Trying to double check my plan and most french drain content is just 1-2 feet in the ground. I'm looking for in depth content at least 4ft down in areas with frost lines. Covering the mesh, rocks, sump basin, etc. Appreciate any help.

Edit:

I'm putting this around my in ground pool to stop the liner from floating. It's a 200ft run so I'll be starting around 4ft and ending at 5ft. I have a 24in x 8ft double walled pipe for my sump basin.

I need to make a 37.5mm diameter hole though about 100mm of wood (for a metal pipe of that diameter to sit snugly into). My best idea at the moment is that I purchase an adjustable spade bit and borrow a friends drill press. I'm a beginner so I'm wondering if there are any other ways to do this, like use a 36mm bit and sand away the rest or something. No one I know has an adjustable spade bit and the guy at the hardware store made me feel stupid for asking for one, definitely going to have to buy one from overseas (I'm from a small country). Maybe there is a way to do this with more accessible tools, or is this the only way?

As a homeowner I sometimes need to repair an inch or so of caulk. Or plug a hole where caulk is the correct material to use. I hate buying a three of five oz tube only to throw most of it away. I can hot glue the tip, but it never lasts as long as factory sealed.

Amazon doesn’t have an answer.

I’m looking to hang a 55” tv weighing 10kg (22lbs) on my wall with a full motion TV bracket. I know I have to mount it to the studs, but I’m not sure whether my house has metal or timber studs. I was thinking of drilling some plywood into the studs, and then mount the bracket to the plywood, but I don’t know what to do if my house has metal studs. I’m assuming I won’t be able to mount it if they’re metal? I can’t really find a straight answer on google, so I’m hoping someone can help me here. 😅

It’s my teammates and I first time building a DIY rov machine for a STEM competition.

It moves too slow, and sinks to the bottom of a 12 ft pool.

In order to win, your ROV machine must move fast and go through obstacles. Any advice?

Hi, I was wondering if you think there would be any benefit adding a thin layer of insulation behind sheet cladding in my bedroom.
I have clad before directly onto internal walls. Just thinking that as my bedroom walls are outside walls it might be worth it. Just that thin insulation like the silver stuff you put behind radiators. Crazy?

Removed an existing pedestal sink (which sucked), and left with this stainless drainpipe with a fairly corroded ring:
https://i.imgur.com/hOu8wlm.png

Rather than buying a new stainless p-trap, can I just cut off the angle, leave a horizontal stainless pipe from the wall, and fernco this to a regular PVC p-trap, or is that a terrible idea? I really don't feel like taking the wall apart and digging to find whatever this attaches to. Or - if that sucks, is there a better way to replace just that screw collar?

My house was a flip, and one of the things the previous owners/flippers did was install Simonton replacement windows in most of the rooms in the house. While the windows are okay, the installation job was sub par, and we have had problems from the beginning with drafts and general heat loss in the winter.

Recently I have been trying to solve the issue by removing the interior trim and using spray foam insulation around the rough opening and the window frame. While that has helped, I still notice that there is some cold air still permeating from around the trim. I understand windows in general are responsible for some heat loss, but the windows are double pane, and rated quite highly for energy efficiency.

I wanted to know if there was another step I could be taking to make the windows more "sealed" I thought of also using flashing tape, or weather sealing tape on the inside after the foam, but from what I found online, the flashing tape shouldn't be used inside, and the weather sealing tape is generally a temporary fix applied directly onto the trim itself.

Any help would be appreciated!

We're on septic. Is it best to seal the drain after the tub is removed, or should we put a drain cover over the existing drain to preserve it?

We're putting down new LVP in the bathroom after the tub is removed, if that's useful information to anyone.

My sister's house has a mouse problem. It's a double wide on a slab with cinder block skirting. The main area where I think they're probably getting in is a gap between the top of the block and the bottom of the walls underneath the vinyl siding, especially in the corners but probably under the siding itself because there is no starter strip holding it tight.

