Home Remodel: Do, Don'ts, Advice

[char_]

No, but when you install the T the right way, high pressure jetting down the main just blows right by. When you do it backwards, Grandpa gets a shit-nado for breakfast.

"backflow preventers" are used on the water line to protect from cross contamination due to siphonage, infiltration from irrigation systems and stuff like that.

I don't understand how you can I install a manufacturered tee anyway but in the correct orientation.

I work for a public works agency and have seen enough sanitary sewer stuff go in the ground thst this isnt making any sense, but maybe you use some special parts in CO.

Maybe a wye installed with the sweep backwards is what you are saying? And the crew ran the jetter nozzle up the lateral?

[Foggy_Goggles]

I don't understand how you can I install a manufacturered tee anyway but in the correct orientation.

I work for a public works agency and have seen enough sanitary sewer stuff go in the ground thst this isnt making any sense, but maybe you use some special parts in CO.

Maybe a wye installed with the sweep backwards is what you are saying? And the crew ran the jetter nozzle up the lateral?

Yeah, I would say you got it right. I just stayed at a Holiday Inn. Words have meanings and I used the wrong one. "Wye" not "T".

[char_]

Yeah, I would say you got it right. I just stayed at a Holiday Inn. Words have meanings and I used the wrong one. "Wye" not "T".

Sorry, Engineer disease.

[Alpinord]

Yeah, I would say you got it right. I just stayed at a Holiday Inn. Words have meanings and I used the wrong one. "Wye" not "T".

Well, a Lowes 'Wye' is a lot like a Home Depot 'Street/Sanitary/Sweep Tee'

[ski-wpk]

Looking for advice on flooring: any suggestions on wood floor (finished on site or engineered) that won’t get trashed by kids or a dog? We’re renovating in Boulder (cool 1968 mid-mod that we bought from the founder of Lange a few months ago - lots of cool ski history), and our 80-pound lab, plus three kids under 6, have trashed a 5” white oak floor with water-based poly in our current house. That floor was new 4 years ago. Need something way more durable for the new place.


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[ski-wpk]

^^^ Also would love a non-poly solution (oil or wax) so I can repair myself if needed...


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[old goat]

Ice, you wouldn't believe what happens even in new construction. It really takes a lot of oversight to make sure it gets done right. When it doesn't get done right it is often years before it gets discovered.

Here are two example that happened recently. 1. The T where the service lateral connects to the main was installed backwards.

City installed new smart meters. Looking at our water bill the last few months I notice that we're getting mid-summer readings despite turning off our irrigation in the fall and not living in the house. The city comes out and figures out that the transmitters for our meter and our next door neighbor's meter, which are side by side on the sidewalk, are wired to the wrong meters. So we're getting billed for our neighbor's water--neighbor who is watering 2x a night every night despite a super wet year and law that they can only water once day a week. Apparently for the last year they have used 8X the amount of water we have. Hoping the get our account credited.

Looking for advice on flooring: any suggestions on wood floor (finished on site or engineered) that won’t get trashed by kids or a dog? We’re renovating in Boulder (cool 1968 mid-mod that we bought from the founder of Lange a few months ago - lots of cool ski history), and our 80-pound lab, plus three kids under 6, have trashed a 5” white oak floor with water-based poly in our current house. That floor was new 4 years ago. Need something way more durable for the new place.


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What does trashed mean? Trashed the finish or trashed the wood? Poly finishes are prone to scratching. You would do better with an oil/varnish/thinner type finish, you can mix your own using boiled linseed oil, tung oil, or danish oil; a non poly oil based varnish; and mineral spirits 1:1:1 . I'm sure there are commercial products that do the same thing but I can't give you a brand. I used this on our upstairs floors which I installed and finished and it held up well with dogs and kids for 20 years. I may have even used poly as the varnish, can't recall. This will be much less prone to scratching but not easily repaired if damaged by water, piss, vomit etc. Or you can just use oil and floor wax, in which case buy a buffer and plan to rewax several times per year. This is easily repaired but not nearly as protective the first finish. Or you can use what ever finish they used on the oak floors when they built my house in 1933. I don't know what it is but the floors still look great, never refinished. If you do use the first type of finish don't apply too many coats and keep it satin and if you do need to touch up an area it won't be as noticeable.

