Home Improvement | Green Home Improvements | Home Improvement Tips

When you think of “essential home improvement tools” I bet your cell phone doesn’t rank up there with “hammer” or “screwdriver” but it probably should! I am a firm believer in using a cell phone or smartphone like an iPhone or Blackberry for small and large home improvement jobs. I started using an iPhone last year and I can now honestly say I don’t do much work on my house without it anymore. Most smartphone and cell phones can assist in DIY home improvement projects in a variety of ways, but here are some ways you can use today’s cell phones to help you with projects around the house:

Cell Phone: I’ve also learned to carry my cell phone with me whenever I’m working on projects around the house, especially outside or when I have to climb up on the roof. If I happen to get stuck or I need help or I hurt myself, then I know I don’t have to worry about whether or not someone can hear me yelling. The whole world is just a phone call away. It’s also pretty handy when you’re in the middle of something and you don’t have to run inside to answer the phone if it rings.

Camera: Most smartphones now have a camera built in which is great for taking quick photos of projects that are partially done or parts that need to be replaced and then carrying those photos with you. I have, more than once, taken a photo of a part or situation and then gone to the hardware store to look for that part and made sure they had what I needed before I took things apart. I recently found myself taking pictures of plumbing parts while I was replacing the old shower valves in my bathroom.

I’ve taken photos of serial numbers, part numbers, rusty items and lots of other things around the home and then I just hit my hardware store and pull up my photos to help me figure out what I need for lots of projects. Need to remember a measurement? Take a photo of a ruler or tape measure next to that thing. Instead of sketching out a job site or an area, just take a quick photo or two.

You can also do the reverse while you’re shopping for home improvement items. If you find something you like in a store just snap a picture of it and then come home and look at your picture to see if it would fit or work in your home. My wife and I have been taking photos of lots of items like counter tops and lighting options for our ongoing basement remodeling project.

Text message/Email/Notes: How many times have you walked in to the hardware store and realized that you forgot to bring along a crucial measurement or thought to yourself that you could buy something if you only had one minor detail? I now regularly enter all sorts of measurements and notes into my cell phone (or I at least send myself an email about something) as I come across new problems. Just last week I took 10 minutes out of my day and walked around my house, taking measurements for all the windows in every room of the house. I entered all those measurements into my cell phone. Now if I stumble across a good deal on blinds or curtain rods I can check to see what windows they might fit right on the spot.

Calculator: Almost all cell phones have a calculator built into them now, so it’s easy to quickly run simple measurements like area (height x width) or other calculations that you may need. My math skills aren’t nearly as sharp as they used to be, so having a handy calculator has saved me from making mistakes in materials needed more than once.

Hammer: Only kidding, but there are some days when I’m so tempted to use it for one.

If you have a great story of how you used a cellphone in a home improvement project, I’d love to hear it.

Repairing a shower valve is one of those home repairs that most homeowners find they need to do every few years, depending on a number of factors including how many people use the shower, your faucet brand and even what type of water you have in your home. Whether you have a single handle “cartridge” type of faucet or a two handle “valve and washer” type of faucet in your shower, the repair for each type is actually pretty similar.

After removing the shower knob and protective sleeve and flange, you’re left with an ugly hole in the wall.

Let’s first go over some of the symptoms your shower may have if you have a faucet or valve that needs to be repaired. The most obvious symptom and the one that most people complain about is a leaky shower or tub faucet. If you put turn the handle to the completely closed position and you still have a constant drip or flow of water for a minute or more then you most likely have a leaky shower. If you have two shower handles then you may want to take some time to test the hot and cold water separately to see which handle is actually leaking. It could be both, but it’s more than likely just one or the other. Most shower leaks are a result of the rubber washers in the valves simply hardening and wearing out to the point where they no longer make a completely tight seal when closed.