My thought is to go around the whole perimeter and fill that gap with expanding foam, then somehow secure the bottom of the siding to the block and then fill the bottoms of the corner trim pieces with steel wool + foam.
Is this a good approach or is there a better way to do it? Also what's a good way to secure the bottom of the siding? Anything else I might be missing?

Been looking around and trying to build a stable truck camper with as little overhead cost as possible. Current two ideas 1. PVC pipe frame with schedule 80 PVC roughly 4 U pole sections joined via a 40 degree elbow and bolted in for support to create a U or ^ shape roof or something relatively close so water can easily runoff. This frame will then be covered with some big duck rinotuff canvas or a thick durable canvas of the like. 2. Other option would be 3 sections of aluminum threaded piping to make a ^ shaped roof same canvas situation. Main goals 1. Sturdy enough for rain/snow and decent wind will be camping in mountain areas. 2. Easy takedown, want something that i can breakdown. 3. Cost effective, trying to keep budget under 400. Thanks for ur help ya’ll

Hi all,

I’m trying to hang a fairly heavy pendant lamp from my kitchen ceiling. I used a stud finder to locate a joist and drilled a hole, but after about 5 cm I hit something hard that seemed metallic. Not wanting to risk hitting a pipe or wire, I stopped and tried a second spot further away. Same result. I tried a third spot, well away from the first two and not even under the stud, and hit the same thing again.

I’ve drilled into ceilings in other parts of the house with no problem, so this seems specific to the kitchen.

I suspect the previous owners redid the ceiling, since there are recessed lights in it (see photo). Could they have installed a metal sheet or some kind of metal backing across the whole ceiling for the light fixtures? Or is it something else, like a metal grid, fire-rated board, or ductwork?

Any ideas on what this could be, and how I can safely anchor a heavy fixture here? Thanks

I need to redo this window caulk, I think it's original to the house and windows from 1996. I have lots of holes around and I've noticed bugs getting inside the windows (let alone air or water).

I'm planning to remove and replace the failing caulk around my exterior windows and have a few questions:

1. Caulk color: Is there any downside to using one color everywhere? Currently, the sides are brown, while the top near the steel lintels is gray/taupe. I'm considering sandstone/taupe all the way around to complement the brick mortar and white window frames. Open to suggestions!

2. Removal and prep: What's the best way to remove the old caulk and prepare the surfaces? Is cutting it out with a knife good, or is there more to it where it really need to be bare? Would an multitool be too aggressive?

3. Caulk recommendation: What brand and type of exterior caulk would you recommend for durability and ease of use. OSI Quad Max? Other?

https://imgur.com/a/JfEFoui

I bought a 2x4x 1/2” piece of OSB at HD. Planning to put it on a table base for my art studio. Nothing heavy just a table to take pics and drop materials. Should I be concerned about the off gassing?

Processing img x1dxg3vmnnxh1...

I tried opening it to 45 degrees and lifting it, but it wouldn't budge. I've seen someone I know do this with unbelievably heavy security steel doors, so does that mean I'm just not strong enough?

Right so I’ve been doing some DIY installing a new recessed light into my closet, however after marking and drilling I’ve came to an issue, above the cellings plaster it’s all wood, I drilled deeper, more wood it’s layers of it, I have neighbors above but I’m confused how there’s no void above my closest, how would I install this recessed light still?

I’ve searched online but it’s not the exact same scenario as mine as there’s is usually wood joists, it seems my entire closet roof is wood

Advice on mounting a small pegboard above my doorframe (metal studs?)

Hi y’all, first time doing a mounting DIY like this, so I want to plan it properly before I drill anything.

I’m trying to mount a small vertical pegboard (about 1 ft tall by 0.5 ft wide, stocky, around 5 kg) on the wall above my doorframe so I can do hangs and pull-ups.

I found out a bit late that our building probably uses metal studs instead of wood. We’re in NJ, it’s a newer building, and I’m guessing steel for fire and flood reasons. I only have a basic stud finder, so I may drill a tiny pilot hole in the closet side to confirm.

