16

my woe is that I'm not a home owner

10/11/2009 3:58:09 AM

Quote :

" What's the worst thing (other than credit hit) that can happen from a foreclosure or DILOT?"

not much.

10/11/2009 1:07:53 PM

Didn't get the air filter cleaned for 6 months.

10/13/2009 10:47:40 PM

any thoughts on repairing hardwood floors? i have about a 4'x6' section of planking i need to put down where they repaired the subfloor. the way the existing floor runs it needs to go down end to end rather than parallel. i'm going to refinish the whole thing after i get it in, do you think a section of squared off ends that big would be too noticeable? i really don't want to get into ripping up individual planks to lace it all back in.

10/14/2009 10:36:42 PM

kirk, i had the same thing happen to my garbage disposal...

turns out with all the vibration, it came unplugged. it happened twice so the second time around i knew what to do

soo as dumb as it sounds, make sure its plugged all the way in

10/15/2009 4:17:09 PM

Moving into a house before a driveway is available or grass is planted.
House is located 300+ ft. from nearest road.
Cars are parked on road, and nothing but mud between house and cars.

I think we may set a new fashion trend by wearing plastic grocery bags on our feet to get to our cars in the morning.

10/15/2009 7:53:44 PM

lay down some wood or something for a path?

10/16/2009 9:28:19 AM

yeah go buy a bunch of OSB

or better yet call a few construction companies or framing companies and ask if they have any plywood laying around they used for temporary purposes that you can come haul off for them.

10/16/2009 10:10:58 AM

went to turn on my heater... the shit won't turn on. when the fan is set to "automatic" it never comes on, and when it is set to "on" it just blows room temp air.

I have a Carrier something or other with a gas pack. Anyone know what might be the problem? I opened the bad boy up and to reignite it per the instructions, but no dice. (there is no pilot light on this model.)

10/16/2009 11:44:12 AM

^ Mine was dead this time last year. This may or may not help, but I'll go through my troubleshooting steps. Keep in mind I know very little about this junk.

Started at the compressor unit outside and found some chaffed wires that may have been the root cause as you could see that they were slightly burned. Root cause or not, I taped them up pretty good and moved under the house to the furnace. There was some sort of control box for the furnace where all the wires went. I pulled the cover and immediately smelled something burnt. A sniff test showed that the transformer was blown. I killed the power to it (it was on a light switch and I killed the breaker) and removed the transformer. Went to a place called "D&L" across from Creative Acoustics on Atlantic Ave with the old part in hand. They had a replacement that was like $25. Put it in, lit the pilot light, and everything was good.

[Edited on October 16, 2009 at 12:08 PM. Reason : l]

10/16/2009 12:06:13 PM

similar happened to my aunt last year

i can't remember what it was..i fixed it though

10/16/2009 5:38:51 PM

looks like the gas valve is not operating correctly... There is a strong spark, and all of the wiring is sound. i'm going to see if i can make sure the lines are clear of debris, but i might end up having to replace the valve. anyone know how much a new one might run?

10/18/2009 3:14:09 PM

you do know there's a safety valve type thing that basically shuts off the gas once it gets cold, right? (as in the pilot light being blown out for a minute or so..) there's a way to bypass it (as in you have to hold a button down basically) to get it going again but it's there so if the pilot light gets blown out you can't blow the place up like in the movies. i think it's called a thermocouple?

or at least that's how its been on the few (rather old) units i've had to mess with.



[Edited on October 18, 2009 at 5:10 PM. Reason : http://home.howstuffworks.com/home-improvement/heating-and-cooling/how-to-maintain-a-furnace1.htm]

10/18/2009 5:09:29 PM

well, i don't have a furnace... it is a gas pack which does not have a pilot light... there is an electronic igniter which activates every time it's time to fire up the burners. I will look for a similar switch, but i didn't see one when I looked at it before.

10/18/2009 7:00:25 PM

o

nvm then

10/18/2009 7:28:47 PM

Quote :

"Anyone ever bought flooring from lumber liquidators? Some of their prices are really outstanding for unfinished flooring."

We went with Bellawood flooring for $3.50 sq. ft. Mix between American Cherry for most of the house, and, Brazilian Koa for the master bedroom. Add stairnoses and transition pieces, vinyl tile for a few rooms, labor to install it all, came just short of $22,000 for a 2800 sq. ft. house for flooring.

