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Worst I've had so far is the other day some neighbor cut down a large weed I had growing in my front yard under the cover of night and then threw it in my side yard. The weed was seriously impressive so they really did me a favor. It was in a section of yard that has a ton of prickly shrubs and heavy ground cover. Must have been a lot of effort to get to.
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Sep 14, 2016 15:25
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I must be a unicorn, all the houses on my cul de sac are friendly save two. One is an absent hoarder, who at least mows the lawn, and the other is a single mom who is completely out of sight and does not interact at all. The rest of us share houses, the kids are in an out of everyone's yard, and we have frequent parties where all are invited and participate. We share tools, advice and booze. I love it, and while I dont particularly care that much about my house itself, the neighbors are great and make living here much nicer. This is just outside DC too, for what that is worth, an area infamous for me-first, type A people.
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Sep 14, 2016 15:31
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My neighbors are hit and miss socially and politically, but they would all dig me out of a ditch if I needed them to. My immediate neighbor to the right (of course his name is Randy) likes to call the city on the parked car of the recovering alcoholic across the street who sometimes leaves it parked past the city-mandated 72 hour limit. Also, sometimes he lives in it because his living situation is... complicated. loving Randy. gently caress that guy.
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Sep 14, 2016 15:44
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couldcareless posted:Please keep us updated because I love hearing about crazy neighbor comeuppance.
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Sep 14, 2016 16:18
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SiGmA_X posted:Report away!!! They should be keeping the broken cars on the front lawn because America. That is the real violation. The car is causing literally 0 issue for us aside from stirring up my easily agitated FIL
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Sep 14, 2016 16:28
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I live in a four-home HOA, and it's got to be the greatest representation for multiculturalism ever. You've got my house, where me and my Latin wife live. You've got the current HOA president, Steve, who lives with his boyfriend and some guy who's in a band and always leaves his tour van on the street. Then there's my direct neighbor, Carlton, who rents from Sylvia, who moved to Florida. Carlton is retired, and I'm 99% sure he's a swinger. Finally, we've got Carlyn and her family, middle-aged African-American attorneys and a small child. Thankfully, the HOA by-laws stipulate that each owner is granted a voting right, not a representative from each property. Since my wife and I are both listed on the deed, we get two votes. Together we make up 66% of the architecture committee, so I could paint my house any color I want damnit.
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Sep 14, 2016 19:21
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I recently bought a house, may god have mercy on my soul. We starting moving in the following Wednesday. Saturday, we evacuated because the entire neighborhood and surrounding streets were flooding. Awesome, right? FEMA says "haha, gently caress you. you had flood insurance". Flood Insurance gives me like half of what my house is worth even though I sustained like 3 feet of water from the ground up. I was lucky enough to still have my apartment and essentials for my family. I go to ask my mortgage company about a forbearance and get told "Sure"  "You'll have to pay back all 3 months at the end of the forbearance though"  In essence, this whole thing has mostly been a poo poo show.
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Sep 14, 2016 19:48
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Quick get another mortgage before this one shows up on credit and let the other house drop into FC.
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Sep 14, 2016 19:54
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Irritated Goat posted:I recently bought a house, may god have mercy on my soul. We starting moving in the following Wednesday. Half of what the house is worth, or half of what the house + land is worth?
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Sep 14, 2016 23:13
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That is my waking nightmare. Holy poo poo.
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Sep 14, 2016 23:22
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QuarkJets posted:Half of what the house is worth, or half of what the house + land is worth? As it's my first house, I'm not sure. I know the value is 134k. Flood Insurance tried to give me 60k to put my house back together minus property.
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Sep 15, 2016 15:03
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Irritated Goat posted:As it's my first house, I'm not sure. I know the value is 134k. Flood Insurance tried to give me 60k to put my house back together minus property. If you don't know its probably house and land. Is $134 what you paid and/or the appraisal came back at? That would be both. Insurance is only going to pay out the minimum of the cost to fix or replace the house and your maximum coverage amount. $60k seems pretty low to replace a whole house, but I know nothing about your local construction market or how big your place was. If they think the existing place can be repaired without knocking it down that may be a reasonable value.
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Sep 15, 2016 18:43
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supercrooky posted:If you don't know its probably house and land. Is $134 what you paid and/or the appraisal came back at? That would be both. That's paid\appraisal. My contractor took a look today and said 60k was really lowballing it since they assumed everything could be removed and replaced. There's a lot of stuff in there that can't be removed\replaced so yeah.. 