The plan: mount a wooden board across the two studs I found above the door (photo attached), then bolt the pegboard into the board so the load spreads across the board and into the studs instead of sitting on one point. I’d use steel-stud screws into the studs, with toggle bolts as a backup.

Questions:

1. Is this enough to hold my weight? I’m around 200 lbs, and I know pull-ups load the mount more than body weight alone. My main worry is that two thin metal studs can warp or let the screws pull out. If it’s not enough, my fallback ideas are:
   • extending the board to also catch the studs on either side of the door frame (4 studs total), or
   • skipping the wall mount and going with a doorway or freestanding bar instead.
2. How worried should I be about hitting wiring or plumbing? The other side of the wall is just a closet, but beyond that there’s a bathroom, and there’s a temperature/washer control panel to the left of the door. I’d like to avoid drilling into something I shouldn’t.

Any experience with mounting heavy things into steel studs is welcome. Thanks!

Current expected layout:
https://imgur.com/a/JgC8EB3

Link to pegboard: https://shop.antworks.at/en/products/ant-hill-23-pegboard?srsltid=AYCX9vLwni_qc2v95zSaqJDror580BZ76nkwsphv7sM8QP9WiG5f5ULQ

I’m a teacher interested in doing pen turning with my class, however I don’t have the budget to purchase a bunch of pen kits (like the components that you add after turning the wood from the blanks). I do however have 3D printers, curious if anyone out there has ever 3D printed pen kits before to add to the wooden pieces they’ve turned out on the lathe, before I try to design something myself. It would be much easier to print a bunch of pieces for my class than to try to get kits. I’m interested in making pens like the slimline 7mm on William Wood-write, although any style of pen I could make would be a fun project!

I wanted the Star Trek computer in my house, so I built one.

Meet Ada, my always-available household AI, and BM-01, the physical “brain module” I just finished building for her.

This started a few months ago with a pretty simple idea:

Could I build something that feels less like Alexa and more like the computer from Star Trek?

Not just “turn on the lights.”

I wanted to walk into the room, say “Hey Ada,” have a normal conversation, interrupt her naturally, have her remember things, use tools, control the house, recognize the people who live here, survive reboots without babysitting, and generally feel like a computer that is part of the house rather than an app I'm opening.

It got a little out of hand.

https://ibb.co/album/SRMpN7

What Ada is now

Ada runs continuously on a dedicated Lenovo ThinkCentre M720q Tiny running Windows.

The current system includes:

• GPT-Live for realtime voice conversation
• ReSpeaker XVF3800 four-microphone array
• dedicated USB speaker
• local “Hey Ada” wake-word detection
• separate local “Red Alert” detection
• persistent household memory and separate lore memory
• tool/function calling
• direct local WiZ lighting control
• Samsung TV control
• weather, time, search, diagnostics, etc.
• speaker recognition with a conservative “Unknown” fallback
• Red Alert / All Clear household emergency states
• a Flight Data Recorder for diagnostic events
• remote administration over a private connection
• Android controls
• automatic startup/recovery after reboot
• and now BM-01, a physical ESP32-based telemetry/diagnostic computer panel

Ada isn't a commercial product and this isn't a company.

It's basically one guy slowly discovering how many engineering problems are hiding inside the sentence:

“I want the Star Trek computer in my living room.”

The AI turned out not to be the hardest part

One of the biggest things I've learned is that getting an AI model to talk is relatively easy.

Making the whole system pleasant enough to actually live with is much harder.

Audio alone became an absurd rabbit hole.

Ada has to hear someone across a room, ignore normal household noise, deal with a television playing nearby, hear a person while she's speaking, know when she's being interrupted, and not wake up every time somebody on TV says something vaguely resembling “Hey Ada.”

At one point I discovered that the ReSpeaker XVF3800 exposes separate processed USB audio channels and Ada wasn't explicitly using its dedicated ASR channel.

Switching to it produced an immediate improvement.

