f13.net

I thought we had one of these, but I didn't see it through March 2011. Home buying tips, yeah.  I didn't want to derail the resolutions thread, so I started new.


Step 1) Take a soil sample to the farmer's bureau and have it tested. They'll tell you what your soil is lacking so you can feed it properly.
Step 2) Don't just dump fertilizer. Do step 1.   You'll be acidic or basic and need to add gypsum or lime accordingly.
Step 3) Plug-aerate the lawn at least once a year.  Lets the dirt break up so the roots can push through the compacted soil.  I always do this just as the rainy part of the year happens in spring or fall.  It looks like crap all over the lawn, but the rain will break it up quick.  Rent this from Home Depot don't buy it.

Grass is pretty easy after that.  Keep it watered, use some weed control/ fertilizer in the spring, fertilize every 3 months and grub control in the fall. Voila.

If your house is <15 years or so you might just have shitty soil because the developer stripped it off and sold it. (Happened at this house)  It's possible it'll be YEARS of effort to get the soil in to decent shape.  Instead, you could just kill the current lawn and buy some sod and start anew.  You will need to prep the ground once the lawn is dead by shredding and such, but you'll be happier.

Alternative: fuck having a lawn and figure out something native and decent-looking to grow in that space instead. Done right, it should require a lot less maintenance and chemicals and such.

EDIT:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ecoregions_in_the_United_States_(WWF)

Something like this can probably help you track down stuff that should be appropriate for wherever it is that you are.

Or sand and rocks. Looks nicer and has nearly zero upkeep. Arizona and Vegas are doing it right.

Depends on the part of the country you're in and if you're part of an HOA, but yeah, I agree.  We grew bluegrass and fescue at this house because they're native.  Drove me up a wall seeing the same plants on lawns in Tucson because it would have taken a crapload more.

That said, letting most lawns go fallow means you get white clover all over. Which is non-native, invasive, and kills native plants.  It's the Kudzu of the 18th century.


You saw different parts of Arizona than I did.  I saw tons of lawns in Tucson.  They were shit but they were there, using water and being wasteful.

I am waiting to see if the crab grass or the clover will take over my yard.  My money's on the crab grass, but it might take a while.

As far as "real" yard advice goes, I'm putting monkey grass plugs under some trees where I haven't been able to get grass to grow for 5 years now.  I also know that this is a permanent step, because you NEVER get rid of it once it gets planted somewhere.

Thanks Merusk. I've got almost full tree coverage. All my neighbors have the same, but they all have services that know their shit or something.

I would rather go to full sand/rocks/mulch/land-art whatever, but the wife won't go for it. Not until the kids outgrow running on the lawn. I'd go freakin' bamboo if my neighbors wouldn't pitchfork me for invading the neighborhood.

Thanks for the info on soil sample. Found a place that does it local. Will get on it when the ground thaws. Looks like the webs recommend doing it in the Fall, but I'm months late or early. House was built in the 60s. Pictures I've seen of the house from previous owners shows that the grass has never really been stellar. Happy to resurrect it as long as I don't need a PHd in grassology or anything :-)

Oh and since we have a thread for this:

I've google'd, but would prefer if someone here had direct experience with it:

I've got a big ass ride on lawnmower, snow thrower, regular lawn mower, push leaf blower/vac, and two-stroke weed whacker. With all these gas powered engines sitting around doing nothing most of the year, I've occasionally wondered if I could hook up an alternator and voltage regulator that would let me power something. Like charging cell phones or using a space heater or something small like, things I wouldn't care if they got fried.

I don't need to do a fridge or furnace or anything. If things ever got bad enough frequently enough, I'd just get a full generator. I also would prefer to not entirely destroy the whole piece of equipment just to hook it up; however, I could donate the push mower to the task because I never use it.

Anyone try this?

Does your riding mower have a PTO shaft on it?

They all run off Magetos, so you would have a hard time doing that.  Just buy an emergency generator.

