Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Your only option is to remove all the loose paint by either scraping or sanding or maybe just washing it with a scrubber if it’s that loose.
You don’t have to remove ALL the paint if some of it is still properly bonded to the wall, but be sure to get ALL the loose paint off. Then, after sanding the edges of the remaining paint smooth, you have to scrub the walls with a good degreaser like TSP or Dawn dishwashing liquid. If the paint is glossy use a product known as Liquid Sandpaper or actually sand the entire area with 400 grit paper to remove the gloss. You don’t have to remove the paint, just roughen the surface so the new paint will stick properly. Once the paint looks dull you are done. New paint can’t stick to a glossy or dirty surface, as you have found out.
If the color of the old paint and the newer paint is way different you will have to prime the walls with a good primer/sealer and then repaint.
Someone took some short-cuts or did the paint job improperly and now you are stuck with doing the job properly.
Considering the cost of parts, packaging, and shipping I don’t know of any company that includes a lot of extra screws ‘just because’. If there are supposed to be 12 screws in the door frame, then put 12 screws in!
Unless there are gaskets or some sort of seal between panels, then caulking between them, and around all doors and windows is mandatory for a weather and water tight seal. No matter what, he needed to follow the manufacturer’s instructions, not ‘wing it’ and do it his own way. Which it sounds like he did, and with the expected results.
OK, so what can be done now? At this point I really don’t know except to force him through letters to him, his company, the supplier of the enclosure, and perhaps the courts, to make him disassemble the structure and rebuild it properly. If you know who made the enclosure then contact them and ask for the assembly manual for it. I’ll be willing to bet you can point to almost any step and say “You didn’t do this. And you didn’t caulk here. And you didn’t put screws in here.” I’ve never seen an assembly manual that says “Open boxes. Put it together however you like. Enjoy!”
You said he was a friend. Well, friend or not he had a professional obligation to install this enclosure properly, in the approved manner following the manufacturer’s instructions. He didn’t do this ‘as a friend’ or for free. He did this as a professional and he needs to own up to the fact that he did it wrong and fix it.
If it takes losing a friend and going to court, then so be it. A leaking sun room doesn’t do you a bit of good and you have wasted money. Money I know you didn’t have to waste. It is more important to get what you paid for then to keep a friend that is willing to rake you over the coals for a profit.
Again, just my two cents on the whole mess. Good luck on this one Bobette. Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving!!
to offer any help. An old boiler could include anything from the years 1600 to 2000 installed in any of a 1000 different ways.
And on a second point: Internet etiquette considers posting in all capital letters to be shouting. There’s no reason to shout here. It’s considered rude.
The more information you can give us, the more help we can offer. With no information there isn’t much we can do. From your post the only things we KNOW are that you don’t know what you are doing and that you have ‘an old boiler’. That is a dangerous combination.
knowing what you are doing you could end up blowing up yourself and the entire household! Boilers are not for the inexperienced to mess with. Call a professional and have them teach you how to use your heating system before you create a tragedy.
The corrosion and arcing are not good signs. The repairs needed can ONLY be done by a licensed electrician so call someone in for an estimate. If it sounds too high, call in another electrician.
Replace the box? Possible, but it depends on the level of corrosion. Hopefully it won’t come to that however.
At the very least the panel needs to be weather-proofed and protected from the elements better then it presently is.
16 or 18 gauge lamp cord to each light. Second, get some string or fishing line about 3 times longer than the length of the arm. Tie a small amount of a cotton ball to the string and stuff into the arm. It should be a loose fit, not jammed in. Use a shop vacuum or the hose on a house vacuum to suck the string through the arm. Cut the wire so one wire is longer than the other by an inch or two. Loop the string over the wire and snug down with the smallest knot you can make or use electrical tape to wrap the string and wire in a straight line for an inch or so being sure to keep it as thin as possible but covering the ends of BOTH wires. Carefully pull the wire through the arm.
Once you get all six wires into the center you can make the connections to a 14 gauge zip cord with wire nuts, the smallest that will fit safely. If you have the tools an ‘insulated in line butt splice’ would work too and maybe take up less room.
Rewiring old chandeliers like that can be a challenge. Good luck and I hope my suggestion works.
REQUIRES all three power connections, hot-neutral-ground. Without a neutral and ground in the box, and ones actually paired with the hot line in the box, you can not mount an outlet there.
You either have to run a new line from somewhere or forget the idea. You said you had two wires in the dimmer box. That’s not enough to make a circuit.
Forget what “someone else said”. They didn’t know what you had, misunderstood you, or didn’t know what they were talking about. “A jumper” won’t get you anything but electrocuted.
you can’t mount an outlet there. The outlet HAS to be a full GFCI outlet in the bathroom and that requires full power and ground.
From the sounds of it the AC connections are at the light or another junction box somewhere and the dimmer just has the hot leads. You will have to bring in power from some other source to wire in an outlet.
