I'll take one. Seriously, fuck "water conservation". How hard is it to find a toilet that works any more? I've been seriously tempted to make my own "Silkwood Shower Nozzle" that will exfoliate the top 2 layers of skin at 10 feet.
Is that the magical shower head that somehow increases your apartment building’s hydraulic pressure? I do like large shower heads in general, though. A big difference over the paint-strippers of the past.
What's the consensus on brushless drills? I purchase a DeWalt brushless 20-volt power drill and have been kind of underwhelmed with its performance. I think I'm going to return it and get a standard 20 volt drill. I am wondering if this is user error and I am not using it properly or if they just sort of suck.
If you're dissatisfied with the performance of that drill it is almost certainly user error. (Sorry) A brushless motor offers longer battery life and improved performance over its operating range. What is your specific complaint about it? Are you using the gear settings correctly? Which model is it?
It died really fast, I had to swap out the battery after not even completing a small job. I was also using a 1-inch speedbit on a stump so that I could pour salt down the holes and cover with wax. I'll have to look at the model when I get home, but it was a 20 volt cordless drill by DeWalt. It came with two batteries.
Short of holding the chuck still with your hand, that's about the max torque you can demand from a cordless drill, with that bit and the sappy wood. Make sure you plunge it in and back it out regularly. (that's what she said) I usually use my corded drill for Tapcon screws or a high torque project like you're describing. (Also, if you just bought it, maybe it wasn't fully charged?) Also, also for that job, I would have used my chainsaw, and plunged an "X" in the stump.
I charged both batteries fully overnight before using the drill. I may do you like you described and Chainsaw an x into it for the same purpose. Most of my projects are a lot more light duty but I was hoping for an all-purpose tool for any projects I could throw at it. I just weigh underestimated the torque requirements of drilling into an old Privet Hedge. Lowe's just sent me a $50 off coupon in the mail so I may just return the brushless drill and get the more standard one. Thanks for the replies.
The one thing that brushless gives you over corded is the ability to sense the required torque and then really tap into the battery to provide the required power to meet the requirements. That means that in a high torque situation like you're mentioning, it'd drain the fuck out of the battery super fast, but still do the job. My bet is that if you used a brushed cordless it would just constantly stall out and not do the job.
I was going to say this or use a corded drill. Sometimes there are jobs that a corded drill is just better suited for.
Bingo. There was a lot of stalling before it was obvious that it was low on juice. I'm going to try the chainsaw trick that Rush suggested for this particular project, and then I will try a fresh battery on the actual project that I purchased the drill for. We are putting up a pull-up bar and need to use that one inch speedbit on some Lumber that I purchased. If it can drill holes satisfactorily into those posts I may hang on to the drill. That will my test.
How big is your battery? The ones I looked up on the Lowe's site showed 1.3 amp-hours for the Dewalt. One of the reasons I bought my Makita set is that it came with 4.0 amp-hour batteries, so about three times the capacity of the Dewalt I saw. They're also brushless. I also drilled 1" holes in a tree a few weeks ago and it was by far the most draining job I've ever used the drill on.
Decided to paint the fence and looked at paint sprayer rentals at Home Depot. $90 for 24 hours? I could buy one for a little more than twice that. Picked up a cheaper one and did the whole fence in 90 mins which would’ve taken 4+ hours if I’d have used a brush. Only complaint was how much paint you use. Probably used 50% more paint but at least I saved a couple hours in this hot GA sun.
I'm pasting this here to add to the knowledge resource, since a couple folks repped me about it . . . So, two different problems: - the condensate drip pan was filling with water, so I assumed the problem for it not working was related it was not. The condensate pan had been filling with water for the two weeks or so since it was installed. I just didn't know it, because it's in the attic and the unit was functioning just fine. The condensate pan has a drain pipe from the attic, and the regular condensate drain from underneath the condenser(?) has a pipe. They run side-by-side from the middle of the attic, to the side wall, and down to the outside. The house is 17 years old, and those pipes were installed with the original unit. I specifically discussed this with the installer, because we talked about re-using the refrigerant lines and the drain pipes. The tech told me "I flushed all the lines. They're clear. You're good to go." Well, he was wrong or he lied. The main condensate pipe was totally blocked, so the backup drain pipe from the drip pan was working properly, handling the overflow. When the tech came back out yesterday, he flushed the pipe and blew it out. Two big wads of general buildup crap came out - about the size of my fist. Hey, gee, it's working great now. - the actual problem with the air handling unit was unrelated to that. One of the thermostat wires had nick in it. The wire was taped to the side of the panel. The tape came off (really, it gets hot in the attic?), and the wire touched the side of the metal unit and blew a small fuse inside. At least that was the best guess from the tech, because the fuse was blown. The float switch had never engaged, because the drip pan was actually draining properly. I just had assumed that since I knew the pan shouldn't be full of water, that something to do with that was the problem.