Also, with the 10% ethanol shit gas that eats carbs, make sure to install fuel cut off valves and only turn the engines off buy cutting off the fuel by using the valve.  This will prevent the Ethanol from turn your carb into sludge.

With a shaded lawn it could also be a few different things:
  1) They have a different grass breed that's more shade tolerant.
  2) The trees could be toxic to your grass.  I'm pretty sure both Oak and Walnut have secretions that kill competing plant life in their drip line. That's one to bounce off the garden center or a botanist.

I wouldn't put any stock in it being the service, myself, unless it's some local business who knows his shit.  The big services like Chemlawn and Truegreen hire from the same pool as Dominoes drivers: "Must have license and be able to carry 25#"

I battled my lawn this year and I lost to weeds. Completely replanted my front lawn this fall. Came in pretty good. Back yard is a mess. Having a kid this year took away from my lawn-war fund.

I've got a really nice mix of stuff on my lawn. A couple years ago I let the back go to seed for the summer and it was a beautiful meadow, tons of 'weeds' (flowers and berries). I don't sweat seeding it, I let the native life do its thing, though I do try to keep the dandelions down for the sake of neighborly harmony.

Speaking of services, Orkin is also a Dominoes driver style organization. I had to threaten them with legal action to keep the retards off my property after they completely pants their heads after I called them to deal with the massive citronella ant nest under my slab. Totally incompetent and they structure their 'money back guarantee' to screw you (obvious, but bears stating). They actually exacerbated the issue by laying down a barrier, so the ants had no place to escape except into my house. Citronella ants can't be treated like traditional ants, they're farmers (and I'm not looking forward to the next nest split as excavation is my only option).

And then the moron starts putting out cardboard glue traps. I have a barn door garage and back onto woods, I get some mice, no big deal. I put some of my own traps out. A few days later, I've got a snap and a couple glue traps with mice and three partial cardboard traps that have been eaten away as the mice escaped (and ran into my traps). Hilariously incompetent.

Glue traps *shudder*

I get why people like them but it just seems more humane to break their backs/ split their skulls than let them starve to death.

I think the only way to deal with ants is fire.  I feel about them the way most feel about spiders.

Necessary evil. I go all Dungeon Keeper on mice, so by the time they get to the glue traps, they've evaded the two kinds of snap traps I lay out. I absolutely hate it and feel like shit every time I find one. I don't like poison because we have a lot of neighborhood cats I'd rather not kill or sicken; and they could also rot in the walls.

For chipmunks, I trap and release.

Fire is good...but not under my house. I love ants...but not under my house.

Aerate and seed spring and fall for a couple years, adding in whatever your local county extention office says you need in the way of ph and fertilizer. After 5 years you'll have a nice lawn.
Then go back out on the road for most of 2 years, have your housemate ignore the lawn, and come back to patchy shit again, and give up. Hopefully I can get a house in Colorado in the next year or two, and just have a prairie lawn.

The next thing that needs to be fixed in this house is the stairway, and that's a job I'd rather move than tackle.

Smart man.

Just have them custom built by a local craftsman. They all are great, right, Sam?!

It's a couple decades out of date, but I have experience maintaining a garden. I can be your gardener. If you know what I mean.

Alternatively, you can burn your house down and collect the insurance.

This thread has now made me laugh out loud twice with this, and crabgrass line.

Thanks (again). I've added this to my growing FAQ to research in about 8 weeks. And yea, none of the services have anything like logos or trademarks around here. They're all a bunch of guys with big ass equipment but without the franchise fees :-)

So glad this could be posted today; sink drain pipe started leaking a few hours ago.  Fingers crossed the epoxy putty holds.

Post a couple of pictures.

Looks like the epoxy held.  It's all 80yr old cast iron and a threaded adapter near the soil stack started leaking. 

The epoxy better hold.  We can't really put a bunch of money into any projects right now, as we're putting the Ohio house on the market in April.  I can't wait to have that monkey off our back.  We're hoping our current tenant wants to buy and we'd make her a sweet deal if so.  If not, blech... we'll be carrying two mortgages until it sells. 

