Homeowner Forum / Repair / October 2008

How dangerous is it to have old knob and tube wiring in your home?
Kenan
www.trustasc.com

Lately, our garage door opener has been acting up.  We have a rolling
metal door, and it goes up just fine.  But when we try and lower the
door, the opener unit flashes as if there's an obstruction and the
door reverses direction and goes back up. We can find no obstruction.

Here's the roof that I will replace to put skylights in:
http://freeboundaries.com/hole.jpg
I'm getting varying opionions on the best way to flash it at the stone
wall (that you can actually barely see in the picture).

Anyone here know whether or not the spray gun on Simoniz washers can
be repaired? Leaks like a sieve at the moment. I had it apart but
nothing jumped out at me.
TIA,

I live on the ground floor of a block of flats in London. I came back
to my flat from holiday and immediately noticed an unpleasant smell. I
thought at first it smelled like ripe cheese like camembert but later
I thought it smelled like sewage.

We recently pulled out the fluorescent light in our kitchen to replace it
with an incandescent light fixture.  Canned/recessed lighting is not an
option since we are getting quotes of $1K+ and we don't want to spend that
much right now.  

I remodeled a bathroom a year ago. Recently the faucets started humming,
somewhat loudly, as you turn them on or off (very low volume). This is a price
pfister faucet, IIRC, with an internal rubber seal about 1/4" in diameter by
1/4" long. Any ideas on fixing this?

I've been contemplating methods of obtaining heat from
the attic for heating the house during appropriate times
of the year.  One idea I have is to put a ducted fan in
the attic to blow the warm/hot air into the garage as an

Here's what the ceiling of my kitchen looks like now:
http://freeboundaries.com/howtoframe.jpg
I'm planning on having a ceiling that slopes with the roof, then drops
straight down and goes around the beams. What's the strategy for

I'm not an expert carpenter by any means, but sometimes it seems to me
that lumber one finds at home depot is to bowed and twisty for most
things such as building a wall. Yesterday I went to hd to by some
2x10's to replace a few joists in kitchen floor and once again, the

The World Stock Market has CRASHED.
We are officially in a major DEPRESSION.
If you had any money in the bank, say Goodbye !
If you have a mortgage, prepare to be homeless, and you may as well

I have been cutting power usage in my home. I have saved about 100 kwh a
month so far. I put power strips on all the vampire stuff like DVR, TV,
Stereo, DVD players, etc.. I shut of light timers and motion detectors.
With the fridge off I still get meter spin, though it is very slow ...

Just finished a remodeling job where I took out an existing closet
doorway and made a large opening with an arched top. Straight sides with
a circular arc on top. I used "bullnose" corner bead to make a rounded
edge all the way around.

Out of sheer boredom the other night, I found myself actually watching
one of those informercials on late-night TV. But this one actually
seemed to be for a product worth having.
It was for the Fein MultiMaster, a vibrating cutting tool that seemed to

I have an exterior light fixture, possibly low pressure sodium
standard screw base 30w bulb, someone put in 100w standard incandesant
bulbs years ago and it works fine. I wondered what would happen if I
put in a cfl, would I blow the cfl circuitry.