Official Pit Home Improvement/DIY thread

lbE08 said:

yeah, I was going to suggest staining the 'crete. you can always put a rug down if you just want something underfoot, but stained concrete keeps the ease of dealing with anything wet/messy down there and just looks nicer than essentially a garage floor.

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yeah either way, whenever/if ever I do use the basement as living space (I want to build a bar down there), then I'd probably get an area rug.

Liquid Karma said:

Can't you polish up and seal a concrete floor so it looks pretty nice?

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yup. guess I should get a quote for that too. my friend who gave me the vinyl flooring quote figured I could DIY the floor painting/staining/whichever is the correct term myself for probably $400 or less, but I definitely want to be sure it's done right. And doing it myself might not be doing it right.

dot com said:

The carpet helps insulate somewhat too, so you'd be losing that.

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I've got bigger insulation problems than the carpet is providing, but it would certainly make a difference.

Finally got the side pieces done and the hooks put onto the hall tree (loss of power halted work for a few days). Now I am going to take it apart for finishing. I'm expecting to wrap it up next week.

Anyone every replaced a toilet flange? Very difficult?

WilmingtonDeac said:

Anyone every replaced a toilet flange? Very difficult?

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Not at all. The wax gasket is annoying to deal with but not difficult. Make sure you stuff a rag into the hole while you have the toilet off, otherwise you're breathing fumes straight from your septic tank/sewer.

Are you just upgrading or was there an issue with your previous flange?

tsywake said:

Not at all. The wax gasket is annoying to deal with but not difficult. Make sure you stuff a rag into the hole while you have the toilet off, otherwise you're breathing fumes straight from your septic tank/sewer.

Are you just upgrading or was there an issue with your previous flange?

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This. It's easy enough that if you consider yourself mildly handy, you should be fine.
I would add to buy two wax rings, though. They're like $4 and if you screw up accidentally the first go, you can't try again with the same ring. A cheapo plastic putty knife to scrape up/off the old ring would be a wise $1 spent, too.

Thanks guys. I'm helping a friend fix up a foreclosure he bought at Carolina Beach. Pulled the toilet last night so I can start the process of tiling the bathroom this weekend and found that the plastic flange was broken in two. It doesn't look overly difficult, just wanted to be sure I'm not overlooking something before I bite off more than I can chew.

WilmingtonDeac said:

Thanks guys. I'm helping a friend fix up a foreclosure he bought at Carolina Beach. Pulled the toilet last night so I can start the process of tiling the bathroom this weekend and found that the plastic flange was broken in two. It doesn't look overly difficult, just wanted to be sure I'm not overlooking something before I bite off more than I can chew.

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What kind of floor was on there before? If you are adding tile to a room that previously had linoleum or something similar, your new toilet will set at least 1/2" higher than the previous one due to the tile. You'll either need a flange extender or possible two of the wax rings stacked on top of each other.

tsywake said:

What kind of floor was on there before? If you are adding tile to a room that previously had linoleum or something similar, your new toilet will set at least 1/2" higher than the previous one due to the tile. You'll either need a flange extender or possible two of the wax rings stacked on top of each other.

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Ahh...good to know. It was a linoleum floor. Took a good while to scrape the glue off the concrete but I finally completed that task last night.

If you're tiling directly onto the cement, it'll probably be closer to 1/4" higher since you wont be adding backer board. The wax gaskets are pretty cheap, so even if it only takes one, it might not be a bad idea to have another on hand just in case like LBE said.

If you are just pulling the toilet up, putting down tile and then re-installing the toilet, not too big a job. There are even spacer kits that make it easy to raise the toilet flange if necessary because the new floor is higher than the old floor.

However, if the flange itself is broken then it is a little bigger project. Here is a picture of the toilet flange. Is yours broken?



edited to add: The two long slots on each side hold the bolts that keep the toilet in place. There can be a lot of stress on the slots and they can break. If they do, the toilet will be wobbly.

he already said the flange was broken. KEEP UP, DEACONBLUE.



*this post was influenced by alcohol.

Yeah, the flange is definitely broken. The part of the flange that is blue in your photo above has snapped in two.

