Hey DIY folks! I have a finished basement with one room walled off as a bedroom. It has three half-windows set into the concrete foundation with a glass pane that is easily removable. I would like to make the mesh screens removable as well, so that the windows can be used to get out in case of an emergency. Currently the screens are screwed into the foundation.

So my question is: how do I keep the screens in place and performing their function, while also making it so that they are easily punched out/removed in case of emergency?

One idea I had was to secure them to the foundation with plastic or breakaway screws. on McMaster it looks like breakaway screws are a thing but I'm not sure they're intended for my purpose, and looks like they'd leave a bit of the screw inside the hole if they ever did have to be broken off, which I don't like.

Not sure if plastic screws are really available or would work in the first place. I think I might need to have something like a drywall anchor that can fill up the space under pressure and can be punched out easily from the inside.

Any ideas?

I've seen tons of videos where people make these peltier "AC"s and as many comments about how the hot side will heat up the room etc...

I'm wondering if a middle ground could be reached.
Maybe a combination of a PC AIO for the cool side to increase the efficiency of the transfer of the heat from the ambient air to the liquid flowing through the radiator and further to the cold side of the peltier module.
Maybe the hot side might be submerged in liquid which I can replace from time to time?

Something ought to work, right?

My room does not have an outside looking window, the only window I have is a large window into the hallway.
At the moment, I'm using a random 12V AC adapter I found in one of my " I'll definately use this later" drawer, and a 12V pc case fan to cool my face.
The overall temperature in the room doesn't really change, so any improvement is something. ( Please don't recommend swamp coolers or I'll summon Krazy Ken on you!)

I'm wondering if the peltier modules are undervolted, their inefficiency ( hot side more hot than cold side cold) is reduced?

What do you people suggest? Is it something DIYable?

It's for an art installation, looking to fill a large cracked wall with gold or silver, kintsugi style. Obviously I can't use real metal.

There's plenty of guides online for colouring epoxy resin but nothing for clay or mortar. My issue with resin is it will just pour right out of the cracks. Can anyone help me out here?

Doesn't have to be epoxy, just something durable and metallic looking I can use to fill a large crack on a wall, that won't leak or fall right out.

Does anyone have any fairly simple ways to keep a kid from tipping their chair back? Standard 4 leg dining room chair.

Living in an apartment for the first time (in a LONG time) and I think I goofed today trying to hang a curtain rod. insert omg I can’t believe you can’t even hang a curtain rod here I went to hang the middle anchor and it appears the soffit was hollow. Obviously has done some damage that I’ll have to pay to repair but more urgently, I still need a hook to hold the weight in the center of this curtain rod and I need direction on how to do it. I have tools and I have willingness. Just need some help with the how-to. What type of anchor should I be using and how do I prevent the wall from caving in under the weight?

The depreciation list has this instruction at the top: "Assets (excluding qualified technological equipment) may not be depreciated in excess of 75% of the original cost. Qualified technological equipment may not be depreciated in excess of 90% of the original cost." Most of the appliances and furniture in my rental are over 15 years old. Does this mean I have to list the asset at 75% of its original cost? I don't have those figures for most things in the unit, only for one or two that were replaced recently. In any case, the total will be way under $255,000. Why have to do this tedious/impossible paperwork?

I have a rental property and I can't get my business license because I haven't filed the FP-31. What is considered personal property? Appliances in the rental, like the fridge, washer, dishwasher? The water heater? Here's what the instructions say:

Schedule A-2: Furniture, fixtures, machinery and equipment: Report furniture, fixtures, machinery, equipment, and other fixed assets used in the business or profession. Report the furniture, furnishings and equipment of hotels, apartments, schools, hospitals, sanitariums, rooming and boarding houses, estate property, property in storage and private dwellings that are rented furnished as a complete unit or as individual rooms or apartments. The totals will copy to Form FP-31, Line 2a and 2b.

So do I have to list every appliance in the house? I rent a furnished house to students and other young adults. I have to list every chair, desk, bed bookcase? They're 15-20 years old on average.

How would you seal this type of window?

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Hi DIYers, I thought this might be a good place to address some insulation inquires. I thought there would probably be a lot of folks familiar with the concept and the specific foam board material.

The Project: Adding heating pads and an insulated box made of rigid foam board around my RV’s fresh water, black water, and grey water tanks.

The goal: Be able to camp in -40F without freezing tanks or losing function.

After doing some research it seems that consensus on how to expand the cold temperature range your RV can tolerate is to add tank heaters and insulation and that the best insulation to use is foam board (with some spray foam reinforcement where the boards meet and are glued together in a box around the tanks.