They all run off Magetos, so you would have a hard time doing that.  Just buy an emergency generator.
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Thanks slog. What got me started on this was: http://theepicenter.com/tow082099.html

Seems like the component cost plus time would exceed just paying the generator cost. The current snowmeggedon didn't nuke our power (oddly). I figured last year if we lost power twice this winter I'd just make the plunge. Woulda been nice to remember that before buying the new video card and standing popcorn machine maybe :-)

You do that in Austin and you end up with a weed garden (the non smoking kind) real fast.  I for one would much rather mow than weed.

Put a weed barrier down and put dirt / sand over that?

Water your rock garden with weed killer.

Learn to love the weeds.

Get a goat.

Nope, plenty of airborn crap that doesn't seem to give a crap what kind of ground it grabs onto.  On the other hand the weeds are really easy to pull since they can't dig real deep.

Yeah, pulling weeds out of gravel or sand is way easier than pulling them out of dirt.  Even a layer of gravel over dirt without a weed barrier makes weeding easier as long as you get to them when they're small.

In Colorado we use mulch over our flower beds without any weed barriers and we hardly get any weeds - the ones we do get are easy to pull. We also have an area with gravel/small rocks over a weed barrier and we get weeds there all the time - liberal use of Weed B Gone and Roundup only sorta keeps it in check.

I think I mentioned this when I got my house, but it bears repeating: http://www.amazon.com/AVALANCHE-Original-Removal-AVA500-Fiberglass/dp/B002TLSTH4/

Just cleaned a foot of snow off my roof in about 45 minutes with almost no effort. Since it's going to rain tomorrow and then freeze to single digits for a week...nice to have in the arsenal. Not to mention saving my back.

So how's that work.  Rolls up the roof and the sheeting slides under the snow, which then slips off the roof?

Here we just build roofs with proper strength to hold it and a pitch so if it gets crazy it falls off.

Your snow doesn't melt the first day?  :awesome_for_real:

What's "snow"?

The metal frame slices into the snow as it rolls up the roof, and the snow blocks slide off. I have a 1 story house, which helps, too.

Numtini, trust me, it's one of a list of things I consider necessary for a good house (proper pitch and strength)....but the houses built like that (from the 1800's, mostly) are in the ghetto here. Total fucking tragedy.

I was chuckling at my neighbor's roof, which has barely 3" of snow and huge icicles already. I'd hate to see his heating bill.

Couldn't you just get the roof heat cable? My first house had ample pitch, and after the first year of roof raking (which immediately followed a day of ice dam chopping), the cable seemed to stay ahead of it enough it both prevent ice dams and allowed enough runoff from snow that collected above it.

Granted, I used about 50% more cable to larger peaks and valleys than needed, but it did the job.

Every house is different though.

Doesn't having the snow on your roof help you keep your house warm? At least ,if you have an attic, I would expect the snow to keep the warmth of the house inside more than cleared roof (see: igloos).

Yeah, snow is an insulator, the reason the guy has icicles is that 3' of it is providing enough r-factor that the temperature at the tiles is above freezing.  Sky's neighbor's heating bills could conceivably be lower than Sky's.

Clearing snow from your roof is at best a workaround for an incredibly weak structure that really should be reinforced, more often it's a waste of effort and excuse to sell you tools and services you don't need (if enough snow was accumulating to actually be a danger, you're having a blizzard so severe you're an idiot if you even leave the house).  If you're really that concerned, put on a metal roof and forget about it forever.

--Dave

EDIT: 3' of snow is equal to only a pound or so per square inch.  If your roof was that weak, major hailstorms would turn it into swiss cheese.

EDIT2: Oh, 3 inches, not 3 feet.  Yeah, your neighbor's insulation sucks.

So snow isn't bad, unless it can't run off your roof.

Metal roofs can help, but are fairly ugly for your average surburban home. Yes it's because of tile bias driven by herd mentality supported by tile marketing in surburbia. Most of that is lost on the average home owner who doesn't want to be the black sheep of the sub development.