Another fun woe while building ... realizing you have a giant box of cardboard, you set it on fire, and then realizing one of the boxes of cardboard in there was the faucet set to your kitchen, full set still in the box. Lost a couple hundred dollars that day

[Edited on October 18, 2009 at 10:30 PM. Reason : .]

10/18/2009 10:27:37 PM

^doh!

10/18/2009 11:06:29 PM

Just got an offer accepted on a house... now there is the pesky task of selling my townhouse within 90 days

10/19/2009 12:03:21 AM

Ha, seems like every time I come in here someone just recently has the same problem as me.

Wife was getting cold yesterday, so we decided to turn the heat on for the season. Flip them both on, and the upstairs heat isn't working. Take the panel off, figure I need to replace the thermocouple. Gas supply looked good, and pilot would stay lit as long as I held in the bypass.

Take out the old thermocouple, and notice they cross-threaded the old one into the control box.

As I got the new one and began installing, the copper lead won't fit tightly into the control box anymore because they f*cked up the threads when they put in the last one. So now the contact isn't always there, so the pilot will die the second the unit kicks on and a slight vibration knocks the threads loose.

I'm pretty sure you can't buy that adapter, so now I have to make a service call ($100-$150 i'm sure) just to have them replace the adapter...ugh!

Any ideas before I call?

10/19/2009 5:40:47 AM

Last week we got two letters from the HOA, one complaining that the flowers and bushes in our gardens were blocking the sidewalk (they weren't) and the other complaining that we hadn't mowed the grass (legit, but annoying).

So we mowed the grass and cut the flower beds down to the ground. It's fall anyway and they were ready to be cut back. The sidewalk is completely cleared.

And we got another letter on Friday complaining that our flowers/bushes are blocking the sidewalk, even though there are no plants left that could possibly block the sidewalk.

I actually think it's just the neighbors. We have some anal retentive neighbors (the kind of charmers who reseed their lawn monthly and were watering illegally around midnight during the recent drought). We both have the same bush right next to each other on the property line, they cut theirs down to nothing while we let ours grow bushy. The result is ours winds up with tons of flowers and color on it while theirs looks kinda sad and barely blooms at all. But they're probably complaining to the HOA about that.

I get to call the HOA today and discuss this, I want to know exactly what they're claiming blocks the paths.

God willing our next house won't have a HOA's territory within 5 miles of it.

Oh, and this weekend while replacing a light fixture in the bathroom I discovered that the people who built the freaking house didn't bother to put one of those little wiring boxes behind it, so we've had the wires right up next to the insulation for a few years now. It also meant I had to install one in order to mount the new light up there which was a massive pain in the ass (for many reasons). When I was in Lowes and the salesperson asked if she could help me find anything I asked her to help me find the builder so I could strangle them.

[Edited on October 19, 2009 at 8:30 AM. Reason : .]

10/19/2009 8:29:13 AM

^^ going to have to replace the gas valve

lame

10/19/2009 8:49:37 AM

^^ you would be suprised at how that is SOP for a lot of builders. (The no box behind a vanity light).

10/19/2009 12:53:13 PM

i, too, will never live somewhere with an HOA again.

10/19/2009 9:48:49 PM

good luck with that.

10/19/2009 11:15:28 PM

i, too, will never live somewhere with an HOA again.

10/20/2009 12:01:30 AM

hard to find hoods with no HOAs unless they're in the middle of nowhere, or actually are in the hood.

10/20/2009 12:39:57 AM

k, i probably would actually. i'd just not live somewhere with a crazy as shit HOA again. esp when the last one cost me $300/month.

10/20/2009 9:23:41 AM

I love my HOA. I bitched to them about one guy who hadn't mowed his grass all year. It was mowed within the week.

10/20/2009 10:17:45 AM

the pain about HOAs is that they can continue to raise their prices and there really isn't much you can do about it, and, like women, they all show their crazy side sooner or later.

10/20/2009 10:55:19 AM

Meh. Mine was raised from $120 to $130 last year. A small price to pay for keeping my property value up.

10/20/2009 10:57:01 AM

Quote :

"went to turn on my heater... the shit won't turn on. when the fan is set to "automatic" it never comes on, and when it is set to "on" it just blows room temp air. I have a Carrier something or other with a gas pack. Anyone know what might be the problem? I opened the bad boy up and to reignite it per the instructions, but no dice. (there is no pilot light on this model.)"

