Its always good to get copies of the utility bills for ~the past 3 months too....they'll be a good tip off to alot of problems with the heat/ac, water lines ect...

10/26/2009 3:07:40 PM

Well the house has been empty for a few months with the water turned off so there is a chance they didn't know, but honestly like was mentioned, pursuing it would cost more than it would to fix it.

10/26/2009 11:33:39 PM

Wraith: maybe i missed it, but what municipality are we talking about here? some providers will allow some mercy on sky high water bills due to a leak, even if it's on the owner side of the meter. unfortunately, raleigh no longer does this. other places do, though...

on the bright side, you're taking one of the main assrapings of plumbing repairs up front. most future repairs should seem easy/cheap in comparison.

10/27/2009 1:23:30 AM

oh for crying out loud, i, too, am having hvac issues. looks like at least one of the solenoids for the dual zone dampers is busted, i can't find the other one, switching on the a/c causes a 5amp fuse on the furnace control panel to blow (apparently something about the 24v control wiring is screwed up), nothing happens at all when the heat is switch on, but the led on the gas valve indicates normal operation. at least the fan comes on when you switch it from auto to on, so something works, just no air comes out of the vents because apparently the dampers are closed.

i know for a fact the a/c was working the day before i bought the place, why does shit just decide to magically stop working? I got a small $400 home warranty, i'm tempted to just use it to get the hvac going. but that would be like admitting defeat, and i'm ready to give up yet.

[Edited on October 28, 2009 at 10:28 PM. Reason : .]

10/28/2009 10:26:54 PM

I'm not anywhere near Raleigh, I'm in Alabama. I got the damn leaking pipe replaced for (for $900 ). The utilities company says they will adjust my previous $500 utilities bill once I have gotten next month's one and it is lower. Still a pain in the ass.

11/5/2009 9:04:38 AM

cool. that's actually not too bad of a price to replace a main water line. definitely towards the lower end of the scale, anyway.

11/5/2009 7:55:42 PM

Woke up this morning to no hot water and a pool around the water heater. I have a "short" water heater in the crawlspace under the house. Should I go tankless? The tankless water heater is almost twice as expensive, but it's a difference of paying $450 or $750 so it's not that big of a deal. What other considerations do I have to make?

Specifically, I've noticed that the tankless units on Lowes' website say they must be installed "Indoor". Would my crawlspace count as indoor? How about the garage which is attached to the house?

Anyone really good with sweating copper want to make some money on the side? I've done it before, but I'd rather have a pro do it this time. I'm thinking I'll do the grunt work to put the new water heater in place and hook up the gas line, but let a professional solder the copper.

[Edited on November 8, 2009 at 9:50 AM. Reason : l]

11/8/2009 9:50:32 AM

I've debated the tankless thing, but I don't know really how efficient it would be, especially with running multiple units (washer, dishwasher, shower). Not to mention I hear things about pressure being lower the hotter you turn the water up, and everything. The cost of the gas to heat it up on demand...it's a big switch.

11/8/2009 9:55:00 AM

I can stagger my water needs so I'm not too worried about that. I'm sure having the water heater exposed to low temperatures in the crawlspace 24/7 during the winter has contributed greatly to my gas bill over the past few years that I've owned the place.

11/8/2009 10:00:30 AM

I've been told good things on the tankless hot water heater thing..

BigBlueRam is the person to ask, though

11/8/2009 12:46:05 PM

So I have a bunch of tree branches down, and while I was thinking of having someone cart them off, a better solution would be to get a chipper and make some mulch which I need anyway.

Does anyone rent chippers? Or do you pay someone to bring one out for this purpose?

Also when is it time to put pre-emergent down? Do you all do one round or two rounds of it?

11/8/2009 1:13:40 PM

be careful putting down freshly chipped mulch... it would attract termites like woah

11/8/2009 4:53:07 PM

Pre-emergent should be put down around first of October and around Valentine's Day.

The October dose kills the winter annual weeds, and the February dose kills spring/summer annuals.

