Sure, I don’t disagree. But unfortunately the companies have monopolies and without market competition , it will be a long ass time before they get away from the bullshit and focus on providing cheap energy.
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Home Improvement
- Thread starter Picasso3
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Palum
what Suineg set it to
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They still control the lobby. Does your RoI include resale or excess generation? Many places where solar is popular they gave curtailed or limited that, or it's just baked into the cost to install a system and can change when muh corporations get upset.
I’m not entirely sure, looks like I have more reading to do. I know Governor DeSantis veto’d a bill in Florida that would’ve allowed the power companies to charge more for solar energy.
Sludig
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Shitty garage addition that was just a slab plopped down and walled up next to the house converted to a room. Still has a significant sloping grade down and away, and unless I grind it down, big issue is tile directly on it likes to crack between seams and move around as the weather changes. Huge cold source during winter, I'd do another floor over it, except.... the door has like half inch or less between tile and the sill.
So not sure how best to go about it, just say fuck it and get the door removed and raised. Or I've seen the best cheapish simple partial solution. Vapor barrier submat or whatever and a bunch of rubber backed floor tiles on the whole room to hopefully cut down on thermal transfer from the slab.
Additional headache to trying to go in and level it or anything if I moved door, is the then former back door into the rest of the house has a couple steps up that would probably need reworked as well.
I'm not super handy, generally fit into the red neck engineer category (so all the farm field stuff I do is great but I can't do fine detail work) So price is of course way higher if I'm hiring folks.
So not sure how best to go about it, just say fuck it and get the door removed and raised. Or I've seen the best cheapish simple partial solution. Vapor barrier submat or whatever and a bunch of rubber backed floor tiles on the whole room to hopefully cut down on thermal transfer from the slab.
Additional headache to trying to go in and level it or anything if I moved door, is the then former back door into the rest of the house has a couple steps up that would probably need reworked as well.
I'm not super handy, generally fit into the red neck engineer category (so all the farm field stuff I do is great but I can't do fine detail work) So price is of course way higher if I'm hiring folks.
lurker
Vyemm Raider
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Tile on a cracked concrete slab is done every day. Every house I worked on in AZ was built on a slab and if the concrete wasn't cracked by the time we got to it, it would be soon. There are techniques and materials designed to prevent the moving slab from cracking the tile on top of it. The most popular is a decoupling membrane called Ditra made by a company called Schluter. There are others. It is a very cleverly designed plastic sheet/membrane that, as the name implies, decouples the floor from the tile allowing the floor, wood or concrete, to move independently from the tile covering it. It works provided the slab was put down to code. If some idiot DIYed it without regard to accepted building practices, don't tile it.
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Sludig
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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we have the pictures of the build, was some oklahoma red neck shit. got other horror stories in the rest of the house
BrutulTM
Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
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You don't have to do any wiring to switch from a regular breaker to a GFCI. Just pop the old breaker out of the panel and pop the new one in its place. It literally takes less than a minute.
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lurker
Vyemm Raider
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My house in AZ had a very severe crack in the slab. I ended up putting laminate flooring in that room. The size and slope of the crack exceeded what the specs for the laminate said was acceptable, but I did it anyway and never had any issues. I would imagine modern luxury vinyl is even more forgiving than the Pergo I used 20 years ago.
Sludig
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Concern is mainly about preventing thermal transfer, not sure that laminate is any better than rubber backed carpeting? Easier to clean for sure and it's being used as a quasi utility room. Though some of the tiles have a 1/4 inch or so uneveness I almost trip on.
Lanx
<Prior Amod>
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ok, this thing puts out product, wowso in a month of using the battery sprayer, now i just wanna use the big boy sprayers
directtools is having a nice sale
i went w/ the 40v instead of the 18v (i have both, it doesn't matter to me which) cuz i've been told the 40v has a more powerful pump, right now the 1gallon ryobi sprayer i use, is ok but the fan tips i use is too much for the pump to handle so i have to goto the big boi versions.
gonna mod it now, cutting off the spray wand and i'm gonna attach a pressure washer gun to it
Siliconemelons
Avatar of War Slayer
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The hardest part of a basic AC swap is charging the thing with freon or whatever it is called now and the prerequisite soldering of the copper.
Buy yourself a goodman setup and learn to solder and buy a AC charge kit pressure kit and pump from harbor-freight and a thing of freon
or
Buy a MrCool DIY system with precharged lineset.
With youtube and a few hours you should be able to get up to speed on how to pressure/balance your system, then read the manual with the system you bought - put it in spec, and have a good day.
Then start your own weekend company and make $ as most AC people just come in with a swap and replace anywho. 90% of AC people when you get into "duct work" will always say something to "we have a duct guy" aka, its all 3rd partied for that stuff.
Buy yourself a goodman setup and learn to solder and buy a AC charge kit pressure kit and pump from harbor-freight and a thing of freon
or
Buy a MrCool DIY system with precharged lineset.
With youtube and a few hours you should be able to get up to speed on how to pressure/balance your system, then read the manual with the system you bought - put it in spec, and have a good day.