Another problem that can occur with showers (and most plumbing) is banging or shaking noises coming from your pipes when you turn the water on. Your pipes whine, moan, whistle, thump, shake, flutter, bang or even pop when you turn on the water. These noises could be caused by a lot of different things, but I’ve experienced it more than once when my shower washers and valves needed replacing. What seems to happen is as the water is turned on it rushes past a worn or broken washer and creates a sort of rippling vibration through the pipes. It can be loud and if it’s let go it can actually damage your pipes with the constant vibration. Note: this is not something called “water hammer.” Water hammer occurs in pipes when you turn the water off and there’s a loud bang or pop or klanging sound.

If you have one of these problems with your shower or tub then it’s probably time to see what you can do to fix the problem. Just as when you’re replacing a shower diverter, you’re going to go through a series of steps to remove the shower knob and inner workings and then reverse those steps to put everything back together. These are the general steps you’re going to follow to repair a shower valve, regardless of what brand or type of shower faucet you have:

1. Turn off the water.
2. Remove the shower knob.
3. Remove any sleeves and flanges around the valve.
4. Pull out the valve or cartridge.
5. Replace the washers or replace the whole valve or shower cartridge.
6. Lubricate the assembly if needed.
7. Put the valve or cartridge back in.
8. Re-attach any shower sleeves and caulk.
9. Put the shower knob back on securely.
10. Turn on the water and test.

The old shower valve. Note the broken ring of caulk around it.

I’ll walk you through the steps that I took recently to replace my own shower valves. I was having a lot of hammering and thumping in my pipes whenever I turned on the shower. For the longest time I thought it had something to do with the previous owner’s plumbing skills (he replaced some sections of pipe in my house) but on a whim I decided to check the shower valves and once they were repaired all my pipe banging instantly disappeared.

First, turn off the water going to your shower. Your shower will have two pipes supplying water to it: one hot and one cold. These valves are sometimes located in a basement or crawl space under your shower but they could also be behind the wall of your shower, so go looking around for an access panel. My shower access panel is hidden in the back of a closet, but I also have valves in my basement. If you can’t find the shut-off valves (or for some reason don’t have them… but you should!) then you can just turn off all the water in your home.

Now comes the fun part: you’ll need to figure out how to get your shower handles off. There are hundreds of different shower handle types, but most have a similar design. First, you’ll probably want to pop or pry out the little middle temperature emblem. These will usually have an ‘H’ or ‘C’ on them for dual handles and will have a temperature circle on them for the single shower handle models. I just use a small regular screwdriver to pop out these little plastic covers. Don’t fret too much if you accidentally break one: you can get replacement shower knob inserts at most mega hardware stores.

After removing the shower knob cover you should see a screw. That screw helps hold the knob onto the valve or cartridge in your shower. Sometimes these screws get corroded or covered with soap scum and mineral build up your water. Do your best to remove the screw without stripping it. If you strip the screw head then your shower knob removal just got a lot more difficult. I’ve found that the screws often come out pretty easily, but the knobs themselves still stick on pretty well in some cases.

Once you have the screw out you’re next step is to remove the shower knob or handle. This is often what causes people the most grief, especially if the handle hasn’t been removed in years. There are quite a few tricks and tools you can use to remove a shower knob.

A set of shower wrenches can really help with removing a stuck shower valve.

After removing the knob there may also be a metal sleeve or tube which prevents water from dripping into the wall behind your shower. My shower sleeves are threaded on one end and actually screw directly onto my shower valves, so I just unscrew them. If you to use force to turn these you may want to use a rubber jar opener to get a good grip on them because they are often chrome and slippery and can be scratched easily.

These shower knob sleeves often have a flange of some type that is held against the wall with a tiny set screw on the bottom. Sometimes the sleeve and flange are all one piece. For single knob showers the flange is large and often sunken into the wall, while two handle showers often have the flanges extending outward. I personally don’t trust these set screws to keep that flange tight, so I also use a thin bead of clear caulk around them to hold them tight against the wall. You may have to take a razor and just slice that caulk or silicone to get everything off.

Once all the “outer” hardware like the shower knob and the sleeves are off, you’re usually left with nothing more than an ugly hole in the wall. Feel free to use a towel or rag to clean out any dirt or moisture that may be there. The hole in the wall should be dry and clean, but I’ve rarely found that. After all this you should have a hole that has a shower valve or cartridge sticking out of it. The next step is to remove that.