I second Solinari on the mulch. Unless you are going to "compost" it somewhat before you spread it, it is better to haul that mess off rather than use it as foundation mulch.

11/8/2009 8:05:51 PM

We have a tankless water heater and it's installed outside of the house, but it was also installed by our builders. It's been great by the way, takes maybe half a minute for water to be hot as balls whenever it's needed

11/9/2009 7:10:09 AM

Is it loud?

11/9/2009 9:13:57 AM

I'm thinking I'd like to go tankless, but probably only if I can put it in the same spot the old one is in so that I don't have to re-route the gas line and water lines too far. Maybe I could drive a couple of posts into the ground, connected by a couple of 2x4s to hang it on.

[Edited on November 9, 2009 at 10:29 AM. Reason : l]

11/9/2009 10:22:43 AM

any recos for a company that'll deliver and put down mulch? looking for the triple shredded wood variety.

11/9/2009 12:48:26 PM

I can say that I have ordered mulch from Mulch Masters for the last 4 years and the price has always been good. The quality has also always been good as well and if you get "X" yards your delivery gets cheaper. I usually get around 5yds.


In your case I would just get it from MM then flag down a lawn crew in the neighborhood and see what a couple of guys wanted to do for some extra cash.

[Edited on November 9, 2009 at 2:22 PM. Reason : q]

11/9/2009 2:21:40 PM

I used to use mulch, and got tired of it. I really prefer pine straw now.

11/9/2009 2:28:39 PM

The one thing I do like about mulch is that after about 3 years of throwing it down I have some really great soil for planting.

However - straw does look good. But man mulch smells bomber!

11/9/2009 4:42:22 PM

^^

why's that?

I'm asking because I feel the exact opposite. After years of having pine straw, i got tired of it looking like ass after a month.

11/9/2009 9:52:13 PM

my heat works now. (not that i need it at the moment.)

11/9/2009 9:54:53 PM

Ughhh...Nobody makes a 40" tall, direct vent, gas water heater anymore as far as I can tell. Even the 30 gallon units are ~49" tall and my current one is a 40 gallon. I'm very close to getting a 57" unit and doing some digging in the crawlspace until it fits. It should only take about 17" deep + enough width to comfortably accommodate it without it being partially buried. I really can't think of any reason not to do this, but I'd like some feedback.

Also, my old one was "direct vent", but there is only one vent tube running to the outside of the house. As far as I can tell, they use two tubes now. One that supplies fresh air and the other that acts as an exhaust. Is this correct? Is it a code change since my old one is 15 years old?

[Edited on November 9, 2009 at 11:40 PM. Reason : l]

11/9/2009 11:35:39 PM

i'm generally opposed to having anything below grade under the house. not to mention, if you spring a leak, digging the water heater out of a 17" hole of muddy water could be quite the mess.

11/9/2009 11:55:57 PM

There is actually a pretty good grade in that section of crawlspace, and the water heater is almost at the top of the "hill". If I cut 17" into the hill water would still flow downhill for approximately 7' away from the water heater.

11/10/2009 1:48:35 AM

I remember the morning I woke up and my hot water heater had busted. I was walking to the bathroom and heard water rushing. Thought what the hell. The water heater is directly underneath our bedroom. So I walk outside and as I get closer to the access, the ground gets more and more wet. There's about an 8-10" lip from the grade to the bottom part of the access and water was flowing out. After I cursed the Gods, I jumped in to cut off the switch at the house (thankfully, the water was still warm)...except THERE'S NO DAMNED CUT OFF AT THE HOUSE SO I HAVE TO GO TO THE F'N ROAD TO CUT IT OFF.

On a positive note, I'd never seen the grass near that part of the house any greener than it was in the subsequent weeks.

Oh, and this was all at about 5:00 AM. Good times.

[Edited on November 10, 2009 at 9:18 AM. Reason : ]

11/10/2009 9:18:01 AM

Quote :

"Is it loud?"

nope, not at all.