If by trashed you mean damaged by water or other liquids (see above) and engineered floor will be the most protective but hard to repair.

If by trashed you mean the wood is damaged--wood is wood, no matter the product. White oak is quite hard. You could go to harder woods but there's still the risk of damage. Your best bet is solid wood, since damage can be sanded out and refinished.

If you're building for the ages I would definitely go with solid wood. Can be refinished many times and can last centuries if taken care of. Engineered wood is more of a throw-away product IMO. I've installed thick solid oak T and G flooring toe nailed and engineered. The solid wood isn't that much harder to install, even with a muscle-powered nailer (actually kind of fun to bang the nails in). Certainly harder to sand flush (I should have left that to a pro) and has to be finished.

I'm an amateur. Let the pros weigh in.

[Deebased]

Looking for advice on flooring: any suggestions on wood floor (finished on site or engineered) that won’t get trashed by kids or a dog? We’re renovating in Boulder (cool 1968 mid-mod that we bought from the founder of Lange a few months ago - lots of cool ski history), and our 80-pound lab, plus three kids under 6, have trashed a 5” white oak floor with water-based poly in our current house. That floor was new 4 years ago. Need something way more durable for the new place.


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Cali-bamboo has some nice kit. I've got a few thousand square feet and a 160 lb Boerboel hasn't damaged it one bit. Fairly reasonably priced, but watch out that shit is heavy

[Foggy_Goggles]

Personally, I'd install LVP or a real wood floor with a living finish. That is only because I live in the mountains, by house is a cross between a ranch and a petting zoo and I live on a dirt road. Wood floor refinishing just sucks.

[fastfred]

Been pushing this alot, just did 1200 sq ft of it in a house, do a couple floors a year with it
https://coretecfloors.com/en-us/products

coretec

luxury vinyl planks by themselves suck bad, but this system is the bomb, done a couple lvp floors over the years in homes and commercial and they all suck I refuse to be involved in another one

[Foggy_Goggles]

Yeah, I guess I only gave half the story. LVP can to total dog shit. It is one of the products that is being pushed at homeowners as "awesome, cheap, and easy to install yourself". Spend the extra to get a quality product, do your floor prep well and only self install if you know what you are doing.

[::: :::]

LVT (or LVP) is for properties you won't set foot in. It's cheap & easy to install & takes a beating. That makes it easy to replace when it gets beat to hell, and no regrets about tearing it out. It's meant to be disposable, despite it's lack of sustainable material.

If you want flooring for a space you will live in, use a traditional material. It will age better, dog scratches and all. Down the road a few years, your house/cabin/van by the river won't look like you put in the cheapest thing possible just so you could pressure wash it in the name of durability.

[iceman]

Looking for advice on flooring...

There's been a lot of threads on this topic, and a lot of opinions expressed that contradict each other. But imo your on the right track with the oil finish but it's definitely going to give you a different look than poly. Some prefer it, some hate it. Some threads on the flooring topic: https://www.tetongravity.com/forums/...rchid=18974783

I personally am a fan of quality engineered flooring like that from Vermont Plank Flooring. I used their product in a project that finished up in 2016 and am very happy with it. I remember Rootskier giving me shit about it but he was wrong and still is. This isn't Lumber Liquidators shit by a mile. What's most important is the stability of the product and the thickness of the wear layer, start there. More info: https://vermontplankflooring.com/wide-plank/engineered/

[RootSkier]

If I gave you shit about it it was probably limited to the fact that prefinished engineered wood floors will always look like they are engineered and not real wood, even if they have a solid wood veneer.

All these years later and I still hate microbevels...but clicking on that link, I see they offer a site-finished option. So not solid wood but all the trouble of finishing on site...OK then. I got nothing. I am sure it looks great.

[house]

Take a look at osmo. It’s an oil/wax blend that you can “spot repair” rather than having to totally strip and refinish.

https://www.midwest-flooring.com/collections/osmo

^^^ Also would love a non-poly solution (oil or wax) so I can repair myself if needed...


