Weathered solar-light lenses require replacement

Q. I have 35 solar lights left out of 50; 15 are missing because of pranksters. The plastic lenses that contain a wire grid are turning white owing to the weather. Is there a way to clean them? I tried an oil-soaked emery cloth. Nothing seems to work.

A. Unfortunately, weather damage appears to be permanent. If you know when and where you bought these solar lights, you may be given replacement lenses, depending on the warranty. Otherwise, you may have to purchase new lenses.

Q. We live in a 3-year-old town house with three levels. The hot-water tank is on the ground floor, the kitchen and powder room are on the first floor, and the master and guest bathrooms are on the second floor. The water needs to run almost two minutes in the master-bathroom sink before it is hot. At the kitchen faucet, it also takes at least a minute, even when hot water has been used on and off throughout the day. This is wasteful. I called in a plumber, and he claims nothing can be done about this problem because of the way the water pipes run and because there is no return line behind the walls. I also downloaded information about the Hot Water Lobster from www.hotwaterlobster.com. According to the website, it takes 10 minutes to install the gadget. Do you have any further information or experience from other homeowners about this?

A. I have no experience with the Hot Water Lobster, but I have used the Laing Autocirc with great results: hot water at every faucet within seconds. The Hot Water Lobster appears to be similar, except that it does not require an electrical connection to a plug, which may be an advantage. If it works as well as the Laing, you should be happy with the installation.

If your plumber is unfamiliar with these devices, call around and find one who is, unless you are comfortable enough to do it yourself. You are correct; it is wasteful to have to run cold water for a long time to get hot water, because the replacement water in the water tank needs to be heated. Had the water pipes in your townhouse been insulated with neoprene jackets, the water would not cool so fast, and you wouldn't have to run it excessively to heat the replacement water. Frequent demand for hot water is usually needed in the kitchen, and this is where these circulating devices are so worthwhile.

Q. My grandfather is looking for a recommendation that you made regarding a restoration-cleaning product for kitchen cabinets. Apparently, there is a product that you could use to strip down and restore old wooden kitchen cabinets. Could you tell us the name of that product? We've searched online but have not found it.

A. The product I mentioned is Milsek, but it is not a finish stripper; it is a cleaner and polisher. If you need to strip the finish, you'll have to get a stripper from a paint store. Formby's makes a complete line of furniture-care products.

Q. My husband built a Wolmanized deck in 1989. At that time, we were told not to treat the wood. In the 1990s, we had it power-washed and then stained it with Devoe semitransparent blue. After a few years in almost full sun, it faded and we used a similar color from the company that had bought out Devoe. We were not satisfied with it, but cost and elbow grease let us live with it for about a year or so.

In 2009, we purchased Olympia stain that lifted up from the wood. We then scraped those areas and tried to cover them again. My husband talked with an Olympia representative, and we were told that “we should have sanded the whole deck before applying the stain.” Olympia lost us as customers!

We're hoping that you can provide some suggestions as to what we can do to have our deck look good again. My husband is in his 80s, and I'm not far behind, so it's getting tougher to do this.

A. It is best to use products made especially for pressure-treated decks. There are several on the market. I have had great success using Wolman products (www.wolman.com) and Amteco TWP (www.amteco.com). But neither seems to have the blue hue you used before. Unfortunately, you will have to remove any vestiges of the other products you used. I admire your stamina for tackling these challenging projects at your ages.

Q. We have a 50-gallon gas hot-water tank that is about 4 years old. I heard it should be drained once in a while to remove sediment. We live in the suburban Chicago area and have Lake Michigan water. Do you recommend this? Should the entire tank be drained? We have a sump pit in the basement we could drain into. What procedure do you recommend for this?

A. It is a good idea to periodically drain about one gallon of water from a water heater. There is no need to drain the entire tank. If no sediment comes out, you do not need to drain the tank as often as you otherwise would, and maybe not at all.

Q. Whenever we experience heavy, driving rain, we get water in our basement. The water is nowhere near the walls, nor near the drain area where we have a sump pump. There will be a little puddle near the stairs, which follows a linear path, but there are different sections in that linear path that remain dry. The house was built in the 1950s.

