Don’t Tell The Cable Company About This One!

The Motorola 484095-001-00 Signal Booster.

OK, the debate goes on about what is better Cable or Satellite? I can tell you this, I have had both and even though I now have cable, I know some of you are laughing about right now, I truly believe that Satellite is the better of the two systems.

But there is one big difference, at least with the cable company I am with, and that is you get so much more for the money you spend. Along with this you also can get more headaches, just ask my wife. I tend to overlook the pixel break up of the picture for those glorious moments when the HD picture puts it’s crystal clear images on my HDTV.

Wait!, you say, you can get HDTV with the Satellite companies too. I know but they want too much money for their HD DVR and then the program charges are added on top of the standard digital program charges and so on.

I am not kidding you, with what my cable company offered me, I just could not refuse.

Now for the problems. First there is the signal. I don’t care what they say, you are sharing a large cable with other people who are using that same cable. Granted it is a large cable, but after some time things happen to that cable an that starts the phones ringing at the cable company.

Getting cable again was the last thing on my mind until they came to my door and enticed me with the price and the possibility of HDTV. Let me repeat that, HDTV. I bought the TV about a year ago just in case I could afford the programming some day and that day came the moment the salesman came to my door. He sure gave me all the right answers to all my questions. I was hooked, yes I took the bait and reeled in the HDTV.

Here is what I did not know. The signal would be a bit weak. I was watching House for the first time in HDTV with Dolby Digital sound when I got my first glimpse of PIXEL BREAKUP. This is when you see the picture breaking up a little and the audio sounding a bit strange. This of course started the calls to the cable company.

The first guy comes out , then the second guy and then the third guy. Well the third buy got it right. He went out to the main cable box where the main cable comes into my house and connected a new cable from the box to my HDTV in my living room. He ran it over my yard, into my front door and then into the back of the HD cable box which connected to my TV by way of component video and digital audio cables and guess what? I still had the problem.

The final verdict, the main underground cable coming up to the box which feeds my house has a break or breaks somewhere along the line. The third guy told me he would turn in the work order and someone would locate the break and get it fixed. In the meantime he was going to put an amplifier where the line come into my house to boost the signal.

All said and done he left and my picture was a little better but except for the HD channels, the standard digital channels just looked weak and washed out. This began my search for a solution until they can fix the real problem.

I found it! I checked some blog sites and low and behold, the Motorola 484095-001-00 Signal Booster was born. At least for me. I read several reviews of this product and determined that in most of the cases it worked great. I ordered it from off of www.Amazon.com and it came from www.beachaudio.com for the very reasonable price of less then $50.00 shipped to my door.

I know by now you are either totally bored out of your minds or anxiously waiting to find out how it worked for me. The answer is, yes! It turned those washed out stations I was talking about into very pleasant to view channels. Nothing like HD, but closer to the digital signal I was getting from the satellite system I had.

So after all this, nearly three months later the cable company is finally replacing all the main underground lines on our street. I guess I was not the only one who had this problem. I suspect in a couple of days I will finally get the signal strength that will accomplish two very important things. The first is my wife will have a smile on her face again when watching House and the second is my picture quality will be great! At least that is what I expect to happen.

Go to Amazon and check this thing out. Read all the reviews. It just might be what you need to get a better picture.

Water Problems? Get Xypex!

Okay here’s the deal. Everyone has a water problem in their house at one time or another. I’ve seen brand-new houses that have moisture coming through the block walls in their basements.

Of course there can be a number of reasons for this and you’ll find the there are a number of fixes for these problems. It is amazing how many suggestions you will get from people when you tell them you have a water problem in your basement.

Being a contractor and running into these problems during my many years in the construction business, I have looked and researched many products over the years. I really enjoy trying to find the so-called needle in the haystack, that is a product or device or anything out there that can solve a problem that seems to be almost unsolvable.

This brings me to a rather large and addition we put on to an existing house in a fairly high classed neighborhood. After we added on to the side of this existing house, there was an area of concrete floor in a screened in porch, that was right up against our new in addition, in which there was a long history of standing water on the floor whenever the wind blew rain through the screens.

Prior to building the new addition this problem was more of a nuisance than anything else. They would have to sweep the water out through the door of the porch and that would pretty much be the end of it.

