The concrete valve box in the parkway outside my fence is submerged about 3" below grade, is this something i can dig out and reset or does the city need to be involved? Ive never done this before BTW so anything else i need to know would be great. Thanks!
I'm looking at buying a home that appears to be from the early 1900s, based on architectural features. The house is a brick foundation with metal siding that has held up rather well. The basement is dirt with a thin layer of cement in places. Obviously a bit damp. The roof from a quick once over appeared to be pretty much intact. No sections of missing or damaged shingles visible from the ground.
The inside appears to be in pretty good shape with no mold, damaged floors, or large pieces of the walls missing. But the paint is peeling in large sheets everywhere. Every wall looks like it is shedding, the ceiling all have paint hanging off, even the trim looks a bit shaggy. Is this water damage given the absence of any other signs? Could it be something else?
The home is foreclosure and has been vacant for at least three years and was a rental property before that. We are in Wisconsin so there is a lot of snow and temp changes. I'm thinking it's possible that it was given a quick shitty paint job when the bank acquired it and now it's falling off? Thoughts? Sorry, I didn't think to take any pictures at the time.
So, my wife picked up one of those soft-sided ("redneck") pools for this summer. It's about 15' in diameter, and about 3' deep. It's got a little pump to circulate the water. Despite my objections, it's now set up in the back yard. And I gotta say -- it's pretty refreshing.
So, I'm kind of interested in small pools now, especially after running across this article with really cool small pools that fit my modern tastes.
What would it take to put a small pool this size or smaller in a smaller in my backyard? I have a feeling the answer is going to be "too much", but why? What's the major cost? Can't we just concrete a box, and fill it with water? I feel like a "water feature" can be built somewhat affordably, but by the time they get to pool-sized, the costs have risen exponentially.
Hello /r/homeimprovement, I recently moved into a new apartment and signed a year long lease and have nice recessed lighting in the kitchen but it has a simple rocker light switch. I was hoping to replace it with a dimmer switch because the current brightness is too much to handle. Also, it is a single switch that controls all of the lights in the kitchen.
My questions are:
Thanks in advance for any help and information!
My wife and I will be moving into our own home in Atlanta, GA in the next month. Not much needs to be done as it was recently renovated; however, I'd like to know of any good references for fixing up parts of the house if need be. Really an overall general "renovation guide".
I've seen Renovation (4th Ed by Michael Litchfield) recommended, but are there any good websites or other reading materials? Also, are there any classes (online or in person) that would be worthwhile to give me more of a hands on feel of home improvements?
Didn't see this stickied, so I hope I'm not reposting, appreciate any advice!
I managed to break my Nest base plate/wiring harness. Any ideas on where to find a replacement? I emailed Nest and am waiting on a reply, but figured an aftermarket source might be cheaper or quicker.
Theres two levels in my house, and I'd like to throw together a partition that I can use to block off the stairwell and create some privacy between the two levels. The space is about 3 ft wide x 9 ft tall. I was just thinking of something like a wooden frame with some kind of sound dampening material to fill the space between, with maybe some handles so I can "plug up" the stairwell when I need to.
Any suggestions for cheap materials that I could use for this job?
My wife and I are looking at a house built in 1870. We both love teh older colonial homes. Some of the floors are uneven/not level, however the sellers have lived there for 30 years with no problem. They are reporting that it's settled and secure.
Has anyone had any experience with this? I know leveling the floors out is a big undertaking, but my wife and I are more than willing to live with it, assuming that it's structurally sound.
What do I want to look for to make sure that it's not going to be an issue down the road? I know to check the joists in the basement to see what shape they're in, but any other input/stories/advice is helpful.
We will be having the house inspected pre-purchase of course, but any help is helpful! :)
Before you downvote me - we bought a house, where the furnace and boiler are in the basement and about 4/5 the way walled off. We want to put in a door with a high-up latch so that the small children won't go back there and mess around.
When we moved in, our inspector told us to seal up a vent someone had put in the return duct next to the furnace. Something about the prev owner trying to draw cool air into the system during the summer. There was a baffle with markings, "Summer ← Winter ↑". Inspector said that's a big no-no; could draw ambient gas from around the furnace back into the ducts.
So, we want to put a door in, and given what the inspector said, I'm assuming that we don't want the door to go all the way up to the ceiling or close off the furnace area entirely - shouldn't any fumes be able to dissipate?
Then again, I've been in homes where the furnace and boiler are in the basement and closed off in a room - but I'm not sure if there are extra ventilation needs if you do that.
Lil help, b/c we are hiring a carpenter to build the door, but they probably will not have HVAC expertise.
Thanks!
