u/miemoo

When it can be humid and warm outside, a family member has a house that to get a little bit of old house smell. Usually only after summer rain. No basement on slab. Already removed and replaced flooring with hardwood. Already stripped old ceiling and replastered and painted. Already painted walls. Many years ago a previous owner may have smoked. There is no tar bleed or anything like that.

Here are some things I’m considering advising them to do and I’m looking for collective wisdom before I send them in the wrong direction :

Removing and replacing blown insulation in the attic. Also, considering an air seal before blowing in new cellulose. This may also help because it gets much hotter upstairs than downstairs.

Removing and replacing all drywall and ceilings. The owner really doesn’t want to have to do this because of the cost. And because it is not a smell that is always present.

Removing old badding from exterior walls and replacing with a foam, new badding, or something else.

Coating all walls with a shellac and repainting.

Replacing old HVAC which doesn’t circulate air very much at all to the vents on second floor with a new system (possibly blower in attic even).

Having ducts cleaned again (had it done a handful of years ago).

Having mold tests done in every room to see if there is a mold issue in a particular room. Not so sure because smell tends to not have a point source.

Running ozone generator in each room throughout house once a month for 15 minutes or so (only when nobody is present).

What do you think it worth it vs not and in what order would you advise?

I have a small breed dog about 17 lbs. I’d like to train her to stay on our property when we let her out with us. I prefer not to install a fence so I’ve been looking for a GPS collar but I’ve read that the positioning accuracy can drift sometimes. Is there a breakout product that is recommended from halo or spoton or other? I’m trying to get real customer experience

First time poster but I am looking for advice (and venting a little)

So I know someone that has a Kinetico Premium-series system installed about 14-15 years ago and got an additional uplflow carbon filter 2 years ago. The head unit on the system broke and started spewing water so the system is on bypass now. Here is the crazy part...The local service contractor wants to charge about $6k to replace the main system. I ... like.. whaaaaaat? Like whhhhuuuuuuuuuaaaaaaaaaattttt?

I don't know if it is the seals or if the head unit needs to be rebuilt but like a seal job is certainly less than $1k and a rebuilt head unit can't be more than something like $1k, right? What is the thing made of? Gold? I see no gold.

Is Kinetico known for being a jack*** company? I can't even find a direct line to customer support - I tried calling and got routed to an outsourced dispatch team. That is pure caca. 💩

So, what is your advice? I will pass that advice along. Do you think it is worth trying to find a head unit on eBay or whatever?

I thought I saw a post on this but can't find it.
I like my dock being visible but I can't figure out how to allow my mouse to glide to the bottom edge of my windows that are either fill, zoom, or centered without accidentally going into the dock and needing to go back out. I want a hard stop that I need to push past in order to enter the dock. How can this be done?