Then start your own weekend company and make $ as most AC people just come in with a swap and replace anywho. 90% of AC people when you get into "duct work" will always say something to "we have a duct guy" aka, its all 3rd partied for that stuff.
10 years old isn’t considered old and it should be a 410a system. 23k for any split system is a pure ass fucking. My company is expensive with union labor and that is plain ridiculous. Only thing that would call for replacement is a dead compressor and that still could be replaced for far far less then that number.
And Goodman is garbage.
Siliconemelons
Avatar of War Slayer
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More companies need to start selling direct to the consumer then.
Mr. Cool showed them a business model, they just need to follow it... but when you sell a bazillion units to stock home builders, who cares about 5% of that to a consumer customer base.
Arative
Vyemm Raider
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The guy ended up replacing the high voltage relay and the dual motor starter and everything is working. He said it was a builder grade system and could fail at any time. I'm going to get other quotes. But I don't think the entire system needs to be replaced. There is some rust in the inside on the sheet metal.
Dandai
<WoW Guild Officer>
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I’ve had to replace contactors a handful of times on my units and well pump. If you clean the coils and change the filter on the air handler, 10 years is pretty soon to replace.
Arative
Vyemm Raider
- 2,995
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I
I regularly replace my filters. I have an Amazon subscription for filters. I posted on our neighborhood Facebook page and the company I used regularly tries to get people to replace the entire system for minor shit.
Avg like expectancy is about 15 years,, guy is trying to sell you a system. 23k is very expensive unless you are being quoted an inverter system, id get a second opinion. Find a local mom n pop shop instead of a franchise.
Arative
Vyemm Raider
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I ended up posting on our subdivision facebook page and the company I used regularly tries to sell new systems to people for problems that could be fixed easily. Only reason I called them is because they were still open Monday night. The system they were trying to sell me was their own branded system. the 23k was the low end, high end was 42k.
Its been working, so I plan on getting the company that installed the system when we built the house out to check things out as well.
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Intrinsic
Person of Whiteness
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Gave the go ahead to a company today to install a home generator. Settled on a Kohler after reviewing everything we got back on the bids.
1. $20k for either a Generac or a Briggs. They were trying to push Briggs bc they had a 10-year all inclusive warranty and Generac is a 5-year limited. This is the same company that quoted me $1k to add an outlet to my closet. Their “Generator” cost was $15k which included the install and pad, then the gas additional costs of $1900 for extension kits bc my panel is 50’ from generator. Plus an additional $1600 to relocate my existing box bc they said the ATS wouldn’t fit in the current spot. Plus taxes brought it up to $20k.
2. $12k for a Generac. They quoted this sight unseen only using Google Earth. Gave me a little hesitation just because there are a few variables I tried to explain to him. Nice guy but he was just like “nope that covers everything.” He also said they could go Briggs and get the 10-year but it would be an additional $1k. Too many unknowns for me.
3. $13.6k for the Kohler. Guy came out to the house, walked it with me and said he’d have no problem locating it where I wanted. He also said they could uplift the warranty to 10-year. He included the plumbing for gas line. Felt more comfortable here since he’s seen everything and was willing to work with my want.
The other two companies were pretty hardline about installing it directly adjacent to my gas main which I didn’t prefer since that’s on the side of the house exposed to everything. Granted, I don’t live in a bad neighborhood or anything, but I still didn’t want it facing out to the world.
22kW. I’m fine with Kohler. I’ve used Generac for 20 years in public safety settings for communication sites and dispatch sites. But for my home, on the “non-commercial” side, I’m not sure I care between all three.
1. $20k for either a Generac or a Briggs. They were trying to push Briggs bc they had a 10-year all inclusive warranty and Generac is a 5-year limited. This is the same company that quoted me $1k to add an outlet to my closet. Their “Generator” cost was $15k which included the install and pad, then the gas additional costs of $1900 for extension kits bc my panel is 50’ from generator. Plus an additional $1600 to relocate my existing box bc they said the ATS wouldn’t fit in the current spot. Plus taxes brought it up to $20k.
2. $12k for a Generac. They quoted this sight unseen only using Google Earth. Gave me a little hesitation just because there are a few variables I tried to explain to him. Nice guy but he was just like “nope that covers everything.” He also said they could go Briggs and get the 10-year but it would be an additional $1k. Too many unknowns for me.
3. $13.6k for the Kohler. Guy came out to the house, walked it with me and said he’d have no problem locating it where I wanted. He also said they could uplift the warranty to 10-year. He included the plumbing for gas line. Felt more comfortable here since he’s seen everything and was willing to work with my want.
The other two companies were pretty hardline about installing it directly adjacent to my gas main which I didn’t prefer since that’s on the side of the house exposed to everything. Granted, I don’t live in a bad neighborhood or anything, but I still didn’t want it facing out to the world.
22kW. I’m fine with Kohler. I’ve used Generac for 20 years in public safety settings for communication sites and dispatch sites. But for my home, on the “non-commercial” side, I’m not sure I care between all three.