Here’s where your exact steps may vary a bit from mine. Different shower valves and different shower cartridges are removed and held in by different methods. Most shower valves I’ve seen seem to screw in, though shower cartridges can screw in, click in or have little clips around them which hold them tight. You, of course, know the exact brand and part number for your shower faucet cartridge, don’t you? :-)

Seriously, the trick here is to be a little curious and go poking around it. The release mechanism should be fairly obvious, but it’s difficult to remove a valve or cartridge sometimes because you are faced with the prospect of actually knowing how to remove it, but it could still be stuck with residue or oxidation. For shower valves, you may actually need a shower wrench which can help you unscrew a shower valve that is set deep into the wall.

Once you have your shower valve or cartridge removed, you’re pretty much home free. You can either replace the washers around the assembly or, if things look really bad, you can often just replace the whole mechanism. I suggest taking the old valve or cartridge to the hardware store and having someone in the plumbing department help you find an exact placement. My local hardware store has a small catalog filled with photos of hundreds of shower valves and cartridges to choose from. Replacing the washers is obviously the cheapest option and should only cost you a dollar or two. I chose to entirely replace both shower knob assemblies for a grand total of $28 in parts. I also took a digital picture of the new shower assembly with the part number clearly visible, so if I ever have to replace anything again I will know exactly what I need.

There’s one more thing to watch for when removing a shower valve or cartridge: do your best to remove ALL of it. You may want to use a little flashlight to look around your pipes once you remove the shower valve to make sure the hole is clean and round. When I remove my first shower valve I noticed that I only had 3/4 of the washer on the end of it. I made a bad decision and ended up screwing the new shower valve right into the existing hole. Everything worked for a week or so, but my shower knob kept getting harder and harder to turn. Eventually I took the entire thing apart again and when I pulled the new shower valve out I figured out why: there was still a little tiny piece of hardened rubber from the old shower washers stuck in the valve in my wall that was getting crushed by the new shower valve. I pulled out the little piece of rubber, put the new shower valve back in, re-assembled everything and my knob has worked perfectly ever since.

You can see the difference between the old and new shower valve.

When you’re inserting the new shower valve or cartridge make sure you’re putting them in straight and twisting them in without crossing the threads grinding any crud into the threads. Your new shower valve or cartridge should go in relatively easily. If you find yourself forcing things in, then you may want to pull it back out and check to make sure everything is clean and free of debris.

When the valve or cartridge is in, the rest of the operation is pretty straight-forward. You’ll simply put everything back on in reverse order. First you’ll attach the knob sleeve and flange (though I’d skip the caulk until you’ve tested it) and then you can actually put the knob back on and tighten the screw that holds it in place.

To test your shower repair, just turn the shower handle or knobs into the off position and then go turn the water back on. Now when you return to your shower and crank the handle, water should flow out just as it did before. Now turn the water off and watch for leaks or any other problems. Test it a few times and if you’re satisfied that everything is working correctly then you can caulk around the flange. You could use a caulk gun for this, but for small jobs I actually prefer just using a little tube of sealant instead. Finally, you can finish up by attaching that little “hot” or “cold” emblem to cover up the shower knob screw.

Congratulations! You just repaired a leaky shower faucet!

If you want to a surefire way to start an argument between 10 home remodelling expert, ask them “What’s the best way to insulate a basement?” You will almost definitely get 10 different answers with 10 different reasons for why that answer is correct.

Most basement remodeling books offer many different insulation methods.

To be fair, there really is no one 100% correct way to insulate a basement. There are different types of basements, different underground situations, different building codes and a number of other factors which vary from state to state, town to town and even house to house. Additionally, there are now different insulation technologies and techniques available than there were just ten years ago, so the process of insulating a basement is constantly evolving and changing as new tools and products come to market.

The best insulation for a basement wall would actually begin on the outside, but that’s something that’s still not done as commonly as it could be. Foam board insulation properly installed against the outside of a basement wall can prevent water from entering and provide an adequate insulation against colder temperatures.

