Home Improvement
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Vacuum truck - Wikipedia
Typically called a hydrovac truck, very common here in Alberta, with all the gas/oil pipelines buried everywhere. Great for everything else buried too.
I used to do a similar trick with a mcguyvered pressure washer & pump for personal use, great for all kinds of excavations, assuming drainage isn't an issue.
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Loser Araysar
Chief Russia Correspondent / Stock Pals CEO
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Burren
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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chthonic-anemos
bitchute.com/video/EvyOjOORbg5l/
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Thread some empty soda/beer cans that will spin when they try to hold on. If there are no pets or children to be concerned about then you can put smooth interior(nothing to grip) barrels/trashcans underneath with enough water to make them swim but not enough that they could get back out.
Lanx
<Prior Amod>
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or
while pellet gun was the most fun, i felt too much like a redneck waking up at 5:50 and sitting on my porch waiting for a squirrel (but it was fun to learn how to zero a scope and see it work)
the trap is nice but expensive at $200
Goodnature Smart Trap Kit, A24 Humane Mouse Trap & Rat Trap with Portable Trap Stand, Automatic Paste Pump and CO2 Canister, Pet-Friendly Mouse Trap with Smart Counter
this one is actually more for rats (a24), the one for squirrels is the a18 (which is not sold in america) and the difference is that the a18 has more force to crush the squirrel skull, i guess theyre harder.
is this true? my kill counter says 13, i had 2 test firings (stuck a branch up there) and only ever saw 3 squirrels on the floor (it's bluetooth so it rings you when you get a kill, but the bluetooth is short range), i set up a cam and pointed at it and yea it does activate, but they "meander" away like theyre drunk
but it's really set and forget, dead squirrel on the floor and in 2 days the neighborhood stray picks it up.
funny enough, i've been experimenting, and they love nutella (so do ants, tho...)
does it work? i don't hear no squirrels no more, and i don't see none at my house ever, but i see many when i take a walk w/ my wife around the hood, good enough for me.
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Pasteton
Blackwing Lair Raider
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Anyone add a second story to a house? Lookin a tiny place that I need to more than double the square footage, which is doable if I add the second story and also build over the garage. Unclear what this costs. I’d imagine just adding the structural integrity to support that extra weight must be costly
Palum
what Suineg set it to
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Basically very unlikely this is worth it unless a lot of conditions are met. First off there's the whole permits thing, then structural/ main beam and engineering work to plan it, then HVAC and utilities to consider, maybe septic if you can't add bedrooms, etc. You'd be building a new house except the main living areas that will be old.
There's a big difference between adding a dormer, utilities and insulating, and adding a whole story like you seem to be implying. The only people I've known who do this own expensive waterfront properties that this is the only way to do anything due to grandfathered foundation location next to water or something like that which makes it "priceless".
We scoped this out a couple year ago, quotes to add a second story to our ranch with very minor ground floor changes were 400 to 600k. We would have ended up with a very expensive house with a ground floor that was still built in 1965. It’s better value to just knock it down and then you get a whole new house for probably about the same price or slightly more. though we ended up moving instead.
I've seen more houses in my area (Seattle) where instead of building a new second floor, they jacked up the first floor and built a new floor underneath it. It avoids you having to redo the roof and the new first floor can be built to support the existing floor. Like Palum said, it was always on houses that were old and I'm assuming the owners wanted to keep the look.
It also took forever. The one near my house has been under construction for almost 2 years.
It also took forever. The one near my house has been under construction for almost 2 years.
We were looking at options for adding to our house, got similar ~$500k quotes for putting a few rooms on top of our existing 2200 sq ft. That was way out of budget and would also take 18 months optimistically with a year of prep for engineering, plans, and permitting.
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Frenzied Wombat
Potato del Grande
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Has anybody looked at having a whole house water purifier installed or actually have one? There seems to be a dizzying array of selection, arguments over what's best, and price ranges all over the map. I asked a plumbing company to quote me on one while they were out installing a toilet, and they came back with 10K lol.. For a one person house.. "But you don't have to change the filter for ten years!". When I said I wouldn't be living here for another ten years, and I'd be more interested in a cheaper model that required more frequent filter changes and/or maintenance, they appeared to lose interest.
Pasteton
Blackwing Lair Raider
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So generally speaking, it’s cheaper to raze to the ground and construct a new two story? Because I’d be ok with that. Hell even if it’s say 25% more costly , it’s worth it to be able to custom build the home. But if it’s say 50-75% more costly then I may rather just go with expanding up.
Dandai
<WoW Guild Officer>
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I have a shallow well so the water has tannins and bacteria in it. Previous owners were apparently unbothered by it, but we opted for a chlorine injector, water softener, and whole house filter. Total cost including install and equipment was somewhere around $8k (4 years ago). So with brandonflation, $10k sounds about right. I have no idea what a more maintenance, lower up front cost solution would look like or if you could even find one.
A year or so ago I was getting breakthrough tannins in my water and thought the filter media needed replacing. I reached out to the installer and he was like there’s no way in hell your filter needs replacing at only 4 years old. He had me increase the frequency of the recharge cycle to every 3 days (it was at 5 days I think) and that solved it. (The filter automatically performs a reverse flow wash in the middle of the night to clean the filter and discharges that backwash into a drain.)
Actually, it occurs to me that the lower cost, increased maintenance version is probably those units that attach to specific faucets. What’s your purpose/need for wanting a whole house system?
BrutulTM
Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
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I have a water softener and an iron filter that does the whole house and then an RO system for drinking water that only feeds the ice maker in my fridge and a little extra faucet on the kitchen sink. I think it cost around $6k but that was probably 10 years ago. What is your complaint about the water now?