Home Improvement Today?

Hope you have better luck out of Carrier products than I have had.

 

Thanks we will see what we can do about blinds that fit there. Ideally I want zero light coming through so tint, blinds and curtains might be our solution.

Yup we might do that. The only thing that I might not like about curtains there is that we are putting a pullout couch sofa there to let us use the office as a guest room when necessary. Still probably doing it anyway. Cats will tell me if I’m wrong.

 

We have couch in the bay window, so instead of curtsins that we can't reach, we went with auto-blinds and a short stack of curtains on either side just to make it look right. We have the same curtains (functional) exactly opposite of these on the other side of the room.

 

All the house trusses are up . There was a small moment of head scratching with the girder and jack trusses that go corner to corner across the 45 degree bend in the house (girder at 22.5 degrees) but I figured that out and then we installed all our sub-fascia and framed all but 1 of our dropped gable overhand ladders .

Section where we have our shade tarp still up is all a hand framed vault , material for that arrives tomorrow and the small pack of trusses on the ground to the right are for the attached timber carport behind house that isn't there yet.

 

Came home from work today & spotted some moisture damage on the drywall next to my water heater. Sure enough the damn drain valve is leaking. The riser platform is soaked through & it's weeping to the vertical walls now. Ugh. Brass ball valve replacement being delivered tomorrow, kitchen pot will suffice in the interim.

 

I feel your frustration. Our house didn't have any kind of water softener or filtration system when we bought it as the previous owner was a cheap bastard. Over the past 4-5 years I've paid our plumber to or replaced myself every single plumbing fixture, toilet, valve, ect. inside and outside my house as the water is so hard and full of chlorine here in Phoenix.

About 4 years ago my hot water heater gave out and flooded the bedroom on the adjacent garage wall. New flooring, new drywall, new paint, new baseboards, ect. The best thing to come out of it was deciding to go with a tankless hot water heater and the whole house water filtration system and softener. Of course, we had a couple of weeks with no hot water while waiting for permits for the larger gas line and installation. Those 2 weeks of cold showers were sure fun.

 

I'd love tankless but my condo subpanel is full so I don't have a slot for a designated circuit (per code). Also I wouldn't want the intake in the garage so I'd have to plumb the intake snorkel outside but can't punch a new hole in the garage stucco because HOA. So I'll replace the valve on this unit & see how much time it buys me. Side note: I've looked for a date stamp on this heater a few times now without luck. No idea how old it is.

 

Gotcha, gotta love those HOA's! Mine's been a real treat to us too. It's usually cheaper to replace them than fix the damage when they leak. I find that 7-8 years is about the beginning of the end for them. Of course, my sister's non tankless recently gave out too after 6 years, but I blame Arizona's heavy mineral city water for that.

 

Could your intake follow the existing exhaust penetration with a concentric vent kit? https://www.supplyhouse.com/Diversi...MIzrm_jv2K8gIVjcizCh0GTwgVEAQYByABEgK6ZPD_BwE

also the intake terminating inside your garage shouldn’t be an issue as garage should be outside your envelope anyway lol, unless you have (non sealed) combustion appliances in there that might backdraft

U could make some room in your panel with something like this: https://www.dkhardware.com/square-d...MIuIHB-P2K8gIVhIXICh2hXACMEAQYCyABEgLayfD_BwE

 

The exhaust vent I have runs up into the ceiling & then jogs across the garage to the exterior wall. Replacing the existing vent would probably mean opening up the garage ceiling (finished drywall) almost the entire length. Which as far as I understand I'd have to replace the exhaust anyway since the galvanized steel won't last with a tankless.

Never seen that type of tandem breaker, I like it! In theory that's exactly what I need, but then I'd have to find out if the tandems are allowed by code for my scenario.

All of this is to say that tankless sounds like far too much work for a starter condo. If I end up modifying my panel to accommodate another 220 circuit to charge my EV (currently only has 1 for the central AC), then while I'm in there I'd see about doing what's needed to future-proof a circuit for a tankless. For now I'll just be content with the $20 valve replacement & count the months until this thing fails for good.

 

New smarter thermostat. Didn’t have the time or ambition to go into the attic to run the 5-wire (4-wire on old thermostat), so I had a local company run the wire and mount it on the wall. I took care of setting it up. I need to dig through the paint the previous owner left and touch up around the unit.

 

I have a question for you home improvement folks. My friends have vinyl plank in their house. In the foyer it’s “buckling” like their is an air pocket underneath or something. I tried to capture it in the photos, it’s about a 6ft diameter “bubble”

They say it gets worse in the summer but…

things we’ve ruled out are this:

no edge issues, they have at least a 1/4” gap all around the entire foyer.

not a temperature issue because the crawl space is cool and the house is cool.

No moisture issues. No dampness in the crawl space and this is no where near a water source or water line of any kind

any ideas?

 

Cut and stack. Congrats. There's probably fewer then 5000 of us that can still do that in all of North America.

 

well , I know about 15 of them haha

 

16 if you count me. lol

 

Is it floating. First thought is humidity.

 

Very weird, to buckle that much Id think it was pinched some where

 

Has anything been slid across that section of laminate? That might cause it to stretch like that.

Have him try a hair dryer/heat gun to get it back flat.

 

My guess is improper subfloor prep. Most LVPs require no more than 3/16” of variance over 10’. That’s pretty flat and my guess is the LVP was laid on the subfloor without fixing flatness issues.

 

It is floating. What would the humidity be doing to it? We are in Alabama with horrid humidity, but if it’s not hitting an edge anywhere why would it buckle like that?

Yeah we found nowhere. Took all the baseboards and quarter round off just to verify and they have at least 1/4” gap everywhere.

It isn’t laminate. It’s vinyl plank. Nothing has been slid across it.

The subfloor wasn’t modified when they put it down. They had old hardwoods before that were installed, removed them, the subfloor plywood was in great shape and even, and they installed the lvp over it.