Home Remodel: Do, Don'ts, Advice

[XXX-er]

Those texas wheelchairs are like 20k minimum. Wheeled skids can be bought around 7-10k in working order at auction. They have a bucket, hydraulics that can be used with all sorts of attachments and are strong as hell. I have an old 1998 Honda recon atv for just fucking around and moving bags of concrete and shit.

are they ^^ good for hunting and riding around with his kid ?

he picked up a 5yr old and trailer for 16K

[Whiteroom_Guardian]

are they ^^ good for hunting and riding around with his kid ?

he picked up a 5yr old and trailer for 16K

Haha, you got a point. Although maybe a skid steer is good for just scaring deer to death.

[Foggy_Goggles]

Nice Phish! Good luck with that.

SxSs and UTVs are not the same thing. Rangers, Gators, Toolcats etc. are awesome. They will be less expensive than skid. They do different things. Even driving a skid steer a quarter mile is painful. But a UTV won't move a foot of set up snow.

Oh....if you can find operational skid steers for $7K, you've found your new side hustle. I think $15K is probably a really number. And you'll need a 3/4 ton to haul it. And they are pretty reliable but parts and mechanics are expensive.

[I Skied Bandini Mountain]

Compact or sub compact 4x4 tractor is better. Used ones are commodity priced and hold their value.

[Foggy_Goggles]

True. I little Kubota would be sick. But reality is that you want the right tool for the job.

Personally, I think that anything you own you need to be able to trailer. So Tundra Life might be coming to an end. The reasons are three fold. 1. Trade Out...you'll want to use something that your neighbor has and vise versa. This is a huge part of owning equipment. 2. Working. Only rich people can afford to let equipment sit. You can make an amazing amount of money with a bobcat or tractor. 3. Mechanicing. Sooner or later they all go in the shop.

[toast2266]

Right off the bat I need to be talked out of buying a skid steer at auction for snow removal and all the cleanup/landscaping projects I have in store. But really what else is there?

Kinda depends on the landscaping that needs done.

But for snow removal, how much would you be paying someone to do it? At least for me, I end up paying around $300-400 / year to have a guy plow. At that rate, it takes a looong time for a skid steer to pencil out. And it means I don't have to get up early on a pow day to go fuck around with plowing - I just go ski.

And for any other projects where I need a machine, I can rent one for $1000 / week, which comes with the upside of not having to do any maintenance on it.

[I Skied Bandini Mountain]

Kinda depends on the landscaping that needs done.

But for snow removal, how much would you be paying someone to do it? At least for me, I end up paying around $300-400 / year to have a guy plow. At that rate, it takes a looong time for a skid steer to pencil out. And it means I don't have to get up early on a pow day to go fuck around with plowing - I just go ski.

And for any other projects where I need a machine, I can rent one for $1000 / week, which comes with the upside of not having to do any maintenance on it.

If I can get plowed out for $400 a year, I'm moving to where you live right fucking now.

[I Skied Bandini Mountain]

I little Kubota would be sick.

My neighbor has sexy little 4x4 diesel JD.

What does the bible say about coveting your neighbors tactor?

[toast2266]

If I can get plowed out for $400 a year, I'm moving to where you live right fucking now.

Yeah, I mean obviously this is going to vary dramatically by location. But assuming WRG is somewhere in the vicinity of Bozeman, they don't get *that* much snow in town. Roughly similar to what I get in Whitefish.

If his spot is down by west yellowstone or someplace like that with more snow and less plow guys, then maybe the economics on a skid steer make more sense.

[dan_pdx]

A couple of questions for the collective.

First, the supply lines to a bathroom sink are knocking when the sink taps are turned on. Same issue for hot and cold. They're copper pipe inside a lath and plaster wall and I can't see that the wall was ever opened to properly secure the pipes. There is a basement under there, but the pipes go up through holes in the subfloor, so no access without making a big hole in the subfloor. Is there any way to secure those pipes without getting into the wall cavity? Turning the shut off valves down to about 1/3 capacity does seem to stop the knocking, but makes using the sink kind of a PITA.


Second, what's the 411 on natural gas furnace vs. heat pump? This is in Portland, so fairly mild winters. I have a NG furnace that's nearing end of life; a tech measured CO at something like 6 ppm at the register with the furnace on. I didn't think to have him take a reading of the ambient interior CO before running the furnace, but the furnace is 18 years old, so it seems plausible that the heat exchanger has some small cracks and needs to be retired.

So now I'm trying to decide the best strategy for replacement: another NG furnace, a heat pump with a NG furnace as backup, or a heat pump with some radiant heating as backup (seems installers in Portland are very reluctant to install a heat pump without some kind of backup). This is my former primary residence, now rented to my cousin and his wife (and their dog), so while I won't say that cost is no object, I want them to be comfortable. It seems that a heat pump is going to cost substantially more than a new NG furnace and not save that much money (maybe $50/month during heating season), so I'm kind of leaning towards just putting in a new NG furnace. Is that crazy?

Other background: the house is an old Craftsman, but fairly well insulated and weatherized: it has fiberglass batts in the wall, insulated to R30 with foam in the attic, and did pretty well on a blower door test. The current cooling strategy is two window units and a portable, which has been OK other than being a little inconvenient.