But you have to use carbide tipped blades because of the minerals in the resin. It’s messy, and slightly slower work than cutting a wood countertop of the same thickness, but it can be done. It can also be sanded to give you the beveled edge you want and then polished to a glossy shine if that’s what you like.
Depending on your exact layout you might be able to do it all with a circular saw and maybe a jig saw. Or you might need a reciprocating saw near the wall. Just remember to use a Carbide blade. Anything else will dull very very quickly.
Or you could just talk to a counter company and pay them to do it. It depends on how much counter needs to be cut and how difficult the cuts will be.
Just be sure to have a shop vacuum running near the blade or discharge chute of the saw to catch as much of the ‘dust’ as you can. It acts worse than drywall dust! It sticks to everything and gets into everything.
Rural, lax code and inspector: it all fits with what I suspected.
I’m glad your friend saw the light of reason. Yes, I’m sure he was trying to save you money, but money foolishly spent is wasted money. The floor should be the biggest concern since it sounded pretty bad. Not to mention that doing the walls and THEN leveling and building up the floors would have probably cracked the drywall again, forcing you to do the walls TWICE. The walls can be taken care of as time and money permit. Having a warm, solid floor is a great start. The insulation in the walls will help and if you get the pink stuff it’s not entirely unattractive. With luck you will have a warm comfortable room by the new year.
Unless you have a broken pipe spewing water, repairs are best done after careful thought and with the intent to do it right from the beginning. In the end it makes for a much better, safer, and probably less costly remodel. As you said, do it right the first time and you won’t have to do it twice. “Quick fixes” hide the problems but don’t cure anything and in the end you still have to fix the original problems and the quick fix was a waste of time and money and effort.
However, the driveway/car park isn’t dirt nor do we know how solid the foundation is. A vapor barrier on the joists is the easiest and best solution. The only way a barrier on the concrete/asphalt would work is if it was sealed at the edges and bonded to the drive. And we still don’t know what the “foundation” of the room is. I’m betting 2X4s or beer cans. In that case the area comes close to being an open void under the room with full air flow. I’d be willing to bet that water flows under the room on a wet day, thus the need to put a vapor barrier on the joists themselves.
A vapor barrier is necessary no matter what. I’d either staple it to the bottom of the joists, if you can even get to them, or spread the plastic from the top with a sag between each joist to hold the insulation and stapled on top of each joist. In time the joists would rot but it might take years. Sealing the bottom of the joists is still the best idea.
If the ground was dirt then your point would be valid but there are too many “ifs” involved in this pathetic build. I’m still waiting to hear that the wall studs are every four feet. It doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed, it only means that it’s going to take work, money, and time to do it properly. I can’t say as I’ve ever run across anything this odd. I’ve lived in houses where the hog house was moved and used as a kitchen. And it was actually done fairly well. THIS is not one of them from the sounds of it.
but it’s about 1/8 inch thick and gold colored. The shop was throwing it out so I have a 40 pound roll of it. It bends pretty well but yes, two or three bends and it breaks. For a lot of things it works pretty well. Holding up grape vines, stuff like that. At the price it’s hard to complain.
check them then call a professional. The pressure cut off switch normally has an upper and lower limit for the PSI (Pounds per Square Inch) and it’s possible that the upper limit is fine but the lower limit is either set wrong or not working. Normally the upper limit is about 60-70 PSI and the lower is about 40 PSI but they can be set to whatever you want, within reason.
Normally there is a tank with an air bladder in it to hold water, cushion the shock of the pump coming on, and to allow you to use the water for a bit before the pump has to kick in to keep the system working. If the air charge has leaked out, or if the bladder is bad, then your pressure will drop like a rock as you open a faucet. If the tank is “water logged” the instructions for recharging it are normally on the tank itself. Basically turn off the pump, turn on a faucet, pump up the tank with a hand pump or tire pump of some sort to the proper PSI and then return things to normal.
A leak in the system, as mentioned, is also a possibility but I would expect the pump to run continuously or for you to not have proper water pressure if that was the case.
To me it sounds like the main pressure switch isn’t set properly allowing the water pressure to drop too low before it tells the pump to turn on, and perhaps a water logged tank.
To staple the 6 mill vapor barrier to the bottom of the joists. Since the room is over an old driveway/walk then a vapor barrier would be a VERY good idea. That way the joist bays could be filled with unfaced fiberglass insulation. A warm floor is a wonderful thing in the winter.
Done properly you will at least have a room that’s comfortable, level, safe, and nice. What you have now is an abomination and enough to turn a building inspector into a raving lunatic. I’ve seen chicken coops built better. And the amount of work required to pull up the floors is minor and really your ONLY option since you have little to no access from under it.
Oh, and you might want to throw some Decon into the crawl space when you are done, since mice can’t read the “No Vacancy” sign.
Good luck on the remodeling. Do it right the first time.
