Homeowner Forum / General / October 2003

Anyone here have experience with different brands of lawn vacuums?
After 3 years of living with the fall deluge from our beautiful trees
(1.2 acre lot, half of it deep woods), I really want to get a lawn
vacuum to help deal with it. Especially something that can deal with

We just installed a Gerber Ultra toilet (boy is that fun to use, no
more hanging cleaners, etc) with our new cabinets & vanity with sink.
But the linoleum floor from 1960 is hot, old toilet marks all over the
right side, along the tub side it is ripped.

I recently purchased a home with an older model Burglar/Fire Alarm
("Silent Knight" 4700 series).  It's been basically turned off
("shunted") for a few years I believe, but it's still passively active
(if the power goes off for long periods of time and comes back on - it

We're looking for a short set of draperies for one of our bedrooms.
Almost everything is 84" long, and that works in most of our rooms.
Occasionally I'll see them as short as 63"...but almost never shorter.
What we're looking for are curtains or drapes that are between about

Yo, my local power equipment shop tells me Husky is no longer a great
brand.... he's pushing shindaiwa products...
On his advice, I bought one of their blade/string trimmers, and while it
seems to be a nice powerful unit, the blade guard makes it a nightmare to

I have a Generac 7500 that I would like to wire into my main box in order to
run the handful of things we need during a powere outage without having to
run extension cords all over the place.
I need some info on the best way to do this.

I have this scenario. I have a 1500 CFM fan that requires a 10" duct.
My floor joists are 9.5 inches wide. If I go with the 10" duct specs, I'll
have to build a chase to cover the duct, and this will cause several design
problems within the room as well as being more costly.

Has anyone here installed a top-mount type fireplace damper themselves? And
if so, any advice you can give on the wisdom of doing that installation
yourself?
(I'm talking about ones like the Chim-a-lator

Whenever the hot water is used, these is loud, very annoying "ticking" sound
coming from the pipes inside the wall. It starts rapidly and slows down.
Since the house is still under 1-year builder's warranty, we had the
subcontractor who installed the plumbing system look at the ...

I have a 1940's house with an unfinished attic.  I would like to add
insulation to the roof and use the space as an office.
First, my roof rafters are a non-standard spacing of 20" on center,
instead of the 16 or 24 that the rolls are sold in.  Does this mean I

I recently had a second phone line installed.  I had a 2 line splitter
(ABACON 267C -Line 1 / Line 2). I am able to connect two separate
phones, or toggle the plugs to access the two separate lines.
I purchased a 2-line GE phone (29460GE2).  The instructions told me to

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We have a rental house and would like to provide a space heater to the
tenants in the basement.
We are paying for the utilities, so I would like to find the most efficient
portable heater (1500wat) available.    I have seen these new ones that

I live in an area a lots of pine trees.  Every fall I end up spending hours
raking up a mound of pine needles, will a vac work or are the needles too
heavy?

I recently purchased a home with a sliding glass door to the patio
which I would like to install a basic deadbolt on. The problem is -
For some reason, the door appears to have been put in backwards (it
slides to the left instead of to the right). This results in the