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Official Pit Home Improvement/DIY thread

Not sure if a home warranty would cover a repair necessitated by you plunging your bathtub. I might not mention the reason for the leak. Otherwise, sounds like you need to sue faxmachineanthem! On the bright side, if he has to replace the drain pipe at least you'll hopefully get completely rid of the clog.
 
hopefully you have a drop ceiling in your basement. It makes the entire process soooo much easier. I recently re-did my basement and it was worth the money to put in a drop ceiling and get "nice" tiles so it doesn't look like an office building.

This is an excellent idea. If RTQ has a drop ceiling, the leak in the ceiling is not that big a deal. Pop out a few tiles to get to the leak and get rid of the wet ones, and replace with new ones. Pipes fixed, new tiles in place, no one knows it happened.
 
hopefully you have a drop ceiling in your basement. It makes the entire process soooo much easier. I recently re-did my basement and it was worth the money to put in a drop ceiling and get "nice" tiles so it doesn't look like an office building.

Unfortunately the ceiling is drywall so I'll have to have a hole cut out.

Not sure if a home warranty would cover a repair necessitated by you plunging your bathtub. I might not mention the reason for the leak. Otherwise, sounds like you need to sue faxmachineanthem! On the bright side, if he has to replace the drain pipe at least you'll hopefully get completely rid of the clog.

Hmm, you think so? I'll be vague.
 
Plumbers had to replace the cap on the drum trap. It had corroded at the connector and (my guess) the plunging was enough pressure to pop it off. I didn't mention the plunger though. Home warranty covered it for $60 flat fee. When they cut into the ceiling, there was drywall tape so it looked like previous owners had dealt with this sort of problem before and patched the ceiling. I'll probably do an access panel to repair instead of patching, in case I need to access that area again.
 
Not sure if a home warranty would cover a repair necessitated by you plunging your bathtub. I might not mention the reason for the leak. Otherwise, sounds like you need to sue faxmachineanthem! On the bright side, if he has to replace the drain pipe at least you'll hopefully get completely rid of the clog.
Poppycock! Those must have been the weakest pipes of all time, or else RTQ has got some serious forearm strength. everydayplumber.com recommends plunging. With a domain name like that, it's got to be reliable.
http://www.everydayplumber.com/index.php?page=clogged-bathtub

Sorry about the mess RTQ. Glad it wasn't an expensive fix.
 
Sounds like a solid plan RTQ. Glad it was a fairly quick and easy process to fix it.

We got our test results back, and our ceiling at the building we are remodeling has a spray textured ceiling with Asbestos. I'm meeting with a remediation company on Thursday afternoon to get a quote, but most likely we'll be removing it on our own. We've got all of the haz-mat suits at the FD, and it pales in comparison to the stuff we typically deal with on haz-mat calls.
 
What kind of contractor would I need to talk with about running a natural gas line into my house from the street? Piedmont Natural Gas said they can do it but so can other folks, they just didn't say who. I imagine they might need to rip up part of my driveway to do this.
 
What kind of contractor would I need to talk with about running a natural gas line into my house from the street? Piedmont Natural Gas said they can do it but so can other folks, they just didn't say who. I imagine they might need to rip up part of my driveway to do this.
Plumbers and HVAC contractors typically can and do run gas lines since they both use them for tankless water heaters and gas furnaces.
 
Does it make sense to go to a tankless water heater if there are only 2 adults in the house?
 
IMO it makes perfect sense. Say you've got a 30 gallon tanked water heater, and you only use 15 gallons of it on a daily basis, you're paying to keep that unused 15 gallons hot at all times. Whereas with tankless, you only heat a minimal amount more than you use each time.
 
I was just thinking about water heaters this week. I don't know how big my tank is, but I know it is from like 1980. Shouldn't an average water heater be able to get through a 20-30 minute shower without running out of hot? I know that's a long shower but if it's the only thing using hot water I feel like it should be sufficient.
 
If I go tankless, do any of the pipes o anything need to be refitted? Of course the first thing I need to do is get that gas line run.
 
If you are unable to place the tankless in the same spot as the existing water heater (it requires an exhaust), you will need new lines run to the unit. Everything else should work with your existing pipes though.
 
Does anyone have any thoughts on how well baseboard heating works? As I've mentioned, the wife and I bought a house, moved in this past weekend. We've had the heat running pretty much the whole time (boiler + baseboard system), and on the middle and bottom floors, it's been steady around about 60 degrees (57 this morning). I know it's been really cold, and admittedly we don't have much furniture/rugs/curtains yet, but should I expect better than that?? We've got some of those fancy oil-filled ceramic space heaters coming, and an HVAC guy coming to do a diagnostic service on the boiler tomorrow, but from what I know of how they work (they're pretty simple), it's working correctly.
 
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Does anyone have any thoughts on how well baseboard heating works? As I've mentioned, the wife and I bought a house, moved in this past weekend. We've had the heat running pretty much the whole time (boiler + baseboard system), and on the middle and bottom floors, it's been steady around about 60 degrees (57 this morning). I know it's been really cold, and admittedly we don't have much furniture/rugs/curtains yet, but should I expect better than that?? We've got some of those fancy oil-filled ceramic space heaters coming, and an HVAC guy coming to do a diagnostic service on the boiler tomorrow, but from what I know of how they work (they're pretty simple), it's working correctly.

We had baseboard heating in a mountain house we had and it was the pits. It was a boiler system that used heating oil to power it. In addition to the heating oil being expensive, the system was inefficient and the power bills were insane.
 
we recently moved and have very little furniture/rugs on our hardwood floors. i have an ancient boiler in my house w/ gas; seems expensive. it does a pretty decent job of maintaining heat, but these polar vortex weeks have been pretty taxing; It does not do a good job of moving back up after the temp goes down (like when i leave for the day)
 
We had baseboard heating in a mountain house we had and it was the pits. It was a boiler system that used heating oil to power it. In addition to the heating oil being expensive, the system was inefficient and the power bills were insane.

Thanks for the input. I guess we'll find out more tomorrow. I do think that once we have furniture and all that, it'll help a good bit, but for now, we'll just have to deal. Luckily it'll be warm this weekend, so the house should be ok while we're home for a longer period of time.
 
we recently moved and have very little furniture/rugs on our hardwood floors. i have an ancient boiler in my house w/ gas; seems expensive. it does a pretty decent job of maintaining heat, but these polar vortex weeks have been pretty taxing; It does not do a good job of moving back up after the temp goes down (like when i leave for the day)

Do you have a ceiling fan that you can reverse the direction on? The heat is going to rise and warm the air over your head well before it warms you up down at ground level.
 
Does anyone have any thoughts on how well baseboard heating works? As I've mentioned, the wife and I bought a house, moved in this past weekend. We've had the heat running pretty much the whole time (boiler + baseboard system), and on the middle and bottom floors, it's been steady around about 60 degrees (57 this morning). I know it's been really cold, and admittedly we don't have much furniture/rugs/curtains yet, but should I expect better than that?? We've got some of those fancy oil-filled ceramic space heaters coming, and an HVAC guy coming to do a diagnostic service on the boiler tomorrow, but from what I know of how they work (they're pretty simple), it's working correctly.

I have a boiler and circa 1940s radiators built into the walls around my house (usually below windows or next to doors) and it has been performing like a champ even during this cold weather (I live in Greensboro). There is something wrong if the house won't stay warm. We love the radiators as compared to blown warm air.
 
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