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Originally Posted by S-F
At some point in the not too distant future it's going to start making financial sense to gut renovate deep energy retrofit most of the houses out there due to rising fuel costs and awareness of the increased comfort in a good house. Even the ones built in the recent past. It's all due to poor builders.
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I'm still in the process of doing that to my house two years after I bought it. Seriously, if I hadn't have gutted it before I moved it, I probably would have burned it down in frustration simply because of the things that didn't work right cascading onto to other things that were supposed to work right... Like the wiring.
Quote:
Originally Posted by S-F
I'm at my mothers house today stacking wood for her and cleaning the gutters. She has had the entire house gone through by a contractor over the past 20 or so years. She has also put on 3 additions. The house sucks..
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I feel your pain. My mom lives 2 miles away from me. She has a house that is about equal in square footage, yet she spends, easily, 5 times what I do in heating and cooling. She won't let me help her out and she won't let me do any renovations. It must be a trust thing. I'm in my 40's and successful at what I do, but something in her will always see that 5 year old taking things apart. She forgets that even at 5, I put the durn things back together. Oh well....
Quote:
Originally Posted by S-F
I can't believe the building inspector gave this garbage the OK.
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I know every building inspector in my town. I know them because all of them at one time or another over the last two years have had to sign something off at my house. Out of all of them, one (1) wanted to help by giving information and making sure things were done right. He was the new guy. The rest... don't get me started on the rest. They love their butts to be kissed, especially by the contractors. They were actually shocked that a homeowner was not only present but knowlegeable on what was going on. As a group, they impressed me as low level functionaries who like the little bit of power they have. They also know that their job is NOT to make sure things are done right, but instead to help generate money for the city. They do this by finding faults in work that violate the building code. Even though the building code is woefully inadequete for correctly building something, it is only the minimum standard.
The look of frustration on their faces when the homeoner (me) followed them around to answer their questions and they couldn't find anything that violated code was priceless. A five minute inspection sometimes took over an hour simply because they were looking for something that needed to be corrected and have another permit pulled to acomplish it.
Needless to say, I'm not a fan. I instead choose to view them as a tool. It will only increase the resale value of the house if I can produce permits for my renovations.
OK, I'm off the soap box.