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[iceman]

If I gave you shit about it it was probably limited to the fact that prefinished engineered wood floors will always look like they are engineered and not real wood, even if they have a solid wood veneer...

We completely agree on that.

[MontuckyFried]

luxury vinyl planks by themselves suck bad, but this system is the bomb, done a couple lvp floors over the years in homes and commercial and they all suck I refuse to be involved in another one

Agreed. They have a time and a place (ie rentals). My home will not be one of them.

Yeah, I guess I only gave half the story. LVP can to total dog shit. It is one of the products that is being pushed at homeowners as "awesome, cheap, and easy to install yourself". Spend the extra to get a quality product, do your floor prep well and only self install if you know what you are doing.

The odd thing is that they can be just as expensive (sometimes more!) than an equivalent alternative. At least the 'good' ones. Flooring stores have been pushing it for some time now, and they continue to do so. I finally made some realizations. (A) It must have a really high profit margin, and (B) these salespeople obviously have not EVER dealt with the installation or warranty repairs themselves. They push the hell out of the product, but they're never the ones doing the dirty work. I used it on a rental condo once. Looked surprisingly good (it was not cheap, like $6+/sq ft) and took one helluva beating, and it is SUPERB for when you have snowy boots coming in and out on a constant basis. However, the stupid interlocking system would constantly pull apart, likely due to constant temperature swings like when the afternoon sun came in beating in every day. I had to entirely redo the floor once. Finally gave up and started using a matching brown caulk in between failed seams, which finally got everything to hold in place well enough.

Anyway, my parents were shopping for hardwood floors a couple months back and the flooring sales lady was pushing the stuff hard on them. I told them to ask her if she had ever installed them herself or done warranty work. Of course the answer was that she had never done anything of the sort. Lol, of course. Thank goodness I talked them out of it. Showed them bad reviews from THAT store, all complaining about the LVP.

One of those things that they'll push hard on you, and they'll CLAIM it has a great warranty, but good freaking luck getting them to own up to it! I had their manager out twice to get a warranty claim done, and although he admitted it was a failure of the system itself, it was still "within specs," so he couldn't do anything about it.

[old goat]

I have a couple of small floors with engineered wood. No microbevels. I think the reason it always looks like engineered is that it isn't sanded and finished as one unit. Of course you could install unfinished flooring or finish over prefinished, but that defeats the purpose of using it.

One advantage of the engineered in remodel situations is that it's thinner, which may let it work better with existing floors in other rooms, cabinets, etc.

[ski-wpk]

Thanks all. We were set on this (https://resawntimberco.com/product/k...ank-white-oak/) from Resawn Timber Co - 7” engineered white oak with a hard wax oil finish - until we ordered a full plank and put my dog on it. Scratched and gouged within hours. Not durable enough. Then 5” white oak finished on site with Rubio Monocoat hardwax oil, but sounds like the oil can react with dog saliva creating black staining - no good for our house of kid chaos and dog that licks the entire kitchen floor clean every night. Will check out the links above. We’ve got 2600 SF to refloor so also needs to be cost-effective.

Pic of the kitchen and living after demo a few weeks ago:


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[::: :::]

You haven’t picked finishes and you’re already into construction?!?

Good luck, man

[ski-wpk]

Carry cost is a bitch on this one so we’re moving fast. Framers were in today; we’re finalizing plans room by room a few days ahead of them. Working well so far - made easier given that Mrs ski-wpk is a designer and we’ve done half a dozen projects with the same architect and builder.


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[iceman]

You need tile.

[savemeasammy]

Solid strand bamboo.

[RootSkier]

Dark green shag for the period look. 1970s is the new mid-modern.

[RootSkier]

In all seriousness: Finished-in-place #2 red oak (available for pickup at Home Depot for $2.99/ft) with the hardest finish that a local installer will put down. I'm not sure what it is but it will require respirators and a clearing of the site for a week, at least.

Oak floors will never not be timeless, even if you hate oak in other contexts.