Reasons For Insulating A Basement

This seems pretty obvious at first. Insulation in any part of the home helps block the flow heat (or cold) from one space to the next. This transfer of heat is part of a whole branch of science called thermodynamics. The idea of insulation is to slow down the “thermal bridging” of heat and cold from one area to another.

So you insulate the outside walls of your home to keep the cold temperature of winters from transferring to your warm living room. Conversely, insulation helps keep the heat from your living room from immediately slipping out into the cold air of the night. The other coverings of your outside home walls (siding, stucco, shingles, plywood, drywall) also help slow the heat transfer from inside to outside, but their primary goal is keep rain and excess humidity out of your home while keeping in some comfortable moisture in your house.

Insulating your basement properly could save you some money on heating and even cooling bills, but estimates range from 3% to 30% so ultimately your specific basement and your specific insulation strategy will determine what savings you experience. Generally, adding ANY insulation to a home will have some slight savings on energy costs as long as it’s done correctly.

It should be noted, however, that insulating basement walls is not like insulating the rest of your home. Most basement walls are concrete or cinder block, which means they conduct temperature (and moisture) a bit differently than regular home walls. Basement walls that are mostly underground will remain cool all year round, which can sometimes lead to condensation problems. Basement walls are also subjected to a lot of standing water in the soil around them, and that can lead to leaks and water seeping in through concrete or block walls. Ideally, your insulation choice should help prevent excess moisture from collecting in your basement as well.

Methods of Basement Insulation

There are several accepted ways to insulate basement walls, and within those methods are a lot of variations.

Blown or Applied Insulation: This has become more popular in recent years as more stores now offer rental machines to blow in insulation and the entire process has become easier and cheaper to use. This will work in some basements where you may already have studs and/or finished areas or if you’re using a blown insulation that has an adhesive mixed in. There actually a few different ways to “blow” insulation onto the walls and these different types of insulation have advantages and disadvantages. Blown in insulation includes wet cellulose insulation, closed cell foam and open cell foam.

Fiberglass Batt Insulation Between Studs: The old tried and true method of insulating walls in other parts of the home is often used in basements as well. That’s a shame because it’s generally a pretty lousy way to insulate a cement basement wall. Why? Because of moisture. Just a little bit of moisture behind those walls can make a mess of fiberglass. Even if you put up a tight vapor barrior, a single pinhole anywhere in the plastic could allow in enough moisture from the air for it to condense and start mold growth. While this basement insulation method used to be popular for

Foam Board Insulation: There are several different foam board products that you can use to insulate your basment. These rigid polystyrene foam boards are fairly easy to attach (screw or adhesive), are moisture resistant, so a little water won’t hurt them and they can serve as a sort of insulation and vapor barrier all in one. You do need to have fairly smooth and even walls to adequately install foam board insulation in a basement.

Air Pocket Insulation: Okay, this sounds crazy, but lots of older basements have been “refinished” this way - without any sort of insulation between the studs and finished panelling or drywall other than a pocket of air. While your basement definitely won’t be as warm as it could be this way, there are some actual advantages: you don’t have to worry so much about moisture because any moisture that comes through the walls will hit the air and have a chance to dry out. If the air in your basement is often humid, then you may actually have a problem with moisture condensing on the cool walls. The idea of simply having a “pocket of air” between the finished wall and the unfinished block wall is a simple one: it works the same way a storm door might work - by keeping the coldest air off the main door and therefore keeping the main door a little warmer. For this to really work you either have to live in a climate with a lot of dry air or use a dehumidifier pretty regularly in your basement (which is a good idea anyway in most cases).

An affordable dehumidifier can save you thousands in moisture damage repairs and make your basement feel warmer.

Moisture Control Measures

Controlling moisture and water vapor in a basement is a big challenge. Just a little bit of moisture can damage finished areas, promote mold growth and make your basement feel much colder with damp air.

In the “old” days of basement remodeling finished walls were framed out with wood studs that were placed tightly against cement block or concrete walls, filled in with fiberglass insulation, covered over with a plastic sheet as a vapor barrier and then covered again with drywall. That was all well and good for temperature, but it for moisture control it was (and still is) a nightmare. A little trickle of water seeping in from the outside walls could start mold growth and go undetected for years. Likewise, moisture from the air could condense and collect behind the vapor barrier and end up soaking all your insulate (and again initiating mold growth) rather easily.

