What home improvement work did you do today?

My wife recommends buddleia (sp?)...butterfly bushes. Grow well there, no maintenance, you get some butterflies. Contorted pine...looks cool, gets big, so keep that in mind. Maybe lavender. Penstemon. She's seriously into landscaping!

 

That Kerdi stuff is the ticket!! I had to rebuild our little shower back in 2013 and went all in using the Kerdi products. Easy to work with and have had zero issues with the shower since doing it. Great product for a DIY hack like myself.

 

Thanks!

I know absolutely nothing about tile work and, prior to this, had stuck exactly 6ea, 8x8 tiles to a bathroom floor once. So, I assume you're referring to that round-over trim around the top of the niche?

I really don't know how else you would do it without it looking like crap. Not that it matters now, but is there another way to do it? Just curious.

 

Correct.

To be honest, I'm not quite sure why I did it that way but I seem to recall it had something to do with it being 12x24 tiles, the pattern I was doing, getting that first tile perfectly vertical, and basically me not knowing what the heck I was doing.

Tile virgin going in. But, yeah, in hindsight starting at the bottom would have been better. Live and learn

 

Are you allowed to catch rain water off your roof?

 

@ColoradoTJ , I like how you've placed that german shepherd in a strategically important location. Looks good!

 

I find it so weird some places ban it.
Here, if your in the city, you can take a class and they will pay up to 1200$ (1$ per gallon) for cisterns, but there was a place local you could get them cheaper than 1$ per gallon so you could help offset other costs of the project. I know gutters themselves are usually a big chunk of the budget.

 

Installed a soft starter on my central ac unit. Can easily start my 3.5 ton ac unit with my 8k/10k natural gas generator. Did a power outage simulation today and started up the ac, all fridges/freezers, internet etc. Ready for the hurricanes now.

Yes, I have a main breaker interlock.

 

I prefer with the dog

 

Can you elaborate a lil bit of what this does, what it is for, and why ya got it?

 

Please!
I can only assume it somehow reduces start up amps so it’s not putting such a huge load on the geni? ACs take a lot of starting amps to get going(depending on age and type of unit)
But not sure how this device helps do all that, and is it specifically only used when the geni is being used for powa?

 

it reduces the starting amps of the compressor. On average for my compressor, there is about a 60 amp surge on startup, way more than my generator can handle. The soft start reduces the surge to about 35 amps.

 

So probably some kind of fancy capacitor in there to help take some of the load.
Is there any adverse effects to the AC unit?

 

I honestly don’t know how it works. It is meant to be permanently installed. It takes five starts to “learn” your ac. Here’s the first and the fifth start. Last start peak amp is what to look at. I confirmed with a multimeter as well and it’s accurate.

 

Yeah I think you’re right about the fancy capacitor. I haven’t heard of any issues to the unit in my research.