My bad. I was thinking of something entirely different. Carry on.
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Enough of COVID...what are you doing to the house?
- Thread starter mimico_polak
- Start date
As a reference point for doing it wrong, the neighbour of my daughter had his nephew caulk some loose mortar on his brick wall. The nephew used common caulk, didn't do it well, smoothed it with his finger, smearing the caulk onto the rough brick and tried unsuccessfully to wipe it off. It was ugly and beyond easy removal.
A school I went to had the three story part completely re-pointed and every brick was masked off. PITA but no smears.
Have you calculated the linear footage? Does 1400 feet sound right?
How much material and time to get it right? At this point you don't need a screw up.
Just playing with the calculator 200 SF with about 7 bricks per SF = 1400 of the thin cemented on bricks. Assuming a 3/8 X 1/2" gap that's .375 X .5 X 12 X 1400 divided by 1728 = 1.82 Cubic feet of grout / mortar. Say 2-3 CF.
How long to put in 1400 linear feet. Mix, trowel in, tool, scrub off, temper if needed. A foot per minute is three days full time.
DIY vs Pro. Cost vs results.
I would have to know the professional. Many are worth their weight but too many contractors get the job and either sub it out or hand it to a novice who makes a mess of it.
DIY saves money and if it isn't going well it is noticed right away and the project or method re-thought.
How long to put in 1400 linear feet. Mix, trowel in, tool, scrub off, temper if needed. A foot per minute is three days full time.
DIY vs Pro. Cost vs results.
I would have to know the professional. Many are worth their weight but too many contractors get the job and either sub it out or hand it to a novice who makes a mess of it.
DIY saves money and if it isn't going well it is noticed right away and the project or method re-thought.
That looks like a pain in the ass to do for a veneer. It’s not structural so there has to be a product about that is easy to apply and just “looks nice”. Don’t use the Sica stuff mentioned as if you make an error and get it on the brick face it’s a ***** to remove. If you can trust yourself to put a decent bead on it would be fine but you’d be using quite a few tubes of it.
Still playing with numbers, a standard caulking cartridge is about 10 Fluid Oz = 19 CI which will do about 8.4 feet of joint. That would be about 165 cartridges. At $12 / tube = over $2000.
Glad it isn't my rabbit hole.
Have you got some spare bricks to experiment with? Stick them to a piece of plywood and experiment.
Edit: I was using 200 SF for calculations. If it's 250 SF add 25% to all numbers.
Glad it isn't my rabbit hole.
Have you got some spare bricks to experiment with? Stick them to a piece of plywood and experiment.
Edit: I was using 200 SF for calculations. If it's 250 SF add 25% to all numbers.
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The icing bag method above is the one I’d use for veneer. Once you’re in a rhythm it shouldn’t be too bad and smoothing out the joints with a tool afterwards would be ok. Looks a lot easier than messing about with pointing trowels.
I'm pretty much in the same camp. The video showed a pretty soupy mix but mortars are generally supposed to be wet.
In the video they don't seem to address the order of dressing the lines. I thought that one did the vertical lines first and then the horizontals. It has to do with drip edges.
If working by one's self it would be good to know how much to grout in before the stuff already in is ready for tooling.
Thanks all! I’ve got the icing bag but for some reason the guy that quoted me for the work said the bag is for wider joints so it won’t work…he could be full of 
though so who knows.
In other news…new gate is 95% complete. Was a full day today of work. Pain in the *** that was. Kevin DID encase the previous 4x4 on concrete…
though so who knows.In other news…new gate is 95% complete. Was a full day today of work. Pain in the *** that was. Kevin DID encase the previous 4x4 on concrete…
Thanks all! I’ve got the icing bag but for some reason the guy that quoted me for the work said the bag is for wider joints so it won’t work…he could be full of
In other news…new gate is 95% complete. Was a full day today of work. Pain in the *** that was. Kevin DID encase the previous 4x4 on concrete…
View attachment 63493
Play with the mix consistency and the nozzle size.
Got over 255 for two minutes and up to 255.6 so I called. Call taker passed to dispatch. Dispatch called back a few minutes later. Am I an electrician? Why do I think my voltage is high? Do my neighbours have the same issue (yes because they are bolted to the same bus but the neighbours have no idea). Do my lights appear too bright (wtf?). Etc. Told him equipment used and previous history. At this point, voltage had dropped to 253. He sent an email to area supervisor to initiate a power quality investigation (hopefully). Told me to call back on future days if I get 255+ again to keep the process moving.
Some of the kids friends live a km closer to the DS. I am tempted to measure there and see what they are getting. It should be at least a bit higher. Not sure on normal distribution voltage drop. Hell, maybe it is just our area and the padmount was wound wrong (seems very unlikely).
I asked about the current smart meters as some can measure voltage. These can't. They can detect an outage but not measure level (and I'm not sure if outage detection is active or if they just fail to respond to a request so HO knows they are out). Part of the investigation may be HO installing a data logger to see what is going on. Hopefully they just stick in in the padmount instead of pulling my meter a few more times.
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Did you phone a call centre or stall centre?
Hydro One emergency line (as directed by Hydro employee that showed up the first time). I will say, while they ask many stupid questions, they pick up quickly and pass request to dispatch quickly (who ask you more stupid questions). When I made the first call it was a few hours before there was a truck out to confirm issue (or not). Hopefully they will throw a logger on sooner rather than later.
