Tommy wrote:total\_douche wrote:I've had about as much of smelly carpets as I can take, so in the near-future I'm going to be nuking the carpets in my living room and hallway, and replacing them with something better (which is, presumably, anything but). Do any of you have experience with laminate flooring in humid climates? It's looking like the best compromise for me, but I'm worried about how well it'll handle Minnesota, since running the air conditioning all summer is out of the question (it costs way too much). Maybe I should just use linoleum...Laminate flooring sucks. So much suck. Just a few years in and we've got a couple of gaps in every room from humidity shifts. This is on first and second floors. Spill water on it? Forget about it. The edges swell. Unless there is some super durable high-end shit, I wouldn't recommend it.Maybe there's hardwood flooring under your carpet?Hot dog, we have a wiener! I was curious and decided to explore in a spot where the cats tore up the carpet (another reason I want to get rid of it: they like to claw at the carpet outside a door when they want in and you want some god damned privacy while you're dropping anchor):So, next weekend, we'll pull the carpet and see how bad the existing floor is.Plan A is to pretty up the existing flooring and call it a day.Plan B is to install vinyl planks over it if the wood is too crap to repair within my (very small) budget. We will have to scrape that layer of granular crap off it. I'm glad I jacked some scrapers from work back when I was a miller. I'll get to relive the glory days of scraping crap out of sifters!My big concern is that one of my cats likes to piss by my door whenever she's angry at me (usually because I wanted five minutes of time to myself). I have to plan for the cats pissing outside of their box when the fancy strikes them. The current routine of spotting with a UV light, then blasting the carpet with enzyme cleaners (which never really get the smell completely out) is driving me insane, but won't the wood absorb accidental/intentional discharge? I could apply a layer of polyurethane, but how well will that hold up? The vinyl option is very attractive to me.

Well, we pulled the carpet, and found a beautiful hardwood floor... covered in overspray from who-knows-what. The first thought was that, since the majority of it in the living room seemed to come right off, that we could sand it off with a DA and leave the finish mostly unscathed, which we did, and it did. We did end up burning through in a couple of spots where it was thicker, though. I figured I could throw on a quick coat of varnish next week as a stop-gap until I have enough money to have the floor refinished professionally (i.e. when I get out of college). Well, then I got to the hallway. There's just no way I'm going to get through that crap without some serious burn-through. It's just so thick there. It's not like it was a painted floor or anything, either, there were places where cords and other things were obviously laying when they sprayed.So I could use the vinyl planks on-hand to do the hallway, and leave the living room as-is (in beat-up but serviceable condition), but that will look awkward as all fuck. Option B is covering the whole floor with vinyl and leaving it until I can have it refinished.I'll probably take option B.Such a waste.

tbone wrote:The quotes I get for regular tank models are like $2k-$2400 which also seems insane but is only a third of that cost. It's a 74 gal tank so it's huge, but apparently that's the size that everyone says is right for our house.Even that seems high. When ours died right in the middle of the fuckin' polar vortex (+ a few pipes that had to be brought up to code) it was about $1,500. And that was with Rocket Plumbing, which we went with out of desperation but didn't strike me as the cheapest place at all.I hope to go tankless next time though.

We have a Rinnai on demand tankless heater and I fucking love it! It gets super hot almost instantly and you never run out of water. It costs next to nothing to run. We've had it for 7 years and I'll I've had to do is clean the filter once or twice a year. I've had regular old tanks in the past and they leak, elements burn out and need replacing and unless they're huge, you run out of hot water if multiple people take back to back showers. If your planning on staying in your place, I highly recommend it if it's possible.

