Preemption Part 3 - the HVAC system

I'm having deja vu again. Remember how I previously described things like the light fixtures and water faucets in the house? If you want to know which light fixture or water faucet was in our house, just walk through the aisles of Home Depot and whichever one was the cheapest - THAT's what was in our house.

Yyyyyyeah, well, the builders didn't just open up their wallets and plunk down any extra cash on the HVAC system either.

Our system is the basic, bare bones, no frills, bottom of the totem pole model. Basically, it was as low as the builders could go and still claim that the house had heating and air conditioning.

It only had a 5 year warranty, and it's about 10 years old, so it's definitely lived a useful life. It started failing on us a couple of months ago (see this previous post for background). We decided back then to hold out and wait for some sort of catastrophic system failure so we could at least TRY to get our useless home warranty to do SOMETHING for us.

Then the phone rang.

The company that came out troubleshoot the system and gave us the estimate for the new system last time called. Business is slow. Would I be interested in 10% off? How about 16 months same-as-cash financing? How about both?

[Rubs chin] Hmmmmm... That doesn't sound too bad.

Now, we have some good history with this company, Aire Serv, in that we know the owner from church and we used this company for our periodic maintenance on our previous house here in Ashburn, too. So it's not like it was just some pushy salesman calling us out of the blue trying to sell us a pink elephant.

I had him come out yesterday after I got off work to walk me through the options and pricing. He talked to me about our current system and how much of an improvement the new system would be.

So we decided what-the-heck, we'll do our part to help the economy and we'll take them up on their offer. We're just going to have the upstairs system replaced now (the one that shows signs of imminent failure), but we will probably have to replace the downstairs system eventually, too.

They're coming Monday to do the installation. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Home Improvements Deja Vu

I look forward to having a house that we plan to keep indefinitely. Each of our previous two houses we purchased anticipating we would sell the house a few years later when we moved on, not sure where the Navy would send us next. We don't know yet if this will be "that" house. Depending on the results of the next two screening boards for me, this could be our house for a long time to come.

With our first house in San Diego, if you had wanted to know which light fixture or water faucet was in our house, just walk through the aisles of Home Depot and whichever one was the cheapest - THAT's the one that was installed in our house. A lot of my home improvement projects ended up being installation of nicer light fixtures and water faucets.

Fast forward to our second house in Ashburn. Ya know what? If you want to know which light fixture or water faucet was in our house, just walk through the aisles of Home Depot and whichever one was the cheapest - THAT's what was in our house. Deja vu! Once again, I spent a good amount of time and expense installing nicer light fixtures and water faucets.

I embarked on a new series of home improvements at our second house though. Our next door neighbor at our second house introduced me to programmable light switches and home automation. He had his house totally rigged with home automation stuff from roof to foundation and it was pretty darn cool. I followed his lead and started a series of upgrades to our light switches and receptacles.

The place it made the most difference for us was in the basement. Neither my wife nor I really like having to go down the stairs into the basement and walk around turning off all the lights the boys left on, or just walking around down there to verify they were all off. I replaced each of the light switches in the basement with X-10 switches (Aside: X-10 were the older generation, the newer ones are called Insteon). Each switch has an electronic address sort of like an IP address for a computer, and they can send and receive control and status signals over the neutral wires of the house. At the top of the basement stairs, I installed an 8-button keypad that showed the status of each of the lights in the basement (on or off), and allowed me to turn them all off, all on, or individually on or off with the push of a single button.

Tangent:

In addition to the remote control, indication, and programming benefits of these switches, they also slowly ramp-up and ramp-down the power. This has a couple of good benefits.

First, it reduces the strain on your lightbulbs and makes the lightbulbs last longer. We had those recessed lighting big lightbulbs in the basement. It seemed like every other time I turned the lights on, one of the lightbulbs would blink out. I was replacing them ALL the time. After I installed the X-10 light switches, I hardly ever had to replace the bulbs anymore. The slow ramp-up and ramp-down of the lights really did make the bulbs last longer.


