Digmaster

I have a cape cod with a shed dormer in one of the upstairs rooms. The ceiling is really low (6'8") in one room (which is an addition built in the 50s). This height is limited by the collar ties which span from the top of the shed dormer wall to the opposite roof rafters. I see online that collar ties can be in the bottom 1/3 of the rafters, in which case can I move them up a few inches to get more space in the room?

I actually had a structural engineer come out to the house for some other work, and he told me I could move the collar ties in the rest of the house up. I forgot to show him this room, and this is the only one with a shed dormer, so I don't know if that changes anything.

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I have a cape cod with a shed dormer in one of the upstairs rooms. The ceiling is really low (6'8") in one room (which is an addition built in the 50s). This height is limited by the collar ties which span from the top of the shed dormer wall to the opposite roof rafters. I see online that collar ties can be in the bottom 1/3 of the rafters, in which case can I move them up a few inches to get more space in the room?

https://imgur.com/a/uJ1MCR7

We had a driveway put in today. In the past we had a sloped gravel driveway and water would flow through it into the street after heavy rain from, we thought, the sides at two points (some sort of natural spring). The new driveway is between these points so we thought it would be fine, esp. with some Belgium blocks to keep the water at bay, however we had a lot of rain over the weekend and the brand-new driveway has a bunch of seepage at the bottom of it, so clearly some of the water was originating from under where the driveway is. I assume it will stop as all the water stops flowing in a few days, but is there any concern about it over the long term, or that the driveway is actively wet ri

This is driving me crazy, what's the right way to layout tile in a shower? We're planning a couple niches which don't quite nicely fit with the tile sizes, as a result we can't (always) just end them on grout lines. At this point we're fairly confident in stacking the tiles as staggering looks like it may be too crowded with all the grout lines from the niches. I've mocked up 6 options, are any of them just far better?

Stacked: https://imgur.com/a/R2S13Zu

Staggered (In these the nitch is a little lower and I didn't bother to model the sides): https://imgur.com/a/ccKLSap

This is driving me crazy, what's the right way to layout tile in a shower? We're planning a couple niches which don't quite nicely fit with the tile sizes, as a result we can't (always) just end them on grout lines. At this point we're fairly confident in stacking the tiles as staggering looks like it may be too crowded with all the grout lines from the niches. I've mocked up 3 options, are any of them just far better?

https://imgur.com/a/R2S13Zu

Some more mockups I made for staggered tile (In these the nitch is a little lower): https://imgur.com/a/ccKLSap

https://imgur.com/a/VyRcD4L

New Jersey, U.S.A.

We renovated our powder room, which was probably original to the house from the 60s.

It all started when my wife got a new vanity on wayfair which we decided to center the whole design on. She bought a ton of samples for the floor to match the vanity, and eventually I suggested that we make the back wall shiplap as it would be more interesting than a colored wall, which quickly turned into tiling the wall. While we figured this all out the vanity lived in our dining room, which I got a lot of jokes about ("Your dining room has everything including the kitchen sink", "Is that for washing your hands after ribs?").

The biggest question of the

https://i.imgur.com/neyvmtX.jpg (about 1 in outside diameter, relatively flexible)

We've actually had 3 plumbers in and none have seen this before, so hopefully you guys know what's up. This is a house built in 1960s in NJ. We have an unused artesian well on the property with a pipe heading to the house. Managed to break the stupid pipe, dug a big pit to access it to block it off with a screw-down rubber plug for the time being. Our well guy said to use a PE pipe plug, I picked that up however it's too small for the pipe, seems the diameter of the plug matches the outside diameter of the pipe e

https://i.imgur.com/neyvmtX.jpg (about 1 in outside diameter, relatively flexible)

We've actually had 3 plumbers in and none have seen this before, so hopefully you guys know what's up. This is a house built in 1960s in NJ. We have an unused artesian well on the property with a pipe heading to the house. Managed to break the stupid pipe, dug a big pit to access it to block it off with a screw-down rubber plug for the time being. Our well guy said to use a PE pipe plug, I picked that up however it's too small for the pipe, seems the diameter of the plug matches the outside diameter of the pipe e

In my basement, we had a wood paneled room. I ripped off the wood paneling to discover that one wall (an exterior wall) the drywall had become moldy and was visibly wet. I tore out the drywall (and gutted the whole room), and it seems somebody tried to waterproof the wall sometime in the past with a black, slightly tacky substance (I assume it is tar). The rest of the basement has drylock applied to it and it's very successful, we have no water issues there. I assume I need to remove the tar before I apply drylock.

How do I get this wall waterproof?

A rather poor picture; I forgot to take one when I was in there so I shot it through a hole in the wall from the next room: [https://i.imgur.

The well: https://imgur.com/a/Zt3hf2y

Our house used to be on well water, and moved to municipal some time before I bought it. Our backyard has bad puddling, which I figured was due to recent rain, but I keep pumping out the water and it comes right back hours later. I can see water bubbling from around the old well, so I believe that's filling the backyard with water. How do I stop this?

I recently purchased a house and I can see a ton of the wiring is this cloth covered romex, instead of the typical rubber covered stuff. The individual wires inside are rubber covered (and thankfully include a neutral), only the outer cover is cloth. From what I see online, this is “first generation romex”, and I see discussion about replacing it with modern stuff. Considering only the outer jacket is cloth covered, do I really need to replace the wiring with modern Romex? It seems to be in fine condition really.

I'm in the process of purchasing a house, and in the basement I see what looks like the insides of baseboard heaters in the ceiling joists, with no vents to the room above (but otherwise correctly piped up). This is in the basement, and above it is what looks like a converted porch area, now the dining room. My assumption is this is an attempt at under floor radiant heating. Is this something that's common at all? I want to finish the basement so I'll probably have to rip it out before doing that.

This is in the NJ area, and the rest of the house does have hot water baseboard heaters, so this isn't a system just for this floor.

https://imgur.com/v0EQd5x