January 19th, 2007 by 
imagery
We have a DirecTV Dual Tuner Tivo in our bedroom, but unfortunately we only had one coax cable jack. So we couldn’t record one show and watch another at the same time unless we ran another cable into the bedroom from the basement. A daunting task because I didn’t want to run the cable around the baseboards and I didn’t want to run it all the way around the house and in through the outside wall. That leaves just one option, and that was to go up through the interior wall.
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At first I thought it would be easy thinking the walls would be hollow and I could simply drop the cable down the wall and fish it out in the basement. I was wrong. In newer construction homes, there are 2×4 fire breaks between the studs which prevent one from doing this. I then thought about cutting a square hole in the dry wall at the firebreak, drilling a hole and passing the cable through. Because we have a split-level home, the hole in the dry wall would of been in a very visible spot and unless I patched it perfectly, the wife would of had my head.
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January 14th, 2007 by imagery
Normally I’m not one to complain, but in today’s day and age with as popular as online shopping is, you would think the web sites of two of the biggest DIY stores would have a descent search capability. Truth is, they are both pretty bad by today’s standards, or frustrating to say the least.
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For one, unless you know the exact name of what it is you are looking for, your search will return no results. This leads me to believe there are no keywords attached to products or if there are, they aren’t very relevant. So, if I want to find a long flexible drill bit extender or wire puller I can’t just search online for it because it will return no results. Yet I know they have them because I’ve seen them in store (and eventually bought them). The fact is, a DIY store is going to have a lot of people who don’t necessarily know the exact name of the tool or product they are looking for because they are amateurs. That’s who these stores are geared towards! So why not make the web sites a bit more versatile and useful?!
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January 12th, 2007 by imagery
The blizzard we had on December 20th, 2006 was probably the worst I’ve seen since living in Colorado Springs. The 10 minute average wind speed hovered around 45 mph for 3 hours and wind gusts exceeded 55 mph. It was one nasty storm that caused a lot of problems all throughout the country.
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For us however, and most people I spoke with who live all around the city, the pain was troublesome. Because the wind came from the northwest, it blew snow directly through the louvers on the gable vents in the attic which then accumulated on top of the insulation. However, I didn’t know this until 3 days later when the sun came out, heated the attic which then melted the snow. This was not good.
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The wife thought the pipe to the toilet in the bathroom had a leak, but there was a splatter pattern to the water. Just as I was crawling around looking for the leak, water started dripping on my head. I looked up and saw water dripping all around the bathroom vent in the ceiling. When I went up into the attic to take a look, I realized we had a problem. A big one.
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January 10th, 2007 by imagery
Over the last couple years, I’ve wondered why our master bedroom was on average about 10°F cooler than the rest of the house during the winter. At first, I thought it had to do with poor insulation or that the central air registers in that bedroom were not supplying enough warm air from the furnace. Turns out cold air infiltration was the culprit and it was seeping into our bedroom from two locations.
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December 29th, 2006 by imagery
Ugh, this was not fun. I hate messing around with fiberglass insulation, especially when I’m working with it in cramped locations. For example, a crawlspace.
Once again, Melody homes did yet another crap job, this time “forgetting” to insulate the duct work for our central air furnace which happens to run through a ventilated crawlspace. The ductwork spiders off into many different directions to supply heat to our house, of which about 100′ runs through our crawlspace. So, during the winter the crawlspace is the same temperature as outside; about 20°F. Whenever the furnace is off, the ductwork cools off to about 20°F and takes a good 30 seconds to heat up. As a result, we get an initial “cold blow” through the registers for about 30 seconds, pumping cold air when it should be warm. Even after the ducts heat up, quite a bit of heat is being conducted from the ductwork into the surrounding air which happens to be in a non-living crawlspace. This is a huge waste of energy.
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October 26th, 2006 by imagery
The ductwork in our house, at least in the places I could access, leaked a lot of conditioned air into non-conditioned spaces. For example, in the crawlspace and basement lots of air was escaping from the ductwork where two pieces joined. I figured I was loosing quite a bit of energy by heating parts of the house no one lived in and was probably making it comfortable only to the bugs and other critters that might like some warmth during the winter months. Conversely, if you live in a warm climate and have an air conditioner, sealing the ducts will stop the cold air from cooling unconditioned space as well.
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