11/10/2009 4:28:40 PM

Getting your well tested as required by county / state and finding out there are higher levels of mercury in it than exceed the limit. Have the county and state toxicologist both admit they are baffled at this point as to why, as we live nowhere near a farm / gas station / chemical plant, and, none of our neighbors (so far as we know) have this issue. More testing to come.

Bottled water for cooking / drinking for awhile, and, no more than 10 minute showers per day.

[Edited on November 11, 2009 at 6:07 AM. Reason : .]

11/11/2009 6:07:22 AM

Well to add to my list of woes in the last year (new a/c, furnace, roof, replaced collapsed line from septic tank to drywell, rewiring below code electric) I have recently discovered that the tiles in my shower were just put on drywall, not the cement board that is needed. There is some nice funk smell coming out of the bathroom along with a black mildew. I am about to tear out the whole wall and see exactly how bad it is. Hopefully my summers of home restoration during college will help me save a load of money b/c I dont want to pour any more money into this house this year.

11/11/2009 1:08:27 PM

^ What the hell did you buy? Did you know what you were getting into?

11/11/2009 1:45:17 PM

He bought that house from The Money Pit.

11/11/2009 3:04:26 PM

Quote :

"be careful putting down freshly chipped mulch... it would attract termites like woah"

Solinari

You could always use rubberized mulch.

Quote :

"used to use mulch, and got tired of it. I really prefer pine straw now."

CarZin

Remember the Pine Knoll town house fire? Read these excerpts from the report about that fire--you may change your mind about pine straw mulch (p. 30-32 [p. 26-28 on the document itself]):

Quote :

"Pine straw (also known as pine needles) has many inherent properties that yield high ignitibility, flame spread, and heat release rate. Its low surface area to mass ratio makes it easy to ignite and fast to be consumed. Its resin content produces high heat release rates when compared to other landscape mulches."

Quote :

"The tests demonstrated pine straw to be the most hazardous, yielding the fastest rate of spread, the highest flame height, the highest temperature, and the most complete fuel consumption when compared to the other three test mulches. According the test report, pine straw has the greatest potential of the four mulches to rapidly create an ignition source for adjacent plants and structures."

Quote :

"Pine straw’s rate of spread was overwhelmingly faster. While the other mulches spread fire at a rate of less than 1 ft per minute, pine straw spread fire at a rate of 7.5 feet per minute. Pine straw’s flame height was 7 times that of small pine bark and cypress and 3 times that of large pine bark."

Quote :

"The results of these tests were recently presented at the 2007 Annual Fire Conference at NIST in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The presenters concluded that pine straw should not be used close to structures."

http://tinyurl.com/yewgf3r

[Edited on November 13, 2009 at 11:16 AM. Reason : FYI.]

11/13/2009 11:15:40 AM

Is it too late in the season to seed?

Long story short:

Recently got a Boxer puppy, and his favorite spot in the yard to pee had yellowed the grass (that dog pees a TON). I spread weed & feed as I do every year this time, and didn't think about the Nitrogen in his urine reacting with the weed & feed, and basically has killed that entire spot to the point of no grass now. We have been building a screen porch, and unfortunately the only access to our porch now is through this patch of dirt (which has been mud all week because of the rain)

The rest of the yard is fescue, so I didn't think you could just throw some sod there without it looking retarded.

Any suggestions? Should I just dump a ton of seed on the area right now? Or is it getting too cold?

11/14/2009 8:46:00 PM

i think (fescue) sod would have a better chance than anything right now.

i am not sure that if you seeded, the grass would be hardy enough to put up with the first hard freeze that is in our not too distant future

11/16/2009 9:23:06 AM

Quote :

"Is it too late in the season to seed?"

I would say yes...in fact I think it's way late to seed at this point. even if the weather stays nice enough over the next 3-4 weeks (lol) for the seeds to germinate and the grass to grow, your grass will be so new when all the freezing temps come that I don't think they'd survive. But I'm really new to this stuff, so get more opinions.

http://www.turffiles.ncsu.edu/
http://www.turffiles.ncsu.edu/Guides.aspx#004175

Quote :

" I spread weed & feed as I do every year this time"

Why not use pre-emergent to be a little more proactive?