Ice dams are that line of ice at the bottom 1-2 feet of roofline which prevent snow from running off and which either accompany or contribute to icicles. While icicles are pretty, they're usually an indicator of an ice dam, as in, a not-to-have.

Snow/sleet/rain can't run off if it's blocked. And if it's blocked, it builds up weight which in the right conditions/level of avoidance can collapse a roof. Of the water expands as it freezes under the tiles, soaks the wood underneath, gets into the attic insulation and then through it to the ceiling, and floor underneath. Ice is heavy enough, but now you've compounded it with mold, and potentially contractor work unless you're handy.

If you have a poorly insulated attic or eve, and can't deal with that for whatever reason, physically removing the snow from the lower 1/3-1/2 of the roof (or using heat wire from preventing it from forming in the first place) can mitigate ice dams.

This is helpful for older houses that don't have all the modern conveniences like good insulation, easy attic access, any thought given to roof pitch, all the current codes, etc.

Uh, no.  The guy has icicles at 20 degree or lower temps because the insulation in his attic sucks and heat from the house is melting the snow from the bottom up.  Icicles are bad, leading to ice dams.  Your attic should be as cold as the outside unless you've got living space in it.

No idea where you pulled a pound per square inch, but stick to programming.  Damp snow is estimated at around 15# per cubic foot. Source (http://www.monroect.org/resources/31/Building%20Information/SNOW_WEIGH_PER_CUBIC.PDF)Giving three feet of snow a 45# load on one square foot.  Roof trusses are designed at 45#/sf dead load in this area.  New York code wants 55#/sf.   You want to get out there and get that off just in case more snow comes unless you've got a metal roof.  Grumblings of 'incredibly weak structure" be damned, that shit's heavy.  

It's mostly about preventing ice dams, and with my roof rake it's just as easy to clear the whole thing. And since it's going to dump a whole lot of freezing rain, the foot of snow would be a few inches of ice when temps drop 42 degrees overnight in a couple days and then it's just a giant ball of suck on my roof. No thanks.

I've helped rebuild at least a half dozen roofs that have caved in from winter loads, so I might be a bit sensitive about such things. I'd rather spend 45 minutes on a beautiful day making sure I don't have to worry about anything. Most of the caved roofs were metal, it's not a panacea.

This is all driven by the fact that every time an area gets an unusually large amount of snow accumulation, a few rooves fail, which gets lots of attention.  In virtually every case, some combination of shoddy construction and age is also involved.

I grew up in snow country, where winter-time snow accumulation measured in feet was the norm, and double-digits on that measure was not that unusual.  Most of the measures now pushed for homeowners are simply profiting from fear and ignorance, a slicker and more expensive version of driveway sealing.

If your structure is fundamentally sound, and your roof isn't half-rotten, these things are wastes of time and money.  If they aren't, you should probably fix the real problem.

--Dave

Fake edit: I pulled a pound per square inch out of my ass, by your numbers I was off by a factor of three on the heavy side (45 / 144 = 0.32).  However, before I was a programmer, I was a roofer (among many other things).  Generally the problem is not your trusses, but your sheathing or your main beams.  Frequently a problem in frame housing is windows that were added or widened after initial construction, compromising the support *under* that section of roof.  Additions with a flat roof can be a problem as well.

Real edit: I actually do believe in the heat wires, they do help with a real problem (even a small leak can rot out your support, and ice dams and the resulting issues can cause the edges to get such years before the rest).  But you only need them on the last 12-18 inches of roof.

What the fuck?

Ehh?  I didn't think I went all psycho on it.  Essentially: A properly built house isn't going to have the roof collapse from snow weight until you hit truly ridiculous levels (like, 10 feet, by which point even a moderately pitched asphalt shingle roof will usually have most of it fall off).  However, a lot of things can compromise that, most of which are either that the house wasn't properly built or it has subsequent damage (such as a slow leak running down a structural support and rotting out the wood).