I also tried energy thresholds, beam direction, moving the microphone, different Windows audio APIs, different gain structures, hardware AEC, software AEC, VAD tuning, interruption thresholds...

Turns out Patrick Stewart is remarkably good at convincing a home AI that he's part of the conversation.

Barge-in taught me a painful lesson

An early version used OpenAI's Realtime system and technically supported interruption.

Except interrupting Ada didn't work.

I spent a bunch of time looking at VAD, microphone echo, model settings, etc.

The actual problem?

My own speaker playback was blocking the asynchronous event loop.

The AI was perfectly capable of being interrupted.

My speaker code wasn't.

I replaced the blocking playback with a callback-driven audio queue.

Suddenly barge-in worked.

That was one of the first times this project taught me that the “boring” infrastructure around the model matters just as much as the model.

Then a simple experiment blew up the entire architecture

After spending a ridiculous amount of time improving the Realtime 2.1 audio stack, I built a clean GPT-Live/WebRTC sandbox in Chromium.

It was supposed to be an experiment.

Instead, my reaction was basically:

“Dude. That was night and day.”

Natural conversation was better.

Interruptions were better.

Simultaneous speech was better.

It felt dramatically closer to the experience I had actually wanted.

So obviously I decided to migrate the whole system.

And obviously that went terribly.

By then the mature version of Ada already had memory, wake detection, smart-home tools, speaker recognition, emergency behavior, remote administration, logging, startup/recovery logic, and a pile of other systems.

Several experimental LIVE builds could do pieces of that, but getting all of Ada back around the new conversational core was much harder than expected.

At one point the new system had even left most of Ada's historical memories behind.

Eventually I stopped trying to transplant the new conversational engine into the old architecture.

I reversed the strategy:

Keep the clean Live/WebRTC conversational core working, and rebuild Ada around it.

That became the modern LIVE branch.

Memory got weird too

Ada's original memory system basically dumped everything she knew into the prompt.

That obviously wasn't going to scale.

Then I tried keyword retrieval.

That worked until I asked the same question using different words.

Then I moved to semantic embeddings.

That worked much better until I asked:

“Why is the sky blue?”

and Ada's memory system decided that my saved memory:

“My favorite color is blue.”

might be relevant.

So memory eventually grew its own categories, semantic thresholds, query classification, cached embeddings, ADD/UPDATE/IGNORE behavior, stale-memory replacement, and limits on how much personal information can be retrieved into one conversation.

There's also a separate lore database because apparently my home computer needs to understand the difference between facts about my household and facts about fictional universes.

I regret nothing.

Wake words are currently my nemesis

“Hey Ada” sounds like it should be easy.

It is not.

The challenge isn't just recognizing it.

It's recognizing different people saying it naturally, from different parts of the room, while not waking because of television dialogue or random household noise.

One experimental detector combined an ONNX wake model, Silero speech detection, and cloud transcription for ambiguous candidates.

It was extremely sophisticated.

During one household test it generated 68 transcription requests in roughly six hours.

And Ada was still annoyingly difficult to wake.

So I removed it.

Later I found cases where the wake model itself was extremely confident but another part of the pipeline vetoed it.

One Red Alert candidate scored 0.954 and was still rejected because the downstream speech gate didn't have the evidence it wanted.

That eventually led to local high-confidence fallback logic.

I'm currently testing a completely different approach: a Microsoft Advanced Custom Keyword model trained specifically on “Hey Ada.”

But I'm not letting it control Ada yet.

It's running in shadow mode.

Ada's existing wake system still has complete authority. The Microsoft recognizer receives a copy of the same microphone stream and simply logs when it thinks I said Hey Ada.

The first real test logged four Microsoft detections and three actual ONNX wake events.

More interestingly, I had actually repeated “Hey Ada” several times because the existing system wasn't waking.

So Microsoft appears to have caught some legitimate attempts earlier.

Promising?

Yes.

Enough evidence to replace the current system?

Nope.

It needs much more real-house testing first.

Red Alert exists because of course it does

Ada also has a separate emergency mode.

