They're building condos next door to my work, and the exterior wall has split. They've suspended their work til Monday, pending an engineer, and holding the wall up with excavators; yet we're to keep working. Is this safe? What should happen now?

I'm in the UK

I am looking at buying a new construction house and I noticed that there is a wall in the basement that does not have insulation put up top. This wall is running along the garage. Is there any concern amout moisture or mold if it remains uninsulated. It is hard to access because there is a framed wall with drywall a few inches away running along that wall.

Was up in my attic and was looking around and saw all of these scraps of wood used in the most peculiar of places and ways. I've not seen this before anywhere. Locale is oklahoma city area. Should I be worried about this?

Recently took two shelves out from under my stairs. Found out they were buried in the wall. The second picture shows how deep the hole is with the handle of a standard brush. My question is what is the best way to fill these in? Gut instinct says too deep for expanding foam? Previously these holes were solely just filled with wood from the end of the shelf bracket. Happy to provide more info if required.

I’ve just walked through my communal hallway and there was grey paint on the floor and now it looks like this (I had no other way out of the building!) - was it cement or something?

The wall above my girlfriends window has just been slowly shattering itself for years. We tried fixing it with sealant, but it just doesn't work. Sometimes big chunks of straight up concrete/ cement fall off.

Looking for advice from a builder. My en suite bathroom was put in by previous contractors. Recently builders have said that we need to replace the joists. The joists which are in were not pressure treated. The result is that when they stand on the joists and bounce a little, there is some give in the joists. They flex about an inch or so. It is a big and costly job to replace the joists with better ones. At a basic level, does this sound legit?

Hello! Please let me know if there’s another forum this question would be better for and I’ll delete. We are having a ton of pest issues in our 1970s basement. The only area we haven’t closed off is these gaps between our ceiling (I believe it’s called a rim joist but I could be totally wrong) and what appears to be the foundation of our home. Would there be any reason these should be left open?

Attached is a photo of how my driveway/ porch looks in my new construction home I'm closing on soon, and also a photo of what I was shown before beginning construction. As you can see, I was under the impression that the porch and driveway were supposed to be... flush? Even? But they're not. Any ideas of what I can do to make this look better? I think it looks really ugly with the .5 to 1 foot difference in height.

I recently bought a house that was built on cinder blocks. The front porch is completely cemented. I'd like to put a boarder around the 2 other sides and along the back and just pour concrete under the house to fill it in completely. (Parts of the floor in certain areas sag some) I was told I would have to jack up the house.. But no real explanation as to why, or if I could skip that step. Any advice would be helpful. Thank you

My wife and I bought a house recently and discovered that there is a rotted section of the sill plate in the front of the house. I had three different contractor companies come out and two of them say they want to use non-hydraulic jacks to lift that part of the house, a quarter of an inch and replace the damage section. The third contractor states that even that quarter of an inch is too dangerous to jack up and that it would likely cause other damage throughout the house, lifting it. it’s of their position to just leave that section alone since it’s already settled and prevent the damage from occurring in the future the cause of the damage was that the house was improperly, graded and moisture came backwards, rotted out the band board and then got to the sill plate.

Any thoughts?

My house was built 5 years ago and has always had a chemically smell that can get quite strong when kept closed in winter and summer. The design features exposed engineered beams that extend from the exterior through interior of the main space, which the engineer insisted be pressure treated, since they are exposed to the elements outside. I assume that's the source of the smell, since it's less noticeable in the other areas, and I can't think of any other source. The beams are painted with a latex paint. Would painting them with an oil-based paint reduce the off-gassing? Are there any other options for mitigating the problem?

This is a house I'm planning to buy, but I'm not sure how extensive this damage is, since I don't know a ton about houses.

It looks like maybe there was a water leak that damaged the wall and ceiling at some point, and though it looks like it has been "fixed", I'm not totally sure it has been fixed completely, or if there is very extensive damage to still fix.

Can anyone help me get an idea of whether this damage looks minor or major?

(This is just to get an idea of whether the damage might be really bad and not worth investing a lot more time/money, but of course, I will have a professional look at it soon too if it doesn't look like a huge money pit)

Thanks in advance for your help! :)

I want to add a pull up bar to this ceiling but it has stucco on it, how do i find where the 2x4 stretches across it so i can properly anchor it?

Flat roof area above this for context.

Hello askabulider,

I’ve got a question about typical amount of airflow that is normal within the cavity between my first floor ceiling and second floor flooring.

Moved into a new build about two years ago and noticed that the floor in our main bathroom (upstairs) gets extremely cold when it gets windy.

Last winter I grabbed surface temperature strips and a ambient thermometer, and the temperature between the tile surface and the ambient air was almost 10 degrees celcius. (13 vs 22).

To add to this, the powder room on the main level, which sits just below the main bathroom always felt colder.

On a day that was a bit windier then normal, I was using the powder room and noticed what felt like air flow coming from behind the light switch.

Started poking around a bit and ended up cutting a small hole in the ceiling so I could poke my phone up and try to see if I could locate where this draft was coming from. Once I opened it, it felt like I had turned on a fan of cold air.

Not: both rooms are exterior, meaning they are on outside walls.

Hope someone can shed some light on what the typical air flow is like between ceiling and floor cavities….

Should I be concerned about this notch in my residential 2x10 floor joist? Electrician cut it to run new wire.

I lost the extra screws for an old crib we are using and I need to order some more of these.

I've figured out that these are tek screws. I already ordered the wrong size once.

The screw is about 3/4" long, uses a 5/16" wrench, and the diameter of the screw is 3/16" wide.

Please give me a link or some text to search to find this screw. Thanks