And speaking of pre-emergent, how soon can I put some down after putting weed&feed down (considering both products have fertilizer in them).

11/16/2009 9:48:16 AM

You're only talking about like 5-10 bucks worth of seed right? Weather forecast has it in the 60's this week, pick some up on the way home tonight and toss it down. The good part about it being a small area is you can spend the time treat the seeds nice.

11/16/2009 10:34:07 AM

Quote :

"and his favorite spot in the yard to pee had yellowed the grass (that dog pees a TON). I spread weed & feed as I do every year this time, and didn't think about the Nitrogen in his urine reacting with the weed & feed,"

the nitrogen in the urine didn't react with the weed and feed. The nitrogen in the urine + the nitrogen in the fertilizer was way too much and killed the grass. But, you would have had the same problem even without having put down the weed and feed. dog urine has a LOT of nitrogen in it, and you're gonna have dead spots whereever your boxer decides to pee (been dealing with this problem for 7 years). Its exactly the same problem you'd have if you overfertilized your lawn.

There are a few ways to deal with this. At my old house, I trained him to always pee in a section of the yard that had no grass and just pine straw. This took about six weeks of walking him to that area with a leash and waiting for him to pee, and giving him a treat/praising him each time before it became habitual. After that I could just let him out back and he'd always go to that area, and never had any yellow spots after that.

Also, you can watch him like a hawk and spray a garden hose whereever he pees to dilute the urea and prevent damage. This will suck for you.

A year ago we moved, and being an older, grumpy dog, he pees wherever the hell he wants, so now I just give our dogs these:



They seem to work.

11/16/2009 12:31:51 PM

^My experience is the opposite. My two dogs whiz on the same spot every time in the morning and at night, sometimes competitively. Those spots are the best pieces of lawn I have.

11/16/2009 12:56:16 PM

Quote :

"^^ why's that? I'm asking because I feel the exact opposite. After years of having pine straw, i got tired of it looking like ass after a month."

I think just about all mulch looks like ass after about 2 months, and instead of having to shovel in a truck load of expensive mulch, it is much easier to spread a few bails of straw in about 5 minutes.

My house is also on a hill. Keeping mulch from running all over the place during rain is a royal pain in the ass. Pine straw stays where you put it.

Its a personal choice, however.

11/16/2009 1:15:47 PM

^^ Do you have fescue? I'm not sure about other varieties, but I know that bermuda does not seem to be affected by dog urine, while fescue will die if you look at it cross-eyed, much less overnitrogenate it (ok i totally made up that word).

^ yeah, you do have a pretty brutal hill, and mulch would be a bigger pain than pine straw.

[Edited on November 16, 2009 at 1:27 PM. Reason : asd]

11/16/2009 1:25:49 PM

Keeping my fingers crossed that I'll have hot water within the next few hours.
One week without it and I have a massive pile of dishes on the counters surrounding the dishwasher.
I'm also $2350 poorer.

Fortunately, I'll get 30% back as a credit to my federal taxes thanks to the recovery act (roughly $700.) I'll get another $100 credit to my PSNC bill. If nothing else, it'll be a nice selling feature whenever I leave the house.

[Edited on November 16, 2009 at 2:47 PM. Reason : l]

11/16/2009 2:46:02 PM

The light bulbs that came with the house are all starting to die at once but luckily Duke power just sent me a free box of CFLs.

11/16/2009 3:34:57 PM

Quote :

"^My experience is the opposite. My two dogs whiz on the same spot every time in the morning and at night, sometimes competitively. Those spots are the best pieces of lawn I have."

have you had a soil sample done?

your yard may NEED nitrogen

11/16/2009 3:47:42 PM

My yard will get nothing and like it. Seriously though, I'm not fertilizing much because we live near a creek and I don't want to add nitrogen to the runoff.

I've got a mix of fescue, bermuda, zoysia, and St Augustines. I just killed most of my lawn (bahiagrass) and I'm putting centipede down this spring.




But it's been the case where I've put down fertilizer on straight fescue as well, at our old house. The dog's spots were always the greenest and healthiest.

