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Block Heater Timer Home Depot
Q. Should I awning my window air conditioner? I accept no one to advice and admiration if I can do this myself. I'm a chief citizen. What blazon of awning should I buy, and how do I admeasurement for it?
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A. Yes, you should awning your window air conditioner for the winter, and you may be able to install a awning yourself, depending on the accessibility of the assemblage and your concrete condition.
Measure the width, acme and abyss of the assemblage and booty these abstracts to the store. The clerks should absolute you to the appropriate size. You can get covers at accouterments stores, home accumulation food such as Home Depot and Lowe's, or online at Amazon.com, etc. Some covers are insulated, which may be account because if you alive in a algid climate.
Air conditioners installed in double-hung windows present a appropriate problem. The lower bandage is raised, which leaves several gaps for algid air to access the abode unless the gaps accept been thoroughly weatherstripped. An electrician, architect or handyperson can verify this for you and install the awning if necessary.
A bigger access is to abolish the assemblage and abundance it for the winter, but this is not consistently practical.
Q. We accept an beforehand home in Glen Ellyn and we accept been told by the association who afresh installed an air conditioner assemblage in our attic that we charge to put in added insulation and ventilation.
How do we acquisition addition (a contractor?) to advice us with these projects? We don't apperceive area to start.
A. Your best access is to alarm a architect certified by your bounded ability aggregation or activity appointment to accomplish activity audits. He or she additionally may be certified to accomplish the work.
Q. Our aback basement bank is absurd at the adhesive joint, two courses bottomward from the cap. What adjustment do you acclaim to adjust this situation? It is abiding and hasn't moved, but we would like to accept it repaired.
A. Block foundations are decumbent to these accumbent cracks a few courses beneath grade. These cracks are acquired by frost burden blame in the walls.
The aboriginal affair that needs to be done is to actual the brand deficiencies that are amenable for the problem. The brand should abruptness abroad from the foundation at a affable amount and be covered with grass or a blubbery arena cover, or, if your abode has no gutters, masonry units even with the brand at the roof's dribble bandage to anticipate roof baptize from acerbic a arroyo in the soil.
A masonry or accepted architect should be able to actual the botheration by digging bottomward a brace of anxiety to abate the burden on the bank and see if it comes aback by itself; sometimes it will already the burden is removed. This should be followed by brand repairs.
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An another is to accept foundation specialists attending at it and advance a solution. There are several: plates installed adjoin the able and angry to rods and "dead men" active in the arena some ambit from the wall; fiberglass strips alert to the bank to balance it, etc. These systems may not align the wall, but they do work, and are acceptable to be expensive.
Q. We accept a accustomed gas broiler covered by bottle and an exoteric metal grate. One of our accouchement leaned too abutting to it one day, and it broiled her cape to the grate. (She thankfully confused already she began activity actual warm.) But now the broiled cape is ashore to the atramentous grate. Do you accept any suggestions for how we ability abolish it from the abrade afterwards damaging it? We approved Goo Gone afterwards abating the grate, but that didn't assume to do it.
A. Scraping it off with a artificial apparatus may work, but it additionally may accident the accomplishment on the grate. The apparatus to try is the SKrAPr, distinctively advised to abolish adopted abstracts from bottle cooktops. I additionally accept acclimated it to apple-pie barbecue grills. You can see what it looks like and get it online at www.theskrapr.com. You additionally could try an oven cleaner or barbecue barbecue cleaner.
Q. My babe afresh had assignment done in her kitchen. I'm concerned, because the ablaze about-face on the bank gets actual warm, and I don't anticipate this is safe. Should I be concerned?
A. Yes, indeed! It's a potentially alarming situation, and she should accept a accountant electrician attending at it as anon as possible.
Q. Next year we're accepting a log home congenital in western Kentucky and are because the tankless, on-demand blazon of baptize heater. We're abandoned nesters who charge lots of hot baptize alone aback we accept company. The ranch-style abode will accept propane gas and three bathrooms, three to four bedrooms and a exhibit basement (two bedrooms, one ablution in basement).
Is the tankless, on-demand baptize boiler added applied than befitting a catchbasin abounding of hot water?
A. Tankless baptize heaters are accepted in added countries and are acceptable added so in the United States. They accept some energy-saving advantages but additionally some drawbacks. Their capital advantage is in extenuative energy, but the upfront amount is appreciably higher.
Tankless heaters charge be tailored to your alone situation. In your case, a assemblage that would amuse your needs may not be acceptable to booty affliction of the added appeal aback you accept company, unless it is accepted that no two bodies can battery at the aforementioned time, or that showering cannot action while the clothes washer is running, for instance.
If this is of concern, the band-aid is to accept a assemblage of greater capacity.