[I Skied Bandini Mountain]

If you can carefully drill a hole into that wall cavity as near the pipes as possible, you can shoot some expanding foam in there and it should glue them into place. Use the big gap stuff and be careful, don't get it in your eyes or on your skin.

As for heating and cooling, I would shoot the works with HP and super high efficiency furnace and collect as many rebates and tax breaks as possible. That might be overkill in PDX, but I wouldn't do only a HP unless I had solar to also feed it.

[concretejungle]

Use the big gap stuff and be careful, don't get it in your eyes or on your skin.

WD-40 gets it off your skin. Either way don't get it on your skin.

[XXX-er]

Nice Phish! Good luck with that.

SxSs and UTVs are not the same thing. Rangers, Gators, Toolcats etc. are awesome. They will be less expensive than skid. They do different things. Even driving a skid steer a quarter mile is painful. But a UTV won't move a foot of set up snow.

Oh....if you can find operational skid steers for $7K, you've found your new side hustle. I think $15K is probably a really number. And you'll need a 3/4 ton to haul it. And they are pretty reliable but parts and mechanics are expensive.

I got a buddy who had planned to do clearing/ roto tilling with a small Kubota s a retiremnt gig but he doesnt do it any more cuz it was such a fucking pain dealing with the customers

I went up thar to buy a 1/4 oz and he ranting about somebody leaving a chain on the ground which got sucked into the snow blower/ fucked up hardware, he was not happy and he WAS the HD mechanic

Junior would have scoped out the SxS pretty carefully cuz he doesnt do anything without giving it a lot of thot, has a farming/ sledding/ biking/ hunting best buddy with all the equipment if he needs to do any farm implement type stuff

[old goat]

If your HVAC guys are telling you you have to have a furnace back up for a heat pump, find another HVAC guy. (A back up woodstove or a generator for outages are another story. Obviously a forced air furnace is no good when the power is out.) Anyway, if you don't have AC already, you're going to need it sooner or later, probably sooner.) Myabe your local electric utility can give you the names of some good heat pump contractors.

[XXX-er]

don't heat pumps not work very well at some point when its gets COLD ??

we could get 2 weeks of -40C up here so Junior has an aging so its forced air wood stove like in the basement where a forced air gas furnace might go, it does have an electrical element in the furnace but thats it for primary and backup heat in the house so no baseboard heat, I don't think there is any gas line out there yet so thats out, he is trying to get a new wood stove instaled but having trouble getting the contractors to show up

[anotherVTskibum]

If your HVAC guys are telling you you have to have a furnace back up for a heat pump, find another HVAC guy. (A back up woodstove or a generator for outages are another story. Obviously a forced air furnace is no good when the power is out.) Anyway, if you don't have AC already, you're going to need it sooner or later, probably sooner.) Myabe your local electric utility can give you the names of some good heat pump contractors.

Seconded.

I'm glad it was after we got divorced that my ex decided to replace her oil furnace with a propane unit in part because the guy from the propane and oil company told her heat pumps weren't reliable enough, because my head would have exploded if I had been involved in that decision and she pushed for propane.

I know a couple other people around here who have them and are very happy with them, and given that we haven't seen extended stretches of truly cold in recent memory (we did back when I was in high school), I'm convinced a heat pump and solar panels is the way to go, especially since we run AC a lot more than we used to. Bonus points for a battery backup system.

[El Chupacabra]

Seems like maybe the right place to ask this -

For carrying an extension ladder on a truck bed rack, is 35" apart between the crossbars OK? I have a Thule Xsporter rack that I set up for holding a rocketbox, so I set the crossbars at 35" spread. I'll have plenty of space to hang the ladder over the truck cab and rearward too.

[Johnny H]

A couple of questions for the collective.

First, the supply lines to a bathroom sink are knocking when the sink taps are turned on. Same issue for hot and cold. They're copper pipe inside a lath and plaster wall and I can't see that the wall was ever opened to properly secure the pipes. There is a basement under there, but the pipes go up through holes in the subfloor, so no access without making a big hole in the subfloor. Is there any way to secure those pipes without getting into the wall cavity? Turning the shut off valves down to about 1/3 capacity does seem to stop the knocking, but makes using the sink kind of a PITA.


Second, what's the 411 on natural gas furnace vs. heat pump? This is in Portland, so fairly mild winters. I have a NG furnace that's nearing end of life; a tech measured CO at something like 6 ppm at the register with the furnace on. I didn't think to have him take a reading of the ambient interior CO before running the furnace, but the furnace is 18 years old, so it seems plausible that the heat exchanger has some small cracks and needs to be retired.

So now I'm trying to decide the best strategy for replacement: another NG furnace, a heat pump with a NG furnace as backup, or a heat pump with some radiant heating as backup (seems installers in Portland are very reluctant to install a heat pump without some kind of backup). This is my former primary residence, now rented to my cousin and his wife (and their dog), so while I won't say that cost is no object, I want them to be comfortable. It seems that a heat pump is going to cost substantially more than a new NG furnace and not save that much money (maybe $50/month during heating season), so I'm kind of leaning towards just putting in a new NG furnace. Is that crazy?