11/16/2009 4:06:35 PM

If that's the case, then the only two possibilities are that the soil was nitrogen deficient or your dogs' urine has a lower nitrogen content, which is enviable.

11/16/2009 4:10:41 PM

Quote :

"I'm also $2350 poorer"

what'd you spend $2350 on? are plumbers that expensive? i thought a top of the line hot water heater was like a grand at most

11/16/2009 4:38:13 PM

Home owner's...got an opinion question for you

This is regarding your first home purchase.

When you first began looking for a home did you know what kind you wanted? Either a single family home or a townhome/condo?

Was the house type that you wanted at first what you ended up purchasing?

Looking back, would you rather have lived in the opposite house type first?


---------------------------------

The reason i ask is that i've been looking hard at homes and i've always had my mind set on a stand-alone single family home over a townhome/condo. I've just liked the idea of having my own lot, the chance for a fenced in yard, and more space. Plus i feel like i'd be able to own a large dog much easier in this environment. I've found some homes i really like but they are in established neighborhoods and i'm starting to second guess if i want to be the 25 year old in an established neighborhood predominately filled with families or do i want something like a townhome that's more catered to the younger single persons.

I think i would enjoy the house more in the former, but the social environment more in the latter. Any tips or advice?

11/16/2009 5:10:10 PM

Quote :

"what'd you spend $2350 on? are plumbers that expensive? i thought a top of the line hot water heater was like a grand at most"

I was pretty much forced into a tankless water heater setup. See my previous posts from last week for more info.

http://www.ecomfortusa.com/product_info.php?products_id=1674&cPath=156&gdftrk=gdfV2937_a_7c140_a_7c326_a_7c1674

+ $100+ flush valves
+ $100+ vent
+ $140ish mechanical and plumbing permits
+ Upgrading gas supply line from 1/2" to 3/4"
+ Re-routing cold and hot water supply lines to new location.
+ All other installation requirements (mounting on foundation wall, etc.)

The 9.4GPM setup is probably a little bit of overkill. I could have done a 7.4GPM water heater and knocked a couple hundred off that price. This was actually the cheapest quote by far. A lot of people around here won't even think about a tankless setup for less than $3k.

[Edited on November 16, 2009 at 5:19 PM. Reason : l]

11/16/2009 5:16:55 PM

Quote :

"i'm starting to second guess if i want to be the 25 year old in an established neighborhood predominately filled with families or do i want something like a townhome that's more catered to the younger single persons."

My neighborhood wasn't already established but I'd definitely say I'm in the minority. I know a few of my neighbors but rarely socialize with them. If I want to socialize with people I'll have a party or have people over to shoot pool or do other things which are much easier to do since I have a single family home.

[Edited on November 16, 2009 at 6:29 PM. Reason : plus the appreciation will be better]

11/16/2009 6:28:55 PM

Quote :

"What the hell did you buy? Did you know what you were getting into?"

I bought a house that had been greatly reduced (150k) b/c the old couple had to get out. The old man couldnt go up and down the stairs anymore because of his hips. Basically it got dropped to the purchase price in the morning, my agent called me, and I signed on it that night. This is a well established neighborhood with houses routinely going for anywhere between 550 and 750, so it was a tremendous investment for me in the future. Now I didn't HAVE to replace the a/c and furnace, but the units were both over 20 years old and weren't doing their job to my liking. Sure I could have gone for a less efficient model, but I decided to go with top of the line equipment for various reasons. The wiring was minimal, the previous owners decided to run extension cords through the attic and other stupid shit like that. The whole house wiring was good.

Quote :

"He bought that house from The Money Pit."

Hahaha. Nice...I have had to put a lot more money into the house than I expected, and it really has put a strain on my financial situation, but I just got a new job that pays 1.4 times as much as my last job, and my girlfriend moved in with a few months ago, so that extra money is certainly helping out. I have learned alot from this process, I am certainly happy that I bought the house because smaller houses in my neighborhood have recently sold for more than 100k more than I paid for my house.

11/18/2009 3:21:52 AM