Tag: repair

Categories
Cottage Life

How to check your deck for rot

Photo by ronstik/Shutterstock.com

Is rot setting in on your deck boards? Replacing the lumber you walk on is usually an easy repair. You can even upgrade wood to low-maintenance composite lumber if you’re tired of refinishing your deck. But a new deck surface won’t last long unless you check and repair the substructure at the same time.

Remove a few old boards from the edge of the deck to be sure that the existing substructure will be safe and reliable if you reuse it. If you used deck screws, you may be able to unscrew them, but chances are debris and corrosion will frustrate your efforts. Instead, use a reciprocating saw with a hacksaw blade to slice through screws or nails at the joint line between deck boards and the underlying frame. It’s a lot easier than smashing and bashing, and it will leave you with decent scrap lumber you can use for those odd projects around the cottage. 

How does the underlying wood frame look?

Poke the joists with a screwdriver to test for strength, especially along their top edges. Is the wood firm or punky? With the floor frame partially open and visible, are there any other areas of rot? Don’t trust your eyes, but poke here and there to make sure all is solid. Sometimes thoroughly rotten wood can look surprisingly good superficially—until your screwdriver sinks in. The ends of joists, beams, and posts are most likely to develop rot because water wicks into end grain in these parts more than other places. Also, pay particular attention to any parts of the deck frame with large areas of moisture-trapping wood-to-wood contact. 

Small, isolated areas of rot no larger than a toonie are usually okay, but when rot sets in, it’s typically over a large enough area that you’ll need to replace some frame parts. Luckily, once the deck boards are removed, it’s not difficult to install some new joists. Now the deck is ready for new boards on top.

This article was originally published in the May 2022 issue of  Cottage Life magazine.

How to prevent rot and adjust joists. 

Don’t have a deck to repair? Get some inspiration for your next build. 

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Mobile Syrup

Sonos working to make future products more efficient and repairable

Speaker company Sonos announced plans to make its speakers last longer and use less energy. The plans come as part of the company’s larger effort to make itself more sustainable by minimizing e-waste and pollution that drives climate change.

According to The Verge, improving the repairability of products is a significant part of Sonos’ plans. The company started a ‘Design for Disassembly’ program this year to help guide the development of new speakers in 2023.  The program will include changes like using fasteners instead of adhesives, which will make it easier for consumers to take Sonos products apart and repair them.

Unfortunately, Sonos hasn’t revealed much more about the program yet. So far, it’s unclear if Sonos plans to make replacements parts and repair manuals available to customers.

Still, Sonos’ director of policy and corporate social responsibility confirmed to The Verge that the program will “make it easier to repair, refurbish and, eventually, recycle future Sonos products.”

Sonos will start using recycled plastics in its products

Aside from improving repairability, Sonos plans to start using post-consumer recycled plastic in all its products by the end of 2023. Although using recycled plastics can help prevent some plastics from ending up in landfills, oceans or animals, The Verge points out that recycling has so far not been a great solution for dealing with the worsening plastic pollution problem. Worse, because plastic degrades each time it’s reused, many companies mix in new plastics with recycled plastics. As demand for recycled plastics grows, it could lead to greater demand for new plastics too.

Another goal Sonos has is to include ‘sleep mode’ on all its products by 2023. Sleep mode can reduce power consumption when a device is idle — Sonos first added it to its Roam speaker this year. The company aims for its products to use less than 2 watts while idle.

Interestingly, Sonos says that about 75 percent of its carbon footprint comes from the energy its products use over their lifetime. That differs significantly from other consumer electronics, which see up to 80 percent of CO2 emissions come from manufacturing, according to a Greenpeace report. Factoring in both Sonos’ supply chain and consumers’ energy use, Sonos says it was responsible for CO2 emissions equivalent to 267,528 cars driven over a year.

Relying on carbon offsets to cancel its legacy pollution

Finally, Sonos wants to cut emissions from its products’ energy use by 45 percent by 2040, as well as cancel its entire footprint by that date through a mixture of carbon offsets and tech that removes CO2 from the atmosphere. Again, however, carbon offsets aren’t exactly a reliable solution — this ProPublica report details some of the rampant problems with relying on carbon offsets. Further, technologies that remove CO2 from the atmosphere have not yet scaled up to meet the needs of companies promising to use the tech to erase their legacies of pollution.

All that said, it is good to see Sonos at least make the effort. The company should prioritize reducing its environmental footprint since that will likely have a more immediate impact than relying on carbon offsets to take care of past pollution. Hopefully, Sonos will lead the way in the smart speaker space and drive more companies to adopt environmental policies like sleep modes and other things that reduce carbon footprints.

Source: The Verge

Categories
Mobile Syrup

Looks like Google will partner with uBreakiFix for Pixel 6/6 Pro repair

Now that the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro are officially available and pre-orders are starting to arrive, people have the phones. And that means there’s a risk someone will drop their new phone and break it (especially since the phones have glass on the front and back this time around).

If you are unlucky enough to break your Pixel 6 or 6 Pro, it looks like Google is once again partnering with uBreakiFix (which is in the process of rebranding to Asurion Tech Repair and Solutions) for same-day repairs. Google did this before with Pixel phones in Canada. 9to5Google reports uBreakiFix will handle same-day repairs for the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro in the U.S.

MobileSyrup has reached out to Google to confirm the same for Canada and will update this post with any additional information.

One of the benefits of going to a Google repair partner like uBreakiFix is that you know the company will use OEM parts, tools and training for the repair. That should bring a little peace of mind to the repair process.

Even if you don’t have the Pixel 6 or 6 Pro, uBreakiFix’s website says it’s “Google authorized” and lists repair capabilities for Google phones including the entire Pixel lineup along with several Nexus phones (even the Nexus S, interestingly). The Pixel 6 and 6 Pro aren’t currently listed on the website, but that might change given how new the phones are. Also, the site humorously lists the Pixel 5a even though it’s not officially available in Canada.

Source: 9to5Google, uBreakiFix