So ive got a really fucking old AC unit. The guy couldn't tell how old it was but has to be >10 years. 10 seer working at 7 seer.

How much is a new AC unit going to run me? 2k? more?

Want to get educated before getting bids.

2k at the very least. How big a space is it heating? Could easily cost 4k or so.

It'd be a total guess at sq. footage, but yeah, im guessing more than 2k because itd be cooling the majority of the first floor of ranch house.

WilmingtonDeac said:

Yeah, the flange is definitely broken. The part of the flange that is blue in your photo above has snapped in two.

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Fixing that is a bigger pain in the butt than you might think. The flange is most likely glued to the end of the pipe that carries waste out of the bath. It is difficult to get that piece off. See the following U-tube video for a pretty good view of what needws to happen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey6c4XUNPBc

As you can see in the video, the hard work is getting the old flange out without doing serious damage to the waste pipe.
After that, it is a matter of cleaning up the waste pipe so a new flange will glue in and stay. Need steel wool or sandpaper and lots of elbow grease. The cleaner the better. Then glue the new one in and let it set for several hours before you put the toilet back.

If you have access to the waste pipe in say a crawl space or basement, sometimes it is easier to simply cut the pipe, splice on a new piece of pipe cut to the proper length and put the new flange in the new piece of waste pipe.

MHBDemon said:

So ive got a really fucking old AC unit. The guy couldn't tell how old it was but has to be >10 years. 10 seer working at 7 seer.

How much is a new AC unit going to run me? 2k? more?

Want to get educated before getting bids.

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There should be an access panel to some of the innards of the system. Take a look and see if you can find some plates with information on what you have. Look near where the pipes connecting the inside unit and the outside unit attach. Look on both units. The plate(s) should list the BTU per hour or cooling capacity in tons, Cubic feet per minute (CFM) of your air handler, electrical info on the motors etc. Once you know that, you know the size of unit you have and can do a better estimate.

If you don't find any of this, look on something like zillow to find the square feet of space under air for the property (This is typically the square footage under roof minus stuff like garage, carport. From this info, and the geographic location of the house, there are charts that give recommended size of heating and cooling equipment.

I would be surprised if a whole house A/C unit could be installed for much less than $4K. More if you go heat pump, but then you wouldn't need your current heating system. It would all be integrated. The decision to go that route is dependent on a whole lot of factors, including where the house is located. You can PM if you want to discuss details.

Blue, have you ever installed a small sump pump for a sink in a basement? I've got a nice sink that I'd like to plumb, but since its 10ft below grade I'll have to pump it vertically to tie into the existing plumbing. I'm not looking for something full size, it'll only be needed for a sink that I will only occasionally use. Primarily cleaning up after catering gigs or beer brewing. I've done a ton of stuff around the house but never a sump pump. Any suggestions?

Anybody got concrete counter tops?

tsywake said:

Blue, have you ever installed a small sump pump for a sink in a basement? I've got a nice sink that I'd like to plumb, but since its 10ft below grade I'll have to pump it vertically to tie into the existing plumbing. I'm not looking for something full size, it'll only be needed for a sink that I will only occasionally use. Primarily cleaning up after catering gigs or beer brewing. I've done a ton of stuff around the house but never a sump pump. Any suggestions?

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You will need something different than a regular sump pump that operates in the bottom of an open pit. They also tend to leave a little water in the bottom of the sump. You really don't want that if you have beer making residue, party dumping etc.

What you need is a small sewage or effluent lift pump that installs in line, so you don't have an open sump. That is, you want the drain line from your sink to go through the normal drain trap, then connect to the pump which will lift your waste water up to your sewage line. Because you only expect occasional use, make sure the pump has an internal switch that reacts to the "demand" of water reaching it.

The actual plumbing shouldn't be that hard -standard plumbing connections. Need to insure that the waste line going out of the pump will take pressure. That is not usual in waste lines. They usually just have free flow from gravity.

ETA: This might be what you are looking for, if you have room for its little sump:

http://www.sumppumpsdirect.com/Zoeller-105-0001-Sump-Pump/p11377.html

Making sure you size the pump correctly is the biggest part of the deal. You may need more pump power than you think. 10 ft of lift distance ("head" in pump vernacular) will require some serious push.