Say:

“Red Alert.”

and she can enter a predefined emergency state, including changing the lighting and producing the appropriate alert behavior.

Say:

“All Clear.”

and the system restores the previous lighting state rather than just dumping everything back to some default.

I deliberately keep this path separate from ordinary conversational interpretation.

I don't particularly want an LLM pondering the philosophical meaning of “Red Alert” while I'm trying to activate Red Alert.

There's also a Flight Data Recorder that can preserve diagnostic information around important events.

Yes.

My living room AI has a flight recorder.

This is apparently where my life has gone.

BM-01

BM-01 is the newest piece and the reason I finally decided this project was worth posting.

Originally I just wanted Ada to have a physical computer panel inspired by the blinking displays from Star Trek: The Original Series.

Then I realized it could actually solve a real problem.

Ada has a lot of stages between:

“the PC has power”

and

“the computer is actually ready to hear me.”

Windows might be running while Ada isn't.

Ada might be running while the wake detector isn't ready.

The wake detector might work while GPT-Live is still connecting.

The microphone might fail while everything else appears fine.

Normally I have to open logs to figure out which layer is unhappy.

So BM-01 became a real physical diagnostic annunciator.

The upper panel contains 20 resin jewels arranged in four rows of five.

Each row contains four monitored systems plus one red master-fault annunciator.

AI / Conversation

GPT-Live
OpenAI/API
Conversation engine
Tools
AI FAULT

Audio

Wake detector
XVF3800 microphone
USB speaker
Barge/interruption
AUDIO FAULT

Ada Core

Ada core service
Memory
Flight Data Recorder
Red Alert
CORE FAULT

BM-01 / External

ESP32 controller
LD2410C mmWave radar
BH1750 ambient-light sensor
External services
BM FAULT

The regular lighting isn't random.

I wanted it to resemble the electromechanical blinking of the original TOS computer panels rather than modern RGB rainbow effects.

So the ESP32 runs deterministic timing groups with different periods and phases, roughly inspired by mechanical cam/SPDT switching.

It looks complicated and irregular, but the pattern is deterministic.

Actual telemetry overrides it.

If the microphone fails, for example, the MIC jewel abandons its normal pattern and rapidly flashes.

At the exact same time, the red AUDIO FAULT jewel flashes in perfect synchronization.

If multiple systems in that bank fail, all of their jewels synchronize with the same red master fault.

I tested the complete path by injecting a simulated XVF3800 failure.

MIC + AUDIO FAULT immediately began flashing together.

When the fault cleared, both returned to the normal TOS animation.

That was probably one of the most satisfying tests in the entire project.

BM-01 also has an LD2410C mmWave radar and a BH1750 ambient-light sensor.

The lux sensor automatically adjusts the panel brightness.

The radar provides local presence information that I can eventually use for more context-aware behavior.

And importantly, the telemetry system has an UNKNOWN state.

If Ada doesn't have enough evidence to prove a subsystem is healthy, BM-01 doesn't just pretend everything is fine.

Right now some of the 16 monitored systems still need deeper health instrumentation.

That's unfinished work.

I'd rather have a light say “I don't know” than build a diagnostic panel that confidently lies to me.

Things that failed along the way

A non-exhaustive list:

• keyword memory retrieval
• blindly dumping all memories into every prompt
• Windows robot TTS
• blocking audio playback
• several barge-in approaches
• assuming USB audio device numbers stay put
• accidentally using the wrong processed microphone channel
• energy-based TV rejection
• direction-of-arrival TV rejection
• physically moving the microphone
• several wake thresholds
• a hilariously overcomplicated wake verifier
• parts of the Realtime 2.1 audio architecture
• several LIVE migration attempts
• incomplete historical-memory migration
• Windows trying to autostart an obsolete copy of Ada
• an AI tool wrapper that turned out not to be callable like an ordinary Python function
• a malformed Python docstring that somehow left my smart bulbs permanently red
• a smart-light group/device naming collision that made one porch bulb look broken
• an early BM-01 layout that was simply the wrong size
• Windows batch syntax being defeated by a parenthesis in a status message

I've learned more from that list than from most of the things that worked immediately.