Mine had the same issue. Nothing on "auto", room air on "on". I could turn it on "auto" and hear the electric hum of something trying to move when I went out to look at the unit, though.

The inducer blower was stuck. A technician came out and just spun the fan manually and got it moving, but a crack in the heat exchanger kept the heat turned off downstairs.

10/20/2009 12:09:06 PM

Quote :

"Meh. Mine was raised from $120 to $130 last year. A small price to pay for keeping my property value up."

A small price to pay? Think about how much more home you could have for an extra 130 a month and consider for a moment that perhaps those in that neighborhood would have enough pride in their homes to keep the neighborhood nice themselves.

so you consider 130 small and a fair price. What would not be a fair price? 150? 175? 200? because eventually it'll get there.

10/20/2009 1:45:32 PM

Who said it was per month? That's my yearly amount.

10/20/2009 2:21:29 PM

My friend is going to close on her first house soon!

What advice would you give to a new homeowner right off the bat?

10/20/2009 5:38:53 PM

Put 3 months house payment and utils in a separate savings account and forget it exists.

10/21/2009 12:13:21 AM

moving a bunch of shit out to lay down floors and then have to wait to finish them



I wish we'd have gone with prefinished now, just because there'd be so much less hassle.

10/21/2009 10:06:54 PM

Quote :

"What advice would you give to a new homeowner right off the bat?"

Keep ten grand in an untouched rainy-day fund. Something like a money market account or something. Only use it for when stuff breaks on the house.

It will be a great relief to not have to use your other savings vehicles to pay for your house's new roof/plumbing/AC/foundation repair/removal of woodland gnomes when the time comes.

Also, go into the attic and under the house and fix any insulation problems you spot. Sometimes the rods that hold up the insulation in the crawlspace will fall out over time (or were missing in the first place) and you'll have insulation that just falls down and rests on the ground (and doesn't do its job). That's a quick fix, like an hour or two of work for $$$ savings. For the attic, just see if the insulation up there sucks and consider having blown insulation put up there to save $ for the winter/summer months.

If there's no proof that the AC was serviced recently, consider doing that as well. If the unit is running low on coolant or has a leak, you'll want to fix the leak and recharge it before the unit wears itself out from running all the time.

Oh, and wherever there's a musty smell, start tearing shit out and figure out where the water is coming from to let the mildew/mold grow. A lot of older homes have that problem, and it fucking pisses me off because the mold/mildew/smell makes me sick. You don't wanna leave something like that alone and wonder why, six months down the road, you feel like shit all the time and can't sleep or work very effectively.

10/21/2009 10:44:22 PM

I also did not want to live anywhere with a HOA. I understand the argument for ensuring that no dumbasses come in and fuck up everyone's property value, but I don't want anyone telling me what to do with my house and my land. People say "if you aren't trying to live like Sanford and Son, you have nothing to worry about", but that's simply not true in my experience. I'm sure my view is colored (a) by the fact that I, across the spectrum, have an aversion to people making my business their business, and (b) by the fact that I grew up out in the country where you could do anything you wanted, then moved to a nice subdivision with very intrusive covenants and a particularly busybody HOA when I was about 16-17.

Still, it wasn't just that--I remember when I lived in FL (about a mile from the beach), the HOA would get bent out of shape if I left my jet ski parked in the driveway for more than 24 hours. Get fucked, dude...it's not like I had some rotten out, junkyard boat permanently parked in the yard.


The place I bought my house has a homeowners' covenant, but it's pretty much common sense stuff. No chain-link fences, fences can't protrude past the front wall of the house (i.e., you can't fence in your front yard)...there are a couple of other things, but I can't even remember what they are...they're totally common sense things, though, that pretty much NOBODY would object to. Even then, there's no HOA to actually enforce anything, but there is a provision to form one if needed. The "neighborhood" is just one street...has about 12-15 houses. As long as no riff-raff moves in and causes problems that can't be resolved by just talking to them, we aren't going to bother with a HOA.

[Edited on October 21, 2009 at 11:07 PM. Reason : ]

10/21/2009 11:06:07 PM

^
Same goes for where I am. The HOA exists to maintain a right-of-way for a shared dirt road going into the neighborhood, collect yearly dues to maintain the dirt road, and, make sure nobody does anything too silly. I remember reading the restrictions ... can't have a slaughterhouse, day care center, and a couple of other things.

