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The Home Improvement Thread. Successes and Failures

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anygreen said:
Is there a company or type of professional who will come to your house and take a top to bottom look at everything and give you a 'honey do' list of recommended essential and/or cosmetic improvements? We live in a 1960s house and stuff is really starting to come up for repair, but I don't know the order of importance and need someone who can look at stuff and say 'Hey, that's a problem now' or 'That's going to be a problem soon' etc.
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If you live in a smaller city, any reputable remodel contractor can do that. Their reputation keeps them busy, so they take care of it. Get recommendations from people you know who have had significant remodel work done. Consult with more than one.

If you decide to go ahead with fixes on various areas of your home, don't be afraid to use separate contractors (roofer, siding work, cabinet and interior finish, flooring, electrical, painting, etc.) With a 60s structure, windows will probably be a big question you should ask these people about. Some of it will be actual "honey do" stuff, but some of it you should probably not touch.
 
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burd said:
If you live in a smaller city, any reputable remodel contractor can do that. Their reputation keeps them busy, so they take care of it. Get recommendations from people you know who have had significant remodel work done. Consult with more than one.
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He would do all of those if he wasn't, you know, a bot.
 
psych said:
How long have you lived in Wisconsin? That should give you a good starting point…
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Years of Jaeger shots chased with sconsintinis (paint thinner shaken over ice served with a skewer of cheddar and a bacon twist) doesn't do much for one's brain health.
 
anygreen said:
Is there a company or type of professional who will come to your house and take a top to bottom look at everything and give you a 'honey do' list of recommended essential and/or cosmetic improvements? We live in a 1960s house and stuff is really starting to come up for repair, but I don't know the order of importance and need someone who can look at stuff and say 'Hey, that's a problem now' or 'That's going to be a problem soon' etc.
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For you? Geek squad.
 
Bought a Toro electric snowblower.

i fucking love it. Fuck gas and oil and spark plugs and that maintenance. It’s also so much lighter to push. And throws snow even farther than my old gas single stage Toro.
 
Deutsche Gopher Fan said:
Bought a Toro electric snowblower.

i ****ing love it. **** gas and oil and spark plugs and that maintenance. It’s also so much lighter to push. And throws snow even farther than my old gas single stage Toro.
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I have a Snow Joe, the 48V version. Don’t get a Snow Joe. Mine sucks. I should’ve bought something else, a better battery brand.

That’s for others, not you, DGF. You were smart, unlike me.
 
Speaking of snowblowers, I need to get mine running this weekend. I always have this problem - no matter how much gas stabilizer I put in it when I retire it for the spring, the gas sucks come winter. Last year it took fresh gas, more stabilizer and a lot of manual cranking to get it to fire up. This year I'm trying drygas too.

edit: I'm all aboard the battery equipment (I have a battery mower and trimmer), I don't know that anything has more power than a real gas, multi-stage snowblower. Maybe by the time I need to replace mine.
 
Swansong said:
Speaking of snowblowers, I need to get mine running this weekend. I always have this problem - no matter how much gas stabilizer I put in it when I retire it for the spring, the gas sucks come winter. Last year it took fresh gas, more stabilizer and a lot of manual cranking to get it to fire up. This year I'm trying drygas too.

edit: I'm all aboard the battery equipment (I have a battery mower and trimmer), I don't know that anything has more power than a real gas, multi-stage snowblower. Maybe by the time I need to replace mine.
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Yeah wind the dry gas(alcohol) right to gas thats already 10% alcohol. That should help
 
Swansong said:
Speaking of snowblowers, I need to get mine running this weekend. I always have this problem - no matter how much gas stabilizer I put in it when I retire it for the spring, the gas sucks come winter. Last year it took fresh gas, more stabilizer and a lot of manual cranking to get it to fire up. This year I'm trying drygas too.

edit: I'm all aboard the battery equipment (I have a battery mower and trimmer), I don't know that anything has more power than a real gas, multi-stage snowblower. Maybe by the time I need to replace mine.
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I use ethanol free premium. Then when I store I I just use sea foam. I try to run it dry but don't always. My wife had to do it this year since my back sucks. She got it on the first pull for a decade-old snowblower. She's never used a snowblower before much less started one.

Anyways, I do recommend ethanol free premium and starting and ending the season with seafoam. I'm sure stabil or others work better, but it's what I use with great success. My lawnmower has had similar results.
 
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Kepler said:
I did not understand that reference. Can you explain this to a coastie, please?
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Once Ethanol was added to gas, commonly known as E10, why would would need to add more alcohol(dry gas) to your gas? Is 11% alcohol going to help your snow blower start? I think not. E10 is a small engine carb killer. If you run that engine frequently, probably not an issue. But if it sits for long periods, not good. Snow blowers sit for long periods. I doubt more alcohol will cure the fuel system issues(Junk in the carb) his snow blower has.
 
The issue I have is that the gas does what gas does when it sits: gets all gloppy and doesn't ignite as well. I use a fuel stabilizer in the spring when I put it away, adding the suggested amount on the bottle. Last year I ran it almost dry but not quite. So today I need to increase that alcohol amount so it gets going and I can then fill it up with newer, non-gloppy gas.

It isn't super hard, just need to treat what's in the tank and then use the pull chain instead of the electric start so you cycle things around more. Just a lot of pulling and pulling and pulling.



I don't have a super long driveway but it's long enough and includes a patio area that I wanted something with a bit of juice to it.
 
I believe it's because water and ethanol are miscible. OTOH, gas and water aren't. Any water would sit on top. Ethanol, while great for improving octane, having so much water could probably do the opposite. I'm guessing that water-ethanol mixtures are also not miscible in gasoline either. So if there's water in the tank (from the air, condensation, etc), it's going to get concentrated in the ethanol and separate from the gas. If you run your engine "dry" it might just be hitting that interface and shutting down leaving you with just a small amount of impossible to ignite liquid in the engine.

now, if all of a sudden you add a shit ton of ethanol, like, denatured 100%, it's going to mix with that water-ethanol mixture and hit the point where it can finally ignite. Once you get it running again, draining or running until dry would probably work. Then switch to 100% gas.

Wouldn't be surprised that this would be fine even if you had a boundary layer of water sitting on top of the gas because if you ran it dry and let it sit open, the dry air would yank that water right out of the tank.

edit: otoh, why wouldn't that also be true for etoh-h20? I'd have to think about that.
 
All this crap is why I'm much more interested in battery devices. F all this nonsense.


I have an inexpensive plug-in leaf blower that just doesn't have a ton of power and I'll be upgrading from that to a battery one as well. I'm in the Home Depot/Ryobi ecosystem so I'll probably stick with that since a lot of their batteries are interchangeable and I have a few of them already on hand.

I'm totally with DGF on this, and the only reason I went gas on the snow blower was power/battery life. If Ryobi makes a good battery powered one I'll just sell mine and switch.


edit: looks like they do make one with the same batteries I already have but reviews are mixed (25 minute battery life, or maybe 40, or maybe 15), some reliability issues, and it's almost double what I paid for my gas powered one. So, yeah. I'll wait a few years on this.
 
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