My suspicion is that as part of a large hydro reconfiguration a couple years ago, they installed equipment designed for the inevitable local population boom. DS transformers normally let you change taps for +/- 10%. If everything is grossly oversized for current load, they may be running out of taps on the bottom end. Another possibility is given that I have measured voltage fluctuation of volts within a few minutes, the system may be automatically changing down a tap at xxx volts (nearing 256 at my house but that may be 258 or so at the DS). Not sure why the automated system would be set that high though.
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I've never spent this much on smoke detectors in my life. Hopefully it was worth it. Current smoke/CO are EOL and need to be replaced. The existing are hard-wired but I don't love them. They all go off the instant one is triggered and they provide no indication as to where the trigger was. A one minute delay would solve my biggest issue but that doesn't seem to be an option.
Trying out Nest Protects this time. You can label them so alert will tell you which one tripped. Also trying one in the garage. That's officially not supposed to work but many people have done it without issues. You can't disable the CO detector but with decent air volume and only shortly running in the garage, people have luck avoiding CO alarms. I wouldn't be able to hear a beeping alarm in the garage from my bedroom without an additional enunciator.
Trying out Nest Protects this time. You can label them so alert will tell you which one tripped. Also trying one in the garage. That's officially not supposed to work but many people have done it without issues. You can't disable the CO detector but with decent air volume and only shortly running in the garage, people have luck avoiding CO alarms. I wouldn't be able to hear a beeping alarm in the garage from my bedroom without an additional enunciator.
Getting an attic and roof inspection done this week on our current home.
House Inspection showed some "mold" (discoloration) on some of the plywood in our attic.
We suspect it been there a long time and before we had our shingles and vents replaced.
But, this is why we are getting the situation evaluated, we figure it is money well spent.
House Inspection showed some "mold" (discoloration) on some of the plywood in our attic.
We suspect it been there a long time and before we had our shingles and vents replaced.
But, this is why we are getting the situation evaluated, we figure it is money well spent.
Our First Alert (combo CO2/smoke) hardwired detectors have little recessed LEDs that you need to be right under them to see that will go from green to red on the one that tripped. One LED for smoke and one for CO2. The one that trips goes off a few seconds before the rest, I don't think this is a feature just a delay for the rest. After the alarm symptom is done (even if the pause was hit) the LED stays red flashing until reset again.
If I was designing the system I would have a different alarm tone on the one that tripped and/or an easier to see LED.
As for trips, it is usually the one closest to the Kitchen that is only there as I needed to make a hole in the fancy hall ceiling when doing the electrical.... Once we get the kitchen reno done (better fan) it will not trip as often, I may put a shower cap on it when pan frying.... I put one in the furnace room and laundry room (not usually recommended locations) but they never nuisance trip which is the concern for those spots. Garage has none but I plan on a wired in heat detector there one day...
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First impression isn't going well. Bought a couple in a store. Checked the dates when I got home. There is a hard expiry date coded into the detector. One was 1.5 years old, the other 2.5 years old already. WTF. Make it 10 years from install or clean up your bloody supply chain and pull all of the ones you didn't sell fast enough. You advertise a 10 year life, people don't expect that to be 25% over when purchased. I will try to swap these out and see if I can get better dates. More incoming from another supplier, no idea about dates on those. If the other stock doesn't have good dates, I will return the two I bought and buy direct from google to see if I get something recent. Useless tits.
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They should just make these subscription. They basically are anyway with the hard coded end date. Charge $15/yr/detector and ship you new ones three months before they expire (as the last two months have excessive beeping and are basically useless). That solves the supply problem as I don't care how old they are.
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Returned the ones I had. Store had three aug 2032 expires and one apr 2031. Screw that, I understand there is some supply chain but anything over six months is unacceptable imo when they are hard coded with a death date. These need to be treated like cheese not pencils.
Tried chat in the google canada store to see how new their stock is (or more likely how they deal with shipping old crap). Fast response. Uber painful. Not sure if I was talking to AI or ESL. Very friendly. Very little understanding. Got passed to Nest Protect support. Still very friendly with very little understanding. They went away for a few minutes (real human swapping in?). More stupid answers like they hadn't read the thread (warranty is two years). They talked about warranty as two years and "replace by" is 10 years. I ask to confirm that I can return for free if replace by is much less than 10 years from order. They say warranty is two years. They are stuck in a loop. Ask about returns if I am not happy. "Warranty is two years." F me. This is very painful. We're at 30 minutes with no answer yet.
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Discoloration isn't necessarily the evil form of black mold. The temperatures an attic sees can bake resins over the years. (My opinion)
This outfit has you take scrapings and mail them in for analysis. They can also send you air sampling Petri dishes.
Stepan Reut, Ph.D. (via Gmail)
LCS Laboratory Inc.
700 Collip Circle, Unit 218,
London Ontario
N6G 4X8 Canada
Phone: (519) 777-5232
sreut@lcslaboratory.com
www.lcslaboratory.com
I totally agree, We've just finished the "inspection stage" of our house and I'll say that the inspector filled the buyer with so many "might lead to" situations it made our heads spin (we have camera's in our house). Luckily I made them an offer they could not refuse (I gave them a slight discount and 3 hours to either buy or F-Off) they bought, we're done... Thank sweet baby Jebus...
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