The Home Improvement Thread

[Fuzz]

Blue is the boring fall back for people who can't be decisive.

[Ashasx]

I do think deep ocean looks a little more blue than that in person...

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by Geraldsh

That stone work clashes! I don’t recall you saying anything about stone or the colour of it but if you do, you got to go green.

Nope, no stone. Just some stained and sealed pine accent, that should look similar to this post. Just a lot less of it than on the house in this post (soffit and probably 50 square feet of accents).

https://forum.calgarypuck.com/showpo...postcount=6412

[Geraldsh]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Nope, no stone. Just some stained and sealed pine accent, that should look similar to this post. Just a lot less of it than on the house in this post (soffit and probably 50 square feet of accents).

https://forum.calgarypuck.com/showpo...postcount=6412

Ah yes, that still puts me firmly in the green camp.

[CroFlames]

The blue looks better with white accents.

But the green looks better overall. Go green.

[Sliver]

That blue with black looks like ass.

[Sliver]

Just go with green, dude. It's what your gut is telling you. No point in dragging this out.

[Lubicon]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Blue is the boring fall back for people who can't be decisive.

Agreed.

Also
I like the blue. More fitting for an ocean environment.

[PaperBagger'14]

Why not both blue and green? Considering where your house is located, a combo of the 2 makes sense. Picture for reference

NSFW!

Last chance to turn back, it’s really bad

NSFW!

You’ve been warned

NSFW!

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Just go with green, dude. It's what your gut is telling you. No point in dragging this out.

I'd force someone to flip a coin for color choice. Then any criticisms about house color shouldn't stick.

"It's not my fault, this person flipped the coin to choose the color!"
"Corsi didn't even tell me why I was flipping the coin!"

[Brendone]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

WTF kind of modernist hell do you live in where dark grey and salmon are the Easter Bunny colours?

I’m totally conservative with my colour pallet and layout when it comes to houses. An asset that I need to sell at some point is not the time to flex the latest flavour of the year. My Moms all about pastel green. Nope. Looks like a 60’s farm house.

I’m sure most who’ve driven the NW ring road northbound have seen the hot pink abomination visible from the road. Looks like a big F U to anyone whose front windows faces them, and good luck at resale. Google earth hasn’t caught up, but pretty sure it’s hot pink. Deduct how much money from your list price to repaint / restucco? $20k? $40k? If you do that outside, how much “we made it our own” stuff did you do inside. For example, nobody wants a cedar sauna, etc unless the house is so huge you can throw away square footage. Decorate with art, furniture, etc to your personality, but be practical with the stuff that’s expensive to undo.

Extreme example compared to a pink or red door, etc. but still, no thanks. I’ll express myself with some crazy socks, etc.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Brendone

I’m totally conservative with my colour pallet and layout when it comes to houses. An asset that I need to sell at some point is not the time to flex the latest flavour of the year. My Moms all about pastel green. Nope. Looks like a 60’s farm house.

I’m sure most who’ve driven the NW ring road northbound have seen the hot pink abomination visible from the road. Looks like a big F U to anyone whose front windows faces them, and good luck at resale. Google earth hasn’t caught up, but pretty sure it’s hot pink. Deduct how much money from your list price to repaint / restucco? $20k? $40k? If you do that outside, how much “we made it our own” stuff did you do inside. For example, nobody wants a cedar sauna, etc unless the house is so huge you can throw away square footage. Decorate with art, furniture, etc to your personality, but be practical with the stuff that’s expensive to undo.

Extreme example compared to a pink or red door, etc. but still, no thanks. I’ll express myself with some crazy socks, etc.

Fair enough, but I grew up in the bay area and a huge, huge number of the houses in former city are these old victorian style houses with basically every colour you could possibly imagine. And they all sell for a billion dollars or something now.

I don’t think I’ll ever acclimate to the ultra conservative home styles here. I don’t know that I’d do a hot pink house, but if I had to choose between that and a beige one, hot pink it is.

[Wormius]

After we got the plumbing replaced, the plumber added a pressure regulator and gauge. It feels a bit low, at 50PSI is there any reason why this couldn't be increased? They installed a bunch of water hammer arrestors on a few lines, I don't know if it's because of these or can I just crank it up without worry?

[Fuzz]

Mine comes into the house at 82 psi, and I don't have regulators. 50 sounds low.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Mine comes into the house at 82 psi, and I don't have regulators. 50 sounds low.

