (And yes, cleaning car upholstery too!) Also watching the hose self-clean is kinda spiffy. The hose self clean on the new models is definitely tempting me to get a new one. |
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Post by Dr. Rumak on Jan 23, 2019 19:44:57 GMT -5
I should also mention that in the course of the job our HVAC unexpectedly died, so the money we were reserving to have some plumbing work done was spent on a new unit, and that the utility company poked a fucking hole in our roof when they were moving the electrical mast and meter which was another chunk of money gone. And here, I've been upset with myself for getting a new HVAC before getting a new roof because the roofers drove nails right through my new HVAC pipes, thus requiring me to have that work done again. It's good to know that I probably would have been screwed no matter which order I did it in. |
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Post by ganews on Jan 24, 2019 8:43:23 GMT -5
The contractors got here 30 minutes late this morning and I can already tell this is going to be a nightmare. They were not aware the basement was carpeted. They have to go back to the office to pick up drop cloths and the new sump pump. They think this is going to take into tomorrow; the parent company assured me it was a one-day job. Massive rainfall predicted tonight. At least I convinced them to tie to the existing sump pump line. Welp, they just left for the day, carpet pulled up and drywall cut. About 2.5 hours of actual work. The big damn rains tonight are going to seep and run over the slab to even more carpet. Tomorrow they will spend the whole day jackhammering and laying down the drains, which they project to take about 7 hours. Meaning the one-day promise from the company, which I just heard again this week, was a lie. I probably should have pulled up the carpet before having this work done. The ongoing rain makes it now clear where the major leakage is coming from: the hole in one cinder block that brings in the city water pipe to my main valve. The slab is just enough off perfect level that it runs in exactly the direction of the main carpet dampness, too. I'm not cursing my decision, because I don't think there really a way to combat this - put some sort of filler compound into the immediately surrounding blocks and the water will still find a way. And it's abundantly clear that the cinder blocks many feet away on that wall are filling up with water, and I have always been able to see efflorescence in the crawl space, so this was going to need to be done sooner or later regardless. It does confirm that I was right about where not to pay for new drainage.
45 minutes and counting past where the foreman asked me if he could start early. I'm looking at the clock even though I know perfectly well they're going to be very late.
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Post by nowimnothing on Jan 24, 2019 19:05:36 GMT -5
When it rains. it pours. Just as I was wrapping up the drywall over my fixed bath drain pipe we hit a cold spell and the water pipes to the tub froze and burst. Luckily most of the water ended up in the garage rather than the adjacent living area. But I had to tear out a lot of soaking wet drywall and insulation to get to them. Of course it was not just one hole, but 4 in different pipes.  |
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Post by ganews on Jan 25, 2019 0:02:46 GMT -5
Welp, they just left for the day, carpet pulled up and drywall cut. About 2.5 hours of actual work. The big damn rains tonight are going to seep and run over the slab to even more carpet. Tomorrow they will spend the whole day jackhammering and laying down the drains, which they project to take about 7 hours. Meaning the one-day promise from the company, which I just heard again this week, was a lie. I probably should have pulled up the carpet before having this work done. The ongoing rain makes it now clear where the major leakage is coming from: the hole in one cinder block that brings in the city water pipe to my main valve. The slab is just enough off perfect level that it runs in exactly the direction of the main carpet dampness, too. I'm not cursing my decision, because I don't think there really a way to combat this - put some sort of filler compound into the immediately surrounding blocks and the water will still find a way. And it's abundantly clear that the cinder blocks many feet away on that wall are filling up with water, and I have always been able to see efflorescence in the crawl space, so this was going to need to be done sooner or later regardless. It does confirm that I was right about where not to pay for new drainage. 45 minutes and counting past where the foreman asked me if he could start early. I'm looking at the clock even though I know perfectly well they're going to be very late.
Picture time. This is the sorry state of affairs - my new neighbor's sump pump outputs in his backyard, which is also the bottom of a hill, creating a little river. That flows around the corner and makes a lake over the fenceline onto my property. That water flows across my driveway and yard toward the street, soaking my front yard terribly.
After they cut the bottom foot of drywall on Tuesday, I could see that water supply pipe. Seepage just started this morning; this is me catching water in old towels before the contractors got here. They then jackhammered ~1 foot of the slab at the border, and had a hell of a time working in this crawlspace.
They filled buckets with excavated earth and gravel from the trench and handed them out through the window. It's impressive that the yard in front of the carport didn't get torn up even more from the crazy rainfall this am.
The trench is filled with water-conducting pipe and covered with gravel. The cinder blocks get drainage holes put in and covered with the black grate. The new sump pump is installed in the corner, and they put the out-pipe up and through the wall and connected to my already-buried PVC sump pipe that carries to the end of the yard by the street.
 I didn't get much education about the new pump. It has a batter backup and is 10" lower than the line for the old pump. Still, for a couple hours after they were done I only heard the old pump running. I was gone in the evening, and now I don't hear anything; I'm going to read up on the model. The cement over the trench will be set by the end of tomorrow. It's supposed to rain again Tuesday, so we'll have a test soon. Now to think about repairing or covering the drywall gap and putting the carpet back down. That's more work, but I'm glad to have the big step over finally. Then I tackle dealing with this neighbor. Then the county, because we've got a street full of water/ice and something needs to be done.
Ultimately I guess I was satisfied with the Aquaguard sub-contractor. He answered my questions, and they kept everything downstairs pretty clean with plastic. All the work today was done with the sliding glass door and windows open, so at least the house didn't freeze. The grass will grow back. He mentioned yesterday that he was picking crew up from Home Depot, and I saw him handing cash to the two Latino dudes at the end of the day. I gave them an extra $40 because why not, it must be a hard way to earn a living.
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