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I installed some copper water lines about ten years ago in my house... I used all steel straps, fasteners, etc. I haven't had any problems with them. I recently ran all my air pipe for the compressor and took one of the steel fasteners down... it looked exactly like the day I installed it...

Yes, I'm using a ball valve. David

Hey guys, I'm working on copper air lines for my compressor. I started brazing this weekend and due to the way everything is setup I don't have a very long drip leg. How much water actually gets stored in the drip leg? Would six inches of 3/4" copper pipe be enough to hold water or would I be...

Do the fittings require a special tool to remove? Thanks, David

I'm doing the exact same thing... now I'm stuck, I can't figure out how to make up the fitting between the air hose reel and the copper line.... the only thing I can figure out is to use hydraulic fittings. The problem with all of the copper fittings I've found is when you try to join two lines...

Brick is great but most houses now set the brick against a stick frame. Combine this with minimal overhangs and there is a likelihood of getting rot, etc. especially if the installer doesn't do a good job. Also brick is a lot more expensive than vinyl. david

Hardiplank still has to be painted though, right? Anything the size of a house that has to be painted occassionally is high maintainence IMO. Personally nothing beats vinyl when it comes to bang for buck. david

You're right, but I read how engineers calculate this stuff and do the math myself. There are calculators on the web which will give you deflection, load, etc based upon your subfloor and joists. The problem with us giving advice is we make a lot of generalizations. We could tell him to use...

If you want to keep a few more inches of height for storage, you could always sister the joists which means you glue and nail them together. So instead of 2"x12"x16"OC you might have 4"x8"x14"OC... make sense? That is what I have on my 16' porch and there are some pretty heavy things on there...

French drain to divert the water to a lower elevation. However instead of covering the drain with dirt, use washstone then some decorative stone on top of that. That way water can't be retained in the ground. david

You can't really calculate the cost of geogrid without knowing the block manufacturer you're going with. Geogrid adds a lot more labor because you have to compact the ground behind the wall even further back than you normally would. In my experience most companies who build non-commercial...

Four feet is as tall as you can go on a retaining wall without needing something like geogrid. Generally it is cheaper to break the wall up into a series of smaller walls. So for example you could use two three foot retaining wall and leave a small bed for planting in between. Retaining walls...

All plastic will *eventually* get brittle with UV exposure. Generally speaking, the more you pay for the plastic product, the longer it will resist UV deterioration. Contrast that with aluminum which will last a lifetime against the elements. David

I'm doubtful you're going to see too many of those walls in residential applications. The blocks weigh over 1 ton a piece. At four feet long and eighteen inches high per block you would need some heavy equipment to move it around. Leveling it would be very difficult as well. I installed a...

That is a good point. I grew up in a rural area with a lot of mobile homes... the floor joists were 2x4s in the ones we worked on. Since yours looks older I'm betting it has two main steel beams running down the middle where they hook on the axles. Probably if you put your big air compressor...

That's just insane. Six feet long!!! I'd be afraid he might get tired of mice and then one day when you're down on that creeper... david

I've installed probably 200 feet of these drains. They work well but you need a good slope otherwise you'll be cleaning them out a lot. Leaves, sticks, etc tend to get stuck in the grates and stuff will pile up behind them. I installed them at the bottom of a long drive that slopes entirely...