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Posts tagged home-improvement
I live in the US midwest (we have all four seasons). Most houses here use natural gas for heating (and usually some appliances), and many homes are about a hundred years old. The main supply from...
In North America, it is common to build wood-frame houses with pieces of lumber making up the frame and OSB boards acting as wall sheathing. The OSB sheathing reinforces the frame against various ...
OSB boards often have a stamp that says "strength axis" with an arrow, usually parallel with the longer dimension of the board. What is this strength axis? Should it be parallel or perpendicular t...
I have a 1/2in OSB board with "32/16" stamped on it. This means that when used as flooring, it the supporting joists must be spaced 16in or denser (32 is for roofing). However, if I did put it on ...
If I'm looking to pay someone to replace my floors (eg. carpet, laminate, hardwood), what is this service called? Would I be looking for a contractor, handyman, floorer or something else? I am ask...
Would the proposed Home Improvement community be open to questions about "house stuff" more broadly? I have in mind not just home improvement, but household operations more generally. I'd been co...
Site Name Home Improvement Description Questions about renovating, repairing, maintaining and building one's own home. Topics Topics covered would include: Any questions pertaining to work ...
Many stores seem to sell "grounding wire". This is a solid copper wire, similar to normal THHN wires used to do house wiring, except without the plastic jacket. I'm confused why you would bother b...
When I work with wood in my garage, it quickly fills with sawdust. Everything in the garage gets covered with a film of dust. Many of my tools have dust extraction ports. I know some people get sp...
I want to do woodworking in my garage, but when I've done this before it created a lot of sawdust and everything else in the garage got very dusty. This is really annoying when doing polyurethane c...
In the past, when I tried to use power tools for woodworking in my garage, it created a lot of sawdust. Everything in the garage got covered by a layer of dust, and it became hard to do things like...
I have a Lutron Maestro MA-T530G. I installed this to control an old bathroom fan which was malfunctioning. I'm planning to replace the fan anyway later, but I wanted to have a timer in the meanwh...
Home Improvement seems like a site where recommendation type questions might happen quite frequently, including product/component recommendations as well as tool recommendations. I think these can ...
How can I confirm that an ethernet cable is free of defects? I have a bunch of ethernet cables around my house. Some are apparently defective, and cause network problems when used. When these prob...
My internet is provided via a coax cable. The speeds are much less than advertised, and the ISP's technician said it's because my coax cables are low quality and degrade the signal. The cables are...
Is it possible to run cordless tools (which normally take a battery) from the outlet somehow? While obviously the intended use of these is cordless operation, occasionally you don't have a charged...
How should I store rechargeable lithium batteries for common cordless tools, to maximize their longevity? I use the tools occasionally, so they often go months without use. Is it better to keep th...
Many companies sell water filters for improving the composition of water received from city mains. There is a variety of models with different number and types of filter stages, and corresponding p...
The LEDs in some rooms of my house flicker when the switch is on. There is no dimmer, it's a basic toggle switch. When the switch is off, they stay off as normal. How can I troubleshoot and fix th...
There are some acronyms related to home improvement that are very well known: OSB, MDF, PVC. Most people who know the material they refer to, know the acronym. In fact, I would guess that a lot of ...
My dining room includes a chandelier ceiling fixture with five sockets, controlled by a dimmer switch on the wall. I've lived here for 20 years and this was already in place when I moved in; I don...
Oriented strand boards (OSB) are often sold with a blue dye on the edges: What is this? I'm assuming it's some kind of chemical protection. Does that mean that when you cut the board and leave a...
Suppose I want to use OSB for a home renovation project. The OSB will be permanently attached in a habitable part of the house. It will be exposed directly to the room, without any coating, films, ...
My house has some conduits put in by previous residents. The conduits are plastic enclosures running along walls, which contain electrical outlets as well as ethernet plugs (actually it also has RH...
In the last few years my area has seen increased power outages -- usually a few hours, occasionally longer. I'd like to defend against these better so that a poorly-timed outage doesn't ruin my wh...
Most everyday electrical wiring has two wires, usually one white and one black/red. When installing a switch, does it matter which wire I put the switch on?
I've heard the term "wall fishing" in the context of interior wiring of a house. What does this mean?