Second, it reduces the drop in the voltage on the power lines when you turn the lights on and off, which can degrade the major appliances in your house over time. Think about it, if you have ten 60W bulbs that instantly turn on when you flick the switch, then you're putting a sudden 600W load on your house's power. Major appliances like refrigerators don't generally like the oscilating voltage.

Plus, you could program how fast the lights ramped-up or down and set them to automatically go to a preset level instead of going full-bright all the time.

Okay, end of tangent.

Next, I took it a step further and installed a few motion sensors here and there. You didn't have to turn the lights on to the basement stairs, because they would automatically turn on as you approached the bottom or the top of the stairs, and they would automatically turn off after three minutes of not sensing any motion.

We had a problem with the boys going down cellar to the play room, turning on the lights and the TV in the playroom, and coming back upstairs 5 minutes later while leaving the TV and lights on. So installed another motion sensor in the playroom. It controlled the lights the same way as the lights on the stairs (only with a bit longer time delay), but it also controlled the electrical outlet the TV was plugged into. When you walked into the play room, the motion sensor turned on the electrical outlet and allowed the TV to be turned on. After 30 minutes of no motion in the playroom, it turned the lights and the TV off.

Eventually I upgraded the light switches on the first floor, too, so when we're going to bed at night, the single push of a button would secure all the lights. Likewise, when our alarm system said someone was trying to mess with the sliding glass door, a push of a button turned on all the lights and scared the prowler away.

So what brought all this up?

If you've been reading my blog for long, then you know we just bought our third house. Thankfully, this time around, we found a house that didn't require any upgrades to the water faucets or light fixtures. However, we've encountered the same issues as our last house in terms of wishing we didn't have to do the walking tour of the basement to turn off all the lights before going to bed and wishing the boys wouldn't leave the TV and lights on in general.

Thanks to a Christmas gift certificate from my wonderful MIL, I ordered our first shipment of new light switches for the basement. They aren't cheap, so I can't afford to just do the whole house at once. Our first priority was the basement again.

The box arrived a few days ago, so I spent most of the day today replacing the light switches in the basement and installing and programming the 8-button keypad at the top of the stairs. Now, once again, we can push a single button at the top of the stairs and turn off all the lights in the basement. Ta-da! Well... almost anyway. I didn't replace ALL the switches, but the primary ones the boys are leaving on all the time in the play room and the home theater.

This is the 8-keypad. Each of the keys are backlit, but they light up brighter to tell you the light associated with that button is actually on. All the buttons are programmable to control one or more switches or power outlets. You can pop the buttons out and change the labels, I just haven't done that yet.

Well, I'm pleased with what I got done today. While I'm glad to have the programmable light switches again, I'm also experiencing deja vu. I wonder if we'll be keeping this house or if I'll be doing this again at our next house.

Preemption Part Deux

It's Friday.

It's a four day weekend. (At least for those of us in the DC area - Tuesday is a holiday due to Inauguration and the traffic jams to come.)

You know what this means, don't you?

Why, yes, you're absolutely correct! That means it's time for another household casualty! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! Bob, tell the folks in the audience what they've won...

So last night and today it was Arctic polar bear BUTT cold in the DC area. When I left for work at 6 a.m., it was 10 degrees, and -3 degrees with the wind chill. Expecting it to be cold, I wasn't all that surprised when my alarm went off and I didn't want to get out of bed because it was too cold out. It was too early in the morning and I hadn't had any caffeine yet, so it didn't occur to me that it was odd for it to be so cold INSIDE the house.

Later, my wife pointed out to me that the heater was not cutting the mustard. It was set for 67 in the house, but it wasn't even up to like 62. The heater kept starting, running for a few minutes, then shutting down again.

So my wife called for our heating & air conditioning company to come take a look at it. They said they'd be at our house at 1 p.m... not so much. The dude finally got here somewhere in the 4 o'clock hour, and was still here when I got home around 5:15.