Now with a new addition attached whenever it rained hard enough for there to be standing water inside the porch, it settled up against the new wall of the addition and ran down through the edge of the concrete into a storage closet in the basement of our new and addition.

So the trials began. We tried everything out there. Filling it with every type of patch from concrete itself to Drylock and other similar products, nothing seemed to work. This not only became very aggravating for us but it was also causing us problems with the homeowner. The homeowner told us we needed to get this problem fixed.

So that caused me to go into my searching mode. It’s kind of like going metal detecting. If you own a metal detector then you know what I’m talking about. You go out looking, trying to find something and hoping that what you come up with will be of great value.

Unfortunately most of the time you find pennies, pull tabs, and other metal objects of no value. But then, if you search long enough, you find that one coin that is really worth something. I once found a twenty dollar bill lying on the ground, but that is another story.

So in all my searching I discovered a product that was very difficult to find but by using some of my resources on the Internet I came across this new product called Xypex. And now here is a commercial for Xypex.

Xypex Patch’n Plug is formulated as a crystalline, fast setting none shrink, high bond strength, hydraulic cement compound for concrete repairs. It stops flowing water in seconds and is used to seal cracks, fill tie-holes and other defects in concrete.

I think the most important words in this description are “stops flowing water in seconds”! That is exactly what this did when we applied it to the edge of the concrete floor that was right up against our new addition.

What makes this product so different than everything else that’s out there is that it actually has a chemical reaction that takes place at the concrete surface or immediately adjacent areas and this reaction continues deep into the concrete structure. In their independent testing they measured the depth of penetration into a cast in place concrete block at 12 inches.

The next question arises how long will this product last? The answer is it is permanent. It will not deteriorate under normal conditions and is resistant to aggressive chemicals.

This company has a wide array of products that you got to check out. One of the most useful products is there Xypex Concentrate. It comes as a dry powder that you mix with water and apply to a surface with a heavy brush. We applied twice to concrete block walls that had dampness and guess what? The dampness went away and did not come back.

The website will give you all the information you need for applying this and all their line fo products.

This is why I chose this to be the product of the month for July. It is truly an amazing product.

To find out more about Xypex and find out where you can get it, go to www.xypex.com.

Since I’ve been in the building business practically all of my life, I’ve decided I want to share some of the techniques and methods that I have accumulated that helped me to simplify my building business. When I say, simplify I mean using little tricks that I’ve picked up over the years to make life a lot easier when doing any type of building project.

So the purpose of this, how do I section is for you to ask me how to go about doing something whether it be a repair or part of a remodeling project that you’re doing yourself, that just might help you get things done more smoothly and in less time and hopefully helping you to save money in the process.

How do I remove my existing vinyl floor and underlayment and what is the easiest way to do it?

I recently had a neighbor come up to me to tell me that he was having a new tile floor put into his kitchen. Since it was one of the houses that we built several years ago he thought that I would know how he should go about removing the existing vinyl floors.

He told me that there were two layers of vinyl that had been put down. When we built the house, we put down a layer of quarter inch luan underlayment and on top of that mastic or glue and the vinyl floor itself.

Later another owner of a home, had installed another layer of luan underlayment put down over of the existing vinyl floor and then installed a new vinyl floor over to luan underlayment.

So now they have two layers of vinyl flooring and to layers of luan underlayment that has to be removed. I asked my neighbor how he was going to go about doing this and he told me that he was going to start at one end and try to peel up the vinyl floor and roll it up and remove it.

Of course having run into this situation many times in my years of business in the building industry, I told him there was a much simpler way to accomplish this. Knowing the house, I recalled there was a step down form the kitchen into the family room.

There was a metal bull nosing that had been installed along the edge of the step that covered over the edge of the vinyl flooring and underlayment. I told him to remove the metal and then look at the edge of the floor surfaces that would be revealed once the metal was removed.

So the first step that one would take in preparation of taking up the old flooring would be to get a measuring tape and measure the thickness of the layers of underlayment and vinyl flooring. In this case each layer of underlayment would be one quarter of an inch thick and the vinyl about 1/8 of an inch each. This would make the total thickness about three quarters of an inch.