EDIT: not a normal door situation; unusual size opening, one side is wood, one side is concrete, top is a steel beam. That's why we need someone to build us a door.
More than two weeks ago, I switched ant baits from Ant-Kil from Protexal to Terro liquid. I had been using the Ant-kil for a week before switching. Since then I have seen the ants come in waves, each trough bringing hope of victory in this long battle, but they just keep coming. At peak, the counters are swarming, then they seem to fade to just a few and sometimes none, but then another wave hits. They are currently swarming the counter, still going nuts over the Terro bait.
What is the longest amount of time anyone has continually fed Terro to ants and still had them? Has anyone reached the point of thinking that Terro was just not going to work for them?
All the stories I've heard of Terro make it sound like magic, but it's not working yet for me.
I am looking to do a 20' x 12' single story home extension in Gatineau (near Ottawa, Canada). The one quote I got was for $65k with a new concrete foundation. Can a project like this be done using Helical Piles? I don't know much about them, but the little reading I have done makes me think it would be possible. Would this significantly reduce my cost?
I currently have a bit of a swamp in my backyard that I plan on taking care of with a french drain that will empty into the storm sewer on the other side of my property. While I am doing this, I also want to run buried downspout extensions from the swamp side of the house over to the storm sewer as well.
I was planning on running the downspout line through the french drain pipe so that I don't have to do two separate runs across the yard. Is there any reason that I shouldn't do this? I am in the midwest.
proposed plan: http://ift.tt/1fASlE8
I've seen a bunch of videos where crown molding is installed, then caulked, and then painted...which makes sense that way. However, we are painting all of our crown molding before it is installed to reduce the taping and trim painting required.
With this pre-painting route, how do we caulk and it not get messy and still look clean along the edge? Is caulking always necessary?
I have a Guardian GF8100D20MU11B furnace that has been making a noise that sounds like the squirrel cage fans are off-balance and grinding against the inside of the housing.
What's perplexing, though, is that it only occurs when the fan has been cycling for a few hours - it's initially is very quiet, though you can hear a faint knock. As time goes on, it gets worse and worse, until you hear a cycling scraping sound.
I have taken the assembly out, and it turns freely with no noise or contact on the fan housing by the fan blades. It is relatively clean inside, with no foreign objects. I re-adjusted the blades so that they were equidistant between both sides of the fan housing. There is a faint amount of wobble on both sides, but, again, there is no scraping sounds when I spin it by hand.
I placed the assembly back into the furnace and started it back up. You can hear a faint "tick tick" sound as the motor runs - but it doesn't get BAD until it's been on a few hours - in this case, I installed the assembly at about noon, and at about 10PM, I decided to turn the furnace off due to the noise getting bad.
My question is two part. One, at this point, does this sound like a motor problem? Because it sure sounds like it to me. (As the motor gets warmer, something gets out of whack, causes the assembly to go off balance.) I found the motor for about $150 and can replace it myself, because my local HVAC guys want about $700... ( Part # 024-34491-000 )
Two, I have a 2000sqft tri-level house with 14 vents, and three large returns....I've been told by two contractors that the furnace I have is way too big for the house. It's 100,000 BTU, and I live in Denver. This is the second fan issue I've had since moving in, and I'm told that due to the ducting I have, the motor is probably freewheeling. I replaced the original motor about 2 years back as it had overheated and seized. (Likely me using anti-allergen filters, though I have to wonder about this as well.)
Should I just pay someone to install a new furnace? Keep replacing motors as they burn out?
Thank you!
I have a 30-year old AC wall-through unit in a guest house that's about 450 square feet. The unit is a Friedrich. I want to replace it with a new one that will fit in the same sleeve, preferably a 230W one with a heat pump built in. Any advice on who makes good units that will fit in the old wall sleeve (which is ~25.5"h x 17.5"w)? I like LG appliances but it's got to fit.
I have some very narrow windows on either side of my front door that need some sort of blinds or curtains. Ideally, I would like to put up something translucent-- that will allow light in, but not allow people to see inside.
The problem is that the window frames are 6" wide and maybe 5-6 feet tall. I've looked on [Select Blinds](www.selectblinds.com) and they don't seem to sell custom blinds that are that narrow.
If I go with curtains, I would prefer to have them sit inside the window sill and not outside of it, if that makes sense. Even if the curtains I ultimately find were to be hung over the window frame and not inside it, there's still only ~1 foot between the door frame and the wall, so it's not much space. I've also shopped around in big box stores a little bit, and curtain rods and curtains are all much longer than this.
Are there some other options that I'm overlooking here, or am I going to have to try to make my own curtain rods and curtains for this?