Other background: the house is an old Craftsman, but fairly well insulated and weatherized: it has fiberglass batts in the wall, insulated to R30 with foam in the attic, and did pretty well on a blower door test. The current cooling strategy is two window units and a portable, which has been OK other than being a little inconvenient.

Check your water pressure with a gauge on a hose Bibb or laundry sink faucet. Should not be more than 55-60 psi. If more than that, could be water hammer. Hope that helps.

[caulfield]

If your HVAC guys are telling you you have to have a furnace back up for a heat pump, find another HVAC guy. (A back up woodstove or a generator for outages are another story. Obviously a forced air furnace is no good when the power is out.) Anyway, if you don't have AC already, you're going to need it sooner or later, probably sooner.) Myabe your local electric utility can give you the names of some good heat pump contractors.

Thirded. Don't see -40C in PDX too often (yet), so performance is fine. Reliability concern is like a generation old. Grid reliability is a different thing, I think backup is important if you have someone especially vulnerable in the house or no family/friends near-but-not-too-near. And even then, generator or battery over an entire backup furnace.

Thanks for the transfer fan advice a few pages back. Got around to installing them finally and happy with the setup. The fan motors are a little droney on anything but full speed, but I'm going to need them infrequently enough that it's fine. The whole upgrade was mostly to shorten the list of things I think about as I fall asleep.

[::: :::]

A couple of questions for the collective.

First, the supply lines to a bathroom sink are knocking when the sink taps are turned on. Same issue for hot and cold. They're copper pipe inside a lath and plaster wall and I can't see that the wall was ever opened to properly secure the pipes. There is a basement under there, but the pipes go up through holes in the subfloor, so no access without making a big hole in the subfloor. Is there any way to secure those pipes without getting into the wall cavity? Turning the shut off valves down to about 1/3 capacity does seem to stop the knocking, but makes using the sink kind of a PITA.


Second, what's the 411 on natural gas furnace vs. heat pump? This is in Portland, so fairly mild winters. I have a NG furnace that's nearing end of life; a tech measured CO at something like 6 ppm at the register with the furnace on. I didn't think to have him take a reading of the ambient interior CO before running the furnace, but the furnace is 18 years old, so it seems plausible that the heat exchanger has some small cracks and needs to be retired.

So now I'm trying to decide the best strategy for replacement: another NG furnace, a heat pump with a NG furnace as backup, or a heat pump with some radiant heating as backup (seems installers in Portland are very reluctant to install a heat pump without some kind of backup). This is my former primary residence, now rented to my cousin and his wife (and their dog), so while I won't say that cost is no object, I want them to be comfortable. It seems that a heat pump is going to cost substantially more than a new NG furnace and not save that much money (maybe $50/month during heating season), so I'm kind of leaning towards just putting in a new NG furnace. Is that crazy?

Other background: the house is an old Craftsman, but fairly well insulated and weatherized: it has fiberglass batts in the wall, insulated to R30 with foam in the attic, and did pretty well on a blower door test. The current cooling strategy is two window units and a portable, which has been OK other than being a little inconvenient.

heat pump, if you expect to keep the house
gas furnace, if you don't

[dan_pdx]

If you can carefully drill a hole into that wall cavity as near the pipes as possible, you can shoot some expanding foam in there and it should glue them into place. Use the big gap stuff and be careful, don't get it in your eyes or on your skin.

As for heating and cooling, I would shoot the works with HP and super high efficiency furnace and collect as many rebates and tax breaks as possible. That might be overkill in PDX, but I wouldn't do only a HP unless I had solar to also feed it.

Thanks, that's a good idea and I'll give it a shot. I'll fix it the right way eventually, but just looking for a quick fix right now.

heat pump, if you expect to keep the house
gas furnace, if you don't

Nice, thanks for distilling things down. We're not sure if we're going to keep it or not, but that's a great yardstick for us to keep in mind.

[Vt-Freeheel]

Thirded. Don't see -40C in PDX too often (yet), so performance is fine. Reliability concern is like a generation old. Grid reliability is a different thing, I think backup is important if you have someone especially vulnerable in the house or no family/friends near-but-not-too-near. And even then, generator or battery over an entire backup furnace.

Thanks for the transfer fan advice a few pages back. Got around to installing them finally and happy with the setup. The fan motors are a little droney on anything but full speed, but I'm going to need them infrequently enough that it's fine. The whole upgrade was mostly to shorten the list of things I think about as I fall asleep.

Icedams much?

[caulfield]

Icedams much?

I live at like 200' so that's not one of the problems I have

eta- maybe app doesn't show profile location, but I'm in Seattle. I don't have ice issues of any kind except that one morning last December

[liv2ski]

heat pump, if you expect to keep the house
gas furnace, if you don't

Interesting advice. Living in San Diego with about the highest utility bills in the country (especially electricity) I thought a NG furnace was the way to go. We don't have solar.

[::: :::]

California is pushing towards electric and solar in the residential building code. Gas, tho cheaper in upfront costs, has a higher carbon footprint