Re: Home and garden projects
 

It's an unglazed ceramic pot that is open at the top. You plant it in the ground, leaving the open top uncovered. You fill it with water then place a lid of some (any) kind on top. The plant/s nearby will take the water they need from the soil, which will have its moisture replaced via the water in the olla that permeates the pot walls. You top the water level up when needed, wich could be every few days or once a week or even less often.

It's supposed to reduce water consumption by approximately 80%.

More details: Ollas: Unglazed Clay Pots for Garden Irrigation - The Permaculture Research Institute

Re: Home and garden projects
 

Thanks for the response! We were told by a contractor that the difference between shakes and shingles for walls is slight these days... that shakes used to be hand-split (?) whereas shingles were machine-made--but now both are machine-milled.

I guess we need to research shingle types. But around here (New England coast) there seem to be only a few types of cedar shingles used for cladding outside walls, both for painted or unpainted....

Re: Home and garden projects
 

This weekends "let's have a lazy 2 days at home" plan has developed into turning the spare bedroom closet into a book nook with a hidden storage area.

Well at least we worked inside with the a/c blowing:thumbsup:

Re: Home and garden projects
 

Ozzidoc, that's a fantastic idea. I have a rather thirsty avocado tree that would benefit from this. Did you get the olla's locally?

Re: Home and garden projects
 

The ollas can be bought in San Diego, but I have made my own for 10% the cost.

Re: Home and garden projects
 

Awesome. Another project for the weekend hits the list :)

Re: Home and garden projects
 

That sounds like something my husband would do. I tell him we'd have more cash and more time if we were renting, as he wouldn't look around the house every few days and decide to change the light switches/outlet plates/fans/trim/blinds/windows/TV mount/ etc

Re: Home and garden projects
 

Excellent!!

Re: Home and garden projects
 

So I was on my way home last night, mulling over whether I should put the new baffles in the dryer, take my chainsaw to the remains of the pear tree, work on moving the TV to the bonus room, or one of several other projects, when my phone rang.

It was Mrs P, calling to tell me that a pipe connected to the water heater was leaking. She had turned off the water supply. ..... OK, so then I knew what I'd be doing that evening. :rolleyes:

It turned out that the wall of the ¾" pex supply pipe into the water heater had developed a pinhole, so I cut off the damaged end section, removed the connection fitting from the top of the water heater (which was less than the usual 18" length), and replaced it with a short iron "nipple" and an 18" flexible supply pipe.

It was all fixed and better than new before bedtime. :thumbsup:

As far as I can tell the pipe had been crushed and very nearly split through (the split is on the inside) before the pipe had been installed, and it just took until yesterday to start leaking. :(

Also, while looking at the connections of the cold supply pipe (the one I had to fix), and the hot outlet pipe, I noticed that the hot water is coming out of the port on the water heater marked "COLD", and the cold supply line is feeding the port marked "HOT". :blink: Another tell-tale sign of a problem is that the valve which is usually plumbed to enable the supply into the water heater to be shut off is actually in the pipe taking hot water from the heater.

Anyway, this means that cold water is filling the top of the tank and the hot water is being drawn from near the bottom of the tank! (The cold port in water heaters is connected to a pipe that goes down inside nearly to the bottom of the tank to deliver the cold water to where the heater/burner is located) .... So having fixed one small plumbing crisis, I now have another project, swapping the hot and cold connections, to add to my list of things to do in my "spare time". :rolleyes:

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I've just replaced the water heater at my girlfriend's house and was somewhat perplexed to see that on the old heater the inlet went into the tank at the pipe marked "HOT" and came out of the one marked "cold". Thanks to your explanation I can see how it still worked and that my plumbing in the new one correctly has resulted in there being more hot water to go round !

Carl.

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Anyone ever replaced the control panel on an oven?

I have an old Jenn-air wall oven that has a broken button for turning up the heat.

Looks like I can just unscrew the current panel and replace it. But is it common to do this yourself?

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I would imagine that such repairs are usually done by the owner, because paying a appliance repair technician to do the job would make it cost prohibitive.

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Thanks, I'll read up on it some more. It's a good oven apart from broken panel.

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Assuming you can get access and the part should be a relatively easy fix? Replace the panel.

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I got both dryer and stove parts from appliance-parts-experts.com a couple of weeks ago. They were the cheapest for both parts, and had the parts delivered in just three days. I will definitely look first at their web site in future.