Home Improvement Today?

If no public water/sewer in the area before you start digging a foundation, drill the well first to make sure you can get ample water. Nothing worse than building a $300,000+ home/cabin to find out you can't find a spot to produce enough water! There's so many options for a septic system, I wouldn't worry about that too much.

Unless this is going to be some kind of off grid kind of place, then the above is irrelevant

 

Had Marvin come out for a door quote. 10k less than Anderson. That's better but still not sold. The rep was not all that knowldegable either. I suppose any monkey can run you through an online designer with nothing but drop down menus.

I think I'm just gonna save the money and give what i got some love with a complete restore (wood) and call it a day.

 

Do they still do storm windows nowadays? That would be an option?

 

Went down in the basement last night to clean out my dehumidifier and change the furnace filter. Walk into the utility room and there was water on the floor. Great! Went to the depot this morning. The original water heater I was gonna get I couldn’t find on the shelf. Think it was up on the 3rd shelf. Wasn’t waiting for someone to come with a fork truck and get it down for me. They had this other 50 gallon chilling out in the isle. Box was pristine. But I know better to check because the last time I got one for my old house, most were dented and beat to shit.

Old one was a 40. Decided to go bigger. Never checked the dimensions of the one I got. Assumed it was the same size as the other one I was originally gonna get. Nope. This one was shorter and wider. Didn’t realized that until after I took out some of the copper. Whoops! Now the flex lines wouldn’t reach. Had to run back and grab some more fittings and sweat a little pipe.

So the drain pan I got is tight. Also I don’t have a floor drain in this house. Whoever installed the furnace I think just drilled into the concrete and is running the condensate that way. How should I plumb this drain pan up? Run a pump and shoot it over to my sump?

Also couldn’t find a side mount drain tube so had to make one. Ended up getting the wrong size pex fitting for it. So need to get the correct one. Just stuff the tube in there for now.


Old ones at the curb if anyone wants some scrap

 

Oh what fun...

I would run the drain pan over the sump.

 

Yea, that’s gonna require a pump. Probably a 60ft run. I might just leave it be and cap the pan. If I flush the tank I use a mop bucket. Takes a while or I could just lay a hose to the sump. I’ve never seen any of my water tanks blowout the pressure relief valve. Unless a major leak were to happen, then I think I would be pretty safe without it.

 

Can you plumb a drain to an exterior wall? This is part of the reason I switched to tankless.

 

Unfortunately the utility room is in the center of the basement

 

you're the same person that asked previously about running the water softener purge line a long distance over to the sump, right?

you could get a condensate pump like this and route all three-- furnace/water heater/softener into it, which would then carry everything over to the sump.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/VCMA-15ULT-115-Volt-Condensate-Removal-Pump-554411/204481244

 

That punny little pump will not handle a blown water heater or a tpr valve blow off.
I would cut the floor open and install a 10+ gallon tank with a high-volume pump with a float switch and plumb the outflow to the exterior of the building.
Just imagine a trying to control a full run hose.

 

No that wasn’t me. But they never one on my water softener either. That was the same basic pump I had on my furnace at my old house. Worked well. That’s probably what I will go with

 

That would be me (sort of; not going to the sump but rather the slop sink which is right next to the sump anyhow), but thanks for the link anyhow

 

The purpose of that pump isn't to handle a high flow, it's there to manage a small leak that would overflow your pan if it doesn't have somewhere else to go.

 

The last couple years the grout around my toilet was dark. I assumed it was because of my lazy cleaning not getting within an inch of the camode. Then over the weekend I noticed a sheen to it. Wet to the touch. Dammit. Removed the shitter to find about 40% of the forbidden donut wasn't even touching the shitter! Leak was at the 9 o'clock position.



New wax ring obtained, easy fix. Until the slot of the 40 y/o flange broke and the T-bolt wouldn't torque down


Ran back to Holmes Depot for a fix, looks pretty easy.


Except the damn porcelain tile & thinset didn't give enough clearance. Time to chisel. Shit got sharp. Sutures? Never heard of her.


Hopefully the new forbidden donut & silicone are good to go

 

Cleaned HVAC Condenser Coils
(3hrs well spent)

 

Home "improvement" yesterday equaled trimming back the overgrown foliage around the house with the hedge trimmer and despite being super careful somehow managing to cut straight through the feed from the DirecTV dish to the rest of the house. Fortunately I still have all the co-ax tools and some ends from 20 years ago in the tackle box where I keep tools and supplies for doing basic electrical work around the house and I was able to cobble it back together. At least it's forcing me to re-run the wire from the dish since the guys that installed it did the typical sh1t job they do because they get paid to do it fast not right.

 

Is that picture, before or after the cleaning...

 

I have an HVAC company come out twice a year to service, clean, and inspect my system. This is one of the things that they do for me. Their fee is well worth 3 hours of my time, but what do you think about the job? Is it pretty easy to do? Is this something that I should be doing myself between their visits?

 

Completed the railing system. On my project deck... Hats off to the guys who do this as a job. Hats off to anyone else who builds a deck by themselves. A lot learned in this process.

As with any good Tacoma/Toyota fan. I already have a list of fixes, and mods.




The enormous amount of blocking for the vertical railing was easy. But the steps were too narrow to have the railing land on the step. Since I already designed it the way it was. I had my friends fabricate some handy brackets to move the handrail off the deck, and outside the boards.