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Tom Raymond

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Everything posted by Tom Raymond

  1. Tom Raymond
    Mike $2300 is a steal, there was a reference to that system costing 14 grand. That would get you a modest poured concrete or a generous CMU basement in these parts. The most extravagent vapor barrier arrangement I've ever seen was homosote sheething laid over 6mil poly.
  2. Tom Raymond
    The house in the OP was being used to grow a hell of a lot of something. It's clearly a dwelling unit and not a green house, so if I could identify what was being grown (and I'm pretty sure I could) I would have no problem calling a spade a spade. What is unclear is if the house was listed as is, or if someone moved in and trashed it. Either way I would think the cops would want to see it, a third party report of drug activity seems like probable cause to me.
  3. Tom Raymond
    A blacksmith shop with a low thatch roof? Talk about playing with fire.[:-bigeyes
  4. Tom Raymond
    I like the juxtaposition of the old timbers, the shiney new floor planks and the wheelchair ramp.
  5. Tom Raymond
    My personal favorite was the AO Smith water heater from 1973 I found 2 years ago. It still had the paper instructions for flushing it hanging from the drain cock. The same house had a portable dishwasher installed as a built in that I guessed predated the DWH.
  6. Tom Raymond
    I'm puzzled, no one thought that interior water manangement was a good idea for Kurt's project in the Pres' hood, or any other basement for that matter. Why is everyone so excited about putting a crawl in a zip-loc bag? Especially one that costs as much as a full basement?
  7. Tom Raymond
    I watch from time to time. There is actually some very good building science going into his projects, not that he'd bother to talk about it. That, and it's really fun to look for his mistakes. There's at least one in every episode.
  8. Tom Raymond
    John are you getting a front loader? Most of those are low water consumption. Mine is almost 9 years old and on the most thirsty cycle uses around 11 gallons of water total. It drains just fine through a 1 1/2" stand pipe. The old one used 30 gallons or more per load and drained just fine on the same stand pipe. Me thinks the flooding stories are folklore.
  9. Tom Raymond
    They'll freeze if you leave a hose full of water connected to them.
  10. Tom Raymond
    The Lisbon Cork I put in my kitchen has a green hardboard core and an unfinished cork on the bottom. It floats without an additional underlayment is ok for kitchens but not recommended for baths.
  11. Tom Raymond
    There few and far between. We just lost our lead installer at my day job, he left for greener pastures. We have hired two guys, each with a dozen years or more of experience, to replace him. These guys are so green that I have been out in the field doing installs two or three days a week to keep the schedule moving. I have been in sales for the last twelve years and have gotten fat and a little bit rusty, but I can work circles around these guys. These two are the best of over a dozen candidates that we talked to. The trades is where you go when you can't make it anywhere else[:-banghea
  12. Tom Raymond
    Call Neff and sons. They are by far the best roofers in WNY.
  13. Tom Raymond
    Huh? I forget that wings are local dish and the further you get from Buffalo the less they resemble the original. The original recipe is crispy deep fried wings coated in a blend of hot sauce and butter, served with a side of blue cheese dressing. The dressing is what made them relavant to the thread, they pair well with a yeasty beer and some moldy cheese.
  14. Tom Raymond
    All of this is an excellent argument for radiant heating.
  15. Tom Raymond
    It's amazing what people worry about. Every time some homeowner posts a pic of a mold problem all I can think is, "I've got more mold then that in my fridge." Here's my take; if there were no mold there'd be no beer, no bread, no wine. Take away our earliest reliable, preservable and transportable food stuffs and there'd probably be no human beings around to worry about mold. Great, now I want a beer and some chicken wings.
  16. Tom Raymond
    Hell no. Even with a basic reside running the price of a luxury SUV there's no money in it. Our overhead eats us alive on a siding project.
  17. Tom Raymond
    Well, it is a mountain now that it's been undermined. Edit: If the place is only 3 years old the plans should be on file. Sounds like you might want to go get a copy of them.
  18. Tom Raymond
    That's more disturbing than the picture Erby.
  19. Tom Raymond
    Why would you need a stairway? After it's been emptied that cooler will come down pretty easily[:-drunk]
  20. Tom Raymond
    The charts are cool and all, but when do we get our decoder rings?[:-dev3]
  21. Tom Raymond
    That's a big deal here in NY. There is all kinds of fracting going on in PA, but NY won't let them in until they figure out how to regulate it. I for one would like to see the gas companies required to maintain the existing infrastructure before they are allowed to drill any new wells. There are thousands of leaking gas mains in WNY, what we are allowing to vent to atmosphere has to excede the production on one of those fract wells.
  22. Tom Raymond
    My old one did. About a year ago the water dept came through and replaced all the meters on my street. My new meter sucks. I have to run several gallons per minute through it to see it move at all, it's noisey, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't 'zeroed' when they installed it (or they made a major math mistake). My first bill on the new meter was for 3 times my normal consumption, the only such spike in the 11 years I've been there.
  23. Tom Raymond
    They get omitted because they take time. We use best practices, that's why we average 12 man hours per square.
  24. Tom Raymond
    The applicator is supposed to do that, notching and tabbing the J channels as they are applied. The flashing is a seperate system altogether. Look at the Certainteed install manual, there are over 100 pages of such little details.
  25. Tom Raymond
    There is a cat rescue org near me that is currently in a huge former restaurant building. At any given time they have 250 to 300 cats living there. I was there once to drop off a cat and the stench nearly knocked me over outside in the parking lot. I can't imagine what it smells like inside. The building is for sale.[:-yuck]
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