Winter's been threatening to show up for a while now, and it's been below zero and snowy for a couple/few weeks now. The downside to that is that the inside humidity was dropping like crazy, despite the fact that I have an humidifier on the furnace. There was something wrong, and every time I went to pet the cats they would get shocked like a motherfucker. While mildly entertaining (for me), they were not at all impressed and quick to run away from people who tried to pet them. It was time to figure that shit out... Started digging into the old humidifer and it was fucked. It was 20+ years old, and installed wrong. Humidifiers should be installed downstream of the furnace, on the supply, rather than on the return, before the furnace. This way you're throwing moisture at warm air, which can absorb much, much more than cold, return air. The way the system was installed now it was trying to (shittily) throw moisture into cool return air which was then going through the furnace and being heated. Well no shit there was next to no moisture in the air (less than 20% some times). Hopped onto Amazon and got a nice, big Honeywell humidifier for 1/2 the price that you could get a lessor model for at the local Home Despot. It arrived overnight. Then pulled the old humidifier out, and patched all the sheet metal holes left over, removed the unnecessary ducting, patched more holes, and reaffirmed that I hate working with sheet metal. I then started the install of the new unit... by cutting a big fucking hole into the side of the supply duct. Again, I really really hate working with sheet metal, but I survived with minimal bloodshed. Mounted the frame and ran the water supply and drain lines, which turned out to be pretty easy as I could use pre-existing drain lines and water supply lines with some minor routing. Here's a pic of the humidifier without the cover: Once that was done, then I could plumb in the sensors and controls. The humidifier only runs when the fan is on and the humidity is below a set amount, so there are 2 sensors needed; an air pressure sensor, and the humistat. The air pressure sensor is a thing mounted to the side of the duct that has 2 plastic hoses that run one to the supply (hot air coming out of the furnace) and the other on the return side (the air going into the furnace). When the fan is running, there's a measurable air pressure difference between the 2 sides and it closes the circuit, saying "fan is on, good to go from here". The humistat is like a thermostat for electric base board heaters... but it works on moisture content in the air instead (humidity). There aren't any set values on the humistat (because it's cheap), so I used a green sharpie to just mark where the current (low, 28% as measured by my Nest thermostat), and then cranked it all the way up. You can hear it click when you turn the knob past where the current humidity is, which then says "humistat says good to go". When both humistat and air pressure sensors are "good to go", it closes the circuit back to the main unit, and that triggers the humidifier fan and water solenoid (valve). This then trickles water down the filter-looking mesh/pad from the top, the fan then sucks room air into the unit and forces it through the water soaked filter, and then into the stream of hot air coming out of the furnace. Ran it this morning and the Nest was reporting 42% humidity. It works! Now the trick is to dial back the water supply to the unit so that you minimize the water being drained out of the moisture pad. Ideally you'd moisten it just enough that all the water goes into the air and there's not drainage. That'll take a few days to dial in, I'm sure. So there ya go... that's how I spent 4 hours yesterday. Fun times, and the cats now like us again.
The house is now at a respectable 42% humidity... quite happy with that. What I'm not happy about is the fact that I knew fuck all about humidifiers and bought a non-recirculating one. That means that there's a steady stream of water that is going down the drain when it runs, and it's running a fair bit. I've now come up with a recirculating design for the system that I'll build out tonight, if I have time. I now have a bucket, a bottling spigot (thanks Rush!), a relay, a small circulating pump, and a toilet plunger valve. (Gotta love Amazon). I'm going to rig it up so that the bucket stays full of water from the supply line using the toilet plunger valve, and when the humidifier solenoid valve triggers open, I'll use that same signal to then fire the relay that will kick off the circulation pump submerged in the bucket of water, feeding the humidifier. The drain from the humidifier will then go to back to the bucket. The spigot will be a manual drain near the bottom of the bucket that will go to the floor drain in the furnace room when I want to change out the water. I've also got some hydrogen peroxide to keep the shit from growing in the recirculating water, if it gets too stagnant. That's the plan, anyway... we'll see how it goes.
I'd also recommend something like this: https://www.iallergy.com/products/c...aQEmJ8YUIS3_ApJJ-5zvrQm9y1dPpvdkaAuCJEALw_wcB I've used this in my humidifier for years and it works great.