The current architecture, very roughly

Voice:

XVF3800
↓
local wake / emergency detection
↓
Chromium/WebRTC audio path
↓
GPT-Live
↓
Ada tools / memory / household services
↓
USB speaker

Household services:

Ada
├── persistent memory
├── separate lore
├── WiZ lighting
├── Samsung TV
├── weather/search/time
├── diagnostics/FDR
├── Red Alert / All Clear
├── remote administration
└── BM-01 telemetry

BM-01:

Ada/Windows health data
↓
Windows telemetry/serial bridge
↓
ESP32
├── 20-jewel diagnostic panel
├── LD2410C radar
└── BH1750 lux sensor

The ESP32 handles the normal TOS animation locally. Ada does not waste network/model traffic telling 20 lights when to blink.

She only needs to report actual state.

What's next?

Ada isn't finished, and I don't think she ever really will be.

Immediate work is mostly:

• finishing the Microsoft-vs-ONNX wake-word comparison
• improving speaker recognition
• expanding trustworthy BM-01 telemetry
• continuing to improve interruptions/audio behavior
• cleaning up some remaining diagnostics

Longer term, I want to build remote modules around the house.

BM-01 becomes the central computer.

The remote modules become terminals.

Which means there is a very real possibility that this ends with multiple Star Trek computer panels installed around my house.

I'm okay with that.

Biggest lesson so far

The AI model is not the hard part.

Making an AI live in a house is the hard part.

Audio ownership matters.

Turn ownership matters.

Memory relevance matters.

Startup and recovery matter.

Knowing whether a tool actually executed matters.

Knowing whether your microphone silently changed device numbers matters.

Knowing whether your diagnostic system actually knows something is healthy matters.

And testing something for five minutes at a desk is absolutely not the same thing as letting your family live with it for a week.

Probably the biggest design lesson Ada has taught me is:

A complicated solution isn't automatically a better solution.

I spent months engineering the old audio path.

A clean WebRTC experiment kicked its ass.

I built an elaborate wake verifier.

It made Ada harder to wake.

I designed more elaborate BM-01 layouts.

The actual physical hardware told me what the layout needed to be.

So my development process at this point is basically:

Build it. Measure it. Put it in the house. Let reality break it. Keep what survives.

That's Ada.

And apparently I live on a starship now.

I have a two car detached garage (shared insulated wall with neighbors garage) that has a finished drywall ceiling but no insulation or vapor barrier. There’s a natural gas line in there that I’d like to use in the future for a heater.

What is the most convenient way for me to properly seal and insulate the ceiling? I’d like to avoid removing much of the drywall so I’m not sure if spray foam injection will be easiest but perhaps costly? Otherwise opening a section where the hatch can go (it’s framed but no access hatch) and then laying planks for a working surface so that I can pin down some poly and then lay batt insulation over top?

FWIW I live in a cold Canadian climate with dry cold winters and plenty of snow.

Have some windows with jambs proud to the drywall and would like to try trimming in place for one. I've seen various tools offered such as multitool, planer, belt sander, flush cut saw, others? - just checking if a basis for one over the other as least likely to have a bad result or for more novice type use. Thanks.

I love using physical, paper flashcards for studying but always end up loosing some, if not all, by the end of the year.
Context: For each unit I make 80-100 flashcards ish. There's about 20-25 units in a year accounting for all subjects.
Anyone know a way I can DIY a storage system for them that doesn't take an absurd amount of space?

I need to attach wood strapping for siding through 4" of exterior rigid foam to a timber building. The building inspector won't care about testing/certifications on these fasteners since it's not load-bearing. I'm inclined to save a bunch of money by buying Temu structural screws instead of GRKs. I imagine the siding/strapping will last max 15 years, and the screws will need to be replaced at that point anyway.

Anyone with experience with knock-off GRKs here?