Home Improvement Today?

So I have a settling crack that has shown up above my master bathroom door (both sides). I figure settling is pretty normal on a 5 year old spec built pier and beam home, especially in the winter as things contract. However, it is now to the point where the door will not close. My thought was that maybe some shims have crushed and need to be replaced with metal. What I found was the king stud of the door landed between joists, about 6 feet away from the nearest beam. My thought is that the doorway is carrying a decent amount of load and should have been better supported. I also noticed that there is no blocking between joists at all so some joists have twisted a little bit. My plan is to jack that area up a little bit and add blocking three joists either side of the area, hoping to share the load over multiple joists.

I am pretty sure this is the direction I will go. Id like to know what you guys think if there is a better approach or something I am missing here.

 

Thanks for the heads up. Smud only offers rebates on heat pumps. When I do replace this unit should I go that route or just stick to a natural gas heater. Heat pumps look fairly efficient, but I worry about reliability and performance on the few nights a year that drop just below freezing.

 

Not a fan of Heat pumps... they aren't very efficient. That's all we have here and when it's cold, the unit runs almost constantly.

 

The Daikin heat pumps we've installed in 2 of my jobs have been awesome

 

Fuck heat pumps. Love when they go into defrost mode when you want heat. Thanks a fucking lot, heat pump. And do you really want the noise of a condenser unit running summer AND winter?

Fuck them, they are fucking shit. Change over to traditional split system with gas furnace.

 

Went in and cut the crack control joints and flooded the slab to rehydrate it .

 

The ones we installed are air to water for hydronic systems

 

We had to install a brand new Hvac system when we bought our house. Heat pump/oil furnace backup. Couldn't be happier, only have gone through one tank of oil so far this year.

 

I don't know anything about hydronic ones, and I imagine of they are state of the art and can be tied into other efficiency in new construction, they might be great. But if replacing in-kind equipment...fuck heat pumps.

 

The work great , plus provide domestic hot water

 

How much snow do you have on your roof? If any. Wait until it’s gone and your roof dries.

 

wheres the pressure coming from? pics would help.

 

No snow here in Southwest Missouri. Pictures would be really difficult to get if not impossible.

 

A friend of mine has a heat pump. We live in the midwest. Her monthly electric bill in the winter is over $700.

I have no idea why anyone installs those things in climates that get much colder than 40. When I was looking for a home last year they were really popular. I’m not sure why... they are just not practical when in winter we sit under 30 pretty consistently.
They must be really cheap and people just buy them over electric furnaces.

Maybe there are awesome kinds out there but those units aren’t what I am seeing.

 

So this is another fun point of the traditional heat pump system typically installed in our region. They have electric heating strips in the air handler that turn on for second stage (supplemental) heat. In one of the systems I have, that second stage is set to come on when the difference between the current temp and the target thermostat setting is >2F degrees. And on my system, there is no way to change that 2 degree differential. So, theoretically, you could set a smart thermostat to step up by 2 degrees gradually (one hour to the next) to try to manage this. And allegedly, those heat strips are also supposed to come on during the defrost cycle to help you get over that fact that the fucking thing turns into AC during heat mode once in awhile to stop from freezing itself up during high heat demand. Frankly, I am unimpressed by this feature.

So, those heat strips are high-demand electrical, and if you have high electrical rates, that's gonna suck. But if you don't have access to gas, or gas is even more expensive, it might be a viable option.

Gas = give me hot air now without interruption until the fucking utility company goes tits up, no questions asked.

I prefer the latter option.

 

I have owned a 100-year-old 2 family home for about 8 years (not renting it out yet but would like to) and everything is original. I don't know where to begin for a restoration (would like to do as much of the work as I can myself), this thread is a good place to start.

 

for plumbing pex is where to go...A friend of mine re-plumbed his 1920's house, I helped him a little bit and it was far easier than the old steel pipe that was in there.

 

Thanks, my neighbor said the exact same thing after he used it in his bathroom. Between YouTube, DIY forums, and the big box stores, home renovation projects are so much more doable, as compared to when I was growing up and we only had like one small hardware store.

 

invest in a sawzall both electric and portable. They will save you tons of time. get some good blades for it too. The best thing about them is they cut nails like butter.

 

I live close to a harbor freight and without paying sales tax too, It must look like I'm a stockholder with all the tools I own of theirs. They're not the best quality, but for the most part they get the job done and at times it's true "you get what you pay for".