I've heard good things about both ^ and ^^.

I have a $50 bissel stick vacuum for hard surface floors that works quite well, if you're in need of that. Though some of the newer full-size vacuums (maybe ^,^^) claim to also work well on hard floors (and don't damage wood).

http://www.bissell.com/poweredge-pet-hard-floor-vacuum/

11/3/2014 7:10:34 PM

I like whatever the maid uses.

11/3/2014 7:27:54 PM

LOL

11/3/2014 8:05:18 PM

My dishwasher doesn't appear to be working. I start it and can hear the water start running, but then it stops about 45 seconds in...detergent never releases and washing never begins. I've drained it and tried to re-start, but same thing happens. I'm going to try some different cycles to see if that works. It's barely four years old, I know dishwashers are suppose to last a little bit longer than that.

I can't imagine this is a problem I can troubleshoot.

11/4/2014 9:06:59 AM

Well the "pots and pans" cycle is working right now, but that's it. Guess I'll just see how this goes.

11/4/2014 10:00:21 AM

Our garbage disposal lost a screw and a blade last week. But it still mostly works. At some point, we should probably get it replaced.

11/4/2014 11:35:43 AM

Get a waste king from Amazon. Zero problems from ours, and it was super easy to install. Lifetime warranty.

11/4/2014 2:29:13 PM

^I just did that this past weekend message_topic.aspx?topic=589554&page=20#16148888

11/4/2014 3:40:52 PM

We already had plumber's putty and there was an electrical box under the sink so the install was nominal. Pretty much any plumbing seems minor after the stupid nail in the water main before the (non working) shut off valve though.

11/4/2014 6:40:35 PM

I've got a hole somewhere on the roof of an added on sunroom. Water drips in and puddles everytime it rains. I thought I had it fixed as I puttied an area that I thought was where it was entering. The first time it rained after my putty job, i don't remember any water leaking into the room. Ever since then however, its continued to come in. Not sure what to do next, grrr

11/5/2014 10:46:15 AM

i've been putting off installing our waste king becasue i have to convert the hard wire to a plug. i guess i'll get to it this weekend. any advice? (already have supplies)

11/5/2014 7:57:25 PM

If you already have a box in the wall, it's super easy to wire it to a plug and that screws into the box. No problems here.

11/5/2014 10:34:12 PM

^.

just make sure you grab the proper outlet

11/6/2014 8:43:57 AM

Anyone have any experience repainting bathtubs? For whatever reason, the previous owner of my house painted the guest bath and did a horrible job. Aside from being some weird kind of light pinkish cream color, the paint is chipping off so anytime someone takes a shower the drain gets clogged with small paint chips. I'd like to paint over it with the type of legit paint that won't peel or chip off but don't have the slightest idea where to start. My googling has only found stuff about painting tubs for the first time.

11/6/2014 9:55:22 AM

I would assume repainting a tub would be the same steps as painting a tub, except just making sure you have a good solid surface. Would sanding it with a fine sandpaper scratch it up to much? I don't think it would.

11/6/2014 11:10:02 AM

good deal on decent air filters?

http://www.groupon.com/deals/gg-enviroflow-pollen-and-dust-control-air-filters

11/10/2014 2:22:53 PM

hell no.

I buy my filters by the case at Global Filter Source on Westgate rd.

This is what I buy. Price: $5/each.

http://global-filter.com/residential-filters/pleated-merv-11-rated/

11/10/2014 9:40:20 PM

^and some that I need are $3.75 each and the others are $4.50 each from ^^....so why is this not a good deal?

hell, these are half the price compared to those from your link.

[Edited on November 11, 2014 at 8:23 AM. Reason : .]

11/11/2014 8:20:53 AM

^I'm guessing he missed the "4-pack" note in the title.

11/11/2014 11:16:27 AM

Our AC/Heat system is acting funny. I'd say about 80% of the time it's blowing out lukewarm-to-cold air. Randomly it will pump out the good heat. Wife works from home and is experimenting with the thermostat today before we call our guy.

11/11/2014 11:57:28 AM

heat pump / gas furnace combo?

11/11/2014 12:10:54 PM

Just a heat pump I believe...

Like most of the stuff in my house...I don't know any details until something goes wrong.