I’ve decided to go with Ultra heat tank heaters which are supposed to be able to keep completely exposed tanks from freeezing down to -11F. According to their website with extra insulation some campers have had success in keeping their tanks functional -40F. So that’s my goal.

I know that the higher the R value the more effective the insulation. But I don’t understand how to translate that knowledge into an estimate of how resilient the added insulation will allow my tanks to

be. ChatGPT is my engineering buddy and even he wont tell me how to make a good estimate. He just says there are a lot of factors to take into account like wind chill and ambient temperature. This is not a satisfying answer. I need some way to get a ball park idea what temperatures my materials are going to help me withstand.

I’m planning on using the highest R value material I can find and afford, but want at least an idea of where my limits are going to be. I probably wont be testing that -40 edge much. -29 will probably be the most it sees, and even then -12 is probably going to be most it is regularly exposed to.

Ultimately I will probably have to get temperature sensors for the tanks themselves and rig them up to some kind of alarm when they are falling to 32 degrees (which will mean the tank heaters and insulation were unable to keep them above freezing and ill need to empty them and/or add antifreeze). And this is how I’ll find my true edge of conditions and prevent damaging my RV finding out.

However, there still should be some way for me to look at this mathematically and have a general idea how effective what im building should be.

Anyone familiar with insulation and R value able to orientate me to exactly what kind of protection is afforded?

We are looking at polyisocyanurate rigid foam board R 9.6

And the tank heaters kick on at 44 F degrees, heat until 64F degrees, and shut off until reaching 44F degrees again

I'm not sure what to search on google and YouTube. I'm a bit hessitant to just ask the hardware store since they sometimes also don't know what to recommend as most of them are just cashiers with no experience and there are no builders around the store to ask. They also sometimes recommend oudtdated techniques.

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/e3/ef/17/e3ef17df011891b7057cfc96980f14d1.jpg

is the type I'm looking for, any pointers? Or if this is the wrong place to ask for furniture plans, can you point me where I should be going? Thanks

Water is pooling beside the foundation here and is creating a leak in the basement. Would adding soil to create a high spot here be the way to go? Or is there a better fix for this? Tia

Got a set of chairs similar to these and not sure what happened but one of them is sagging back too far to be usable.

My thoughts were either use a jack to lift the seat up and hit it with heat (I have a propane torch), or do the same but then weld it in the new position at the base of the coil. Or would love to hear any other ideas, especially if someone has dealt with this before. Thanks!

Hooking up a dishwasher is supposed to be the easiest thing in the world, I know. You get the dishwasher, you get the installation kit, you connect everything together, so simple a parrot could do it, right?

Well, I have the supply line connected to the dishwasher, but I can't find a way to connect it to the shutoff valve on our hot water line. The supply line is 3/8'', way too small for the thread on the outlet from the shutoff valve. I got an adapter for 1/2'' to 3/8'' - but the 1/2'' end of the adapter is still too small for the shutoff valve. Same story for 5/8''-3/8''. The only other size I can find is 3/4'' to 3/8'', and the 3/4'' end of that is far too big for the thread on the shutoff valve. Is there a different size between 5/8'' and 3/4'' that I should be looking for? Everything I find online says shutoff valves can only be 1/2'' or 3/4'', so am I just too fucking stupid to screw nut A onto thread B?

Got a new screen door put on. I can tinker with the screw door closer, but can only get it to close with a very loud slam or close almost all the way and not latch.

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The problem is the porch is old and just not even. The hinge side of the door is about an inch in front of the handle side.

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I don't really want to make any major changes, or have to take everything apart. Any ideas?

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The only things I can think of are:

1- put on another door closer. I'm not sure if this would work or not.

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2. Find some sort of device that can make the door close that last inch or so, maybe a magnet?

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Any help would be great.

I'm trying to get as close as I can to a 30,000 BTU portable gas burner that I can use indoors for wok cooking. The highest output I've seen is the 15,000 BTU Iwatani 35FW, but outdoor wok set ups can go up to 50,000 BTU. I watched this video by Alex https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYvxNTc-ZU8. He somehow connected a second butane cannister to the main one and now outputs 22,200 BTUs (12,000 + 10,200). Here is a screenshot of what he made. I tried googling this sort of thing, but it seems pretty niche and I didn't find anything. Does anyone know how I can do this? Thanks!