Yep, I made it home JUST in time to hear the GREAT news from the heating company guy. His assessment was:

1) The filter was clogged. Now, we just moved in 3 months ago and I changed the filter just after we moved in, so it's not like I'm totally out of periodicity on that MRC. (Sorry, Maintenance Requirement Card for those non-Navy types. In the Navy we have daily, weekly, monthly, semi-annual, and annual preventative maintenance we have to do that are documented on MRCs). Still, he said after he took the filter out, it started right up and kept running for a good 20 minutes afterward and was still running when I got home.
2) The bearings are going bad on the blower motor. He said because of this, the blower motor might be overheating and that might be what's causing the system to shut down every couple of minutes. New blower motor? $500. Cha-ching!
3) Our system is overall a piece of junk that is about to catastrophically fail and cause mayhem in our household any moment. The heat exchangers and piping are corroded. Who knows how soon it'll fail and dump freon into our house. He recommended not "wasting" the money on a new blower motor and just buying a whole new HVAC system for $9,800. Cha-ching! Cha-ching! Cha-ching!

Um... have you seen the DOW lately?

I mean, I just got a statement on my IRA for 2008, and it said my net return for the year was - (that's NEGATIVE) 33%!!! Not to mention we just became new home owners and sank all our non-retirement fund money into the down payment on the house. I just don't have $10k laying around to buy a new heating system right now.

As with the previous water heater dilemma, there's the question about the useless home warranty. Should we WAIT for it to FAIL and then ask the useless home warranty company, "Oh please oh please oh pretty puh-leeeeeeeeeeeease won't you replace our heating system?" I predict they'll give us the standard blah blah blah due to paragraph x on page y, this repair is not covered for reason z.

My wife called the useless home warranty company tonight to ask them what they would cover. They said only if there was a MECHANICAL FAILURE due to normal wear and tear would they pay to have it fixed. Plus, we can't just have it fixed and then send them the bill. We would have to:

a. WAIT for the system to fail
b. Put on several layers of clothing, mittens, hats, and wool socks
c. CALL the useless home warranty company
d. WAIT for the useless home warranty company to send one of THEIR representatives to come inspect the failure, see the busted pipe and the water damage and deem, "yes, it is not working" (because our assessment and our HVAC company's assessment aren't good enough). Then he'll say, "Oh, but we don't cover the water damage, only the new equipment." Riiiiight.
e. Huddle together as a family and all sleep in the same bed to share body heat while we wait
f. WAIT for the useless home warranty company to send someone (the lowest bidder with the cheapest parts available) to repair it
g. Go to Home Depot and buy some space heaters while we wait
... and so on and so forth...

Ahhh, the joys of home ownership.

So what do you think? Preempt the failure and rack up the credit card bill? Let it ride and see how long the current system lasts before it dies, and then take a stab at getting the useless home warranty to cover it?

I hope you all have a splendid 3 or 4 day weekend depending on your location. (Or 2 day weekend if you're not even in CONUS - Sorry, John!)

Preemption

We are developing a habit of buying ten year old houses.

First, let's rewind about seven years to when we owned our first house in San Diego. One day, we drove up the street to our house to find a waterfall cascading down the driveway. Our water heater was in the garage, and it had rusted a hole in the bottom and dumped its contents into the garage. Luckily, it was just the garage. Luckily there wasn't much on the floor in the garage, so the cleanup was fairly reasonable. Of course, it happened on a weekend, and Sears couldn't come to replace it until Monday, so we took showers at our next door neighbor's house that Sunday morning.

Fast forward about three years to our second house in Virginia. One of the things we love about living in Virginia is having a basement. We had enough money left over from selling our house in San Diego that we were able to hire a contractor to finish our basement in Virginia and put in a home theater, another full bathroom, etc.

