The Joys of Home Ownership

[lsturbointeg]

Originally Posted by a4nut

wow, my winterization costs $67, and frankly all they do is blow out the water and turn it off. I can't imagine what they could possibly do that would cost $6700, unless they remove the system entirely and then reinstall it.

As for the $600-$1000, maybe they watered every day for hours? I run mine 3 days per week for about 2 hours and that's plenty in the summer. My increase is only about $100/month.

I figured it was a past due? I wonder if there's a DIY for this?

[lsturbointeg]

Originally Posted by Maestro

Around us, if you are going to have a watering system, most everyone puts in a separate water meter just for the sprinkler system. Reason being it is not the water bill that kills you it is the sewage bill which goes way up since they multiply your water usage to calculate the amount of waste water, the number is more than what comes out of your house since they have to use clear water to dilute the waste water before they clean it all. I know the extra meter is $1500 to install, the meter is only a few hundred $ but the water company knows they loose out on extra sewage $ when people do this so they make will not allow me to use ground water to water my lawn since it was a protect wet land. Did not know I had protect wet lands on my property. The town runs the well and water and sewage system so they have interest in letting people get off cheap.

I do have a separate meter for the sprinkler system. The Water Utilities guy showed me when he installed the new transmitters

[lsturbointeg]

Just wanted to share some projects I've been working on around the house. The fireplace was a bit boring as you can see it's a shelf which could house a 42" LED TV so I upgraded by enclosing it and aaded some Fluted case moulding and topped it with House of Fara Crown moulding.

Before:



Here I textured the walls with my Hopper hooked up to my air compressor


Here's the finished look!

[lsturbointeg]

Retexturing the kitchen area as well as installing Crown Moulding all around and repaint with Behr Marquee Gate Gray
Before:




After :



More Crown moulding and texturing around the rest of the house




Getting ready to texture in the upstairs hallway



In case people were curious as to all the retexturing is because there were so many holes in the wall and if anyone know about patch work if you just patch and paint you can actually still see the patch work from under the new paint and I think it just looks ugly that way. So retexturing makes the walls look brand new again

[BMWrules7]

Originally Posted by RABAUKE

I love old houses, have never owned anything less than 50 years old, my current and hopefully last home is over 100 years old in a Heritage area. We've had the place for 3 years now and have been renovating it as it will be our retirement home. I find that it seems that on a somewhat regular basis I have to stop my reno work and repair something as there is always something that needs attention, I'm good with that for the most part. Keeps me out of trouble. Thank god I can do most of the work myself, if I needed to pay a contractor I'd have gone broke....

Any ghosts?

[CO_Steve]

Ok, I've got a just moved in story. Supply plumbing? Hah. Child's play.

So we buy this older home that is on a hillside below the street level. It has a lift station. For those who don't know a lift station is a tank that accumulates the sewage and then a pump sends it up the hill to the sewer line. So in the pipe coming out of the pump there's a check valve so that waste can only go up the hill and not come back down. If that check valve fails open then the pump fills the line uphill with waste until the tank is empty. The pump then shuts off and all that waste runs back down the hill. Since it has to go backwards through the pump it spins it up backwards. At some point enough waste refills the tank to trip the pump back on. Since it's spinning backwards at that point it shears the impeller shaft and stops pumping, but continues to run. This happened to our system. I found out when I got an $800 monthly electric bill and went investigating where the power was going.

Pump out tank, replace pump. $5000. When it happened a second time years later I said screw it and replaced it myself.

[UncleWede]

^ Call Mike Rowe about THAT dirty job

[M_Six]

Ah, septic systems. Ours is an onsite system that empties into the woods out back. There's a pump in it that aerates the sewage and permits bacteria to grow and break stuff down. If the pump fails, the bacteria die and the system fails. You notice it pretty quickly because of the smell.

So our house was built as a duplex even though it was a single family home. In other words, the downstairs had its own electrical, water, and cable TV system, as well as HVAC. The original owner had planned on retiring here and having a live-in helper.

