Fifth Avenue Forum

What are the odds that it leaks after installation, though? It should be tested prior to the pour, and if that's good, it's going to be encased in concrete.

My parents have the heat source (wood and coal furnace) in a work shop about 100 feet from the house. insulated pex lines take heated water from there to the house to heat the house. They've had it installed for ~7 or so years now. Not a single leak.

5th avenue place dahntahn has heated sidewalks, which is why when (back in the old days) it snowed, every sidewalk in town was a disgrace except for the block surrounding that building

Anyone got some nice shelving for rough totes? Garage or basement?

I'm looking to get some storage going and the more I look, the more I'm wondering if I should just get some 2x4s, some plywood, and build them myself.

Get some 2x4s and build it yourself

Buy lumber? Now? What is he, rich?

Argh, me nards! lol

Meijer and Menard's, the icons of the Midwest.

What are the odds that it leaks after installation, though? It should be tested prior to the pour, and if that's good, it's going to be encased in concrete.

Expansion/contraction of the concrete relative to the tubing. Sometimes you'll have a very small, undetectable small leak that will propagate over time. If done right most likely it won't leak

The steel tubes could have similar cracks or bad welds, but nothing is leaking in our out. They use a special type of heating wire that causes the current to flow on the outside diameter of the steel pipe. That is how the heat is generated. If the wire goes bad, just pull it through and install new wire.

Figure this is the best thread for it... snow blower. I live at the top of a pretty steep hill. Driveway is about 100 ft long, and I've got ~100 feet of sidewalk to care for as well. What should I look for in a good snowblower?

https://www.ariens.com/en-us/power-equi ... w-products

Figure this is the best thread for it... snow blower. I live at the top of a pretty steep hill. Driveway is about 100 ft long, and I've got ~100 feet of sidewalk to care for as well. What should I look for in a good snowblower?

Consumer Reports also has a buying guide here:
https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/sno ... /index.htm

Two-stage blowers that they recommend and have scores higher than 90 include:

Toro Power Max HD 928 OAE 38840
Troy-Bilt Arctic Storm 30
Toro 38842
Ariens 926078
Cub Cadet 2X 30’’ HP
Ariens Deluxe 30 EFI

The Cub Cadet is a "Best Buy" for price.

I have a 7 or 8 year old wheeled version of that first Ariens listed. Excellent machine. It has easily handled everything I've tackled with it. Three foot deep snow? It'll throw it all the way across the yard. Plowed, packed, heavy stuff at the apron? Chews it up and spits it out no problem. I enjoy using it so much, I regularly do the sidewalk for the whole neighborhood and several neighbors' aprons.

A yearly spray down with fluid film really helps keep the snow from sticking to augers, chute, etc. and helps protect from rust. Recommend for any snowblower, but don't spray anything rubber with it.

WD40 works well for that, as well. If I were upgrading, Toro and Ariens would be the only two brands on my list.

Random trivia: One of the first applications for WD-40 was on Atlas 1 rockets. The Atlas 1 and 2 used "balloon" tanks on their first stages that were made of a thin layer of stainless steel only a couple of millimeters thick, and they relied upon constant pressurization in order to retain their structural integrity. Even stainless steel, however, can rust in the heat, humidity, and salt air of Cape Canaveral, and any rust spots could affect the integrity of the tanks and cause them to collapse, so the military needed something they could spray on the tanks to protect them. WD-40 was that product. The original name of the WD-40 company was the Rocket Chemical Company.

That story is funny to me because of how much I’ve actually seen it over the past few years.

WD40 is worth its weight in gold.

WD-40 works well when used on a wasp nest.

Well, that’d be a new one for me. “I’m gonna make these **** so slippy they won’t be able to actually sting me.”

It's not really a lubricant, although lots of people use it for that. It will eventually form a gummy film because that's what it was originally designed to do. I've seen many warnings over the years not to use WD-40 as a gun lube for precisely that reason; it will eventually get gummy and stick up the gun.

There are a number of larger lots in my neighborhood, and at least three of the owners - who own houses on those lots - have sold a portion of the lot to the same builder. So for the last 3+ years now, there has been virtually non-stop housing construction going on, all within a football's throw of our house. Some of these lots, I have no idea why anyone would want to buy a house packed so close together. Every one of them has been required to obtain a variance to get around local code. And on one of the properties, the only access to the new lot is via the original owner's driveway, so that is becoming a shared driveway for both houses.

I'd like to hear the rationale behind a decision to spend the $$$$$ on new construction but also being like "yep, a shared driveway is part of my homebuilding dream".

Most likely these people are house-poor

I know the owners of two of the properties. The land has been in the family for generations (my entire street was actually their land at one point), and they decided to sell the land so that they didn't have to maintain as much of it. They're both retired.

I take back what I said about a single stage snowblower. If I had to buy another, it'd be a 2-stage or better. Almost had a god damn heart attack with the nonsense outside today.

The cheapest craftsman from lowes did the job. Bought it Tuesday and this was its maiden voyage. The only thing it struggled with was the sidewalk where the plow built it up to like 2.5 feet. Luckily my neighbor had one of these bad boys:

https://www.cubcadet.com/en_US/snow-blo ... wE&start=3

He did some work on everyone's sidewalk. It was impressive.

Those track ones look awesome.

1,600 for a snowblower in PA is such a waste of money unless you live in Erie

But it looks cool, and has the right color scheme.

You can get a 24" Ariens for under a grand. That'd probably be my max, too, though I bet you can save a few hundred if you waited until summer.