Home Improvement

They make little bottles of stuff that fit on a hose like fertilizer to kill moss on a roof. $15 at Lowes, just a heads up. Kills it dead and it dries up and falls off pretty quickly.

Shop BAYER ADVANCED 32oz Ready-to-Use Liquid Moss and Algae Control at Lowes.com

It's worked for me well. Had a shop that got no sun on the roof on one side in a heavily wooded area.

You do need to kill it, and the best way is with the liquid stuff you spray on it. Once it is dead, you can sweep it off. They also make chemicals that will eliminate stains from that, and make your shingles a uniform colour again. Someone down the street from me had a professional come in and do this, and I talked to the guy. He said the first mistake people make is thinking that direct sunlight will kill the moss. It keeps growing under the shingles. The second mistake is to pay someone to come in and do it, rather than getting the chemicals themselves. A little research online, he said, and anyone can do this themselves.

Use this stuff

Wet and Forget

Do not pressure wash.

I live in the PNW and any shaded or north facing surface gets moss no matter what. If its a small area bleach will kill it instantly. Spray it on, the moss shrivels up and turns white, brush it off the roof after it dries up. Otherwise yea any commercial product with zinc in it will kill it good.

Here's my project from last weekend.
My mother is redoing her kitchen in her new house, and wanted to get rid of her "old" electric stove and cook top. I say old, but this stuff can't be more than 2-3 years at that.

Anyway, I had a Kenmore oven/top combo unit that I bought 7-8 years ago, and it's worked great, but you can't turn down newer, higher quality stuff.





There was a lot of work involved so far.
1.) Had a local cabinet maker build me a laminated countertop for the cook top.
2.) I had to cut off a section of the old counter so that the new one would fit into the open space.
3.) Mount the new counter into place (I'm going to fix in this weekend and make sure everything is completely level)
4.) Tear about my fuse box and add a new 30 amp double pole for the stove while re-using the older 40 amp double pole for the cook top. Unforunately, I was out of space, so I had to pick up a few mini breakers, but I'm still good as far as code is involved.
5.) Run a new 10/3 line from the fuse box out to the stove.
6.) Build up a floor stand to raise the stove as high as possible.

All in all, I'm around $300 in supplies to do everything. Most of those supplies are the wiring and countertop. I still need to paint a kick plate and put that into place, and close it in so it looks like it's always been there. Aside from that, I'm going back to the same countertop guy to build me a few laminated sections to fill the open spots just to finish the "look". But this new stuff works great. I'm glad that I learned how to do so much of this stuff in the past, because it would have been expensive to have someone else do it for me.

Probably been discussed to death, but thoughts on doing the whole solar panel on the roof thing? We don't have any trees above our house, so it's pretty much in constant sunlight.

A lot of talk around town recently about how much people are saving - but what's the real lowdown? Anyone here ever do this through one of those companies that will install it and you pay monthly or whatever? Is it worth it? What are the upfront costs?

I could talk to the guy at Home Depot shilling the shit, but I feel I won't get the real talk.

You need to figure out if MA has any rebates or tax breaks for putting solar on your roof, and then compare costs to do it vs what you'll save each year to figure out how long it will take for you to see a return on investment. But unless MA gives big tax breaks, rebates, or other incentives it will not be a great investment. It will take like ~15 years or more to see an ROI if you just pay straight up with current technology.

That's basically what I figured. These neighbors sound like shills anyways. Saying their electric bills dropped from $300-350 in the summer to paying $180 to the solar company.. my bill is $100/mo with the mitsubishi AC units running nonstop

I have a good friend that installed solar panels. He has a big house, probably around 3000sq feet. In the summer his electric bills would top out around $400 per month to cool his home and about the same for gas in the dead of winter. The solar panels negate about $300 worth of power per month in utility bills. The install of the panels plus a new electric furnace was about $25,000 and he's saving maybe $2500-$3000 per year on utilities (his gas/electric combined wouldn't hit that $300 per month threshold a few months out of the year in the spring and fall, so a little goes to waste)

So at worst he's going to start to come out ahead in about 10 years. Definitely not something that is worth doing unless you know for certain you aren't ever going to move again.