We didn't need a second kitchen, so when we moved in I had a neighbor, who owns lots of rentals in our area, come in with his crew to remove the kitchen. The deal was they remove all the cabinets and appliances and repair the sheet rock, and we call it even.

So they get to the dishwasher and find an odd ROMEX cable wired to the main board on the lower front of it. The cable went out through the wall and into a conduit going into the ground. We're thinking, ok, it's a grounding cable. So they disconnect it and roll it up and leave it inside the wall when they replaced the sheet rock.

Two days later the house and yard stink link a water treatment plant. I called the septic maintenance people and they come out and find the pump isn't working. After much investigating, we find out the idiots who installed the septic system tapped off the front of the dishwasher for power. That's what the ROMEX was. I couldn't believe it. I had to have an electrician come in and put a junction box in the wall and wire in the septic system. Luckily there was already a 20 AMP circuit there from the kitchen so he didn't have to run a new one.

[Maestro]

Originally Posted by lsturbointeg

In case people were curious as to all the retexturing is because there were so many holes in the wall and if anyone know about patch work if you just patch and paint you can actually still see the patch work from under the new paint and I think it just looks ugly that way. So retexturing makes the walls look brand new again

This is the reason I do not like texture walls. Had them when we lived in Calif, repair was a nightmare. I like my plain walls with flat paint on them, clean and repair is easy work.

[UncleWede]

Those cans of texture at Home Depot do a pretty good job on small repairs like a cable to run camera wire and even when u just get tired of looking at all the repairs in a single room u r going to paint

[lsturbointeg]

Originally Posted by UncleWede

^ Call Mike Rowe about THAT dirty job

ha! whatever happened to Mike? did he finally catch something and said "ef this!"

[lsturbointeg]

Originally Posted by Maestro

This is the reason I do not like texture walls. Had them when we lived in Calif, repair was a nightmare. I like my plain walls with flat paint on them, clean and repair is easy work.

my house in Temecula at the time had the same knock down texture. i think most homes in Cali have textured walls. just adds a nice look to the room. but yes, if you have to do some drywall repair matching the knockdown can be a *itch!

Originally Posted by UncleWede

Those cans of texture at Home Depot do a pretty good job on small repairs like a cable to run camera wire and even when u just get tired of looking at all the repairs in a single room u r going to paint

totally agree as i've used this on small projects. you can actually use those patch repair kits and a sea sponge to mimick knockdown. there's a bunch of ways if you browse YouTube but on full rooms/walls i'll use just normal joint compound from Home Depot and mix it with water until it almost has a pancake consistency...load it into my hopper and blast away!

Originally Posted by CO_Steve

Ok, I've got a just moved in story. Supply plumbing? Hah. Child's play.

So we buy this older home that is on a hillside below the street level. It has a lift station. For those who don't know a lift station is a tank that accumulates the sewage and then a pump sends it up the hill to the sewer line. So in the pipe coming out of the pump there's a check valve so that waste can only go up the hill and not come back down. If that check valve fails open then the pump fills the line uphill with waste until the tank is empty. The pump then shuts off and all that waste runs back down the hill. Since it has to go backwards through the pump it spins it up backwards. At some point enough waste refills the tank to trip the pump back on. Since it's spinning backwards at that point it shears the impeller shaft and stops pumping, but continues to run. This happened to our system. I found out when I got an $800 monthly electric bill and went investigating where the power was going.

Pump out tank, replace pump. $5000. When it happened a second time years later I said screw it and replaced it myself.

damn $800!

finished texturing upstairs and will let it dry for a day or two before i start painting. gotta borrow the 28' extended ladder to reach the higher areas on the ceiling. but contemplating about putting crown moulding upstairs now still have a long ways to go with these house projects. the one project i can't wait to do is my Home Theatre build 135" Projector screen with my current HT Audio i've already somewhat completed! looking at something like these:



Here's the room i'll be working with. it's a bonus room 2nd floor above the garage area but it measures 24'x20' so plenty of room to work with