HANDYMAN : HOW TO STOP THE ANNOYING POP IN YOUR HEATING SYSTEM.Byline: Peter Hotton Q: I'm getting quite a few pops in my hot air heating system whenever the heat comes on or goes off. Sometimes it's enough to wake me - and everyone else - up at night. What are those pops, and can I stop them? A: Those pops are an old story, and they will stop when the heat goes off for the last time in spring. What is happening is that the metal ducts expand when they heat up as the heat come on, and contract when they cool off when the heat goes off. This expansion and contraction is movement, and when metal moves, particularly if it is held tightly in place, will make the noise. If there was room for the metal to move into, it would be less likely to pop. The same thing can happen with copper heating pipes. So much for the reason. The cure may be twofold. One is to make sure the ducts are not too tightly secured in their hangers hangers used for hanging x-ray films to dry. There is a clip type, with a clip at each corner, and a channel type in which the film sits in channels in the sides of the frame. . If they are tight, you can loosen the hangers. That could cause another noise; the sound of the ducts moving on their hangers; it might be less than the popping sound, however, not loud enough to wake you at night. And to correct this, you could put a soft gasket between hanger and duct. The other cure is to cut the ducts in the middle of their span, cut off an inch of duct and connect them with a flexible material such as canvas. This will give the metal a chance to move into space rather than against itself, eliminating the popping. Incidentally, you can turn the heat all the way down at night so it won't come on to wake you up. At least the popping won't occur at night, and if your house is well insulated, it won't be intolerably cold when you wake up. Q: I am redoing several rooms in my house: washing, painting and the whole works Noun 1. whole works - everything available; usually preceded by `the'; "we saw the whole shebang"; "a hotdog with the works"; "we took on the whole caboodle"; "for $10 you get the full treatment" . What order is the best way, or at least the most efficient way, to do it? A: Order of battle, whether washing, sanding, papering, staining, varnishing var·nish n. 1. a. A paint containing a solvent and an oxidizing or evaporating binder, used to coat a surface with a hard, glossy, transparent film. b. or painting: 1) ceilings, 2) woodwork, 3) walls, 4) floors. Some specialists may argue over the woodwork/walls order, but the handyman feels that it's easier to do woodwork first, because you don't have to worry too much about getting paint on the wall when you're trying to paint the edges of window and door frames. If you do slop a little paint on the walls, new paint or wallpaper will cover it. By the same token, however, you could argue (and some do) that doing the walls first is better because rolling walls is likely to spatter spatter, n droplets of airborne particulate matter larger than 50 μm that fall to the ground. a little paint onto woodwork, and if you do, you can cover those splatters with new paint on the woodwork. Take your choice and do what's comfortable for you. Another question the naysayers might come up with is, why do the floors last (sanding and varnishing)? If you do, you'll get sawdust sawdust used as litter for chickens and bedding for horses. Sawdust made from treated timber may cause pentachlorophenol and other wood preservative poisoning. Fungi growing in sawdust litter in poultry houses may cause poisoning in the birds. all over the freshly painted and wallpapered room. True, and perhaps a good point, except that the sawdust is more easily swept and wiped off a clean, new surface than a dirty old one. Besides, if you do the floors first, you'll have to really protect them while you do the other parts of the room. There's nothing like a big scratch, spilled paint or water marks on a brand-new sanded and varnished floor. It's enough to make a grown handyman cry. Q: Please answer how I can clean water and stain spots off a slate floor. A: Slate and unglazed tile are notorious for their susceptibility to stains from water and other causes. The stains usually show up white. To remove them, dip a piece of steel wool steel wool, abrasive material composed of long steel fibers of varying degrees of fineness that are matted together. The coarser grades are used to remove paint and other finishes, the finer grades for polishing or smoothing a finished surface. in paint thinner A paint thinner is a solvent used to thin oil-based paints, or as a cleaning agent. Paint thinners include:
If there is no finish already on the slate, after cleaning the stains off, you might consider treating the slate with Future; this will darken dark·en v. dark·ened, dark·en·ing, dark·ens v.tr. 1. a. To make dark or darker. b. To give a darker hue to. 2. To fill with sadness; make gloomy. 3. the slate and give it a shine, but it will make the slate a little more stain-resistant. Q: I built a unique gate that look great but isn't working. I built two brick pedestal-type posts, one on each side of the driveway. Then I glued a gargoyle gargoyle (gär`goil), waterspout used in medieval Europe to draw rainwater from church and cathedral roofs. Gargoyles were fashioned imaginatively in the form of human grotesques, beasts, and demonic spirits. (a hollow statue made of some sort of resin) to the top of each pedestal-post, using an epoxy epoxy Any of a class of thermosetting polymers, polyethers built up from monomers with an ether group that takes the form of a three-membered epoxide ring. The familiar two-part epoxy adhesives consist of a resin with epoxide rings at the ends of its molecules and a curing adhesive, then strung a heavy chain spanning the driveway from the gargoyles gargoyles medieval European church waterspouts; made in form of grotesque creatures. [Architecture: NCE, 1046] See : Ugliness . One gargoyle stuck for a month, the other for a year. How can I reglue them permanently? A: How about suspending the chain from the top of the posts instead of the gargoyles, then regluing the gargoyles. The chain now is exerting considerable pressure on the gargoyles, and any constant (and sometimes moving) pressure can break almost any glue joint, epoxy or not. Or, screw or bolt a pedestal top (sort of platform of pressure-treated wood pressure-treated wood, wood that has had a liquid preservative forced into it in order to protect against deterioration due to rot or insect attack. The most commonly used preservatives are chromated copper arsenate (CCA) and pentachlorophenol. ) on each posts, then bolt or screw the gargoyle on that pedestal. That way you can leave the chain hooked to the gargoyles. MEMO: Peter Hotton writes for the Boston Globe. |
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