Most of the newer methods of insulating a basement try to eliminate the problem of having “sitting water” on your basement walls for any period of time. Foam board insulation can either be installed flat against your concrete and block walls with construction adhesive or they can be attached to the wall with screws using furring strips along specially designed edges. If you use adhesive, you should also tape over the seams with some sort of plastic seam tape.

Another method for dealing with moisture is to put up basement framing with a small (1 inch) gap between the framing studs (metal or wood) and the actual concrete wall of the basement. This allows air to actually circulate behind the walls, which means that small amounts of moisture that happen to form on the walls will actually have a chance to dry out.

Some experts even argue for a dual approach to basement insulation: insulating the top half of the wall for temperature control, while leaving the lower part of some basement walls exposed for drying.

Again, no matter what you do, if you have moisture and condensation problems in your basement you’ll want to invest in a quality dehumidifier. By slightly drying out the air in your basement you will prevent mold growth and make your basement feel much warmer.

Insulation and Vapor Barriers

Vapor, in the loosest sense, in moisture contained in the air around us. So a vapor barrier is really a moisture or water barrier. There are still lots of people who feel as though a vapor barrier is a necessity in a basement. When really pressed, though, they often don’t have a good reason as to why. In theory a vapor barrier is used to block any and all moisture from the air inside your basement (like you breathing out) from reaching your cooler block walls and condensing into liquid moisture. This idea only works if you have a 100% completely air proof vapor barrier.

I have never, ever seen someone put up a 100 square feet of plastic sheeting without having a single teeny, weeny air hole gap somewhere in that wall. It’s been stated by others that a single hole from a pin in a plastic vapor barrier can allow in up to a cup of moisture to condense behind a wall in a single year. Even if you staple every inch and then tape over every staple, I simply have a hard time believing that a vapor barrier can be 100% sealed in a regular home basement. And if you’re going to screw up drywall, forget it, because one slipped screw off the stud and you’ve just ripped your plastic barrier.

The more current thinking with vapor barriers and basement insulation is this: Moisture in air is going to enter and exit your basement walls. That’s almost impossible to completely avoid. So if it’s going to happen, use insulation materials that are not harmed by moisture and give them an opportunity to dry out.

Insulate and Fill The Gaps

A big part of basement insulation doesn’t actually have anything to do with the cement or block walls that make up most of a basement, but rather it concerns the wooden floors and framing of your house above your basement. That wood frame around the top of your basement that holds up your entire house is often a prime source of heat loss in a basement. Look around and you’ll see all sorts of pipes and wires going out of your house through various holes. All those holes and gaps should be insulated tight, to prevent cool or moist air from entering.

You can use foam board or other types of water resistant insulation to fill in the areas around the joists but one of the easiest (though slightly more expensive) ways to insulate that area is to use some sort of expanding foam. You just spray it in the area and the foam expands (there is a little bit of an art to it) and fills in the gaps and empty areas quite well.

Final Thoughts on Insulating A Basement

I’m just about to start my basement insulation project (I just have one unfinished room to insulate for now) so I’ll write up the details after I’m done. I’ve been looking into my various options a lot, and there’s one free basement insulation guide that I keep referring back to. It’s a free .PDF file called Basement Insulation Systems and it’s written by Nathan Yost M.D. and Joseph Lstiburek, Ph.D., P.E. It’s on the US Department of Energy’s website and it really breaks down the problem of basement insulation in a scientific but readable manner.

I think I’ve decided to go with the foam board insulation method, but I might have to get a little clever with what I’m doing. I have a fairly dry basement with very little moisture anywhere. I’ll post photos and let you know how my home insulation project goes once I get started!

We have some small room air filters in the bedroom of my home which we run pretty regularly to help cut down on some of the dust in the house that’s generated from an active family, two cats and an old force hot air heating system. The little air purifiers work pretty well, the filters were getting a bit expensive for my tastes, so I decided to see if I could just make my own air filters for a fraction of the cost.