11/11/2014 12:15:42 PM

heat pumps will work less efficiently wtih outside temps lower than 40 typically and work much better as the temperature is higher but sounds like something is off unless it's only not working well with very low temperatures

11/11/2014 12:21:23 PM

Yeah...it's been mostly in the 50/60s. System was brand new in 2010...is either of those more common than the other? At the very least I know we have gas for our stove, but that our water heater is electric. So maybe it is the gas/heat pump combo...

11/11/2014 12:38:06 PM

If you crank up the thermostat high enough to where the emergency/aux heat kicks in, does it then blow hot air?


when it was most recently in A/C mode, was it blowing cold air then?


If you get hot air in emergency/aux heat, and your A/C was blowing cold, I would suspect a faulty reversing valve.

[Edited on November 11, 2014 at 1:07 PM. Reason : . ]

11/11/2014 1:04:30 PM

^

- I actually woke up at about 3 am this morning as the vent (directly above my side of the bed) was blowing cool air on me. I went in the hallway to turn it off and it was on "Aux Heat". Don't know if it hit that setting on its own or the wifey did it. Downstairs has just been on regular heat and doing the back and forth thing.

- AC blew awesome cold air all summer.

11/11/2014 1:26:42 PM

Freon leak. Oh well. Guess it could have been worse.

I also had no idea Freon was involved in the heating aspect of my unit.



[Edited on November 12, 2014 at 6:07 PM. Reason : .]

11/12/2014 6:04:07 PM

Source and sink are relative, ya digg?

11/12/2014 6:41:34 PM

during the polar vortex last winter (earlier this year) my aux heat wire somehow became unseated from the thermostat, and it was too cold for the heat pump to create heat without aux coils, and so i spent two nights with my house in the 50s, heating occasionally by my electric oven, unable to diagnose why my heat pump couldn't produce heat and on the verge of calling for HVAC repair to diagnose before i decided to make sure all the wires were connected. no idea how it became loose to the point it came unseated and fully out of the connection. sometimes it's the simplest thing. sometimes it's freon.

11/13/2014 9:05:45 AM

^^^

The heating part of a heat pump is the reverse of air conditioning. CalledToArms forgot way more about this than i'll ever know, but here's a HSW link.

http://home.howstuffworks.com/home-improvement/heating-and-cooling/heat-pump.htm


But that doesn't come into play for your aux heat. When your aux heat is on, it's just electric resistance heat (like an old-timey electric heater), which is inefficient and expensive, but it provides heat if/when outdoor temps are too cold for the heat pump to do much good.

If all is good now, then the fact you were getting cold air with your aux heat on could be just that the aux heat had just kicked in when you checked the thermostat or something.


^ I had a somewhat similar issue with one of my heat pumps last year. The defrost board failed and the condensing unit got stuck in defrost cycle. it makes a ridiculous racket and also uses aux heat mode as the heat pump is disabled while it defrosts. towards the end of the winter it was doing the same thing again. i said fuck it and decided to let future BobbyDigital deal with the problem.

So far it seems to be ok, but it hasn't been thaaat cold.

[Edited on November 13, 2014 at 10:18 AM. Reason : .]

11/13/2014 10:13:48 AM

any advice here? snow/slush on the undercarriage and in the wheel wells, melting in the garage, creating a mess. and I've learned that my garage is ever-so-slightly crowned at the middle, so some of the water creeps towards the walls.

what would you guys do for a long term fix? I'm currently just using towels and a Shop Vac. I'm not going to start parking on the driveway -- that defeats the purpose of having a garage

11/15/2014 10:59:51 AM

I've seen parking mats that are designed to catch melted snow and whatnot, but I don't have any pesonal experience so I did a quick Google search and found an interesting article that may be helpful:

http://allgaragefloors.com/best-garage-floor-mat-snow/

Good luck!

11/17/2014 8:50:13 AM

Someone on the garagejournal forums had a whole thread about the melted snow/ice situation in his garage, and did something with mats as well.

i'm not gonna go pull it up for you, but i'm sure you could find it -- the search on their forums is pretty good.

11/17/2014 1:14:05 PM

speaking of heat pups, we have one for the upstairs zone in the house i just bought. when the cold snapped, we weren't getting any heat out of the unit after a few hours. I had just installed a programmable thermostat (more for precise control than temp changes), so I figured I had crossed some wires up. after much looking and reading, I was 100% sure I had done it right and called a HVAC guy to come out.

turns out I was good. but the previous owners had disconnected the wiring for the aux and emergency heating. so when the temps dropped below 40, and the heat pump couldn't keep up, thus switching to aux heat, it did nothing but pump more and more cold air in.

i should call the HVAC guy who did the system inspection prior to purchase and give him the $125 bill

11/17/2014 10:37:28 PM

Was the unit programmed to automatically switchover at 40? Or could the heat pump actually not keep up? Depending on how new and well maintained the heat pump (and the house) is, they can be productive well below 40 without any assistance from aux heat. Just wanted to note that in case you have your system setup to automatically switchover. There is usually a calculated/theoretical balance point for your system and you can also test this empirically.

