Raising sunken floor; water heater installation woes; mini-splits
Get tips on making fixes around the house.
Q: Can you plant a tree in the soil on top of a septic system?
Q: We have a sunken family room that was built about 4 inches lower than the rest of the house. For various reasons, we’d like to bring it up …
Q: I just replaced the hot water heater in my house and did the job myself. Now we’re getting hot and cold flashes of water coming out of fauc…
Q: I’m doing a bathroom renovation and wondered if I could remove the old fiberglass panels for my present shower and replace the whole thing …
Q: Our heat pump went out a couple of months ago; the compressor broke down. It’s going to cost us $5,000 to $6,000 to replace the whole unit.…
Q: My home has a 100-foot-long driveway with a 10-degree slope. It now has six very large cracks in its surface that range from about a half-i…
Q: We bought a 17-year-old house recently and removed the old carpeting. We want to have tile instead. But when we pulled up the carpet, we fo…
Q: We have a two-story house built with a back patio that is covered by a tar and gravel roof. Now when I look out on that roof, most of the g…
Q: I’m a renter, but I’m interested in getting into vegetable gardening. Would it be all right to build a 4-by-8-foot raised bed on top of par…
Q: We are in the market for a new water heater and wondered what you think about heat pump water heaters. How do they work?
Q: I’m a renter, but I’m interested in buying my own home. Recently, I have been looking at houses for sale owned by people who originally bou…
Q: I’m buying a 1,700-square-foot house that is being constructed by a builder. The builder has made me an interesting offer. For just $600, h…
Q: We have a relatively flat roof on our house that is covered with foam but that needs to have an elastomeric coating put over the foam every…
Q: I live in Sabino Canyon and have two large dogs that live in my backyard and keep digging holes in the pea gravel. I keep filling the holes…
Q: I have a beautiful Texas ebony tree; it’s very large and has a lot of thick foliage. Short of getting a chainsaw and cutting it down, how c…
Q: If I install photovoltaic solar panels on the roof of my home, and the electric power grid goes down in my area, will the solar panels stil…
Q: I have a lot of mold on some of my baseboards and I think it’s because I have a lot of rain water seeping into the house due to a crack in …
Q: I have an older house with a water pipeline that goes through the house before going out into the backyard so that I can use its water to i…
Q: I’m a new homeowner doing renovation work on an older house, and we are removing the popcorn ceilings. About four months into the job, we h…
Q: I live in a subdivision that was built on a slope, and my neighbor’s lot is slightly higher than that of my house. A concrete block wall st…
Q: I have a water softening system and it works just fine, but I always have a pink-colored ring in my toilet bowl. How can I stop that?
Q: I live in a house that I bought in the 1970s, and I have out-of-date green laminate countertops in the bathroom. Recently, I went to a home…
Q: We are renting an older house where the owners had previously installed green indoor-outdoor carpeting inside the entrance way in a 10-foot…
Q: I would like to save money whenever I can on my energy bills. Can I turn off the circuit breaker on my electric panel that controls my air …
Q: I have a 45-year-old house built with adobe bricks that originally had black mortar used in between the bricks. Over time, the mortar faded…
Q: We are getting ready to rent out a two-bedroom townhome that has four hard-wired smoke alarms with battery backups. Would it be a good idea…
Q: A large mesquite in my backyard has grown to the point where its roots are lifting up the concrete paving all over the yard. What can I do …
Q: For the past couple weeks, the water coming out of our kitchen faucet has been steadily decreasing — both hot and cold. I tried cleaning th…
Q: There is a shut-off valve outside my house on the water pipeline, but when I use it, I turn off both the irrigation line and the water line…
Q: I have a polished concrete floor with tiny cracks in it; what can I do to fix it?
Q: I live in an apartment, but love to do container gardening. Because of the small space I work with, it doesn’t seem possible to do composti…
Q: A large mesquite in my backyard has grown to the point where its roots are lifting up the concrete paving all over the yard. What can I do …
