Q&A / 

Can Asphalt Shingles Last 50 Years or More? Heck Yes! A week ago I made a decision to ratchet up my ability to save you as much money as possible in these very challenging financial times. Inflation is raging. In my opinion, it’s going to get worse. Each day I’m receiving more and more emails […]

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Oxalic Acid Cleaner - It's a Great Rust Remover Not a week goes by that you, or another reader or two or three or twenty, might reach out to me with a fantastic question about the column of mine you’re reading. Often you might ask why I failed to dive deeper into the topic. You […]

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Why Does Wood Crack - It's Water's Fault Do you own anything made from wood that lives its life outdoors? It could be a stunning deck, perhaps a decorative privacy fence, maybe a pergola, or even a teak table and chair set. I’ve owned all of the above and more over quite a few trips […]

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Cracked Stone Small stones can be cracked with a sledgehammer. But what about solid bedrock that extends through the globe to China? Well, you use a giant jackhammer when blasting is too expensive or there are other houses too close to the blasting site. Part One of this two-part series is below the Cracked Stone […]

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How to Break Bedrock Most rocks are very hard. Granite is especially hard as is the Meredith Porphyritic Granite. Cracking stone with a giant jack hammer is cheaper than blasting with TNT.

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Raised Garden Pond Ideas - They're Unlimited Before I got married, I was invited to go out to dinner with my future wife and her parents on a routine basis. One Saturday afternoon we ate lunch at a restaurant on a floating barge tied up on the north shore of the Ohio River. My future […]

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How to Find a Roof Leak Several weeks ago I shared with you the different types of roofs you can use on your home. I should have realized it would create a tsunami of help requests regarding roof leaks at my Ask Tim page on my www.AsktheBuilder.com website. You may have been one of the […]

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Homemade Weed Killer - Goya Picante Hot Sauce I love testing things. I also hate chemical weed killers that have names it's nearly impossible to pronounce. My front sidewalk is immediately adjacent to my water well. I would never use regular weed killers on my lawn or the sidewalk for fear of poisoning my family […]

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How to Build a Wood Fence - Tips for a Fancy Fence You’ve heard the wise saying, “Good fences make good neighbors”, I’m sure. It’s been around in one form or the other for hundreds of years and Robert Frost immortalized it in one of his missives just over 100 years ago. The advice is […]

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Basement Leak Repair - Best is Doing it Outside Ande lives in Puyallup, WA and reads my weekly column in her paper. She’s got a very common problem. In fact, tens of thousands of people suffer from it in places where there’s abundant rainfall for many months during the year. Ande’s backyard turns into a […]

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