The next step would be to take a circular saw and set the blade to the thickness of the layers which we just concluded was three quarters of an inch. In this case you would take your saw and start cutting from the edge of the revealed layers and gradually lower the saw blade of a circular saw into the floor holding it firmly.

It would be best to use some type of a carbide tip saw blade that would be capable of cutting through the thin wire staples that were used to attach the quarter-inch luan underlayment. After lowering the blade into the floor the idea would be to cut out small sections in the floor anywhere from 1 foot square to 3 feet square.

After cutting the first square you can take a pry bar and a hammer and get the pry bar to go under the edge of one side of the square and work with it until you can pry this entire square up.

After this you can continue to cut squares next to the one you just cut and then using either the pry bar or even better a floor scraper you can continue to pop up the squares until the entire floor is removed. The nice thing about this is that all the layers come up at one time along with most of the staples and you can easily throw them into a dumpster.

Another question that comes up when removing floors with this method is, what do you do around the cabinets?

This will probably be the most difficult part of removing the floors. In most cases the first layer of underlayment was put down prior to the installation of the cabinets. This means that the cabinets are resting on that first layer of underlayment.

So unless you are going to replace the cabinets, you have to find a way to remove the underlayment that is around the base of the cabinets.

What I do is take the reciprocating saw, also known as the sawsall, and using an all-purpose medium length saw blade, I gradually lower the blade with the saw running, down until the tip of the blade hits the floor that’s right along the edge of the cabinet base and while cutting I pull the saw slowly along the edge.

The trickiest part of doing this is that you have to hold the saw on an angle when cutting under the toe kicks of the cabinets. I do this until I have gone around the edges of the entire base cabinets.

Once you’ve done this just pop up the remaining pieces and discard them. To continue the prep work for the new tile floor you will need to remove or pound down any remaining staples or pieces of staples that are in the subfloor. Now the floor will be ready for a layer of cement board underlayment and of course the new tile.

The nice thing about doing it this way is that you get back down to the original subfloor and after you install the cement board and tile, the dishwasher will still fit under the counter and over the floor and you will still have most of the toe kick showing on your base cabinets.

I’m not saying that this is a really easy job to do, but it is the most efficient, timesaving method, and if you’re doing it yourself, it will save you money.

Believe Me It’s Out There

There is nothing more frustrating than being told that something can’t be done or that the product you’re looking for is just not available.

As a builder I have been in situations several times in which a supplier will tell me that a particular product or style or color off a product is not available. I have even been told that the manufacturer does not make a particular item.

Why do they sometimes make it so hard to find that special building product?

Of course, it takes a lot of research to find out if what they are telling you is true or not. Most people will walk away from the situations and except what they are told as been true. And it may be in the mind of the salesperson who told you that a particular item was not available, that he believes it to be true.

To give you an example, a couple of years ago we built the Shaker style house and put in Andersen Windows. Our customer was told by our salesman from our local supplier that he could not get screens the same color as the interior of the Windows. He was told that the screens only come in the colors that match the exterior of the Windows. As a matter of fact that’s all that it showed in the books that the supplier had.

It took a little time, some research, and finally reaching the right person after going directly to Anderson Windows and we found out that they did make the screens to match the interior of the window.

Lesson learned, do not always believe what someone tells you without researching it first.

Now for the good news. If you run into a problem like this, let me know and I can search my vast resources and get you and answer. It can be about any subject related to building including things such as appliances or home theater products. Just let me know and I will do my best to get you results.

Sorry this contest has ended.

Welcome to LevelAdvice.com! 

My name is Rick and I am the owner of Maselli Construction Co., Inc.  I have been in the building business most of my life.  My dad started the business 55 years ago and at age 86, he still has an active part today.

I decided to start this blog to offer advice and help solve problems in all areas of residential building and remodeling.  I have learned so much over the years and thought this would be a great way to share what I have learned with others.

So be sure to check out all the categories and let me know what you would like me to add.  Also,  be sure to check out my companies website at www.maselliconstruction.com.

There is a buzz that is starting about a website that is due to launch this fall,  Showroom411.com. I can’t tell you too much about it except to say that if you are a contractor or if you are someone who is going to hire a contractor,  this site will be an invaluable place to go for information and communication in a way never before possible.  I will let you know more about it as we get closer to it’s launch date.

Happy Blogging,

Rick Maselli