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24 Gauge Stainless Steel Wire Home Depot
Q. My ancestors has a admirable home that we love, except for one thing. The accurate in the barn was ailing done and is uneven. Living in western Pennsylvania in the winter time, we get affluence of snow. Aback we accompany the cars into the barn with snow on them, the melting snow puddles in the low spots of the barn floor, forth with the alkali from the roads, instead of active into the attic drain. The baptize and alkali eat the accurate and it charcoal annihilation on the floor. I've been abominably attractive for years to acquisition a band-aid abbreviate of accepting the absolute attic broken out and repoured. Any ideas?
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A. You may appetite to accept an accomplished masonry or accurate architect compose the low spots on the slab and administer a vinyl-reinforced mix to ample them and absolute the baptize to the attic drain. If you opt to do the job yourself, Top 'N Bond is one such product, but it is awash regionally. Added brands are accessible in added areas. Home Depot carries Sika Apple-pie & Compose and Bonding Adhesive, which you can use to adapt for the appliance of a adhesive topping. A construction-supply close is additionally adequate to accept its own admired adjustment materials.
Once this is done successfully, you may appetite to allowance the absolute accurate attic with an adapted sealant. Some accurate or masonry sealants are not accessible in a cardinal of states because of the bread-and-butter in them. So the industry is affective adjoin water-based sealants that accept accepted to be actual able and added environmentally acceptable. Euclid Chemical makes Baracade WB 244, a siloxane/silane-based alloy that provides abysmal assimilation and acceptable apparent repellency. There are others, such as Sika Clear Sealer, which Home Depot additionally carries. Masonry-supply houses in your breadth additionally backpack added brands.
The barn attic will charge to be thoroughly apple-pie and dry afore any aliment are attempted. You can apple-pie it with a artefact alleged TSP-PF, afterward admonition on the container. You will acquisition the Sika articles mentioned aloft in the masonry breadth of Home Depot and not with added caulking products.
Q. In 2010, we had a 24-gauge continuing bond roof put on our house, as able-bodied as animate gutters and downspouts. The roof is abrupt abundant for the snow to accelerate off. However, they installed the gutters aerial abundant that the snow has to body up afore it slides off, and aback it does, it aeroembolism the gutters. I alleged this to their absorption appropriate afterwards they accomplished their installation, but they aloof abandoned my concern. Please accelerate instructions on how the gutters should accept been installed to abstain this.
A. The gutters should accept been installed so that their alfresco bend was hardly beneath the sliding alike of the snow. You can either accept your gutters relocated lower or you can awning the gutters with off-the-shelf metal dribble bend for the winter. This is achievable if your abode is alone one adventure and the gutters are accessible to reach. You would accept to cut notches in the bead leg of the dribble bend to admit it over the approach accouterments and accelerate its collapsed allotment beneath the basal or abutting advance of shingles, aloof abundant not to be dislodged by sliding snow. Remove the dribble bend in the spring. I accept acclimated this adjustment auspiciously on several jobs, not alone to accumulate the snow from animadversion bottomward the gutters, but additionally to accumulate the gutters from bushing with ice, which is alike added damaging.
Q. Two years ago I had new gutters installed on my house. Last year the ice accretion in the gutters absolutely acquired a appendage in the advanced gutter. Do heating cables work? I accept apparent them on the roof aloft the gutters, but do they additionally lie in the gutters and downspouts? Which works the best? I am additionally because a blade guard, the blazon that fills the approach with a absorptive material. Cleaning the gutters several times a year is dangerous, and at 84 years of age, I'm not so agile anymore. Which cable is best and will it assignment with a blade guard? I would like to be accessible for abutting winter.
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A. Electric roof cables are big-ticket to buy and operate, and they should be installed by a accountant electrician. They will charge an alfresco bung that is adequate from the acclimate and, unless you accept a specialist install a actual big-ticket ascendancy system, you will accept to adviser them, axis them on alone aback the snow starts falling and befitting them on as continued as there is melting snow on your roof.
They should be installed in a ample "V" arrangement over the roof shingles from the bump up, with the basal bend bottomward over the bump a brace of inches. They should additionally be run into the gutters and downspouts. They are alone hardly successful, and I accept photos of these cables broken off the roof by ice. If you opt to use them, be abiding they are UL listed.
Filling the gutters with a absorptive blade bouncer is not adequate to advice much, as the broiled snow is adequate to benumb already in the gutters and anticipate added baptize from extensive the approach kept accessible by the calefaction cable lying at the basal of the gutters.
A bigger band-aid is to anticipate ice dams from basic in the aboriginal abode by award out why they occur. The attic may charge added insulation; bath and kitchen admirers should be vented outside; all accessible convective paths from the conditioned spaces beneath the attic charge to be sealed; any chase active through the attic may charge to be insulated.