Hes happy with them, he plans on never moving again even in retirement, he's out in the country with a lot of land and a pond/woods. Hes staying put for good.

I just wonder what kind of solar tech will be available in 10 years once his are paid off, if he shouldn't have waited. In another decade or two he could easily be back to having a large electric bill even with the panels, due to the rising cost of energy, whereas new panels at that future point in time might be less expensive with a better energy yield. .. Who knows.

From what I read people in other areas of the country pay massive amounts per kilowatt. I lived in the south all my life and now TX. I have a 3200 sq. ft. house currently and for a good portion of those years I worked at home so someone was home all the time and I never once in my life had a power bill of more than $150. These weren't state of the art modern houses either. Only one had double pane windows etc...

The thing people often forget is that solar panels are not 'permanent appliances'... they are depreciating assets. You will have to replace/repair.

They are not cheap - not all power companies offer buybacks, you need serious capacitors to make use of them. Look at it this way - if you have normal energy saving thermostats and a peak/non-peak energy plan, most of your energy generation is going to be during the day... when you normally have your house at 80. You are running pool pump/appliances/etc. at nights during the week for the most part.

I just don't think they're worth it in most cases - in fact I passed on a house that had them, in part because they were going to be a 5k+ investment to repair/fix back to spec from negligence and can you imagine the fucking price to replace your roof underneath all those panels/cleats/piping? holy shit...

Deathwing_sl said:

How the hell do you manage only $100/month with multiple AC running nonstop? My bill was a bit below that with NO AC.

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I have two really efficient heatpump Mitsubishi units. My house is only 1500 sq feet and I live less than 1 mile from the power plant is my guess.

In the winter I can't heat the house with the units though, my bill went up to $500/mo when I tried

The two units barely have to work to cool the house to 72 degrees

Wall-mount deluxe

It's one of those, but an older version with a remote control

Water Softeners

So basically my 36 y/o culligan water softener is starting to shit the bed. Keeps getting stuck in the regen cycle even after maintenance. I'm looking at new ones and well, they have some cheap single systems at hd/lowes for like $500 or I could get a another similar system installed but it'll run me around 2 - 3k. I'm hesitant to put a nice system in because I'm not planning to stick around in the house for more than a few years, but if those cheap ones at hd/lowes aren't worth it, I guess I'll be eating a couple grand. Any input/advice ?

I'm in a similar boat, everything I can find seems to say that there's two categories: properly sized salt units that actually soften water (cheap if you shop well) and expensive contaminant removal systems that are "saltless" that are ok for drinking but don't actually soften water.

There doesn't seem to be a reason for modern softeners to be expensive anymore because computers are cheaper than dirt and there's actually competition in the market now because of it. I can't seem to find anything supporting spending more than 4-600 so far but I'm not in a huge rush yet.

Palum_sl said:

The thing people often forget is that solar panels are not 'permanent appliances'... they are depreciating assets. You will have to replace/repair.

They are not cheap - not all power companies offer buybacks, you need serious capacitors to make use of them. Look at it this way - if you have normal energy saving thermostats and a peak/non-peak energy plan, most of your energy generation is going to be during the day... when you normally have your house at 80. You are running pool pump/appliances/etc. at nights during the week for the most part.

I just don't think they're worth it in most cases - in fact I passed on a house that had them, in part because they were going to be a 5k+ investment to repair/fix back to spec from negligence and can you imagine the fucking price to replace your roof underneath all those panels/cleats/piping? holy shit...

Click to expand...

The only way I would do it is how my friend did it in the previous post that I mentioned...all of his solar panels are just in a field next to his home, not actually on his roof. He has a ton of acreage, so he had plenty of space to put the panels on the ground. Panels on the roof seem like a huge headache.

So my dog got cancer, and as a result she has been unable to wait for me to get to the door when she needs to go out, this has led to her peeing on the floor in front of the back door quite a bit, add to that while I'm at work and my wife has the newborn and toddler she doesn't always realize it or clean it up right away. As a result we have one board of our nice pergo coming up on one side because the moisture has gotten under it and expanded the padding. I have tried banging it back down with a rubber mallet but nothing... does anyone have any suggestions? it doesn't seem feasible to remove the board and repalce it, but I would rather not live with it if I can help it.