A. It was common in the 1950s to build basement stairways before the concrete slab was poured. This provided an entry point for water that built up under the slab in heavy downpours or long-lasting rainy periods. It also provided an easy access for termites to enter the house unless the ground had been treated with what, in those days, was chlordane (now banned).

If this is the case, you can have the stringers cut off, the pieces embedded in the concrete removed, and the holes filled with concrete or Waterplug. As in every case of basement leakage, check the grade around the foundation and correct any deficiencies that allow water to pool against the foundation. You can tell whether the leakage is due to grading problems or an underground source by the length of time it takes for leakage to show up. If there is a delay of a day or more, it is usually caused by an underground source. But it does not seem as if you have a serious problem.

Q. I think you may have once answered this question, but I couldn't find an archive of your columns. Is there one somewhere that is easy to access/search? I am renovating a basement area in my home. This is a raised ranch (1963) with a finished basement. The basement wall is half cinder block at the bottom and half framed and finished on top. The exterior wall is 2-by-4. I would like to know the best way to insulate this wall from bottom to top. It has never seemed adequately insulated, and I don't like the exposed block for aesthetic and practical reasons. The framed section of the wall is insulated with R-14 fiberglass and drywalled. I would like to just frame out a complete wall from bottom to top, for one clean, straight interior wall.

I have heard several ideas about how to insulate. Some say construct a 2-by-4 wall and add a vapor barrier from bottom to top to cover the whole thing. Others say just a vapor barrier on the bottom half, which doesn't make sense to me because I don't understand how to seal off the cinder-block area. I have also heard to use something like extruded polystyrene glued to the cinder block with furring to attach the new drywall and then 2-by-4 construction above or some sort of variation. What method do you recommend? Can I construct and insulate over the existing drywall? Or should I remove it first to expose the studs and existing insulation?

Above the existing wall is the overhanging portion of the upper floor, which extends outward about 18 inches. What's the best method for insulating this? I have heard to have it completely filled with spray foam. It is currently filled with batts of fiberglass (also R-14).

A. Sorry, but I don't know the answer to your first question. You may want to call your newspaper to find out if they have an accessible archive.

In order to prevent any possible frost damage, keep in mind the safe recommendation to insulate only the top two feet below grade of a foundation, unless you are sure that you have a functional footing drainage system, the backfill consists of sand or coarse material, and the grade slopes away from the foundation. You can insulate the cinder blocks by adhering 1-inch-thick extruded polystyrene (XPS) to clean surfaces, using StyroBond or any polyurethane caulk, which you can find at Home Depot or A.H. Harris in Williston.

To avoid the loss of space that would result from studding from the floor up, consider studding only above the blocks, allowing the bottom plate to come flush with the XPS, unless you want to have electrical outlets in the block section. Fill the stud cavities with fiberglass, staple a 6-mil plastic vapor retarder to the studs (no need to do so over the XPS), and screw drywall to the studs while gluing it to the XPS with the same adhesive you have used to fasten it to the blocks.

You do not need to remove any of the existing drywall, but you will have to have a licensed electrician alter any switches and receptacles to meet the new wall surfaces. If the overhang of the floor above is only insulated with R-14, which is not filling the full depth of the floor joists, you need to ascertain whether the band joists are insulated and the fiberglass laid on the bottom of the joist cavities or whether the fiberglass is stapled to the top of the joists, leaving an empty space below it. If the former, it will be difficult to add anything, except tacking 1-inch-thick XPS to the soffit and nailing new plywood over the XPS to insulate the framing. If the latter, you can remove the plywood soffit, add fiberglass and XPS, and put the plywood back. Filling the joist spaces with closed-cell foam would be expensive and waste the fiberglass that is already there, as it would crush it. Adding blown-in cellulose is also an option, but it should only be done to fill the empty spaces between the fiberglass and the soffit — a tricky job. Do you really need to do anything there?

Ÿ Henri de Marne was a remodeling contractor in Washington, D.C., for many years, and is now a consultant. Write to him in care of the Daily Herald, P.O. Box 280, Arlington Heights, IL 60006, or via e-mail at henridemarne@gmavt.net.

$PHOTOCREDIT_ON$© 2011, United Feature Syndicate Inc.$PHOTOCREDIT_OFF$