By Jon Eakes
Tough Tool Testers Found
Nailer Wanting
When tool companies set out to innovate, sometimes they do really well on part
of the new tool and not so well on the rest. Our tough group of Canadian builder
tool testers were thoroughly impressed with the ability of the new Stanley N88
(RH-2MCN) framing nailer to do a superior job of nailing in hangers. The head
of the tool was specially made for locating the hole in the hanger and the rest
of the shape was designed to get in and do that job exceedingly well. For that
specific job, they liked the nailer. One guy also mentioned that he really liked
the gun depth adjustment with no need to change pressure at the compressor.
But then it got confusing. One liked its light weight and another found it too
heavy. Designed for carefully placing the nail for hanger nailing, Stanley did
not include a continuous trigger function, which one fellow felt was lacking.
They all agreed that the real problem was not the nailer but the nails. The
specific hanger nails were difficult or impossible to find for almost all the
testers, and expensive compared to the competition. Other nails tended to jam.
In addition, Stanley's special collated nails for hangers would spit pieces
of plastic right in your face as it chewed its way through the nail strip.
Would they recommend it to others? Only as a very efficient speciality hanger
nailer and only if availability of the nails improves.
FlexTherm radiant cable
As I mentioned in the last issue, I have been renovating an old house myself
this summer and, of course, with me that means all kinds of experimenting with
both tools and products. My wife really doesn't appreciate that my camera crews
and note-taking blow the construction schedules right out the window. But aside
from marital stress, I am having a lot of fun and learning things.
One of my great discoveries was a new in-floor radiant heating cable by FlexTherm
in Montreal(featured in last issue's New Product Showcase). I heard the claim
that a new cable was coming out that had almost no electromagnetic radiation.
Although the debate on whether electromagnetic fields in general are harmful
to humans is not settled, many consumers are sensitive to the question - especially
when it relates to rather strong radiation from heating cables and babies crawling
on the same floor. It is a nice warm floor but there are unsettled health debates.
So a wire that had almost no flux field sounded too good to be true.
As it turned out, Flextherm's factory is 15 minutes from my house. So off I
went to see if it was true. I took my own guss metres and used theirs. It was
true. The new Green Cable is an ecological breakthrough in radiant heating.
Of course, they can't stop an electrical current from creating a magnetic field,
but they spent years mastering the technique of twisting two wires together
in just the right way to have them cancel each other out - and they really do.
At an up-sale of only about 10 per cent more expensive, this will allow "clean"
radiant heat where hydronic is not practical. My holistic wife will now have
warm feet in that new bathroom.
Rear
discharge toilets
Then there was the question of the request to move the toilet to the other
side of the bathroom, as it was being expanded. Of course, that was impossible
because of a finished living room ceiling below and about four joists in the
way. So I decided to break all norms and locate a rear discharge toilet and
run the drain pipes across the floor (in front of the bath tub, just under
that designer step). Think about what this technique could do for basement
renovations.
That started a very long process of discussion and testing. Most rear discharge
toilets in North America are made for commercial use with noisy power assist
flushing mechanisms, not really practical for a master bathroom. However,
outside of North America, there are tons of choices in rear discharge toilets,
simply because of concrete construction and not wanting to drill through the
floor. Of course, they are all metric and not many are certified by CSA. No
European companies wanted to bother to send me a sample because they felt
they had no market here.
We finally got our hands on a Caroma hang-on-the-wall toilet from Australia.
This is a down-flow toilet with dual flush - 6 litres and 3 litres. This product
line has produced very good clearing performance in the low-flow testing that
has been going on. So we put it into the test laboratory to see it if would
clear well when hooked up to a 90-degree exit out the back to the side, over
two feet, then another 90 degrees (that's where she wanted the toilet) and
then 6 feet run to the old toilet standpipe, 90 degrees down into the joist
area and 3 feet over to the stack. It worked! At least we had some advance
information on upcoming research that told us that a 3-inch pipe at no more
than 1/4-inch per foot slope gives the best carrying performance for low-flow
toilets.
Then I had to put it in. Understand that this is all metric. The tank is separate
from the hang-on-the-wall bowl, which is kind of cool, but that meant exiting
the tank in metric, changing to imperial pipe, back to metric to get into
the bowl, out of the bowl in metric about 6 inches in diameter, they supplied
a reducer to about 5 inches in metric, then reducing to 3-inch drain pipe.
Also, I discovered that a hang-on-the-wall toilet, when the backside is not
open, is rather touchy as you have to carefully line up two bolts, the input
pipe and the output pipe, and slide it all on without getting the slip-on
gaskets out of line. The first time my vertically challenged wife sat down
I got to start all over, as I discovered that the Australian standard is about
1-1/2 inches higher off the floor than ours and, for my wife, that means reading
on her tip toes.
I wouldn't recommend the experience for a renovator until they get all the
metric/imperial transition pieces down to a science. But it is a great toilet.
The activation buttons are on the end of air tubes and hence can be placed
anywhere you want. My sister-in-law couldn't figure out for the life of her
how to flush the toilet. Of course, this is all being done under the title
of "experiment", but it just might someday become commonly acceptable
to plumbing inspectors. HB
Montreal-based TV broadcaster, author, home renovation and tool expert
Jon Eakes provides a tool feature in each edition of Home BUILDER.
www.JonEakes.com
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