By the way, it is positively stunning how many calls I run for people who say their furnace isn't working but the reason is dead thermostat batteries.
If you're too dumb to change your batteries you deserve overtime charges. Can you imagine paying someone close to 200 bucks to pop in 2 new AA batteries?

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Safe to say that there some notification on it, like a blinking icon or something?

what is your opinion on CO detectors? or are smoke detectors enough?

Smoke detectors won't detect CO so I would get them. I have two, one near the door that goes out to my garage and one near my furnace which is close to bedrooms on my second floor. I believe both are combo units, CO and smoke detector housed in the same unit. You can get units that plug into a regular wall outlet or get the ones that can mount on the ceiling.

Store bought CO detectors are nearly useless. Kidde, First Alert, Nighthawk... garbage.
First flaw, they won't beep unless they read 70ppm CO and then wait 90-240 minutes before they alert. OSHA has a guideline for no more than 30ppm over 8 hours, so you can be sitting in double OSHAa 8 hour limit forever and they won't beep. The 400ppm reading gives 4-15 minutes before beeping. That's insane.
Second flaw, most plug into the wall and most wall plugs are near floor level. CO is lighter than air. So if they're plugged in they're reading the lowest concentration in the room. CO monitors should be higher... mouth and nose level. Nighthawk at least has a detachable plug.

You want to be safe you should buy a low level CO monitor. Something that beeps at 15ppm. They're typically 150 bucks so that's why people are turned off by them.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
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no, but this is code for watch me bite your style and make a proper thread in the spirit of this.

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The combo detectors are kinda trash too. They claim to have a sealed battery that lasts 10 years, and the battery may, but no CO detectors sensor lasts only about 5 years give or take a year based on climate (humidity kills sensors, and Chicago's summer humidity counts as a high humidity climate.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

One other thing... don't bother with a detector if your furnace or laundry room.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

thanks . back home I have a combo smoke and co but it's on the ceiling. which I guess by the time it detects i would be dead right?

My son bought a 3 pack of those plug in ones the other day. so you're saying just return them?

Water heater has a slow leak. Hooray. Unit is ancient so I suppose it could have been worse. There's four of us, it's a 40 gallon existing but we run out at the end of my shower. Kids don't shower daily yet, do I need to go with a 75 gallon? I'm hoping these things are available

Are the kids girls? 50g is edgy for a family of 4 if everyone takes a shower one right after the other. Girls tend to take much longer showers, so a 75 if you have two girls might be better. That's becoming much more popular.
Now, if you're on city water with a softener, a tankless may be a better option than a 75. I used to not like them much, and they do require quite a bit more maintenance, but they're getting good. And they tend to last longer than water heater tanks. At least with the proper maintenance.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
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Any more than 2 fixtures being used, the water volume goes way down.That's fixable with enough money, but then that defeats the purpose of the tankless to begin with, which is long term savings over the initial cost of the piece of shit.

Eeeeehhhhh yeah they should be good for something like 5 to 6 gpm.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
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I am intrigued. I have a 6 or 7 year old 40 gallon traditional water heater. I was planning on getting a new one with a power vent so I can get rid of the chimney which isn't even venting it properly or so I hear now that the furnace is vented out the side of the house.

I have city water and will have a softener again once I install the water heater and rework some of the pipes. There are 5 of us and the current one kind of sucks ass for keeping up with even 2 showers in a row. Any brand recommendations? What is the maintenance on one of these things? Clean some filters or de scaling?

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get a polisher a little bigger than you think you need and the biggest brine tank that will fit and make sure it can do demand regen not a timer based thing

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

I've mainly installed Navien. I can tell you that their tech support and customer service is far and away the best of any manufacturer I've ever contacted. I won't bore you with stories but trust me they stand behind their product like no other company I've ever seen.

Maintenance... there's typically a water inlet screen to clean once a year. And descaling should be done once a year, that requires a submersible pump that runs cleaning agent and water thru the heat exchanger. You mix up the cleaner with 4 gallons of water into a 5 gallon bucket, the pump goes into that and the water pumps into the cold inlet side and out the hot back into the bucket. Let it circulate for 45 minutes. Then flush with fresh cold water. There should be bypass valves on the thing so you isolate the street inlet and the house hot outlet and you can just circulate thru the machine. You can probably buy the kit for the average price of a contractor to come out and do it twice so if you're in any way handy I'd say buy the pump kit. You'll clean the flame sensor and spark electrode while the system is flushing. It's an hour of maintenance once a year. There's also a fresh (combustion) air intake screen you should check and clean every couple years.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

Ha, my current Rheem has a manufacturer date of Feb 1997. Finally something in this house lasted longer than you'd expect.

It's the temperature of the water entering. The lower the temperature, the less GPM. Obviously its instahot, so it has to go through an exchanger. It won't leave the exchanger until it's at temperature. There are tables for it. Tankless are great down south.

We had a power vent installed with ours to avoid it running up through the 90 year old chimney. Works pretty well but it is much louder than I suspected when outside. Can't hear from inside unless windows open.

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I have 3 bedrooms, all with popcorn ceilings
The middle one I was able to remove myself. Sucked, but was able to.
My ex painted the other 2 , so I cannot seem to penetrate it with anything.
Seems like drywalling over it is the solution, i saw you could attempt to mud over it and smooth it out but that seems pretty ridiculous
Had a guy come over to give me a price as i'm not hanging drywall on a ceiling, sorry
2900
For 2 bedrooms
That no painting , just hang/tape/smooth
Seems like an awful lot
This is a small place, master bedroom is like 12x10 and the other one is 8x8
does that honestly seem like a fair price ? I mean my god

I know it is kind of a shitty job but that sounds like an awful lot. In most cases there is a tool that just shaves it off but sounds like yours is hard as concrete. I did find this online....

Contractors typically charge $1 to $2 per square foot for removal of popcorn ceilings.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Price is up for everything right now with home stuff. We are having our stairs redone and it's a lot more than it was when we had it quoted about 5 years ago.

If it has asbestos in it that adds to the cost. We had to have tile remove and it added a good amount to the bill.

yea i guess that's why i at least want to get a 2nd quote
is this like how it is now ?
I mean its certainly a value proposition, this is obv completely cosmetic
i don't NEED to do this work but i want to
Like 3K to hang some drywall even if it is on a ceiling seems like a lot. I mean if that's just "how it is " , i'd just as soon spend that money on like a new appliance or something, or do some other kind of work that has some practical value first

I'd get another quote or two and if they are all close, I'd probably wait. I think it's going to be this way for a while. We had a quote for a bathroom for 20k last year that we needed done, the almost same size bathroom 15 years ago with nicer materials cost 13k.

15 years ago

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Spaulding bought a car in 1989 for $4000 and is shocked cars now are $20K+



There is a chance the guy really doesn't want to do it. So by throwing a high price at your he either scares you off or you accept and he makes a ton of dough.

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i do understand that line of thinking, but this is "Bill's Drywall"
I suspect his main line of work is hanging drywall
So i'm not asking him to do something out of the ordinary here

I mean given your other thread, you could probably do the job yourself during "work" hours.

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i could ?

Homeowner Question:

Finished the basement and have decided to go with epoxy for the floor with throw rugs on top. Any specific brand I should look for?

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