Woe #bazillion. Damper on the heating system is messed up. Sounds like an airplane taking off when it kicks on, and blows like crazy. rather than a steady continuous stream of air. Likely a quick fix, but need to call the HVAC folks out (again).

10/22/2009 12:08:44 AM

We haven't had a problem with our HOA, but it's funny to get cc'd on emails from our neighbor to the HOA president complaining about something every month or so. She cc's us on it to make the president feel like we're all behind it so he'll do something about this "urgent matter." Every time we get one my husband and I just laugh. It's usually something REALLY small.

10/22/2009 10:46:35 AM

Reply To All:

I really don't give a shit. Does anyone else in the CC line?

10/23/2009 2:31:34 AM

Arg. I just bought a house a month ago and it's already starting to break. First we had a few cold nights so I turn the heater on and bam it just doesn't work. Thanks for catching that one, home inspector. I dropped $600 to get it fixed.

THE NEXT DAY I find out that something else is broken. I get a $500 utilities bill. Apparently there is a leak somewhere gushing water all over the damn place. I spent two hours on my hands and knees crawling all under the house trying to find any evidence of a leak but nothing. After making sure all the faucets were off, I checked the water meter and sure enough it was showing that water was pumping through. So now when I go to sleep and when I'm not home I turn of the water to the entire house. What really pisses me off is that the home inspector did find a few leaks under the house but I had them addressed in the repair list. I have the invoice from the plumbing company saying that all leaks had been fixed. DID THEY NOT THINK TO DOUBLE CHECK THE DAMN WATER METER?

Ugh so I have a plumber coming out today to try and find the source of the leak. Anyone who knows anything about plumbing... if the meter is suggesting a leak somewhere but I can't find any evidence of it, what's the deal? I guess it could be an underground pipe or something? And if so, does that mean they are gonna have to dig up my yard to fix it???

[Edited on October 23, 2009 at 9:37 AM. Reason : ]

10/23/2009 9:31:58 AM

^ Usually you can find the leak in your yard by walking the line from the box to where the water enters your house and looking for the wet spot. Then you just gotta start digging.

10/23/2009 12:51:01 PM

the same could be said of fat women

10/23/2009 10:55:53 PM

^^ just off the top of my head - in the disclosure agreement when you bought the house was there any mention of this? Can you find out from the city if the water bill was this high when the previous owner had the house? If so I would think that you might be able to do something. Also- form my experience - any leak on your side of the water meter from the meter to the house can get pricey. Good luck with this and let us know what happens.

10/24/2009 7:55:30 AM

^^^hindsight is 20/20 but that is why I will always get at least a one year home warranty at closing--preferably paid for by the seller.

10/24/2009 7:57:49 AM

^ This. My dad bought a garden style townhome for me to stay in when two people fucked me over on signing a lease (and I was clearly going to have to move or go home, probably go home). He made sure that they bought a 1 year warranty for the place. In that one year's time we got the AC repaired, then we got the AC replaced (the guys who did the repair the first time were smrt), and got a brand new water heater (and it was a good name brand, too).

10/24/2009 8:47:06 AM

Actually there previous owner purchased a one year home warranty but after calling the warranty company about it, it is only good for stuff that happens within the foundation of the house. I got a plumber to look for the leak yesterday, and sure enough, it is in an underground pipe in my front yard. They are gonna have to dig it up and replace the entire thing. It's gonna cost $900. I was expecting it to cost more so I'm not terribly pissed but still, that's a lot of damn money. The plumber that looked at it said that he had been out to the house a few times before for the previous owner and that she was a complete ditz about everything when it came to plumbing maintenance.

10/24/2009 2:45:00 PM

are you not the least bit ill at the previous owner for not mentioning this to you or your agent before you bough the house and walked into a massive utility bill?

10/24/2009 2:55:25 PM

it's pretty gay, but in NC it's common for sellers to mark on the disclosure form (which is designed to notify the buyer of anything wrong with the property) "no rep" or that they make no representation on whether a specific aspect of the property (like plumbing) is in good working repair or not.

Technically, you could probably still go after the agent/homeowner if it was something they should have been reasonably expected to notice, but ultimately it would cost more than $900 in legal fees and it might be hard to prove fault.

10/26/2009 1:46:12 PM