If the snow accumulation exceeds the norm for an area by a major factor, rooves are going to fall, as deficiencies that didn't show up before are exposed.  But if your area has already had such a situation recently and your house didn't cave in, it's almost certainly okay (as evidenced by the fact that it survived).  However, this is exactly when the "solutions" such as roof rakes and extensive roof rebuilding/replacement will be pushed onto the local market (often abetted by local building inspectors who don't want to admit they miss structural deficits like those, and will argue that it was just a random thing that could have happened to any house).  Nobody is going to come to your door and tell you that $100-200 worth of heat wire you can install yourself will be adequate to protect your house, or that your house doesn't need any additional protection (roof in good repair, pitch sufficient to shed excessive snow, etc).

--Dave

I'm just saying that is a good roof rake for people who give a shit about properly maintaining their house. Or you can go ahead and hope that your roof will survive rather than take simple precautionary measures to stack the deck in your favor. If you're going to remove a couple feet of snow to prevent ice dams, this rake makes it just as quick and easy to remove the entire snow load.

I don't know why it turned into some crusade against predatory products and services. Then I remember this:

(http://i.imgur.com/Zs6dbho.jpg)

Keep your bullshit in Politics and Eve, Francis.

I'm sorry if I was rude, but I've lived in New England for most of my life and this is honestly the first time I've heard of a device to clear a roof or that you would do such a thing.

I see my mistake, I tried to depersonalize it, rather than saying "Sky is an idiot, don't waste $120 on that piece of plastic crap that won't do shit when you actually need to do something about snow 5 feet deep', I tried to simply explain things.  Next time I sperg out, I'll be sure not to spare your feelings with a meta-explanation that doesn't call you out personally.

--Dave

Sorry, I'll keep my complete ignorance and stupidity when it comes to the topic of home maintenance to myself from now on.

A roof rake is used to clear off a roof when you have large buildups of snow and ice to prevent ice dams and pockets of water doing a thaw/freeze cycle against your roofing material, or if your building has skylights or dormers or what not.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_dam 

It generally doesn't have anything to do with roofs (rooves is an archaic and seldom used plural) collapsing, and more to do with regular maintenance to maximize the lifespan of your roof.  If you don't do anything, more than likely your roof will be just fine (unless it's well past its 20 to 30 year lifespan). 

In Upstate NY (though Sky is really more Western  :oh_i_see:), we will tend to get periods where in direct sunlight you will have melt.  If that melt is running down through a foot or two of snow it can get stuck, refreeze, and cause some damage.... but again not likely to cause a huge problem unless you have skylights or dormers, or a more level slope where two roofs come together.  It does degrade the long-term durability of some roofing materials, and has the potential to cause more damage if you have freak periods of weather (like an ice storm, or a regular thaw/freeze period hovering around 32F).

I would make the guess that this kind of phenomenon correlates with areas that also do lots of maple sugaring (Northern Northeast/Southern Canada) as maple sugaring is dependent on that thaw/freeze cycle for Spice maple sap to flow.

Asphalt roofs (with tarpaper) are subject to some dregradation from standing water going through thaw/freeze cycles, and that could cause rot to the underlying plywood/plank roofing structure and/or some potential for mold or mildew.  It's not about "omg, my roof will collapse!" it's about making sure you get your full 20 or 30 year lifecycle out of your roof, and that bits of it don't get so degrading they go flying off the next time you get a good wind storm.

And the chances that you will damage your roof while trying to use a roof rake, doing far more to shorten its life cyle than the freeze/thaw cycle would have, is nearly 100%.

--Dave

Maybe that's true of you Dave, but don't assume everyone has the same level of competence.

You're trying to tear ice off of your roof with hard tool at the end of a long pole.  You're going to damage your roof.  Get heat tape/wire.

--Dave

Yeah yeah, let's move on.

Sheesh.  Let's see what happens when I bring up that light bulbs in certain places in my house tend to blow out quickly.

I did look for signs of arcing on the bulb contacts already.  I've had one or two electricians look at it and the best advice I got was to buy industrial-strength bulbs.  That actually did work for a while, but the filaments did eventually die.  Now I have LED bulbs which seem OK so far but it doesn't really solve the core problem.