The shut-off valve to my dishwasher leaks from the handle when closed. Currently we're between dishwashers, so it has to stay closed (and the next shutoff along is the water mains. We can't go without that for five days). With a brass valve elsewhere in the house I just had to tighten the packing(?) nut a little, but this is plastic - there is no nut to tighten. Just the valve.

Obviously, the long term solution is to get a brass valve, instead of a plastic piece of shit, but is there anything I can do to fix up this plastic one in the meantime? (Google is supremely unhelpful - all either "fix the packing nut" or "here, buy 500 plastic valves".)

We're buying a house and the kitchen is a bit of a design mess. The pantry is extremely narrow, deep, and shelved, which makes it all but useless. I want to put in pull-out shelves to make better use of the space but the cabinet door doesn't swing fully out of the way, so pull-outs would impact it. I figure there must be a hinge type that will do the trick.

The cabinet door is inlaid, just under 30cm wide, and not lipped. The cabinet interior is 26.5cm wide, so the door extends about 1.5cm past the edge of the interior. The door is also about 6.5 cm from the wall, so any hinge doesn't need to open at any great angle.

My hope is to build the pantry shelves to within a few mm of the full width and 50cm depth of the cabinet, with under-mounted 50cm runners with 50cm extension so the entire thing rolls out. All the ready made products seem to have side-mounted runners which narrow them, and only go to 45cm deep. This pantry is too small to cut 10% or more off the area!

https://preview.redd.it/7c4kfqhipf0b1.jpg?width=3072&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6f7fb33a9efcf78fa220de0c967690cf0dc6a3ce

https://preview.redd.it/j0kzhmwgpf0b1.jpg?width=4080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=70d72e8f8222829c08274b70aa2116d6c57f59a1

I currently have a garage, which has no access to power utilities. I currently use a generator when I need power there, but I'd like to have constant power if possible. However, the generator is both inefficient and loud to run constantly, not to mention the wear that 24/7 running would put on it. I only need a small bit of power constant (I am not always there, and even when I am I often only need to run a couple LED/flourescent lights most of the time), and can run the generator when the demand for larger loads (>1000w) comes up. It'd be nice to have power for security cameras, perhaps a small mini-refrigerator, things like that, though. I'm thinking of a battery storage system I'd assume, sort of like how solar panels would have. I'd like to do this as cheaply as (safely) possible, and size isn't a critical factor (power density is not of the essence here). Does anyone have any suggestions on what would be the cheapest batteries and means of putting the current to/from them? My generator currently outputs a 5500w output (also have a smaller 2000w one I use as necessary) at 110v or 220v AC, and while I know AC > DC > AC is not the most efficient thing in the world, neither is running a 2000w generator just to use 20w. I am open to any suggestions here!

I'm trying to find something to stop the draft from this mailbox hole. It cools down the entire garage and the room above by cooling the floor. Typical mailbox through wall that you can buy are 10-12inches but we have a bit under 8 inches. Anyone has ideas?

Hello Fellow Teens,

I recently tried to install an over-the-range 30" microwave in my apartment only to find that because the cabinet on the Microwave's hinge-side is so close and extends so far out past the cabinet above the Microwave, that the corner of the microwave door on the hinge-side cannot fully open.

You may ask yourself how the door of the old microwave could open if this is the case? It was a rounded edge while the new one has a very hard right angle...

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If anyone has dealt with this before and knows of any options or how to best word this while searching I would greatly appreciate any help. Thanks!

A question, currently renovating my house and removing old cheap laminated floorboard.

I'm wondering could I place this on top of the OBS board I use as attic flooring? Besides looking nicer (for an attic it's pointless I guess), would this me an extra useful layer of insulation or just a waste if time?

Thanks in advance

I have a GOYOUTH 2 in 1 under desk treadmill that I bought on Amazon and that I use 4 or 5 times a week. It's been good for me, but the only issue is moving it to and from my desk. At first I would squat down, pick it up, and carry it. It's a distance of only a 5 feet or so, but even so, I started worrying I was damaging my back.

After that, I tried using my foot to just push it instead of lifting, and that worked fine also, except that I started worrying I was now damaging my knee.

Seems like the only solution that won't give me any trouble is giving it wheels somehow, but I can't figure out how. I tried searching for some type of product to buy, but to no avail. Is there some type of product with wheels that I can buy to place my treadmill on top of it and roll it to and from my desk?

If I can't find a solution, I might be forced to spend another $500 or so on a treadmill that actually comes with wheels.

According to the product listing, its dimensions are 49"D x 21.6"W x 5.9"H and 50 lbs (23 kg).