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Sep 15, 2016 18:46
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Irritated Goat posted:That's paid\appraisal. My contractor took a look today and said 60k was really lowballing it since they assumed everything could be removed and replaced. There's a lot of stuff in there that can't be removed\replaced so yeah..
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Sep 15, 2016 19:14
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Did you not have contents coverage on your flood insurance? Mine covers up to 60k in contents before structure is even brought in.
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Sep 15, 2016 19:45
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SiGmA_X posted:Color me confused...What type of stuff can't be removed and replaced? Built-ins that were water damaged and will probably break upon removal. Those counter tops from the 80s where it's all 1 unit with the backsplash. The fireplace took on water. If I'm reading it right, they're OK with leaving the outlets since we have working electricity right now even though they were under water for days. The walls removed around the 2 tubs show there was water behind it. The only things the flood adjuster suggested replacing were the appliances, doors, and walls. couldcareless posted:Did you not have contents coverage on your flood insurance? Mine covers up to 60k in contents before structure is even brought in. I didn't have contents like a moron. Once we're back in there, I definitely will add it.
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Sep 15, 2016 19:47
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Is the insurance company just cutting you a check or will they be paying the contractors? It could be that your contractor was just telling you that it's a lowball estimate because he's hoping to get more money. I'm sure that the insurance company wants to pay as little as possible but $60k might be an okay amount for appliances, doors, and walls. The countertops probably wouldn't be much more to replace, if they need replacing
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Sep 15, 2016 19:54
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Sorry to hear that man. The insurance game is never fun. Good luck with recovery.
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Sep 15, 2016 20:03
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Irritated Goat posted:Built-ins that were water damaged and will probably break upon removal. Those counter tops from the 80s where it's all 1 unit with the backsplash. The fireplace took on water. Good luck dealing with insurance. Don't take it lying down.
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Sep 15, 2016 20:13
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Got home from work yesterday, it was a balmy 88 degrees in the house. AC fan was blowing but the compressor was not turning on. Turned out it was a blown fuse, so it was a $14.00 fix, but now I get to worry that it's a hidden problem causing the fuse to blow and I'll have to get an HVAC guy out anyway.
big trivia FAIL fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Sep 16, 2016 |
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Sep 16, 2016 14:40
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-S- posted:Got home from work yesterday, it was a balmy 88 degrees in the house. AC fan was blowing but the compressor was not turning on. Turned out it was a blown fuse, so it was a $14.00 fix, but now I get to worry that it's a hidden problem causing the fuse to blow and I'll have to get an HVAC guy out anyway. At the beginning of the season our AC would turn on and then immediately trip the breaker. After some panic googling, I cleaned out the electric air filter and it has been running fine ever since. Now I've got "clean air filter" on my calendar every six months.
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Sep 16, 2016 16:36
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Economic Sinkhole posted:At the beginning of the season our AC would turn on and then immediately trip the breaker. After some panic googling, I cleaned out the electric air filter and it has been running fine ever since. Now I've got "clean air filter" on my calendar every six months. Is there an air filter on the handler?? I change the filters on the two wall things every other month.
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Sep 16, 2016 16:42
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Economic Sinkhole posted:At the beginning of the season our AC would turn on and then immediately trip the breaker. After some panic googling, I cleaned out the electric air filter and it has been running fine ever since. Now I've got "clean air filter" on my calendar every six months. I think most people turn off those electric air filters and use regular filters inside them. IIRC they create ozone and don't actually clean the air that well. Our house has them as well and we were recommended to keep them unplugged for that reason.
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Sep 16, 2016 18:36
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EPA tells you to avoid ozone, it's mildly toxic too. It does wonders for nulling odors though.
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Sep 16, 2016 18:49
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I could see those being useful for periodic freshening up but yeah I wouldn't want ozone pumped around my house all day if someone was home.
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Sep 16, 2016 18:51
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I bought a small house recently with a mostly collapsed flex-duct system (known issue). While in the crawl space taking measurements for metal duct replacement, I found an extensive tree root system beneath the vapor barrier. By extensive, I mean maybe half of the crawl was opaque at the surface with a root system. The culprit is a huge sweetgum tree about 15 feet from the foundation. There are two cracks in our foundation beneath the intruding roots, likely from subsidence because sweetgums are notoriously thirsty trees. Sweetgums and their damned spiked balls are Hell Trees and I have no reservations about wishing the tree a short and painful death. Assuming we can make the tree removal permitting work, is there anything I need to consider with a tree removal service? It's a substantial tree, with a chest high trunk of 30"D. Complications with leaving the roots as they are under the foundation? Also, the root intrusion was conspicuously absent from our inspection report. There is no way the root system could have been missed. Magicaljesus fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Sep 17, 2016 |
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Sep 17, 2016 04:00
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Don't cheap out on tree removal services. Make sure they are insured. That's about the extent of the advice I was given when we got a pine tree out front cut down.