Also, solar pre heat for hot water is cheap to instal and is the best bang for your buck as far as solar goes. I have multiple friends who have built and installed their owe pre heat systems but I think commercial ones aren't terribly expensive.

tbone wrote:The quotes I get for plumbers here in Chicago to buy & install tankless water heaters are like $6k-$7k which is insane. Also, of course, they shit talk the Rinnai and say the only one they will install is a Navien.The quotes I get for regular tank models are like $2k-$2400 which also seems insane but is only a third of that cost. It's a 74 gal tank so it's huge, but apparently that's the size that everyone says is right for our house.Also they all do a hard sell on tacking on some maintenance plan where they knock off more money from the install of the water heater than it costs to buy the maintenance plan "so you'd be dumb not to do it!" which is a total crock of shit. Just sell me the damn thing for what it should cost, let's not turn this into a fuckin' used car situation. "You gotta rust proof this bad boy!" That's nuts! I bought my Rinnai online and had my plumber put it in. I think he charged me $500. I had my gas company send a guy to do the gas hookup and they charged about the same, maybe a little more. I probably did some of it like installed the PT 2x4's to mount it on but really, I didn't do much. Total was under $2500. A regular tank you can actually put in yourself pretty easily. I put a new one in my Moms house last year and have put a few others in over the years. It's really not that difficult. I bought it at a local plumbers supply house for something like $500 and had it hooked up later that day.

Revisiting our discussion about water heaters from a year ago. So I'm finally getting around to having to replace my water heater for a few reasons (likely all related) - It's 12 years old and who knows what horrors occurred in the previous cycle of house renters/foreclosure in the years preceding me buying the house- Apparently my inspector sucked ass because there is something obvious that every plumber points out right away in that there are ferrous joints connected to copper hot/cold pipes on the top, which have started to rust out and likely cause sediment to build up inside the tank, as well as increase risk that shit will just pop and spray water in my basement.- Hot water is leaking out of the tank and into the cold supply line, causing all of my cold taps in the house to run hot for a few seconds before cooling down.I was really close to pulling the trigger on a tankless, but am having second thoughts. First it's like 3x as much money to buy and install one vs. a regular old tank(ful?) model. It would take me something like 10 or 15 years to get ROI. Second, one of the plumbers was telling me that there's no good way to route the exhaust through my basement wall outside because there are windows nearby any possible location so it would be against code. Third, we have a huge 74 gal tank and never run out of hot water. By the time my baby daughter is a teenager maybe then we will, but the warranty will be up on a tank model by then anyway.So now, I've flipped and I'm pretty sure I'm going with a regular old tank water heater, but that thing about venting tankless water heaters out, not near a window -- anyone know if that is bullshit or actual code in Chicago? I just have this need to know. Would be nice if I could just vent it out the chimney like the current water heater but apparently that isn't possible.

Oh yeah also are there any particular brands of water heaters I should avoid? Every plumber claims that the brand they sell are the best and all of the others are total bullshit that they always have to fix for a lot of money, including the brand that the last plumber just claimed the opposite about.

The quotes I get for plumbers here in Chicago to buy & install tankless water heaters are like $6k-$7k which is insane. Also, of course, they shit talk the Rinnai and say the only one they will install is a Navien.The quotes I get for regular tank models are like $2k-$2400 which also seems insane but is only a third of that cost. It's a 74 gal tank so it's huge, but apparently that's the size that everyone says is right for our house.Also they all do a hard sell on tacking on some maintenance plan where they knock off more money from the install of the water heater than it costs to buy the maintenance plan "so you'd be dumb not to do it!" which is a total crock of shit. Just sell me the damn thing for what it should cost, let's not turn this into a fuckin' used car situation. "You gotta rust proof this bad boy!"

Maybe this will come off as venting but any advice would be appreciated. My wife is all out of sorts, I'm just frustrated.I finished my basement by myself. Finished the project about 6 months ago. All through the construction I never saw a lick of water down there. But twice this week we had about a two foot area up against an exterior wall be drenched. I'm chalking it up to there being a crack in the wall and both times there being excessive water right up against the house. The first time our gutter drain backed up, second the outdoor faucet came on for 20 minutes and no one realized. Do I do anything? Do I rip out the wall at this point and attempt to repair the cement? Or do I just leave it as is? I cleaned up the floor and I think since we're going into winter we really shouldn't see any water near there until the spring.