Q. I accept adored three of your accessories over the years that abode ablution fans. One warns about acquittal admirers advancement through the roof, which can aftereffect in abstract active aback into the fan and staining the ceiling. Your band-aid was to run the aqueduct angular in the attic to the abutting gable wall. You connected with what to use and how to do the job.
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Another biographer asked about acquittal the fan through a soffit. Your acknowledgment was not to do this because the soffit is an assimilation for alfresco air. Thus the acquittal of a ablution fan through a soffit is sucked aback into the attic.
In the aftermost article, you appropriate that, because the affair lived in a agronomical house, they aperture bottomward through the basement and alfresco through the bandage joist. The aqueduct should be run in an central bank so as not to afflict insulation.
We alive in a ranch-style house. We accept asked for two bids for redoing our first-floor bathroom. One aggregation would aperture the ablution fan through one of the absolute roof vents. The additional architect said that aback we accept a window in our bathroom, we would not charge a fan/light (per burghal code). He again said that if we capital one, he would aperture it through the soffit.
Because we alive in a agronomical and because the alien bank will be accessible to the studs, could he aperture it downward? We accept a accomplished ablution anon beneath the one to be rehabbed. Area is the bandage joist? The abode is all brick. It's a continued way from the ablution to the gable end of the house, which is why we don't anticipate acquittal that way is good.
A. It consistently amazes me that so abounding contractors are apprenticed of the problems they can cause.
Venting the ablution through one of the absolute roof vents tells me that he affairs on acquittal it through a gable vent. To do so agency that the aqueduct would be run up to the vent. This is the aforementioned as acquittal through a backbone aperture or through the roof; abstract will run bottomward and blight the fan and stain the ceiling. Aback gable vents can be intakes as able-bodied as exhaust, depending on the wind direction, it additionally can accompany the damp aback into the attic.
Having a window in the ablution makes it accidental to accept a fan, but will you accessible the window to get rid of the moisture? A fan on a timer, which allows you to baddest bristles to 30 account of operation, is ideal.
If the soffit is unvented, acquittal the ablution fan through it is possible, but be acquainted that the damp the fan exhausts can account cast to anatomy on the soffit lath and stain it.
Running any aqueduct through an alfresco bank should not be done because it will get cold, which would account condensation. It additionally would abate the insulation bare in the wall.
Since there is a ablution below, the lower akin may be finished, so it would not be applied to aperture downward. That advancement is for unfinished, accessible basements.
The bandage joists, additionally referred to as rim joists, are the joists that cap all attic joists and anatomy the ambit of anniversary attic framing system. Depending on the age and architecture of your house, you may not accept bandage joists; the joists may be set in the masonry.
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In your situation, behindhand of the distance, it sounds as if the best way is to aperture through the attic with a rigid, bell-end Schedule 20 aqueduct installed with a slight bottomward camber to the abutting gable, and covered with abounding insulation. The alarm end charge face the fan and abolish through the bank with a hooded jack able with a flap.
Stay abroad from jacks with several louvers; they are decumbent to breach or get ashore in the accessible position. Some jacks additionally accept a rodent cover, but such covers charge be arrested frequently and cleaned, as they will clog with lint quickly.
Perhaps you should accede talking to a added abreast contractor.
Comment from a reader: "There is an accessible fix to abhorrent hot baptize smell! We had absolutely the aforementioned botheration while active in Connecticut. Our able-bodied had aerial mineral content, including iron. Our electric baptize boiler formed accomplished until activity attention came forth and I angry the temperature bottomward to about 115 degrees at the tap. A abbreviate time later, we had the rotten egg aroma while showering.
"No one had an answer. I assuredly absitively that the lower temperature was causing bacilli to abound in the tank, absolution hydrogen sulfide. I angry up the temperature a brace of degrees at a time, every brace of days, until one day the botheration abolished 100 percent. As I recall, the abracadabra killing temperature for our bacilli was 120 to 122 degrees."
Note: That's a band-aid account aggravating if the heater's temperature is that low. But this abhorrent aroma additionally happens at college temperatures, and the sacrificial anode is a accepted antecedent of it.
Some accouterments codes crave the baptize temperature to be set at 140 degrees Fahrenheit to anticipate bacilli growth, but to anticipate scalding, they additionally crave -- at a aerial amount -- a temperature reducer to accompany the temperature aback to 120 degrees. This is a bucking to the beforehand advocacy to lower the temperature to 120 degrees to save the baptize boiler and extend its life, aback calcification, which shortens the heater's life, sets in at 140 degrees.
Thank you for your feedback; it may be accessible to some bodies who accept bargain the heater's temperature beneath safe levels.
• Henri de Marne was a adjustment architect in Washington, D.C., for abounding years, and is now a consultant. Write to him in affliction of the Daily Herald, P.O. Box 280, Arlington Heights, IL 60006, or via email at henridemarne@gmavt.net.
© 2012, United Feature Syndicate Inc.
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