Related to this, I assume: I can't leave my 18V batteries in the charger where they are currently plugged because something causes them to go bad, either permanently or temporarily.  Something is off about my power supply but I don't know what.

Yeg, haven't you had like 12 consoles die too?

You have something really funky going on with the power into your house. Betting that you have a faulty transformer in your neighborhood that is feeding your house. Have you contacted the power company?

The dying consoles were fixed by replacing Ye Olde Powerstrip, which apparently have lifespans.

I haven't called the power company, but that's an idea.  I have my own transformer, but doesn't everyone?

It really depends on the density of customers. In suburban/urban neighborhoods it is usually a few houses that all tie into one transformer.

I'll call the power company and see if they have anything for me.

As for mice and whatnot, four cats do the job in that division.  Post-murder cleanup is my job.

One of my cats handles cleanup for all the murders committed by the others.

I just get to handle post-cleanup-cleanup from the box.

Sounds like you've got surges, Yeg.  Bulbs burn out because of the stress of the element heating/ cooling off or getting banged in a fragile state, after all.  Surges would push them beyond their expected current.

I'm with Chimpy ask the P.C. to look at your transformer.  Do you have any idea at all how old it is?  Their lifespan are like 20-25 years but I thought your house was about that age.  You bought it and built the pool, not built new, right?

Also, no, just those of you with vast country estates have their own transformers. Us peons have to share... with the upside that we don't have to pay when they burn out/ explode.

My transformer was installed in 2002, along with the entire house.  However, it's a ground-based unit and now invisible behind many bushes.

We had weird surges for a while and it turned out to be the power connection between our house network and the utility company--their fault. Took them a while for them to figure it out.

On lawns, the thing that's killing me every August is a weed called nimblewill, which looks ok as it comes in and then shades out and kills the fescue and bluegrass. If I cut it, it goes to seed faster, on a short stalk. Very annoying shit. Can't selectively kill it.

I solarized my vegetable garden two years ago, but it's getting overwhelmed again by weeds. I think I'm going to build a genuine raised bed with cedar planks instead and grow in that.

Our big issue at the moment is that we've had the sewer back up in the basement twice in a year, but every time they run a camera down the line out to the town sewer they don't see roots or any major issues, and that's with an old terracotta line. The latest hypothesis is that the trap in the lawn is oh-so-slightly misaligned and so it's catching and clogging now and again. Which is a fucking expensive fix according to the plumber whose theory that is.

But the thing that's really stressing me out is the bigger work we have to have done in the next five years--I really don't know how we're going to afford it. Means a loan, I guess, which really complicates our current debt situation.

I'm thankful for threads like this. Makes me feel better about selling my place and renting again.

I'm happy to not have a slothful middleman between me and my comfort.

Have you checked the actual voltage at a couple of sockets?  If it's 125-130 or so things will still work... usually... but it's not good and sensitive stuff will blow out.

We lost a refrigerator, garage door opener, and microwave this way one year - the voltage slowly rose up to 130 due to a corroded neutral wire in the box and we didn't notice until stuff started dying.   Things with their own little boxes on power cords like TVs/computers seemed to survive, thankfully.

I have a cheap voltmeter that I can jam in some sockets.  I do seem to remember it being over 120V when I was using it to determine what was going on with a bad can light, but I'll try some more samples.

Corroded neutral wire.  I feel like I'm about to learn something.

The electrician took care of it in like an hour, but as far as I could tell it was just a big fat wire in the circuit breaker that sometimes rots away and then the voltage into your house is no longer really controlled or some other kind of electric wizardry.   It was cheap to fix, anyway, that's what I was relieved about, and no problems for the 7-8 years since the fix.

All depends on the landlord. Mine happens to be a young professional couple with their first rental property. In an area that's not easy to rent out.
They treat me like royalty.

Also, I have no issue with doing cheap generic maintenance. I'm just happy to not be worried about paying for new roofs or furnaces.