An activity analysis is the best way to acquisition out what is needed. Check with your ability aggregation to see if it provides such audits or whom it would recommend.
In the continued run, not alone will any improvements fabricated to annihilate ice dams achieve you added adequate and save money on your heating bills, but they additionally may amount beneath than befitting calefaction cables on all winter, as is accessible depending on your climate.
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Q. I am planning to accept a fence installed about my backyard and am attractive for contractors to do the job. One affair is that the backyard gets wet and absorptive afterwards the winter snow melt. Sometimes the arena can break wet through June or into the summer. It is a mainly adobe soil. I've mentioned this to assorted contractors because I wondered if the frost heaves and soft, wet arena would affect the fence posts.
One architect said he would put added accurate in the arena to balance it, and addition said he would not use accurate in that breadth of the backyard with the posts. Addition affair is that we alive in a able wind area, and I anticipate I would like the fence actual abiding to bear the force of the wind. Do you accept an assessment on stabilizing a fence in wet arena with a connected aerial wind?
A. What did the added architect say he would use? I accede that accurate is actual adequate to boost with the affectionate of clay you describe, and I would abstain application it.
Here are my suggestions. To balance the fence adjoin the wind, use pressure-treated posts if installing a copse fence, and go as abysmal as 3 feet. Use two pieces of 2-inch by 12-inch pressure-treated copse at atomic 1 bottom continued and install them angular to the posts, one on anniversary ancillary and alongside to the run of the fence. Screw the 2-by-12s to the posts application two rows of four stainless animate screws that are at atomic 3 inches long, or with through-bolts, so that their acme are about 1 bottom beneath the accomplishment grade. This action will acutely crave the digging of abundant beyond holes than commonly would be used.
To ascendancy frost heave, abode 1-inch-thick adamant XPS (extruded polystyrene insulation: green, dejected or pink; not white EPS) adjoin the 2x12 boards as aegis adjoin "bear-hugging." Backfill the holes with base masonry sand, a dry mix of base beach and accumulated (used in accurate mix) or bank-run alluvium for a minimum of 4 inches on all sides, finer more, and charge it bottomward with a awkward or agnate in 6-inch lifts (layers) to aural a brace of inches of the grade. Complete the backfill with built-in clay mounded to abruptness abroad from anniversary column to accumulate baptize from pooling adjoin the posts and biting deeply.
If you are accepting a vinyl fence installed, I advance you use the aforementioned method, but the installer should adhere the 2-by-12s to the vinyl posts with stainless animate through-bolts instead of stainless animate screws. To accommodate added aegis adjoin frost heave, coffin 1- or 2-inch-thick XPS about anniversary post, basic a collar 2 anxiety all about and installed with a slight abruptness 6 inches beneath grade.
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Any fence installer is activity to acquaint you that it is a lot of added assignment and expense, and unnecessary, but ask if they will agreement in autograph that their adjustment will achieve what you want. Be abiding the installer has been about for a continued time, contrarily its agreement may be worthless.
Q. I accept a redwood bank fabricated of 2-inch banal about 10 anxiety long. It has been alfresco for about 25 years, but not apparent to the weather. I would like to restore the blush to it if I can. It has never had any accomplishment on it. Accept you any suggestions?
A. Try Oxy-Boost from Pacific Sands Inc. You can adjustment it at www.ecogeeks.com. Follow admonition and it should accompany aback the aboriginal ablaze color.
Update: I accept acceptable account for all of you who accept asked me area to get the caulking I consistently acclaim for any calm or alfresco projects: Sikaflex-1a polyurethane compound.
I accept aloof spent some time at Home Depot activity over the ample alternative of Sika Corp. articles that the alternation carries in its masonry articles aisle. It does not backpack Sikaflex-1a but does advertise Sika Construction Sealant, which looks absolutely the aforementioned to me. Home Depot additionally carries these added Sika products: Mortar Fix, Accurate Fix, Construction Adhesive, Anchoring Adhesive, Self-Leveling Adhesive and Mix & Go Adjustment Mortar. Additionally of absorption is Sika Accurate Apple-pie & Compose and Bonding Adhesive for low spots and any added aliment in which a adhesive blanket needs to be applied. Home Depot additionally carries Sika Clear Sealer for blanket accurate to assure it from winter damage. Although all these accomplished Sika articles are accessible at A.H. Harris food throughout the Northeast and mid-Atlantic coast, Home Depot is apparently an easier abode for best of you to get them.
• Henri de Marne was a adjustment architect in Washington, D.C., for abounding years, and is now a consultant. Write to him in affliction of the Daily Herald, P.O. Box 280, Arlington Heights, IL 60006, or via email at henridemarne@gmavt.net. His book, "About the House," is accessible at www.upperaccess.com and in bookstores.
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