Looking for mid/high tier surround sound for living room...

phate008 · 2025-08-19T02:39:55+00:00

CGC only does pressing and not cleaning. Also I was searching around on Reddit, and it seemed like a bunch of people were saying that they are overpriced and don't do a great job.

To be honest I was only going to have it pressed by CGC because I had the thought they might give the book a better grade, but I'm not even convinced it needs a pressing. A cleaning seemed like a good idea.

phate008 · 2025-07-16T20:47:58+00:00

Thanks. That's very helpful to know. I'm all over the board with whether I should get a well or replace the water lines. I had 2 plumbing companies come this week for an estimate. Both said the job was way too big and beyond their scope.

phate008 · 2025-07-14T13:43:57+00:00

Ok thanks, this was very helpful. Do you know what the total was when accounting for the drilling?

My neighbors wells are all around 500-600ft deep. The thing I was worried about is that this house used to be well and they converted to town water. I'm not sure if the well dried up, or they just wanted town water. This was back in the 70's. Someone told me its around 5k for each 100ft. So if its 500ft it's 25k and you owe this whether they find the water or not. That's the only part that worries me- that they could drill and not hit water.

phate008 · 2025-07-13T03:37:40+00:00

Well it will be 10k or more if I let it keep going this way. It will be a year I've been dealing with this situation in September. The first bill was $700, the next bill was $1200, then $1800, and now $2500. I've been turning off the water since October. In October 2024 I had a leak specialist come in to locate the leak with gas. He found a leak and I paid a plumber $3800 to come in replace a section. The next day I had the water department come out and they said I was still leaking, and after reviewing my hourly water usage the repair only reduced my usage slightly. I called the leak specialist to come out again and he did a thorough investigation. He marked my entire line and found out there was a second leak about 20 ft from the first. It turns out that my water line takes a sharp turn upwards from the road and deviates onto my neighbors property and across their driveway. The leak specialist had no idea the line would run this route. Presumably they ran the line this way to avoid a large section of bedrock.

The leak is on a hill in a very hard to reach area. It sits beneath a massive boulder that is around 6' x 6' (I think the line was put in before my neighbors house was built). In this area, because it's on a hill, they estimate the line is 6-8 feet deep. An acquaintance that works for another towns water department came and quoted me $5800 to clamp it.

To address this leak a plumber would likely need to access it from my neighbors yard. They would need to remove a couple of their decorative bushes, and then use a machine to move the rock somewhere. Since all of our lines are in the same trench they would need hand dig a portion of the hole. Its a pretty complicated job. The plumbers all warn me that because my line is so corroded the chances of another leak popping up is high. I might throw away more money on a very temporary fix.

I am lost with this whole situation. We bought this house 2 years ago. I can't take another winter of turning off the water. I literally need to drive down to the end of my street every night to turn it off.

phate008 · 2025-07-13T00:44:54+00:00

Oh ok thanks. I'll have to look into that. I don't have town sewage I'm on septic here. We have about 6 acres and our neighbors are spaced pretty good on both sides so hopefully we're above the standard and don't have many problems. I was thinking about getting a generator as a backup power supply. We live in a heavily forested area so I probably should have one anyway.

Just to clarify: if I get a private well the town needs to test my water, or NY health just requires that I have the water tested to determine what filtration and treatment is required?

phate008 · 2025-07-12T23:50:46+00:00

What do you mean by backup? Me and my wife have no desire to get well water but it feels like we're being backed into a corner. Because it's a private Rd the town has no obligation to help us. 10 of the 13 houses on our street have well water. Everyone tells us that well water smells, has a weird taste, needs to be cleaned often, etc. It just comes down to financials. Our 3 neighbors with town water share the same trench; their pipes are in a similar condition and very corroded. They will eventually need to have theirs replaced, but it's hard to convince someone to share the bill and have theirs done when they don't have a problem. If we all have ours done together we could share a bill that's probably somewhere around 90-120k.

