Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Hot Water Tanks - Pick The Right One - Home Improvements

How many times have you run out of hot water? It can be pretty frustrating if it happens while you are in the middle of a shower, doing the dishes or trying to get all your laundry done. You just might need a larger hot water tank to meet the needs of your family and your family's lifestyle. Here are a few guidelines to help you choose the right sized hot water tank...

Friday, January 23, 2015

How To Fix A Leaking Toilet Bowl In A Few Easy Steps

Is your toilet leaking at the base again? You're in luck! This article features a complete DIY guide on how to fix a leaking toilet bowl. In just a few easy steps, you'll put your fixture back to good condition again!

Monday, January 19, 2015

Dependable Plumbers in Vancouver

Mr Rooter Plumbing of Vancouver are a few of the best in their field, and definitely a great selection if you need plumbing work performed in your house. Fact is though, you can probably save yourself a lot of cash if you take a couple of preventative measures once a year or so. The following post was taken from their Canadian web site where you can discover a great deal of pointers on plumbing related matters.

If you have done everything you can about examining the plumbing in your home and you still require assistance, then call Mr. Rooter at 604-433-5555. if you live in the Vancouver area or any of the surrounding towns. They cover North and West Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster, Richmond, The Tri-Cities, Surrey, and all points in between. They even reach Horse Shoe Bay.

Preventative Steps to Avoid a Plumbing Disaster

In some cases a pipe in your house will spring a leak. If the leak is significant, turn off the water main right away, either at the shutoff valve or the main shutoff valve. You'll most likely need to change the  area of pipe. If your experience working with pipes is limited, you'll probably wish to call in a plumbing contractor to do the job. If the leak is small, the solution is to change the pipe, but here are a couple of short-term options until you have time for a proper replacement.

These Methods Only Work for Minor Leaks

1. Clamps should stop most leaks for a number of months if they're used with a strong rubber blanket. It's a good idea to buy a sheet of rubber, as well as some clamps sized to fit your pipes. You can get these items at a hardware shop and keep them on hand just for this purpose.
2. A sleeve clamp that fits the pipes diameter works best. Wrap a rubber blanket over the leaking area, then screw the clamp down over the blanket.
3. An adjustable hose clamp used with a rubber blanket stops a pinhole leak.
4. If absolutely nothing else is at hand, use a C-clamp, a small block of wood and a rubber blanket.
5. In a pinch, try using epoxy putty around a joint where a clamp won't work. The pipe needs to be dry for the putty to adhere. Shut off the water supply to the area and leave the water off till the putty sets.
6. If you don't have a clamp or putty, you can still stop a small leakage temporarily by plugging it with a pencil point.

Vancouver home owners requiring home service have a couple hundred choices when it pertains to hiring a Vancouver plumbing expert. An individual suggestion is the best naturally, and second best would be online testimonials. So here is another tip for finding a plumbing contractor you can rely on.

When you find a company that has a website that seems to meet your needs, do a little research on the company name and add the word "reviews" to the name. You should find at least two or three reviews that will help give you an idea of the level of service to expect.

If you have a plumbing emergency right now and need immediate assistant call Mr. Rooter in Vancouver at 604-433-5555. They do good work.

Frozen or Busted Pipes

In subzero temperatures, frozen or busted pipes can wreak havoc on your household and wallet. Here are a few tips on how to identify if you have a problem, and what to do if you notice your plumbing system is frozen.

NIST Sphere Format

I downloaded the TEDLIUM speech corpus last night, and this afternoon I poked around in it and said grr. It uses a NIST Sphere format which is basically a plain-text header followed by encoded samples... it's a WAV file, but with far fewer useful tools. Oh well, thinks I, I'll just transcode the files into Opus at a very low bandwidth and with some downsampling so that I'm not taking up all of my disk... and then opus-in-gstreamer decided to segfault every time I tried to send it the data. I'm sure it's just missing something, but no idea what at the moment.

In the end I just wound up transcoding to WAV files to make it easy to pull the files into gstreamer environments, which is where the final voice dictation will be happening, after all. Not sure that's worthwhile unless I do some down-sampling, but I was hoping to use Opus and/or Speex to pre-filter the audio (yes, I know, do it myself). It would be really interesting to use the internal model of Opus or Speex as the inputs to the neural network.

Not going to have time to play with any of that for a while, though, as I need to get work done.

Friday, January 16, 2015

Handy DIY Plumbing Tips For Property Owners

This is going to be one of the best resources available for you to get more information about plumbing. There are a great deal of resources offered both on and offline, nevertheless we have actually gathered the very best details in this short article and sorted out the incorrect recommendations that you might find elsewhere.

If you have an on demand water heater in your house and it is over ten years old, you should take a look at changing it. Hot water heating systems are prone to corrosion on the bottom. This can lead to leaking and flooding whatever space it is in. Then not only will you have to replace it, but you'll need to repair any damage triggered by the leak.

Regular Maintenance at Home is Time Well Spent

When it comes to plumbing an ounce of prevention is the best thing to prevent things from going crazy. In order to avoid blocking prevent doing things that would obstruct drains. Do not pour oil down the kitchen sink, and set up hair catching filters in all your bath tubs. This will prevent a great deal of unneeded clogs.

Inspect your toilet for leaks. When a month, put a few drops of food coloring in the toilet tank. After half an hour, inspect the toilet bowl. If the water is a little colored, the tank is leaking. You can fix the leakage by changing the stopper in the tank. People squander water through leaking tanks, without even knowing it.

When you are using your disposal unit you should run cold water not hot water. You ought to run the cold water as long as the motor to the disposal is running. Prevent overwhelming your disposal. Things like corn husks, onion skins, celery and other high fiber foods could clog it.

Find a Professional

If you're linking a new gas device in your house you absolutely need to have the right port to include it to your gas plumbing. Universal connection kits are offered in the house enhancement stores which will make the connection in between your flexible hose and the iron supply pipeline tight and safe.

If you are having any sort of troubles with your water line or plumbing in general then you will certainly want to shut off your water supply. One of the most typical mistakes that individuals make is to leave their water running while they are attempting to take care of things and this results in bigger issues.

Check Your Home For Problems

In conclusion, it is essential that you understand how to take care of plumbing, but it is more vital that you get your data from a reliable source. Use the recommendations offered right here and you will certainly be happy that you made the effort to do so.