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Sep 18, 2016 05:59
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Also, supervise. We had a tree service remove the wrong branch even after we watched them mark the right one with spray paint. Our recourse was a 25% discount, which we put towards an apology gift for our neighbors who lost their shade.
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Sep 18, 2016 14:03
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Tree service people tend to view everything as a problem that needs to be cut down, because otherwise no time to bill for. Keep close tabs on them always, that's the one contractor I'd never let work unsupervised. Of course I'm super loving picky about my trees and shade and sight lines after spending 10 years on them.
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Sep 18, 2016 15:03
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Lol if you're paying a contractor by the hour.
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Sep 18, 2016 22:53
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I work with a guy who is building a house and he has most of his subs on hourly contracts. I asked him how he stays in his budget and he says he hounds them all the time and rides them like Shetland ponies. I'd rather just do a fixed price myself.
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Sep 18, 2016 23:44
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I have a rodent or rodents in my attic. There were rodent issues up there when we had the home inspected and they cleaned it up and, I thought, fixed entry points. But last night we had one of our first rainy and cold nights and my wife definitely heard something up there. I went up there for the first time and the good news is that we have more insulation than I knew could exist. The bad news is that this, combined with the vaulted ceiling mean I have very little access to most of the square footage up there. I checked all the access points I could find without finding any issues from the outside, but I'm at a loss for what to do next. I threw a rat trap and a bait station up there, but solving the access issue seems like the best course.
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Sep 19, 2016 06:23
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I haven't had to deal with rodents inside yet but I did see some Great Stuff with a bitterant in it to keep pests from chewing on it. I'd start by getting a can and spraying it into every crack and crevice I could find both in the attic and in the crawlspace. Also trim your trees and plants back from your house. Maybe put some outdoor pest traps around. That might be a waste of money though.
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Sep 19, 2016 17:57
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Got a hill going down to the lake, bad drainage as our house is in a little valley (we live in a circle street toward the middle and both directions drain right down to our house). Grass refuses to grow over much of the backyard around the patio where the sun doesn't hit, turfallo (I KNOW!) loving died, and drainage specialists say the soil is too alkaline. Same drainage specialists sent me an estimate for re-grading the yard and adding more catch basins and also some buried flex piping connected to gutter drains to route water out to the lake for $5000. I think the oversaturation of water is drowning the grass and I'm not sure about the alkalinity. We of course want to have the yard re-graded and all that when we have $5000 just laying around (because that definitely needs to be done) so we can then put in zoysia sod. We recently fired a lawn service in favor of mowing the lawn myself because in the summer that saved us about $200 a month. Long story short, our lawn looks like poo poo all the time, most of it is weeds because that's all that will grow, and I think it's at least partially because of our drainage problem, which is in turn causing erosion on the hill in our backyard where we can't put a retaining wall. Tossed around the idea of putting riprap down the hill, as a buddy of mine manages a warehouse for a building materials supply company and said he could get me a truck load of good-sized rocks at builder prices and have it delivered right to me. I could get some dudes to help me out in laying down the rock if I go that route, but unsure if this will look good or work at all. Anyone know if I'd need geotextile, or could I just lay the rocks directly on the ground? Do I get drainage problems fixed first?
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Sep 21, 2016 17:02
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Don't rip-rap you backyard, please. It's kinda hard to visualize exactly what you're talking about, some pictures may help. What kind of soil is it? Clay, sand, loam? How bad is the erosion?
