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[geonerd]

Geohouse is getting new carpets and I am completely befuddled.  Shag, plush, frieze, loop, fibers, treatments.... it's too overwhelming.  This is partly a vent, but partly serious too- any recommendations on your garden-variety basic carpet for a high-traffic room?

[biomancer]

For high traffic and easy cleaning, I like berber.

[new_bus_prof]

Geohouse is getting new carpets and I am completely befuddled.  Shag, plush, frieze, loop, fibers, treatments.... it's too overwhelming.  This is partly a vent, but partly serious too- any recommendations on your garden-variety basic carpet for a high-traffic room?

Berber is horrible with water spills, OK with pet hair, but for general foot traffic is good.
Plush is great for bare feet, easy to get spills out of, horrible with pet hair, and hard to get a good deep vacuuming with.
Loop or shag is okay. Here the length of the shag or loop is what really counts. Shorter lengths act more like berber, while longer are more like plush.

The stainmaster/scotchgard treatment is a must. Every carpet without has not survived a year with kids and dogs.

Personally, I prefer frieze and level loop carpeting. They are recommended for high traffic areas, and seem to do the best at retaining their look and feel.

[spork]

I just put plastic over the not-yet-replaced dining room windows. Even with the storm windows down, I could feel the cold air coming in.

[collegekidsmom]

We always fight over the plastic windows. I try to distract from that activity as long as possible. At the first sign of cold air, all the beautiful old windows are covered by plastic. I sit and look through the Saran wrap looking stuff. Of course it helps, but I do hate that stuff. I have an old house and there is a constant search for the source of the cold air that blows by. I like the house cold so I really don't care but others do not share my view of things.

[spork]

Getting woken up in the wee hours by a faulty CO detector prompted me to do some investigation.  I discovered that the one smoke detector in the house was 11 years old and centrally wired to a defunct 36VDC alarm system.  The detector is now in the trash.  Tomorrow I'll be going to a retailer to buy a batch of new smoke and CO detectors.

Additional evidence that the previous owner of the house was an idiot:

- bypass plate not connected to the damper rod in the fireplace woodstove insert (flue always wide open, which sent a lot of heat up the chimney and explained why she burned 5-6 cords of wood every winter)

- cut-in and cut-out set too high on the boiler's pressure control (a waste of gas)

- screws put into plaster without anchors, which left big holes in the walls and made light fixtures, mirrors, and other things loose and crooked

[mignon]

My son has one of those fan-lights (it's an old house) in his ceiling.  One chain turns on the fan.  The other chain turns on the light.  He pulled the light chain too hard, and the whole thing came off, right down to the "root."

If I try to fix this, am I likely to electrocute myself?  Has anyone (I mean, anyone on the fora) every fixed a fan light chain before?

Help would be most appreciated. 

[madhatter]

Replacing the chain's not too hard. Rule #1 when working with electrical -- throw the circuit breaker before you touch anything. Once that's done, you'll have to unscrew the cover plate to see where the chain's connected so you can see what you need to replace.

[barcrossliar]

It's really easy, but chime on turn off the power bit.  Some fan lights are wired so that the fan and light are on different circuits, so when you're at the home improvement store getting the replacement chain, pick up one of those testers that can detect current without actually touching the probes to the wires.  Comes in handy and can save your life.

[aristotelian]

Do you mean that he pulled the chain or the fan down to the root?  It may actually be easier to replace the fan if a hard-to-find part is damaged. In either case, you should be able to fix this one yourself.  As long as you turn off the circuit, there is no harm in at least opening it up to check out the damage.

[barcrossliar]

The replacement chain units are easy to get.  They're usually on the rack with all of the fancy pulls (soccer balls, "crystal," etc.).  They're pretty much a one-size-fits-all unit.  In addition to the tester I mentioned upthread, you will need:

Ladder
screwdrivers
electrical tape
needlenose pliers
it's also nice to have an assistant who can hand you things and spot where you dropped the screw or wirenut.

Take out the bulbs and off the glass shades to reduce the weight of the unit if you have to remove the light unit to reach the chain.

[kedves]

The replacement chain units are easy to get.  They're usually on the rack with all of the fancy pulls (soccer balls, "crystal," etc.).  They're pretty much a one-size-fits-all unit.  In addition to the tester I mentioned upthread, you will need:

Ladder
screwdrivers
electrical tape
needlenose pliers
it's also nice to have an assistant who can hand you things and spot where you dropped the screw or wirenut.

Take out the bulbs and off the glass shades to reduce the weight of the unit if you have to remove the light unit to reach the chain.

That's the list I would make, too, with perhaps a flashlight for looking into the pull-chain area or crevice (if there is one).  I have a dark house.  In most big-box hardware stores, the lighting and lamp materials (except switches, etc.) are in the fan area. 

You can see why an assistant is nice--but not essential.  I just balance things on my shoulder.  The assistant is handy to run to the box and turn on/off/on/etc. the breaker, too.

You'll need the needlenose pliers to open and then re-close the cap-end (don't know what the proper name is) at the end of the bead chain, the coupler that enables you to attach one part of bead chain to another part of bead chain.  You might also need them to pull down on whatever remains of the bead chain as it emerges from its socket--hopefully, something is there still.

This is a good thing to know how to do, especially if you have closets with old, dirty, worn-out strings on pull-chain lights.  They're easy to replace with bead chain and a little wooden pull.

Wire-cutters are handy for cutting off bead chain that is too long, getting it to the perfect length, but ordinary household scissors will do the job (use the end near the handles).

Good luck -- let us know how it turns out!

[mignon]

Thanks, electricity-whizzes.  I'll try it this weekend!

[dr_strangelove]

Looking for some tips on troubleshooting intermittent static on our home phone lines. This has been going on for years, and I'm finally trying to kill it. I'm pretty sure it's internal, since I never hear it if I plug a phone into the jack in the grey box on the outside of our house. In fact, if I do that, the static generally goes away altogether (for a while). I'm not sure what that's telling me.

When we have it, we hear it on all the phones. I have access to all the wiring (though not the entire run of all the wiring). I've tried to isolate the cause by disconnecting various runs of wire (at the junction box), but so far haven't been successful. Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

[new_bus_prof]

Looking for some tips on troubleshooting intermittent static on our home phone lines. This has been going on for years, and I'm finally trying to kill it. I'm pretty sure it's internal, since I never hear it if I plug a phone into the jack in the grey box on the outside of our house. In fact, if I do that, the static generally goes away altogether (for a while). I'm not sure what that's telling me.

When we have it, we hear it on all the phones. I have access to all the wiring (though not the entire run of all the wiring). I've tried to isolate the cause by disconnecting various runs of wire (at the junction box), but so far haven't been successful. Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

OK. If you're checking the grey box outside your home and not the modem, then you use a telephone company for your service. Do you have DSL/Broadband service via the telephone company? Are your phones connected inside to a line separate from your DSL line or the same one? Usually, this only happens when you telephone and DSL line are on the same connection. If this is the case, then try putting a quality DSL line filter on the phone(s) and anything else that connects to the phone line.

If the filter doesn't work, then you probably need to hire a telephone technician to fix internal wiring. However, if it's just an occassional static during bad weather (at either end of the call) then it probably won't ever go away.