BG Homeowner and DIY Thread - Out of the Basement Edition

[Souj]

Really not sure how/why the previous owners didn’t deal with this considering how bad this stuff is. Money’s tied up already for the winter so it’ll have to wait a little bit to fix.
Temporary quick fixed the known problems.
Fuse box feels like it might just connect straight to the outside. And wife didn’t want this particular window covered in plastic so I just taped it up with the only masking tape we had- green. Fuse box is mostly hidden so didn’t bother making it look nice. I actually had a giant roll of plastic wrap that the movers we hired accidentally left behind.

Spoiler: show

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[Ksandra]

Any guesses on what's happening?

We have for forever used wall mounts for our TVs with no issues. We wanted to put a TV up in our computer area and my hubby is having issues with the wall where the lag bolt keeps breaking. My wall is now dotted with holes that have bolts in them (going to patch them up, but kinda waiting until it's finally up since there's like 3 now that have been broken). He's very frustrated about it. He's broken bolts that the mount came with and ones he bought at Lowe's (all three brand new). Is it possible there's something behind the wall that's causing them to snap?

So weird, because between homes and apartments we've probably put up TVs about 10 times and we've never had a bolt break. Don't think we've done anything different, either.

[Kirin]

Like mounting bolts? Bad batch?

Small enough to be running into a nail protection plate and breaking? Running into cast iron plumbing pipes?

[Jaybar]

Lag bolts or wall anchors? Lag bolts (big ass screws with a hex head) shouldn't be snapping if just going into wood studs. Might be you're hitting pipe or conduit and the husband is trying to force it through?

[Ksandra]

Lag bolts or wall anchors? Lag bolts (big ass screws with a hex head) shouldn't be snapping if just going into wood studs. Might be you're hitting pipe or conduit and the husband is trying to force it through?

Yeah they are lag bolts. These are the ones we got from Lowe's (same size as ones that came from the box): 1/4-IN X 3-IN Z HX LAG SCREW And we have a stud finder, so it's going into a stud. We did one stud, then had to do another because now there are bolts in the wall in the way (can't get the broken ones out). Two studs we used were ~2 feet apart (eyeballing from my computer chair). And it happened in both.

It's so fucking weird. Unfortunately, that's really the wall a TV should go on if it's to go anywhere, but we are not sure what's going on, and don't want to break more screws in the wall without figuring out what's happening.

[Drai]

stud finder’s are not always perfect, they can mistake drainage for studs very easily, also if there’s protection plates on the stud to protect wring or waterline penetrations then I’m not suprised the bolts are snapping, could also be a super gnarly knot in the wood itself that’s hard as heck.

[Cantih]

Jay, Jaaaaaaaaaaaaay

[Jaybar]

Imma die.

[thetruepandagod]

i discovered hinge door stops are absolutely horrendous if u have heavy solid core doors, that is all, do not make this mistake.

[Byrthnoth]

punched through your wall, eh?

[thetruepandagod]

nah chipped away the brand new paint and started to crack one of the doorframes

[Souj]

Spoiler: show

Finally got around to clearing out the house of unopened moving boxes and start putting it all away in the garage. Still got plenty of work to do. Got a few more old consoles I’ll hook up to it and I’ll probably set up a portion of it for Warhammer 40k building/painting.
Chose the two coldest days of the year to do it, but hey, my garage’s got a heater. Huzzah.

[Tyche]

I finally have a close date on my house. Feb 11th, then getting keys 1 week later. Already have a slew of home projects to begin tackling.

The water heaters in the house are original...from 1989. I bought 2 Rheem platinum hybrid water heaters. They can run on heat pumps, which will dehumidify my finished basement, and have built in leak detection and valve shutoffs. And they run at around 25% the power of the current units.

I've priced out about 15g's in home theater equipment. SVS PB-2000 subs, SVS Ultra sides and surrounds, and a JVC NX5 projector. I'm trying to get a hold of an Onkyo RZ50 AVR, but not having much luck.




I've bought a slew of Z-wave switches and sensors to install to run home assistant on my UNRAID server in a Linux VM. I'm pretty excited about this. I have to have an electrician over to install a ton of recessed lighting in the living area, office, master bedroom, and master bath. For whatever reason, those are the only rooms without recessed lighting (just "nipple" or fan lights). I'm also going to get some outdoor PoE cameras to run through the server for continuous recording. The home also has a full ADT security system already wired up, and I believe I can gut the panel and install a Konnected system and use all the ADT wiring and sensors in Home Assistant.



There's also a large rec room in the basement, separate from what will be the home theater room. It currently has a half kitchen. It's about to de demo'd and converted to a whole ass bar.

[Outlaw]

There's also a large rec room in the basement, separate from what will be the home theater room. It currently has a half kitchen. It's about to de demo'd and converted to a whole ass bar.

I want to see a pic when you get the bar done. Nice looking place.

[Tyche]

I'm sure I'll have do a breakdown of the basement work. There's a lot there we plan to do.

For the home theater room, we already have total light control. The room is going to get painted black. Wife isn't too happy about that, but I want it done right. I think I'm going to do a combo of matte and flat to have some contrast between the walls and trim. I have always wanted the carpet from The Shining in my HT room, but it poses two problems. 1. The carpet is pretty bright and distracting. 2. One company has the carpet rights, they're out of the UK, and it's not remotely affordable at over 400 GBP per SQ meter.

The audio in the room is going to be obscene. 7.1.4

SVS PB-2000 pro subwoofer
SVS Ultra center channel
SVS Prime Pinnacle towers
SVS Ultra Dual surround channels (x4)
Still deciding on Atmos speakers. I'd like them angled at 45 degrees, but those speakers are usually expensive and need a lot of clearance and I don't know how much clearance I have until I get in the house.