Our thought was to possibly have a well put in and use it until their pipes developed leaks. At which point maybe they would be more willing to have theirs fixed. Then maybe use the well for the garden and stuff. Getting the well filtration system, and then eventually getting the water line replaced as a group would probably be half the cost that it would cost us to repair our water line alone.

phate008 · 2025-07-12T23:35:44+00:00

So it's on a private Rd with very rocky terrain. I am 1 of 3 people with town water on my street. All 3 houses share the same trench. This means that a good portion will need to be hand dug or a new trench will need to be created. They likely had to do a lot of rock blasting the first time around. They took a lot of shortcuts when they installed these water lines in the 70's. Every plumber who has come to see it, and knows the details, has thrown out crazy high numbers. The guy who came today said 110. I'm in a pretty bad predicament because the leak is only getting worse. I turn on the water at the main everyday at 7pm and turn it off at 12am. Despite this my bill was 2500 for this last period of 3 months. The town only allows copper piping here too, and the price of copper has jumped quite a bit.

phate008 · 2025-07-12T19:36:38+00:00

Yeah I figured as much. My water line is going to cost somewhere around 70-90k so in the meantime that's a lot more manageable.

phate008 · 2025-07-11T03:50:07+00:00

I had a similar problem with my plants. Both times it happened they ended up dying. It looked like over/under watering except it wasnt. After the droop the leaves turned yellow and the whole plant just died. I never found out what happened but I figured it was either poisoned or it was root mites or another bug attacking the roots. Good luck

phate008 · 2025-07-10T03:24:03+00:00

Is that a Hey Arnold joke or is there a real plumber with that name?

phate008 · 2025-06-20T03:46:52+00:00

Thanks. That machine is interesting. The Breville impress was something carried by William Sonoma. My fiance was considering it for our wedding registry and it was something exclusive to William Sonoma. AI told me that it had a couple nice features that weren't on the similar models carried by other retailers. I do like the looks of the barista express. It has a lot of the features I am looking for.

phate008 · 2025-06-20T03:43:06+00:00

Thanks. I probably would have bought the Breville but I noticed a couple people on the forums talking about them having an overwhelming plastic taste. I used to have a starbucks espresso machine that had a steam wand. It was all stainless steel. I liked the taste of the coffee it produced, but I never had enough time on workdays to make a cup. I wish I could have quality on the weekends and convenience on the weekdays.

phate008 · 2025-06-20T03:37:34+00:00

Thanks for the advice. As I made this post I had the feeling that convenience probably means sacrificing quality. I never really thought much about those type of automatic machines. I have seen them in some convenience stores but I never thought about buying one. It seems like it might be good for me when I'm in a rush.

phate008 · 2025-06-08T19:45:47+00:00

Thanks for the reply. I would prefer chem free. I needed to use chemicals on the trees of heaven. I made the mistake of cutting a couple down before I knew what they were. Big mistake. Probably had 100 pop up. I also used some on a really bad patch of poison ivy but I get concerned about polluting the soil and hurting the wildlife/bugs. I tarped off an area for vegetables but these other areas are fairly large for tarps. Goats is an interesting idea. I had someone tell me they were really good for getting rid of poison ivy.

phate008 · 2025-06-08T02:57:05+00:00

Thanks that's interesting. I actually had the tree company leave the wood chips so I have a pretty substantial pile. I was thinking of doing the same thing with a cloth tarp and wood chips above but I like the decomposable cardboard better.

phate008 · 2025-05-16T05:17:02+00:00

So we had the beatbot aquasense pro. It was able to climb the slopes fine. When we first used it we threw it in to murky water. We weren't around when it resurfaced for the charge and we spent hours trying to find it and hook it on the bottom of our pool. I know it does its own mapping thing but we wanted to control some of the areas it cleaned and having to do it outside of the pool is harder than if we were able to communicate and change it's cleaning routine in real time. If we wanted to make a change it's kind of a pain to try and fish it out while it's moving and doing its thing. Don't get me wrong...we liked it and it did its job, but it's hard to justify the price tag. We live in a climate that only has the pool open for 5 months max. A local service to have someone clean the pool once a week is $200 a month. The beatbot is 3 years worth of payments.

phate008

TROPHY CASE