We never had a regulator or gauge before so no idea what the pressure was, but but the 50 feels really low compared to what we had before. Is there any reason to keep it this low?

[Fuzz]

They say to keep it below 80. Too high, and the water eventually eats through the elbows. Not sure if that's only a copper issue. I'm also not sure what pressure the bands used to clamp PEX are rated at. Not sure about hammer arrestors or other fixtures, but I assume since 80 is regarded as the limit, everything would be fine up to that. Just guesses though.

[CroFlames]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Fair enough, but I grew up in the bay area and a huge, huge number of the houses in former city are these old victorian style houses with basically every colour you could possibly imagine. And they all sell for a billion dollars or something now.

I don’t think I’ll ever acclimate to the ultra conservative home styles here. I don’t know that I’d do a hot pink house, but if I had to choose between that and a beige one, hot pink it is.

An American! Get him!

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Barnes

Fuzz needs an HRV. HRVs are required in new home building codes in Alberta because houses are so sealed that they require greater ventilation to maintain air quality AND remove excess moisture from venting but also condensing at the heat exchanger. An ERV will transfer heat AND moisture to the fresh air whereas an HRV just transfers heat so an ERV would maintain the humidity level in the house and an HRV will lower it.

HRVs to lower high humidity in the winter. ERVs to regulate humidity with the outside year round. HRVs in Alberta.

Finally going to follow up on this. TLDR; success!

I had time to install this in early December. I ended up going with a Venmar, aka VanEE aka Broan V150H75NT.

https://gasexperts.ca/product/vanee-...del-v150h75nt/

This unit worked well given the space I had, and the top port configuration with 5" ducting, as I already had a 5" fresh air duct cored through the foundation. The other reason to select this one is that it auto balances, which meant I didn't need to buy a manometer and fiddle with dampers. You do have to run the balance procedure if you change ducting, but it's all automatic. They say AI, but clearly it's just logic programming. No room for an A100 in here.

You don't require a wall controller, but it's nice to have to program days, easy turbo mode, and smart humidity and air control, so I went with the advanced one.

https://gasexperts.ca/product/vanee-...control-41303/

Spoiler!

The red duct is the cold air takeoff that goes to the unit, and the green behind the unit goes to the cold air return duct on the other side that injects fresh air. The gray insulated is the exhaust, and silver insulated is fresh air. I did have to get a second hole cored, but found a guy on Kijij who did it for $170. I have a coring and cutting guy now, if anyone needs one!

The hardest part was the usual, pulling wire to to my wall upstairs. Gas Experts had great support for the few questions I had, and the wiring is all pretty clear, and I've always been afraid of the unknown for furnace wiring. Now I've seen how simple it is.

So how does it work? Wonderfully. It basically took our humidity down from 65 to as low as I want it. I had to re-instate the humidifier just to get it back in the 35 range. The fresh air is super noticeable too, so that's nice. The house was starting to smell musty.

Reminder, this all started when I re insulated the upstairs and sealed up many gaping holes in the sheeting, drywall, and all manner of leaky bits.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Here's an unfortunate change of pace... now my place in Calgary appears to have been improperly insulated under one of the closets. It's a corner of the second story that sort of protrudes from the rest of the house above an entryway, so the area in question is right above some soffit (see 2nd picture for where the corner with the ice is).

Great timing for a home repair expense, right when I'm building something else.




This is a home that was built in 2017, so obviously I have a new home warranty, but the coverage for walls and roofing is 5 years on that. I am not sure if that means that if I discover something after the 5 years is up that was clearly a problem with the way it was built originally, I'm out of luck on that, or if there's a discoverability clause, or what. But separately I guess I could sue the builder for negligence.

But regardless, first things first is, what am I looking at to fix this. If someone can give me a lead on a good person to come in and do a home inspection and document the issue, and a good person to contact about getting this fixed, I would be most appreciative.

I'm guessing it involves taking out soffit, reinsulating, taking out baseboard and part of the wall and probably some subfloor, reinsulating up there, and then repairing?

This was not a nice surprise.

[Fuzz]

I'd probably get a fan in there right away to move moisture out, and some warmer air around. Reduce house humidity if you can control it, for now.



Just a guess, but I don't think you need anything inside, just pull the soffit and check the insulation. I suspect spray foam is the solution, but those bump outs are always going to be a cold spot.