Well, he's at $52K all told, but yeah, I thought it seemed a bit much. No idea how expensive the plumbing is, and I have a lot more floor tile, but still... I was thinking around $30-35K for this project. I don't really have any experience with bathroom remodels though.

Also, now that I think of it, 600sf of tile seems like there was a math error somewhere. a 9x18 bathroom and a 4x18 hall should be 234sf, yes? I'm guessing the tub dais and the shower add to that tile total, but I can't see any way of getting to 600sf.

only if they need to cut pieces for corners, bends, angles, etc but yeah seems way over

flushed my water heater for the first time ever. it was installed three years ago and new at the time. I use a water softener system with softening pellets which I read/heard would lead to even more buildup in the water heater.

I was quite surprised but the sediment was very minimal. It was all up front too. when the flush began is when the sediment came out and again, it was like a 1/4 teaspoon or so of small sediment, nothing too big, individually speaking. I guess I was surprised and expected more sediment. Is this normal? I watched some youtube videos on the process and followed the water heater manual step by step when doing the draining process.

The dirty secret about flushing a water tank is it only flushes out loose sediment,not built up sediment.

Its not efficient but its better than nothing.

Ive turned on the supply to the tank while having the drain hose still attached, to try and flush as much as possible.

Short bursts to partially fill the tank, a couple gallons at a time and i have gotten a little more sediment to shake loose, but if theres buildup, its not all going to come out.

Hopefully you dont have much buildup over three years, but that just depends on water quality.

Wow OK. I'll make this brief:

I have (had) a retaining wall next to my garage. This year it started to lean over the driveway a bit but was perfectly upright and functioning.

On behalf of the city a contracting company was hired to replace my driveway due to nearby sewer work. I came home a few weeks ago and my retaining wall was knocked down/destroyed when they came to remove my old driveway, no notice, no note no nothing. Oh well, **** happens, I'm sure someone will make it right its not a huge wall and can't be all that much.

Eventually sent off a claim to the contracting company (not sure why I had to do this but the city claims adjuster said I had to despite me doing this all through the city). Today I got this super aggressive email from the office manager at the contractor place:

I have done some investigation into this claim.

xxx Asphalt has been in business for over 35 years doing residential reconstructions. We train our employees to use extreme caution to prevent situations such as the one you are claiming. We also train our employee to document and take pictures of any existing conditions that are out of the ordinary.

In your specific case, we not only have documented pictures proving that your “destroyed retaining wall” was destroyed before your driveway was removed but we even made sure to notify the City of yyy of the poor retaining wall condition prior to removing and replacing your driveway.

If you would like to continue with this claim, please be advised that xxx Asphalt will also be submitting a claim as it is against the law to submit a fraudulent insurance claim.

Please advise

WTF! I obviously curtly just said "show me pictures that it was destroyed, leaning is not destroyed, you knocked it down, destroying it" and yeah. I mean really? The last part is off the wall. She's accusing me of a criminal act? Who is she going to "make a claim" to? Yikes.

I'd have the next letter coming from a lawyer, twere I you.

Got another bid on that bathroom project, and it's almost 1/3 more than the last one. Ouch.

Obviously you have to get a lawyer. A guy who comment on whether Anna Kendrick is hot or not, should not be you resource when 10s of $Ks of money are in play.

ugh lawyer yeah well will update when I get a response back from this office manager tomorrow. This is like 2-3k max fix I just don't get it, maybe they get a lot of BS claims IDK but they have no case, they broke my ****, just fix it so I don't have waste more of my time and their money on this. Oh well.

Depending on size of wall, 2-3 k might not cover it.

I'd send a letter stating if they don't address your damage seriously, you will retain legal counsel and sue them for all damages.

Also send one to the city since they are trying to put the effort on you to repair what they or their agent destroyed.

In the process of having a huge landscaping project completed in my backyard, but there's one element missing. We used to just have a crappy wooden deck that we didn't mind leaving our recycling bins and garbage can out on, but now that we have a beautiful patio, we would prefer those to be out of sight/not directly on the stone. Any suggestions or links for something we could buy to solve this issue?

We do not have a garage and won't have a new shed built until the spring. We have one open space between our house and the fence about 8 ft wide that we could fit like a small shed to hide them, but we will have a hot tub installed directly beside where this would be and I'm worried about it potentially smelling.

Sue for the cost of a “non-leaning” retaining wall plus legal fees. GG

Yeah I don't like your chances - you yourself already acknowledged that it was in disrepair.

Normally if the city has contracted out the service it will be the contractor's liability but usually those claims are referred onto from the city to the contractor. It would rarely go to the contractor first.

So just got the back patio done recently, and we have a raised level with a couple pillars that are meant to have lights in them. It seemed like the wires were fed under the stone well and made it out of the top of both pillars fine, but when the electrician came to wire in the new lights, he unwrapped the outer protective casing of the one and the actual wire was nowhere to be found. We assume it's a bit down into the pillar due to some sort of malfunction. The pillar on the right when looking at the house is the one with the issue. My dad's company built the patio, so it is possible for them to build down the pillar and try and find the wire in there, but it seems like a pain in the ass, so I wanted to know if OOT had any suggestions about what to do. I was considering looking into solar lights to go on top, but not sure that I'll be able to find any that are super reliable. Thank you

Id have the stonemason take the cap off and see if the wire is inside the column.

That isn't a big deal, pop one joint and replace.

But the puzzle to me is how the wire isnt in the sheathing.

I thought that was manufactured all together to prevent such a thing occurring.

Yeah we're all at a loss for how it could have happened. Manufacturing defect maybe?

Is there wire sticking out of the other end wherever it terminates? Or is it completely hollow from end to end? There's not really anything that holds the wire in place within the metal armor so if the person that cut the wire and installed it pulled out extra wire from the other end it could cause this.

I can't imagine anyone installing this with no wire at all inside but if it is in fact hollow from one end to the other you should be able to feed wire through.

Is that the other end within the lamp base on the other pillar? If so, it shouldn't be that hard to feed new wire thru.

Haven't had a look at the other end that'll go into the house. That's a good idea, thanks. There's no conduit I guess, and it goes through compacted gravel or whatever, so my dad didn't think it'd be possible to fish a new wire through the casing but maybe he's wrong.
Edit: yeah the other end is on the other pillar

The other end of the wire is one of the two on the other side. Somebody yanked that end of the wire on the left until it disappeared from the right. Your electrician isn't at a loss for how it happened because he's probably the one responsible. Otherwise he'd be screaming bloody murder at the masons.

Oh, I just noticed the pull lube. Alternative theory: He installed empty conduit but can't get the wire through and now he wants to blame somebody else. Whatever happened, you should have a pissed off electrician but it doesn't sound like you do. Something isn't right in your (or his) story.

My pony is slow.

Yeah there was a young kid electrician working on this part of it all alone, and when I got back home, this is the mess I found. Any ideas what I should do?

Fire him.



He's trying to feed jacketed cable through flexible conduit. No wonder he can't get it to come out the other end. It's way too big. It's just supposed to be 3 individual wires in there.

Basically the electrician had one of his guys drop off the wire needed for the job so that my uncle could begin building that platform and the posts. One end is sticking out of the ground, ready to be fed into the house. The rest is buried within the patio and my uncle is the one who fed it and buried it through there. It seemed to be ready for the electricians to do there stuff, but then maybe the young kid did just keep pulling on the one wire not realizing what was going on until it disappeared. I haven't personally talked to the head electrician about it yet but his guys called him and spoke to him and they didn't really know what to do.

I thought the wire was already inside the conduit when the patio was installed, and then they just take part of the protective casing off, no?