Home Improvement Thread

[NTP66]

I found a 12’ Bumble online and bought it. Inflated it to make sure it was good, and was surprised to see that the damn thing is nearly 6’ in diameter, too. Gonna be a crowded lawn this Christmas.

[blackjack68]

I want to be a dentist!

[MrKennethTKangaroo]

The water dispenser on the refrigerator is not working. Light turns on when the button is pressed. I hear a click and electronic buzz. Yet no water.

A. Did the earth run out of water

B. If the answer to A. Is “no” then what happened

[meow]

When did you change the filter last?

[Shyster]

Had the same thing happen to me. Whirlpool fridge. Icemaker stopped working too. Checked and changed the filter, and that wasn't it. I'm no help, though, because I've never bothered getting it fixed.

[MrKennethTKangaroo]

When did you change the filter last?

Well sir I moved in last Monday.....so.....never.

That being said I took the filter out, looked at it and put it back. No changes. Maybe I should blow on it like a Nintendo cartridge

[dodint]

Is spittle in a filter similar to sneezing in a butthole?

[Troy Loney]

Got our roof replaced last week. Got three quotes and went with the cheapest. I mean, not just like cheapest, but 50% of the top quote and 5000 less than the middle estimate.

My neighbor used to work for the guys I picked and eased some of my concerns about going with such a low offer.

At this point, I would recommend them as it looks great and they ended up having to replace a lot of planks. It was Bella construction, so if anyone has any horror stories about those guys, I am willing to hear.

[robbiestoupe]

Got our roof replaced last week. Got three quotes and went with the cheapest. I mean, not just like cheapest, but 50% of the top quote and 5000 less than the middle estimate.

My neighbor used to work for the guys I picked and eased some of my concerns about going with such a low offer.

At this point, I would recommend them as it looks great and they ended up having to replace a lot of planks. It was Bella construction, so if anyone has any horror stories about those guys, I am willing to hear.

I may give them a call as I have some fascia work that needs done.

[dodint]

My HVAC guys are killing it. They were only supposed to take the tanks out yesterday. Came home and the ductwork was pulled out along with the top half of the furnace, in addition to the tanks. One of them is going bear hunting in McKean County on Friday and is super motivated to GTFO.

Also, of course it snowed this morning. Our space heaters are doing work though.

[DigitalGypsy66]

I think the HVAC installers pad their installation times, just in case there are issues. We had all the old ductwork replaced and a new heat pump/air handler put in two years ago. They said three days, and were done in a day and a half. Whatever, they did a great job and left no trace behind - not even a thread of insulation on the carpet.

[Kane]

Most business pad their time a bit. I used to add 2-3 days onto card access installs, in case we ran into tricky cable pulls or some such nonsense.

Some of the old ass buildings in Pittsburgh were nightmares.

[dodint]

I think it was NTP66 that put me on it but I really like the Ecobee 3 Lite so far. It'll take a month of use before I get the really deep metrics and stuff, but it's interesting to see how much my new system is actually running. It charts the target temp, inside temp, and outside temp on a graph so you can watch the fluctuations. I knew my house was fairly well insulated but I was very surprised to see how little heat it loses overnight and that the unit barely runs until the morning. I never would have guessed that.

The only thing it doesn't do that I thought it would is tell me when the supplementary electric heat is running rather than the heat pump, when it gets really cold. That's the most important thing to know and it doesn't appear to have that capability.

[DigitalGypsy66]

Did you get a variable speed heat pump? Those are great. My American Standard thermostat shows a lot of that data, including the different phases of cooling (ie the variable part). Very cool to see a graph of how much we're using our heat pump.

[dodint]

Yeah, two-stage. It's overkill for the house. It looks like an industrial unit that should be attached to an apartment building. When they did the initial loadout test the air was coming through really loud with our old style narrow-opening registers. Under normal operating conditions it's fine.

Amana High-Efficiency 2-Speed Heat Pump System 18 seer @ 3 ton rated with Amana Indoor Fan/Coil Unit and Auxiliary Heat Package 15 kw rated. In a house that has about 1050sqft.

We bought it for our eventual expansion. So far the second stage hasn't kicked in and probably never will as the house is currently configured.

[dodint]

Going from an oil furnace with basement tanks to an outside heat pump freed up a ton of much needed space:





The air handler is obscured by the chimney in the second picture, you can see the trunk for the expansion coming off of it to the right.
I'm going to paint that wall this weekend and then look for some utility shelves to throw in that space. When we do the expansion that chimney is going away which will give us even more options both upstairs and in the basement.

It's been a good year for the house. We've added the whole home filtration system for the well water, installed a driveway, and now this. Other than small odds and ends I'm going to rest on this laurel for a while until we start talking to the architect again about expansion in 2022. We have the concept plans done but we need to progress to builder plans.

Due note that those crazy bright directional LED lights cannot be photographed.

[AuthorTony]

Has anyone applied UV window tint to their house windows and, if so, does it actually work?

[dodint]

We plan to do that with the expansion. I can recommend a good residential tint installer if you go that route; or if you just want to talk to them about it.

[AuthorTony]

Can you PM me their details? Thanks!

I'm going to turn 2 bedrooms into one writing space/movie memorabilia room and I want to cut back on the amount of UV light coming in so my crap doesn't get faded and ruined.

[dodint]

Blackout Tinting in Latrobe, ask for Dean Marks. Mention me and that you shot the Delorean and you'll have a pretty good conversation starter.
https://blackoutempire.com/residential-window-tinting/

They're a pretty big operation, I imagine they'll be happy to come up your way. They advertise 'surrounding counties' as their service area.

[NTP66]

I think it was NTP66 that put me on it but I really like the Ecobee 3 Lite so far. It'll take a month of use before I get the really deep metrics and stuff, but it's interesting to see how much my new system is actually running. It charts the target temp, inside temp, and outside temp on a graph so you can watch the fluctuations. I knew my house was fairly well insulated but I was very surprised to see how little heat it loses overnight and that the unit barely runs until the morning. I never would have guessed that.

The only thing it doesn't do that I thought it would is tell me when the supplementary electric heat is running rather than the heat pump, when it gets really cold. That's the most important thing to know and it doesn't appear to have that capability.

Make sure you check out https://beestat.io/ for enhanced data (much better than ecobee's).

[dodint]

I dunno. Feels like homework again.

[NTP66]

Source of the post ue note that those crazy bright directional LED lights cannot be photographed.

They would blind anyone looking at the photo, too...

[NTP66]

I dunno. Feels like homework again.

In that case, just sign up. This is what you get:

[tifosi77]

Current fridge/freezer temperature settings at casa de Tif:

Fridge: 37°F
Freezer: 0°F

Actual temperatures:

Fridge: 54°F
Freezer: 33°F

Alert message telling me to change the water filter that has only been in the thing since late-October.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFf