All Forum Posts by: Don Meinke

I get a kick out of our modern terminology.  Everyone calls maple and pine,,,'hardwood' floors.  When really those are soft woods at best.  I guess its a relative term.  IF you fall and hit your head hard enough on it,,,it well might be termed 'HARD' .

It might be termed hard if you drop a glass jar of sticky pickle juice, shattering your 'day' and making clean up the order of the day!!!

the proper term might be wood floors.  To "ME" hardwood is more like oak flooring and its kissing cousins.  NOW you can flame me for posting such a worthless trivial item,,,,but keeping this in mind with how you sand it isnt.  Its pretty easy to sand or over sand pine or maple,,,right thru the wear layer,,,where it takes MORE skill to do that with oak.

I have been reading about do it yourself poured in place concrete counter tops.  Seems pretty basic, easy and inexpensive if you have basic concrete skills.  I am unsure how much polishing is required as I havent gotten to that part yet.  ONLY downside is I am told they can be stained by foods but a good sealer and bee's wax treatment goes a long way.  Maybe color choices makes a difference too. Always leaned towards lighter/ whiter colors but a darker color may hide more.  So a medium might be a good compromise.

  Its my feeble attempt to have a solid surface, better and more durable than laminate, cheaper cost than granite and quartz,,,less likely to see tenant trashed results.  Also thinking the poured in place option vs poured upside down then installed later,,,to be an easier one man band operation,,,more forgiving IF walls are imperfect.  JUST something to think about.  Might want to google concrete counter tops and view what I see.  I am sure the learning curve applies here.

Is this all one floor? story and a half?two story?  Basement , crawl or slab?

IF its a one story  with a basement its a snap to run new pipes and wires. A two story might require a bit of demo and reconstruct.  Fishing pipe and wire isnt rocket science.  Its sort of fun if you attack it right.  Make it fun, reward friends help with drinks and food, as well as yourself.  Plumbers and electricians dont like this type work and charge accordingly.  Buy yourself what ever tools you need.  Planning the project out will take as much time as doing it.  If its a two story can you run an electrical chase all the way to attic and back down the partion walls??  that is much easier.  A little drywall is pretty cheap

All good ideas above.

The ONE thing not mentioned yet is----the double trap ,,,,trap.  Is their two traps in the same drain line??  You say there are 3 things on this line??  There is a phenom called one trap pulling the other trap dry,or nearly dry

I used to live in an old apartment that smelled just like that once in a while from the sink drain in the bath,,,it was nasty.  Tried bleach and other stuff and never got it gone.  I was moving anyway,,,,good riddance to that place,,,awful on so many levels.

"HERE" when we get stuck in a rut,,,"we put it in 4 wheel drive and drive out of there"

Sorry couldnt resist.

Now to your question at hand.  You say you have a 35K house that needs 10 K in repairs.  Is that 35 k the anticipated value AFTER the work is done OR its worth 35 now and with 10k of work is now worth 45 K????

I guess the question is---whats the house rent for now?  Maybe with a little paint and polish??  And how much rent AFTER the work is done?

10 K is a lot of work for supplies on a do it yourself basis.  What is the nature of the repairs?  Can you rent it now and work on it in stages as time and funds allow? OR are all repairs needed now before renting it?  Some repairs cant be worked on around a tenant,,,some can.

I always say you can always sell them ,,,but can you buy back similar other priced property?  If you want to sell it,,,ask your self ,,,why???

Boric acid is what you want for residual roach killer.  You poof it into every crack and crevice you can find.

Another all purpose creepy critter spray for inside OR outside is Tempo SL or SE something like that.  It is made from flowers and sprays smelling just like spraying water.  It is the bees knees for hard to handle pests like spiders.  It is VERY safe to be around.  Its labeled for INSIDE  food processing and restaurants.  (If you have ticks in your lawn before, you wont after  )  A friend sprayed a heavy dose 4 YEARS ago and it still kills some stuff.  It needs a respray now cause I see a few.

You 'could' keep the vertical stack and just replace the  horizontal runs.  Cutting off the runs about a foot away from the stack and then turn it out of the cast part.  A little prudent tapping will help loosen the rust and a pipe wrench or two with cheater handles for more leverage.  

