Recent content by mcbane

I use only slab sensors and still needed to put in a timer to prevent short cycling. Unfortunately the tekmar thermostats don’t allow hysteresis to be adjusted. An open door will cool the air for a few minutes and you don’t want to fire up the boiler to try to deal with that aberration. 90...

Thanks for the replies. Strap wrench and soapy water finally cracked it loose. No broken plastic parts

I can no longer remove the twist lock hose from my CT26 vacuum. Won’t twist at all and won’t pull out. And I didn’t vacuum up any epoxy or other wet adhesive. All parts are plastic so channel locks almost guaranteed to cause damage. Any suggestions re how to remove the hose? If I recall...

Need a Time machine to fix by roughing in correctly:) In any case, the pipe I needed to repair was 3” ABS in a 2x6 sill. Not much clearance either side of pipe. And hit by 10d nail. Fortunately lots of foam around the pipe where it exited concrete so possible to glue a coupler below the damage.

The PT has copper azole. Unfortunately stub ups out of slab for DWV and electrical conduit are there before the wall is framed, so sheathing must get nailed after the pipe is there. Lots of ways to avoid problems with SST nails if you are aware of what can go wrong. I just thought I would...

Just thought I would share a cautionary tale. Code now requires super corrosive PT for sill boards, and requires either HD galvanized nails or SST nails to resist corrosion. But there at least a few observations of nail gun HD nails failing, so SST nails seem safer. Probably true but there...

It depends what you want to use the water for, since pressure drop will vary according to flow rate. If your only need is 2 gpm for a sink or flushing a toilet, 1" pex will have minimal pressure drop. But if you want to run a 6 gpm sprinkler, you will lose 12 psi. Take a look at the table...

FYI, if you want to back up a hole with copper and are going to use a penny, you want a penny minted from 1962 to 1981. Pure zine (82-present pennies) is a lousy backing material and will contaminate the weld. I have never used bronze (pre 1962) to back a weld so no idea how well that will work.

The root cause of your problem is improper location of the overhead electric service entrance, and merely guying a replacement conduit to the ridge line is unlikely to be a long term fix. Permanent solutions would be a) underground service entrance, which would require you to trench from the...

I put 2" insulation on the outside of the frost wall, down to the top of footing. I also put 2" foam between the frost wall and floating slab, but that foam is reduced to 1/2" for the top few inches of slab.

I had a mystery problem like this where power good on the poco side of the meter. Not always a loose terminal screw. In my case, turned out that during a meter changeout they had cracked the plastic part of the meter base such that the spring loaded contacts were making poor contact on my side...

If you have CARB style cans with the original equipment spout they not only vent vapors but if knocked on their sides will spill fuel. The best solution is to buy aftermarket caps that provide a liquid-tight and air-tight seal. And even then, dont store them in your garage - best place is an...

The current auger is a smooth spiral. Im sure it worked well in Minnesota, where it came from, but it doesnt work well in ice. Unfortunately the constant freeze thaw cycles in CA create lots of ice that you need real teeth (or a way bigger machine) to cut.

Thanks for the idea. I suppose I could also just reach the 1” dimension by putting a couple of really small teeth on the back side and then grinding those off.

Auger is 18" diameter. I just checked my clearance after chipping away all the ice and at the tightest point I only have 1" clearance where the auger comes close to the back edge of the blower's ice cutting blade. So I probably want max 7/8" high teeth.