Early one Saturday morning of a three-day weekend, my wife heard a noise sort of like a "whooooosh!" from the vicinity of the basement. Upon further inspection, we found our water heater decided it didn't like holding all that hot water anymore. It gave up the ghost.

I tell ya. There's nothing like spending the first day of your holiday weekend combating a flooding casualty in your house. I shut off the water supply isolation valve to the water heater, but that didn't stop the flooding in the basement. I figured it was because the isolation valve on the inlet of the water heater was leaking, so I shut off water to the entire HOUSE and opened some faucets low in the house to drain the system to stop the flooding in the basement.

Whew. The flooding is stopped. Now for the cleanup.

My wife and I spent the first half of the day just cleaning up the mess, sucking up water with the wet-dry shop vac, sopping up water with every towel we owned, and trying to figure out what was wrong with the sump pump.

Aside: Isn't it ironic how the only time we ever pay attention to our sump pump is when we REALLY NEED IT to be PUMPING and it's NOT? If we were in the Navy, we'd have some sort of PMS (Preventative Maintenance System) card that told us to check the pump to make sure it worked every 3 or 6 months.

We finally got to a point where the cleanup was mostly complete and the fans were running in the basement to dry out the carpet. We were then able to pause for a moment, take a deeeeep breath, and take stock of our situation.

Whew... cleanup mostly done. Now for system repair and restoration.

So there we were... Saturday of a three day weekend, not only with no HOT water but with NO water PERIOD. I called Sears, but they couldn't do anything until Tuesday. Then I called a dozen or more plumbers in the phone book, but most didn't answer.

The only plumber I could get on the phone that Saturday morning wanted me to sign a contract for ten years of indentured servitude and hand over my first born son in return for his services to come replace my water heater before Tuesday.

Ahhh, no thanks.

We spent that holiday weekend taking showers at our next-door neighbor's house and eating out every meal. We took some buckets of water home to use for flushing the toilets.

I learned something new that weekend. My good friend Vince came over and taught me how to "sweat" copper pipe and install a new valve.

On the first trip to Home Depot, I bought a new isolation valve, flux, the flux brush, and solder, and Vince brought over his propane torch. Once we got the new isolation valve installed and allowed the joint to cool for a couple of hours, we said a prayer, crossed our fingers, and held our breath as we turned the water back on in the house to see if the repair was a success.

It was.

Well... sort of.

Actually... not really.

The new valve Vince had installed was holding just fine, but we reinitiated the flooding casualty as water started pouring out the hole in the bottom of the water heater again. It turns out, the source of the flooding was NOT the isolation valve on the INLET side of the water heater.

I learned something else new through that experience.

Ya know that valve in your shower that has one handle to both turn the water on and control the temperature? Yyyyeah, they're not so good at ISOLATION. In fact, they're DESIGNED to allow water to leak by from the cold side to the hot side as an anti-scalding safety feature. The unintended consequence is that this allows cold water from the water main to go up to the showers in the house, leak by to the hot side, come down the hot pipes into the OUTLET of the water heater, and leak out the rusted hole in the bottom of our busted water heater.

Aside: I think there's some unwritten universal law that no home repair project can be accomplished in ONE trip to Home Depot.

Since there was no isolation valve on the outlet of the water heater, I had to make yet another trip to Home Depot and buy ANOTHER isolation valve and Vince let me borrow his pipe saw. I cut out a section of the pipe on the outlet side of the water heater and installed a new isolation valve.

I dug up this old picture off my Palm Pilot. On the right is the isolation valve that Vince showed me how to install. On the left is my own handy work from installing the isolation valve on the outlet of the water heater.

Once I got the outlet isolation valve installed, we said a another prayer, crossed our fingers and held our breath again, and turned the water back on in the house to see if the isolation held.

Thankfully, it did.

Whew... cold water restored to the house. Now we can at least use the toilets.

We made it through the weekend continuing to use our neighbor's shower and eating out so we didn't have to wash any dishes. On Tuesday, we got Sears to come install a new water heater for somewhere in the ballpark of $600.

