I’ve been doing a lot of weird projects around the house, either my indoor rock wall, snow making or other things. As a result, the usual locations of Lowes and Home Depot can be very-expensive or don’t even stock the parts you need. I wanted to make a short list of the things I’ve purchased in recent years, including how and where you can save some major money as a result.
You may think you can’t buy from Grainger because they only sell to a business, but there are a few exceptions to that.
1) If your employer has an account there, you can buy things as an “Employee Purchase”. Typically all you need is the main phone number, but also having the account number can be helpful.
2) You can sign-up for a business account. This may require doing something like setting up a LLC. In Michigan where I live, this is around $50.
3) Find someone else that has an account and use theirs but do an employee purchase as well.
It shouldn’t be hard to do one of these. Here’s the reasons why you might want to.
For my rock-wall, I needed about 200 3/8-16 T-nuts. These are typically very expensive at a place like Lowes. At Grainger (Part# 1XGJ1) they are $16 for a box of 100 instead of almost 50c-$1 each. The same is true for the Socket-Cap screws (bolts) which are about $1-1.50 each at Lowes, you can get a box of 50 (4XE65) for $18. Keep in mind this size works for *most* holds, but some require longer bolts of 2 1/2 inches or more.
For my snow maker, I needed a liquid filled pressure gauge to measure the water PSI. This was not something that was in-stock at Lowes/Home Depot and only cost $20 to arrive next-day at Will-Call.
I’ve also used them to replace the blower motor in my furnace when the local furnace repair shop did not call me back. (Nothing like waking up to the smell of a burning electric motor)!