I'm going to run all this on an Onkyo RZ50 if I can find one. Looks like there could be a march restock. But it's the only good 11 channel option with Dirac Live.

For the projector, I'm leaning toward a JVC NP5. It's a true 4k projector and not a "shift 4k". HDMI 2.1, so 4k at 120Hz. It is supposed to release this March.

I really don't know what I'm going to do with the larger rec room other than the bar in the back of the room. The other side of the room, it's...odd. It has an off-center fireplace. I'd like some sort of gaming table/gathering table. Will probably just bring someone in to design the room, interior design is not my thing.

[Kirin]

Getting quotes for basement waterproofing, and honestly don't know what to make of it. I don't think we're getting scammed, as the bids are all from established companies. I am concerned we are paying too much for "too much" of a solution.

Quote 1: ~11k for driveway channel drains, a french drain in the front yard, and a gravity feed drain around the internal basement wall for any water that happens to weep in. This is the system where they drill weep holes and have it feed into a drain cut into the foundation to stop it from pooling elsewhere in the basement.

Quote 2: ~17k french drain right up against the house along perimeter wall equivalent to the basement, underground pump to stop water table from rising and leaking in (not a sump pump), and resealing the outside walls. No driveway drains or front yard french drains, but the same internal channel system as quote 1 but operated by the underground pump instead of gravity feed.

We have never seen waterfall leaks along the basement walls, but the bottom blocks in the unfinished part are absolutely weeping during heavy heavy rains. From that, it does seem to be water coming up into the blocks instead of downward. Our concern in going with quote 1 is it not being enough and needing to do quote 2 eventually.

[Byrthnoth]

What kind of soil do you have around the house? Clay-ish?

You should get a third quote, get them to lay out their plan, and ask them what they think of the other two plans. They're going to be biased towards their own plan, but points may be made.

By and large, there are three parts of basement waterproofing and you don't necessarily need to do all of them (ordered by increasing price):
1. get surface water to move away from your house through grading and french drains
2. put a sump pump below the lowest point in your basement (potentially with french drains running from other wet spots into the hole) and pump the water out
3. try to seal the outside of your foundation at/below ground to the frost line (this can be very hard and thus expensive)

I would start with #1 (specifically grading, which you could do yourself) and then check out what your basement is doing and move up the stack.

[Kirin]

What kind of soil do you have around the house? Clay-ish?

You should get a third quote, get them to lay out their plan, and ask them what they think of the other two plans. They're going to be biased towards their own plan, but points may be made.

By and large, there are three parts of basement waterproofing and you don't necessarily need to do all of them (ordered by increasing price):
1. get surface water to move away from your house through grading and french drains
2. put a sump pump below the lowest point in your basement (potentially with french drains running from other wet spots into the hole) and pump the water out
3. try to seal the outside of your foundation at/below ground to the frost line (this can be very hard and thus expensive)

I would start with #1 (specifically grading, which you could do yourself) and then check out what your basement is doing and move up the stack.

Its Georgia clay for the most part.

We've honestly tried to get multiple quotes for both the landscape drains and the basement stuff, but its been a non-stop cluster of cancellations and reschedules over the past few weeks and we want to get this moving before the spring rains start. Wife is of the mind to get it done so we can stop worrying about every rainfall that we may not be home overnight in the chance something does happen - which it doesnt always but when it does it involves 3 or 4 am shopvac sessions. To that end, quote 2 would solve that for us and then I can tackle the yard drainage myself.

[Byrthnoth]

Yeah, clay soil is bad for drainage but if you get really lucky then your basement can just be dry. My parents have clay and are on the side of a hill. They graded the land so the water just runs around the house and they need no sump or even drain in the basement.

It doesn't sound like you're really lucky, so something like quote 2 might be a good idea if you have the $ for it. I can't really say if that's a good price for it because I don't know what they're going to do or what the local market is, but if you're having trouble getting quotes from contractors then it's probably safe to say the market is tight.

One question, though. Are they proposing putting the french drain around the house just below the surface level and having it drain into a cut-out in your basement foundation, or are they going to dig it a few feet down? If it is just at the surface, it feels like that french drain would be solving the same problem you could solve with grading (but it requires more pumping) so I'm not sure how excited I'd be about that.

BTW, I see in your post you note that it's an underground pump (not a sump pump), which is confusing to me. How does the underground pump differ from a sump pump? Is it just not in a hole in your basement?

[Kirin]

Our house is below street level and also downhill going behind it. Its hard to explain, but the unfinished part of the basement (and the main problematic wall) is along our front porch which has the water pooling issue - which is why I wanted to install a french drain there along with a new catch basin and connect/repair to existing draining to feed it out alongside the house and into the sloped back yard. Driveway included because it also pools water with inadequate draining (which I partially remedied posting here before).

Instead of the yard french drain, quote 2 proposes to place and line a french drain right up against the exterior basement wall and down a little bit into the ground with the idea that it will pull foundational water away, just not directly from the front yard/porch. This wont feed into the basement at all, but just spit out behind the house.

I was explained that a sump pump is more passive and turns on when collected water reaches a certain level. This different system is more to catch the water table rising during heavy storms and pump it out to keep the water table level below the foundation and relieve water pressure against the foundation (and lower basement walls as it continues to rise). Like I mentioned, we dont see falling water leaks in the basement, just moist walls at foot level where the weeping takes place so it makes sense to me to worry more about bottom up than top down.