After you get it screwed out get a plastic male adapter of proper size to screw back in with pipe dope on threads.  You can now run plastic where the metal pipe was.  you can do the worst pipe first,,,gain experience and confidence,,,then keep on till the last of them is done.

Bet they have that laundry drain tied into main stack someplace.  Removing enough wall to see and then can cut a small slot to follow it.  Not hard to patch back

 You say you have a crawl space under ALL the property?  IF there is any gunk on outside of the pipe it got there from a leak,,,which they are prone to,,start out as pinhole and get worse.  Just be sure to put a cleanout wye close to the stack because where the plastic and cast meet is huge risk to plug up.  Put in access panel if its behind wall.  The cleanout wye has threads on the wye part for a threaded pug for future cleanout,,,use plumbing putty there too to make sure threads are free if removal is needed

Had an old house,,,things are supposed to be built better back then...Dont believe it,,,above the last fixture to drain they reduced the vent stack to 1/12" or 2" from the standard 4".  Then expanded back to 4 in the attic where you could see it again,,,then put a 6" bell on the roof.  It was amazingly efficient at catching all the tree leaves much like gutters and downspouts.  Might have even contained a dead squirrel over time.  ALL fell down to where it bottle necked to the NARROW pipe.  So venting didnt happen and fixtures were slow draining if that.  Sometimes good at best.

Put all new in 3" all the way up thru the roof....SURPRISE,SURPRISE,SURPRISE,,,plumbing went back to working like it should have before the replacement.  It could properly suck air and I could not see the plugged up innards of the pipe.

Have also seen plugged up vents from mud daubers, birds, dead squirrels,,,you name it so IF it wasnt done correctly the first time it MIGHT be an issue.

Now as to your question as to if you have to replace all the way up thru the roof?  It is easiest because you HAVE to support it and cast iron is extremely heavy,,,other reason is as I explained.  THAT is the easiest part..  A pair of 2 pound hammers and a pair of safety glasses,/goggles and you can crack it any where you want.  A decent coat up over your neck also cause those chards hurt .  A recip saw is worthless on cast,,,on galvinized yes.

Watch some u tube vids,,,slope all horizontal pipe with a level about 2% towards the stack,,,make a drawing of all connections and from that make a shopping list of fittings needed, buy a few extra repair and regular couplings for oops mistakes,probably 4 sticks or so of 3 or 4" mainline and enough 2" to get to laundry sink/washer,bath and kitchen sinks, traps and clean outs.use plenty of pipe support on horizontal pipe,,, use long turn radius elbows everywhere you possibly can,,,primer and cleaner and good glue,  dont worry about mistakes,,,you can always fix them!!!  Instead of thousands of dollars of cost you will be amazed at how far a 3 to 500 dollar bill will go and may have some left over.  A weekend worth of work,,,some help from a buddy or two,,,including liquid payments,,,and some BBQ and your set to whack it out.  If you can soften the job and have some prepared and started your half way there.  A recip saw to open walls and galvanized pipe.  The planning is the hardest part,,,and plans do change.  DOING IT YOURSELF IS REWARDING IN MORE THAN ONE WAY!!!

AND they have some cool access panel doors in the plumbing dept of all the big box stores.  I use Mennards cause thats all we have here.  Easy install,easy access and very unnoticeable if painted same as wall color

IF you have a cast iron stack and galvanized horizontal runs to the fixtures the MOST likely place of plugging is the place it joins together right at the stack.  Of course the whole run may be gunked and rusted shut.

IF you see any pinhole rusty specs on the outside of any pipe its rusting thru and needs replaced.  For this main part I would replace it at least with a screw on plastic clean out.  Up sizing to 2" is best for that and laundry drains.

It is going to get worse as time goes by.  The BEST option would be to replace it ALL as well as any metal supply piping cause its time.  You can pex and glue PVC very easy by yourself.  Their are TWO kinds of metal piping in a home,,,,THOSE that leak,,,And those that are going to leak...due to rust out,/plug up.  Your milage may vary but you might be really surprised how little walls and access has to be opened to do it.  Best if some access still remains afterwards. 

Run a few new runs of new grounded wiring too so the gfi and enough circuits are added,  DO IT UP RIGHT and put new clean-outs where they help most and you probably never need them,,,suffer if you dont.  Actually when your all done replacing is just as cheap as throwing a band aid on the old junk thats in there, again and again...