kurt

This might be another outgrowth (or tumor) from Holme's show. He's always bragging how he only uses screws instead of nails. I've even had customers comment or ask "did they use screws or nails"; when I question them why they asked, it's always "that's what Holmes does".

We'd call that a cheap felt cap; essentially a thin felt barely mopped down over some previous nastiness. There isn't any "usually" with a thin felt cap; it's whatever the gapped toothed hillbilly that applied thought would get by.

That's right. Inasmuch as these little walls can prevent catastrophic disaster, you want a good firewall. I've personally seen what happens when firewalls are incomplete or compromised, and it's bad. Really bad.

That can only be determined by examining the By Laws of your association. Most of the HOA's that I work with, that would be a common element, i.e., an association issue. Your association may have different regulations.

I finally found one last year. I kept smelling something burning, looked and looked, finally found this weird little mechanical space behind a closet, found the plastic duct snaking through there, felt it, kinda warm, then when I lifted it slightly, it kinda melted/fell apart, and all the smoldering that had been going on inside burst into flame. Then it was me frantically stamping out a bunch of little lint brush fires. The client just stood there with their mouth in a little "O" shape..... I got to look smart that day.

Yeah. In 2002, they switched to the first numeral, i.e., first digit 2 means 2002, 3 means 2003, etc. Download Attachment: Furnace Age Chart.pdf 103.56 KB

Gawd....how'd you get a Quatro furnace out there? They made those pieces of crap on the South side of Chicago in an old garage. Maybe the lousiest furnace ever made.

How come no sleeved conduit to accommodate movement/settlement?

Definitely wild. What I've witnessed is high winds running over a roof create lift as an airplane wing does. They start to lift, then "bounce flap" up and down, and then it's WHAM. Wind force increases exponentially with velocity. The break point is around 50mph, or so it feels; it's really hard to stand in a 50mph wind. At 65mph, the curve goes steep. 70mph, you're getting blown off your feet, you can't stand up. Put that on 5000sf of anything and it's a lot of force.

Interesting question. I don't know. Never seen it, and as you know, we look at a few thousand flat roof truss annually. I don't think it would.

I don't know where you get that idea. It's not ridiculous, but it hovers right at being ridiculous. B&H is an Amazon vendor, among many others. Amazon isn't Alibaba or Taobao. I am sure there is some vendor someplace on Amazon that is dipshit, but I and our other business buy mountains of stuff out of Amazon. Mountains. It's flawless. It's an absolutely awesome operation. Not taking anything away from B&H; they're excellent. But, Amazon's prices and service are just as good, sometimes better, especially if you're Prime.

Aluminum siding is a rain screen, meaning the siding itself doesn't keep water out; some large amount of water drives in/on/around the siding joints and laps and gets under the siding. The underlying water resistive barrier (WRB) is what keeps the water out of the house. Most people would recognize a WRB as Tyvek, yours might be fanfold foam, maybe Celotex, maybe even another layer of siding (depending on how old the house is). Point being, pressure washing isn't going to "loosen the joints" to allow water in. Water is/was already getting in and draining out the bottom. The issue is something else (that I don't know....yet).

The Watt's thing uses the cold water as the "return", but it's only a return until hot water reaches the fixture. Then it shuts down so the cold water side stays cold. So, yeah, Jim and I are talking different things. I misread his post. The Watt's thing works. Nolan's works, I've talked to a few other folks around the country that use it and tell me it works, so I'm going with it working.

Right. The fancy valve that's installed at the fixture is temp sensitive; once the water gets to the set point (usually around 98F), it closes so the cold water supply doesn't get hot. At least, that's what the marketing and sales reps told me.

never heard that one before. How'd that work?

Good to know.

The on demand thing can go either way; some folks love them and others hate them. I was sort edging into the hate end of it....more like exasperated because of how long it took to get hot water to fixtures that were 20-30' from the WH. You might want one of these....because of this.....or maybe not. Especially interesting is this (cut and pasted from Green Building Advisor) ......."even as the flow rates of faucets and showerheads has dropped, plumbing codes are increasingly mandating larger-diameter piping, so the wait times for hot water have increased, a fact that's exacerbated by the larger houses we're building. In addition to the long wait for hot water, all of the cooled-off water sitting in the pipe goes down the drain. Nationally, there?s a huge amount of water wasted in this way." The Watts system takes up the slack of standby loss, which may or may not be a consideration for you. Depends on your personal water use ethic. There's also something called the "cold water sandwich"....when you're in the kitchen turning the water on and off constantly, it "confuses" the sensors and you can hit a spot where you don't get hot water until the system resets. I hated my on demand heater. I changed back to conventional. I never found it to have an appreciable effect on my water bill. I'd also consider one of the newer high btu output jobs...they're 25 gallon tanks but very quick recovery. I was an early adopter though. Maybe the on demand types have gotten better. 10 years ago, they were just a pain in the ass.

OK, I thought you were talking about a Generac stationary system. Those portable jobs are awesome; personally, I think you're set on the generator part. Conventional tank vs. on demand...... How far from the fixtures is the water heater going to be and do you have a return loop for the hot water?

I'm with Trent. Why wouldn't you just upgrade the whole shebangabang? Seems silly to salvage a few parts and then dink around with them. I look at a lot of generators. They work great. The #1 cause of malfunction is folks don't change the battery every few years, like on a car. It's an internal combustion engine with a starter....it needs a good battery.

Yep. Looks like one of the basic tenant gambits for beating Com Ed.

If we're going nostalgic,.......my first was a car phone, called such because the equipment took up most of the trunk space in my Dodge. 5 grand. Seemed like a good deal in the mid-80's because I was blowing about $10 a day on pay phones. My first bag phone (and, if one is going back to bag phones to describe quality, early senescence is taking hold)...was about $2800....another seeming bargain. I remember battery problems. I had an early handheld that, one day, started getting warm, then really warm, then hot, then ridiculously hot, then I put it on the sidewalk where an impromptu demonstration of critical mass and nuclear meltdown occurred. The whole thing was reduced to stamped parts in a matrix of black plastic goo. That was a great phone. Educational and entertaining.

They're all just phones. Everyone gets super excited about new ones, then it wears off. In China, I use a Xiaomi phone. They have all the same stuff as every other phone and they cost <1/2 as much. I switched everything to T-Mobile about a year ago. I got 4 phones for what it used to cost to have a single phone @ Verizon, coverage is the same or better. I dream of the day I can chuck my phone in the garbage can.

We can talk about it.

It only makes sense. Operating systems and hardware have to be integrated as only the OS side can make it happen. It's why the iphone was so good for so long. Samsung makes zero money on the hardware side; almost nothing anyway. That can only hold out for a while.

He ran calculations; he didn't rubber stamp it. He told us to make it a lot less strong than we were going to initially.