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Sep 21, 2016 17:23
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LogisticEarth posted:Don't rip-rap you backyard, please. It's kinda hard to visualize exactly what you're talking about, some pictures may help. What kind of soil is it? Clay, sand, loam? How bad is the erosion? As we live on a lake and no contractor will consider building us a retaining wall there (citing the bad soil, not dense enough, can't get footings or deadmen, wall would crack, fall down or otherwise fail within a year or two and they couldn't guarantee it, the area of the backyard that is flat is too small for them to get backhoes or bobcats back there to move dirt so they'd have to do it all manually, etc), rip-rap seems like our only option. Our house's foundation is on decent packed soil; last retaining wall builder that came out brought a soil probe and in the hill, he stuck it in and it sunk in all the way down to the handle with minimal pushing by him. Contrast that with the soil on which the foundation was poured, he put all his weight on the soil probe and couldn't push it in. That's the soil we're working with. As to the type, it's mostly fill dirt with sand and silt dredge mixed in. Our house is newer (built 2013) and, along with another house, is built on what used to be one lot that had a single house on it from the 1910s and 1920s back when all of our area's land was on 100yr lease from the city. I don't think there used to be a hill, they just dredged up the lake to make a cove and make the lots waterfront because otherwise they wouldn't have been. I'll have to take some pictures later on today when I'm home as I get it's hard to visualize. I'm in Texas, and when it's not a drought, it's super-heavy rains that fill the lakes up, knock down branches, etc. Our drainage problem makes this worse, and anything not covered in foliage be it weeds or whatever (on the hill, it's all weeds really), gets washed down the hill. I guess it's possible that getting the yard re-graded and getting some flex pvc piping connected to the drain spouts and buried underground to end toward the bottom of the hill could solve the erosion problem from running water, but I don't know that it'd solve the erosion problem as it relates to the rain hitting the hill directly to wash away some dirt. I can see some flow paths the last few storms took down the hill, and I'll get photos of that as well. Other than not looking nearly as good as a retaining wall, what's wrong with rip-rap?
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Sep 21, 2016 18:36
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A shitload of ground covering plants that don't mind alkaline soil and full sun, and a stone walkway to get past them to the lake?
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Sep 21, 2016 19:15
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Have you considered using some water tolerant plants or trees to help stabilize the soil? Not sure what your specific climate is, but cypress trees are great at handling season long flooding and drought. They grow fast as a bonus. Florida coast is stabilized with sea oats and other ground covers. Mangroves might work if you're in brackish water.
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Sep 21, 2016 19:22
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There aren't enough flora on the hill to keep it from eroding. We do have two trees, a female cottonwood and an elm that are right next to each other. I'd really love to cut the cottonwood down actually because I hate cottonwoods, they are brittle fuckers that will lose an entire branch in a small storm to the point that the arborist recommended getting a cable installed between the biggest branch and the trunk to minimize the possibility of it breaking off. But since they are mature trees and both about 30' tall, their roots help in that area of the hill. robotindisguise posted:Have you considered using some water tolerant plants or trees to help stabilize the soil? Not sure what your specific climate is, but cypress trees are great at handling season long flooding and drought. They grow fast as a bonus. Florida coast is stabilized with sea oats and other ground covers. Mangroves might work if you're in brackish water. I'm in Texas. It's either drought or torrential downpours for days. Desert-type plants and drought resistant plants would do well here. It's just that my wife hates desert plants and insists on buying annuals. I couldn't even get her on board with a bougainvillea. The hill is so long and steep that it'd be difficult to plant anything there. Before we had maybe four different retaining wall builders out to give estimates and subsequently refuse to build a wall, we had planned on doing a two or three-tier terrace where we could plant things and make it look nice. Bozart posted:A shitload of ground covering plants that don't mind alkaline soil and full sun, and a stone walkway to get past them to the lake? I'm not much of a green thumb by any means, so what types of plants don't mind alkaline soil besides the weeds growing in it? Trees would be tens of thousands I think, and we'd have to buy so many goddamn plants to cover that hill it'd be insane. We already had a set of sandstone stairs built to the right of the property so we can get down the hill, unsure how long those stairs will remain stable in the soil. Eventually I want a ramp made out of the same stone so I can get my mower down there. Before we built a dock our neighbors mowed the area of flat land at the base of the hill, but now they can't get to it. e: I suppose when we get ready to put sod down we could get zoysia put down on the hill too, would those roots be enough to stabilize the soil?
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Sep 21, 2016 21:55
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You don't need tons of trees to cover the entire area. Trees are great because their root systems are enormous and complex, so they will suck up water from a large area around once established. What you're really looking for are native trees and shrubs (I live in another country with a very different climate so don't know what they are, but Google "native Texas shrubs/trees" and go from there). Native plants are designed to work together in the type of climate/soil conditions you have. They'll create a little ecosystem of their own and be able to thrive in drought/downpour conditions as well as prevent erosion. Dumping a lot of rock won't help really because you'll still have the same issues, just covered in rocks. I know there's a standard picture a lot of people seem to have in mind about needing a big grass lawn and some typical flowers, but people (and their land) would be so much happier if they worked with what they have, not what they think they should have. You will fight a huge, expensive, unending battle with your land if you try to turn it into something it isn't. Native landscaping can be really beautiful because it fits the environment and works with it.
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Sep 21, 2016 23:11
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