Homeowner Forum / General / November 2007

I have lived for 2 years in a new home equipped with a heat pump.  We
have discovered that we are experiencing dirty sock syndrome in the
heating season.  Is there any solution to this?  The heat pump is a
Lennox.  Has this problem been brought on by a design flaw of the

I have wood paneling on my living room walls that I want to remove and
restored to plain white walls.  The paneling is glued to sheet rock.  My
question is, can the glue be removed easily without too much expense?  Also,
the sheet rock was never painted or treated as far as I can ...

We're remodeling and we are finding lots of plain foil wrapped around
all the PVC pipe and in some of the walls.
It's not there for insulation -- it's primarily on vent pipes and even
some drain pipes (from the sink to the floor). House was built in

I bought a little house in middle of rural Missouri. My neighbor lives
in his house next door for 50 years, and he told me that my house has
a history of frozen pipes. Unfortunately, I have to travel in
December, and the house will be likely empty for two weeks. He told me

I have a brother who has been tiling his (floor) new house for about 8
weekends now.  It seems he is taking way too long to do the tiling.  I
believe him and another brother have been spending 2 days a weak 8 hrs a day
to do probably what totals 2,400 sq ft.  I wonder if there is ...

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I live in an apt building with radiant heating so that sometimes there
is a repetitive clicking or tapping noise in the ceiling.  This is
because the metal is expanding, but someone suggested it's because of
air trapped in the pipes.

I am looking at Zillow on line and it looks like I will have to do my
own tracking to find the actual value of a house.  I am in the
Southeastern Michigan area.  Have you looked at the "zestimate" versus
the recent sales price?  What the heck good is the zestimate, anyway?

I have a hot water boiler furnace and seem to have air in the system.
The furnace heats the house through baseboards and my electric hot
water heater gets its water preheated through it also. Lately I have
air in the baseboard heaters that I can hear gurgling and when I turn

I have a problem with neutral terminal on the timer switch for my
immersion heater in that it overheats (this is the second timer switch
in which the neutral load terminal overheats). As far as I can tell,
the timer switch is fit for purpose (13A) and the cable is the correct

The discharge from water softner is killing the grass in my yard.
Is there anything else I can use besides the bags of salt?

I'm going to buy a high quality cast iron wood stove for my home. I've
been studying the options and like Jotul's model F3 CB. Quadrafire
also seems very good. Does anyone have real world experience with
either?

I am trying to find a fridge for a narrow space in my kitchen, 26
inches wide. It also has to have the hinge on the left.
Any 26" models I have found so far (GE Estilo for example) have only
had RH hinges.

Do you know what the unit in the basement would look like?
Our apt. basement as two cylindrical heating units but I'm not sure if
they are both for just heating water, or what.

November 9, 2007
How to Chop Firewood
by Troy Griepentrog
My grandpa had a glass eye (his right eye). While on a road trip with