Just buy a larger (and cheaper) air filter of the same thickness and cut it down to size.

Turns out, it’s pretty easy! You can essentially buy cheap air filters and cut them to whatever custom size you need.

I’ve had an ongoing battle with dust in my home for a while, and each thing I do makes the situation a little better. I regularly change the large air filter for my home as part of my regular furnace and air conditioner maintenance and I even wrote a review of a professional duct cleaning service. I also regularly vacuum and we try to keep our cats away from our bedrooms when we can.

I decided to also get two $30 small room air cleaners and I set one up in each bedroom. They work well, but when it came time to replace the filters I was shocked to learn that the filters it needed sold for over $12 a piece for what was essentially a piece of cardboard with filter paper in it. Even worse, I soon learned that the exact sized filters I needed were discontinued, so online sellers were basically raising their prices whenever they wanted.

Now, general air cleaners are not particularly complex machines. Most are just plastic boxes that have a fan and a filter. Yes, you can actually just place an air filter over a box fan and make a quick air filter that way. The fan pulls the dirty air in, the filter traps the dirt and dust and the clean flows out the other end of the fan. Some fans are fancier than others, but the filter paper used in the majority of air purifiers is about the same, though the exact specifications may vary. Remember: this is for air purifiers and filters that use paper filter boxes. You don’t want to go replacing HEPA filters or other spongy types of filters with simple paper filters. It may filter your air, but it’s not going to do as good of a job. Your air filter is only as good as the filter type being used.

Here’s what I did to make my own air filters:

1. Measure your old air filter: This is probably the most important step. For most air cleaners the air filter has to be an exact size to fit into the device, so you want to be sure you get as close as you can. For my air cleaner the thickness of the air filter is what mattered most. My filter was about 1 inch thick.

2. Buy a large air filter replacement: I then took my measurements and when to my local mega hardware store where I had about 700 air filter replacements to choose from. Now that I know this works I’ll probably just purchase a pack of cheap furnace filters online and save myself even more money in the future. I purposely picked a home air filter that was 1 inch thick and was larger than my small 10 x 9 inch filter. I got one with a thin wire mesh on the filter paper because I figured that would help the filter retain it’s rigidity when I cut it. If I had been smarter I would have bought a filter that was at least TWICE as large so I could maybe cut two replacement filters out of one cheap filter. I ended up buying an air filter replacement that was $3.99, which is a heck of a lot cheaper than $12!

Cardboard from a cereal box and some invisible tape are all you need to build an edge around your air filter.

3. Cut the air filter to size: Measurements are nice, but for this I ended up just placing the old air filter on top of the new one, lining up one corner. I then traced the exact size out of the old filter on the new filter. You want to line up the corner so you only have to cut two sides and can leave two sides in tact.

One important step: be sure you mark which way the air is supposed to flow. It’s usually on the edge of the air filter and it does make a difference. Air filters are designed to have air go in one way and out the other. Once everything is measured you can take a hefty pair of scissors and start cutting. You may want to wear gloves or use a mask for this, just to avoid cutting your hands on any wires or breathing in any dust particles from the filter (though they should be safe).

The finished air filter doesn’t look pretty, but it works great.

4. Reinforce the cut air filter edges: Now you have an air filter that probably has a cardboard edge on two sides and no cardboard edge on the other two sides. Those cardboard edges are important because they give the filter some form and they prevent air from flowing around the filter when it’s in place. To put new filter edges back on, just use some thin cardboard (the cardboard from a cereal box works nicely) and some simple tape. Remember, these filters only last 90 to 120 days, so they don’t have to be made out of plastic or steel. In about 10 minutes I was able to cut out and fold an edge around my air filter, keeping everything in place with a few pieces of invisible tape.

It wasn’t pretty but it met the specifications of the old air filter, so I slipped it in and gave it a shot. The whole project ended up taking me no more than about 20 minutes from start to finish and I ended up saving $8 right off the bat.

I’ve had my new DIY air filter installed in my air cleaner for about a week now and everything is working just as it was before, so I’d consider this project a success!