Home Improvement Today?

Put these in any potted plant saucers and even in a few buckets with a small amount of water around the yard. Mosquitoes lay their larva in the water and the dunks will kill them.

$9 Summit...responsible solutions 110-12 Mosquito Dunks, 6-Pack

https://www.amazon.com/Summit-responsible-solutions-110-12-Mosquito/dp/B0000AH849

 

Thank you.

What brackets are those? How does the railing attach?

What railing works with those?

 

Thinking through this. I like the clean look of these and no miter cuts required. I may rip a piece of 5/4" 1x4 Azek at a 12-15 degree bevel and use the wedge shaped piece behind the brackets to get me to 45 degrees. They'll never be seen way up there.

 

Those are the Trex brackets. Made for the Trex Enhance railing. They screw into the post and bottom of the top and bottom plates of the Trex railing. Don’t see why they wouldn’t work with your application

 

I did one about that size:
- trimmed some branches off so I could get to the base
- made a choker with a small 10k tow strap and kinda broke it loose with a Hi-Lift Jack (lifted it ~12”) I could have done more / higher / repeatedly, but felt it was >50% "loose", it was at the edge of the driveway, truck was there... so:
- hooked a chain to the strap and pulled it out nice and slow with the truck in 4LO
(Easy peasy, no ax or pick, shovel was used only to fill in the hole)

 

tldr:
it cost my last boss $10,000 for this knowledge.
there is zero depth requirements for utility companies. if you hit it, marked or not, it's your fault. it's the consequence of the utility companies writing the legal rules that we need to follow.

officially, any time they mark a utility path, there's a 3 foot horizontal acceptable range from the paint marking to where the utility can actually be located, but any vertical dimension.

there are recommended, and supposed depths(36" for main utility, 18" for others), but there is no regulation requiring them to meet those depths.


extended story short, the electrical company i used to work for had a job where an apprentice put a stake through a gas line. they had to shut down a main, and evacuate a neighborhood to fix it. oops. the wheels of the legal system move slowly, and in the 3 months for the full ramifications to come to, the apprentice was fired for other reasons. i ended up attending the required class on locating, digging, and the errors surrounding. it was enlightening in all the worst ways.

upon getting to the class, ended up chatting with the other guys in the class--we were all there for similar reasons for hitting a utility of some sort. quickly learned that the guys sitting behind me were from a plumbing outfit, that were also there for hitting a gas line. they were rodding(clearing out a plugged drain) out a main sewer line from a house to the street, and the utility had ran the gas line through the sewer line they were rodding.

they said that the incident investigators later told the boss of the plumbing outfit that the official procedure that as plumbers doing work on lines that could cross utility lines, the rules they need to follow is that they need to call ahead, have the entire yard marked out, and any place the sewer lines cross any utilities, they need to hand-dig those sections and verify that the sewer line is clear of the utility to prevent the issue from happening again. keep in mind this is in an area where many main sewer lines are around 4-6' deep.

most plumbing outfits will perform 4-8 sewer rodding jobs per day, usually with less than a days notice, as few choose when their sewer starts backing up... typical cost is around $150-400 depending on length and difficulty. but digging up a front yard easily adds a comma to that price, if not 5 digits, and can extend the project to at least 2-3 days... it would basically run them out of business to follow the law.

anyways, during the class, there was also a story of a homeowner that ran over a utility line with his lawn mower, severing it. he was on the hook for all the charges because he was working around a live utility line, and did not have an active dig ticket on file, or have the marking service come out to mark that utility.

utilities suck.


i would wait until spring, when the ground is very well saturated, and easy to dig. pressure washing and a shop vac is a good idea, but very messy, it's really what all that the pro's use, just in a gigantic truck form with a DOT sticker on the side.

 

Don't move to Cali and enjoy the read. lol

https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PUBLISHED/GENERAL_ORDER/52591.htm

 

to be fair, he doesn't specify where he's at. so either, or both, could apply.

 

Absolutely.

My mom used to live in an unincorporated part of TN. 20 years ago she asked if I could build her house. I said I'd be happy to come to TN in the fall and please send me the plans. She mailed me two sheets of graph paper with general dimensions. Keep in mind this was a 2 story 2500 sq/ft home. I called her and told her she needed an architect, structural engineer, yada yada. She literally laughed. Turns out she was right and I was wrong.

The only inspection that occurred during the entire 3 month build was for electrical. That's state mandated anywhere in TN. Yep. I built a house with no real plans and finished it without a single inspection. Once it was done I walked the county inspector through the house to get the Certificate of Occupancy. He didn't check shit. Like he never even asked to turn the central heat on or flush a toilet.

Different areas have very different regs. lol

 

It's Missouri. Cali is nice but just for visiting.

 

That's nuts. But I'm glad you approve of my janky daylighting idea! Guess I'll wait till spring.

 

Meanwhile PG&E in CA files for bankruptcy, burns half the state to the ground and gets a pardon for their lack of maintenance.

 

Got the door trimmed.

 

Alright need some help here. Demolished our brick hearth, and this is what’s left. Obviously still plenty of cleanup and a bit more demo, but what you see is cinder blocks and the bricks that were integrated into the wall is all that’s left. The empty spaces were just bricks kinda half ass thrown in and mortared. The perimeter is all floor joist, and the cinder blocks are supported by a steel beam so we are super sound structurally.

what I’m needing to know is what are my options for building back? We were toying with the idea of no hearth, but with the bricks sticking out of the wall being a bit higher than floor level idk if that’s an option anymore. Thinking I want to somehow frame this up a bit, and build a new non brick hearth.

any suggestions welcome, except for “I wouldn’t have torn it out”

 

Have you thought about a thin, flat stone for a hearth? Maybe 1/2" above the existing floor, in a color that blends in rather than contrasts. You would have a hearth, but not an obvious one like you had.

I think you'd want some sort of non-combustible on the floor for safety.

 

I actually don’t hate that idea! Not sure how I’d get something to lay flat with those bricks along the exterior wall without framing up around them though. It is a gas fireplace if that matters about the combustible comment..

 

Looking for recommendations on a miter saw stand! No formal shop at my house currently so it moves every few weeks depending on projects. Mostly just out into the driveway to use and then back in the garage for storage. What’s everyone using?!

 

Ditto!

I have have my old Hitachi on a bench and looked at some options, none appealed to me - plus this is just an old school saw, may upgrade and want to buy once for future saw.

 

I can't quite tell from your picture, but the general answer to your question is to lay the stone on a bed of mortar.

Gas fires don't hiss and pop and throw sparks, so in theory, you're probably safe there. But, you don't want to burn your house down. And, I'm sure an inspector wouldn't approve either.

 

Maybe not the best picture to help, but maybe you can tell. I think a bed of mortar would solve the issue well enough for something to lay flat. Would just have to figure out what kind of framing and such I’d need to build up to that point to support a stone. My wife said she might even like someone to do a nice polished concrete slab there.