One thing to note is that the more well-built (in terms of insulation and air tightness) a house is, the lower a heat pump can operate effectively. It's not solely dependent on equipment specs. A heat pump continues to put out heat, the BTU/H input just decreases as the outside air temperature decreases. The 'balance point' is based on where the heat loss rate of the house in terms of BTU/H is higher than the heat output of the heat pump in BTU/H. The better the house, the lower the loss, meaning the heat pump can keep up down to a much lower outside air temperature.


[Edited on November 18, 2014 at 9:18 AM. Reason : ]

11/18/2014 9:10:30 AM

the house is pretty well insulated and the unit is from 1999 when the house was built. i think it was just a matter of the the temps slipping just enough that the auto-switch-over to auxiliary heat. and once that happened, it turned off the pump, fired up the not-connected heating coils, and just had a closed loop of failure

i think my "when the temps dropped below 40" was more of an approximation of when it stopped keeping up and not really an indicator that at 40 outside it automatically switched.

ever since we got it wired up and got the temps back up to where we wanted it, it has had no problem keeping up, even when we spent a day in the teens and 20's earlier this week.

[Edited on November 20, 2014 at 10:43 PM. Reason : .]

11/20/2014 10:42:58 PM

So resident HVAC experts... apparently my system has a manual AUX heat switch on the CP in the attic with the AHU... I think that switch simply turns on AUX heat, not just enables it... wtf mate? any solutions to getting this automated?

11/21/2014 8:57:21 AM

so you aren't getting any aux heat via regular programming using your thermostat? Is that what led you to go to the controls at the unit?

11/21/2014 2:45:44 PM

I don't recall ever seeing it displayed on the unit; and when it's 20 degrees outside, my system struggles to maintain the house in the 60s.

11/21/2014 2:59:19 PM

wallpaper gone - before picture is from when the house was listed

11/22/2014 2:42:49 PM

Anyone know why a pilot light on a water heater would keep going out? Such a pain in the ass, because i'm batting 1.000 finding out when i'm getting in the shower

11/24/2014 12:42:53 PM

mine did for a while... is the covering attached correctly to keep wind out of it? (i think that's what was causing mine to go out.)

11/24/2014 2:44:12 PM

wind/draft, rust/corrosion, leak

11/24/2014 3:45:11 PM

The cover is on. I guess I need to have it checked for leak, rust etc. thx

11/25/2014 10:53:10 PM

Our HOA just sent out an email requesting that we keep our dogs quiet while out in the yard. I guess some neighbors have complained about dogs barking. That is fine. But the email went on to "suggest" that we crate our dogs while inside the house.

I'll be damned if someone is going to dictate how I treat my pets inside my own home. We weren't one of the problematic houses, but our yards are just about an acre in size, and the houses are spaced about in the middle of each lot. If my dog is barking inside the house, I seriously doubt anyone can hear them while inside their house.

12/1/2014 4:49:39 PM

^ yeah, that's a big ol' GET FUCKED

12/2/2014 10:33:46 AM

Quote :

"Our HOA just sent out an email requesting that we keep our dogs quiet while out in the yard. "

We have a neighbor who leaves their dogs outside for long stretches at a time. Pretty annoying, but thankfully they're across the street not next door. I don't think the crate suggestion was the dictating. The only dictating was to not leave them outside right?

12/3/2014 10:55:20 AM

So my house hasn't been powerwashed in years and is pretty damn dirty. Are there any cleaning agents I can presoak the siding with or would it just be a waste of money.

Also by garbage disposal is dead. Any recommendations? 1/2 HP? 1 HP?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/hi/3226848011/ref=sr_bs_1

12/3/2014 11:23:23 AM

^ this stuff works pretty well: http://wetandforget.com/

12/3/2014 12:49:52 PM

i got and installed the Waste King 8000. it goes on sale (check slickdeals) often... got mine off of amazon for maybe or 80 bucks.

12/3/2014 12:58:47 PM