GETTING TO THE POINT

So why am I telling you all this?

We have just purchased yet another ten-year old house with the original water heater in the (nicely finished) basement.

During the home inspection prior to closing, the professional home inspector told us he was worried about the water heater. It's old and it's making noises indicative of scale buildup inside, and he recommended replacing it.

We tried asking the sellers to replace it, but they said no. It works. It doesn't leak. It's fine.

Our realtor told us, it'll be fiiiiiine. If it does "break," then your home warranty will cover it.

So here's the question: Should we...

A) WAIT until the water heater BLOWS and floods the basement like our previous two houses on the premise that the home warranty will pay for it? (I'm sure they'll come up with SOME excuse why it isn't covered.)

B) SAVE the time and effort of cleaning up the mess in the basement and just go ahead and pay out of pocket to replace the water heater NOW?

C) Implement some risk-mitigation strategy and install a kiddie-pool under or around the water heater and do daily operational checks on the sump pump?

What say you peanut gallery?

Useless

Deja vu.

Flashback: Circa 2006, I said to myself, "Self, our home warranty is an absolutely useless waste of money. Why on earth did we pay for it? I'm NEVER going to waste my money on another home warranty again."

Every time anything went wrong in our last house, I dutifully called the home warranty company.

Every time I called the home warranty company, they dutifully cited article blah, section blah blah, paragraph blah blah blah, sub-paragraph blah blah blah blah that CLEARLY states that [insert name of your household casualty here] is NOT covered by the home warranty. So sorry. Thank you for playing. Buh-bye. (Whew! Dodged another sucker actually trying to get us to pay for something.)

Case in Point #1: The vent from our clothes dryer went into the wall in between the laundry room and the first floor half bathroom, then down through the floor and out through the back of the house under our back deck. Well, one day, I noticed water dripping down the bathroom wall from the electrical outlet on the wall next to the sink.

Water and electricity don't tend to go well together ya know?

I would dare say they're a dangerous combination. As I got closer to inspect the scene of the casualty and identify the source of this "controlled leak," I was alarmed to discover hot, damp air gushing from around the edges of the electrical outlet. Somewhere in the wall, the dryer vent had ruptured and was venting the exhaust from the dryer into the wall, and it had found an outlet in the adjacent bathroom (pun intended).

I (foolishly) thought that the purpose of a home warranty was to pay for things that break in your home and were beyond your capability to repair. I called the home warranty company, and... copy and paste the conversation above - not covered by the warranty.

This happened like FIVE times in the two years I lived in our previous house here in Virginia (not the dryer venting through the bathroom electrical outlet mind you, but stuff braking that I thought should be covered by the home warranty.)

The home warranty covered us ONCE! They fixed the broken handle on the dishwasher. Whoopie.

Fast forward a smidge over two years.

We're in the process of buying our house in Virginia, and I told the realtor that our last home warranty was useless and I didn't want to waste our money on it. Our realtor assures us that this is a GOOD home warranty and worth the money, and my memory has experienced a typical exponential decay on WHY I believed home warranties were useless.

Now, three months later, our humidifier isn't working.

My wife called the home warranty company.

They cited article blah, section blah blah, paragraph blah blah blah, sub-paragraph blah blah blah blah that CLEARLY states that [insert name of your household casualty here] is NOT covered by the home warranty. So sorry. Thank you for playing. Buh-bye. (Whew!)

Note to self: NEVER EVER BUY ANOTHER HOME WARRANTY.


I should demand my money back.

I would be interested to see a Consumer Reports study on home warranties. Consumer Reports had a pretty interesting article on extended warranties on other items.

"Extended warranties are notoriously bad deals for the consumer but retailers push hard to get you to buy them, or service plans, because they're cash cows. We tell you why in most cases, you don't need an extended warranty."

There's another important decision at hand that dovetails with this story, but I'm going to save that for another blog post.