A recent experience has got me wondering how many errors are made in the home mortgage industry.

Ginny and I are in the process of applying for a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) so we can do some improvements to the house in the next few years.

As part of the HELOC application, they did an appraisal of our house.

When they got the appraisal back, they informed us that our original loan offer had to be revised because the value of our house was significantly lower than our own estimate.

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Thanks to a hint given to me by a twitter friend, we purchased a refurbished Roomba 530 from Woot last week.

The unit arrived on Thursday … and I plugged it in to get it charging as soon as I got home.  I positioned the charging base in the corner of the dining room which is pretty much out of the way.

So Friday morning it had a green light, indicating it was all charged up and ready to go.  So, being the good geek that I am, I pressed the button and let it go about it’s business cleaning the dining room, living room, & kitchen areas.

It dutifully started up and was vacuuming up the dust & bits of cat hair.  It went from room to room, cleaning the floors up, as I thought it should.

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As I mentioned a few days ago in twitter, the outflow pipe of our sump pump froze.

I had gone down stairs to get something from the utility room and found that the sump pump was running … and didn’t stop.  The pump sounded OK, but no water was draining from the pit.  I turned the power to the pump off and triggered the backup pump … which ran but didn’t remove any water.   This meant that the pumps themselves weren’t the problem.  I went outside and discovered that the outflow pipe was frozen solid.  Clearly not a good situation.

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Kind of a busy two weeks … Ginny and I were on vacation.  Because of the cost of our last vacation (England & Ireland), we decided to make this a “Staycation” … basically stayed home and didn’t go anywhere big.

One of the things we wanted to was finish the floor in the smallest bedroom.  This was a project we started about 6 years ago … we had these grand ideas of turning it into a reading room, with a hardwood floor, a nice comfy chair, plenty of book shelves, etc.

Well, the project started out fine … but ended up completely stalled due to problems with the flooring material we chose.

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Considering the weather today, it seems to be a fine time to test the Aquanot backup sump pump.

It’s taking quite a while for the water level to go high enough in the pit. I’m a bit worried that the float on the pump is too high.

Problem here is that once the water goes over the input from the drain tiles, the flow slows down.

Of course, I suspect the fact that the ejector pit is taking on ground water isn’t helping this test. Yet another item to be added to the repair list. This one, however, is pretty pricy … As the utility room floor will have to be broken up in order to put a new pit liner in.

<time passes>

Well, the sump pump never did turn on. Rather frustrating. I did a bit more research and figured out that the float was not set right. It needs to have some play so it will turn the pump on and settle a bit before turning the pump off. Unfortunately, the primary pump interferes with the floats range of motion.

I’ll gave to call Permaseal about getting it reconfigured so it works properly.  Having a emergency backup sump pump doesn’t help if it doesn’t turn on in an emergency.

Ginny and I decided to get a new furnace & air conditioner this year … with the price of natural gas going up, we figured it would probably make sense to get a more efficient furnace … and our A/C has always been kind of wimpy.

As I always try to do, I got at least 3 quotes … in this case, four.

Three were for independent HVAC contractors … the remaining one was from Sears Home ImProvement (SHIP).

Three of the quotes were pretty close … one of the independent quotes was about half what the others quoted.

We decided to get a 80% efficient, two stage, variable speed, system by Carrier. We could have gone with the +90% efficient system, but I think the time to recoup the extra cost would take too long. The variable speed aspect was the only iffy bit … we were told by all the contractors that, because our house lacked adequate air returns, the variable speed fan would not be as efficient as it could be (it will still save us money, just not as much).

We ended up going with Sears … mainly because they were also willing to run the duct work necessary to add returns in the three upstairs bedrooms. None of the other contractors offered that. Well, there was a good reason they didn’t offer that.  The estimator from Sears (Ron) said it would cost an additional $2000 for the duct work.

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Last year, when we were having the heavy rains, I noticed there was some water coming into our basement … not a lot, but enough to be worrying. Ginny and I did a bit of investigating and found that water was pooling near the foundation of our house. We figured it had to do with our less than efficient gutters & downspouts.

So, later that year, we had the gutters replaced … we had leaf guards installed, oversized down spouts, the works. Everything seemed good. Water was being routed away from the house.

Well, earlier this year … when we were having the heavy rains during the brief warm spell, I noticed we were getting water in the basement again. Clearly this is not good.

So I start looking for foundation water proofing companies. I put in a request at servicemagic.com and got 3 contractors interested in giving us a quote, although only two bothered to call us.

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Once again the joys of home ownership are manifest … this morning, as Ginny was leaving for church, she found that the garage door wouldn’t open. It would come up part of the way, then stop. I got dressed and went out to look at it and determined that something was clearly broken. I was able to get the door up by pushing it as the opener was pulling it up.

After Ginny got on her way I started looking at the door in more detail … I noticed that the rail that the garage door opener used was flexing as the door was opening. I disconnected the door from the openers chain and noticed that the door was VERY heavy. Then I noticed the spring was broken.

Every now and then I’m able to get mechanical things repaired … if I put my mind to it … but I know that the garage door spring was something that I could not handle myself.

I did a bit of research and found a guy who would replace both springs for $170 … and he’ll do it today (Sunday). I figured better not look a gift horse in the mouth, and got it scheduled.

Hopefully it will just be the spring and it will be taken care of quickly.

Well, ADT finally came and installed the new wireless backup unit.

Of course the upgrade wasn’t without it’s hitches …

1. The guy who came wasn’t exactly the picture of professionalism. I assume he was a contractor and not a regular ADT field service engineer.
2. The analog wireless unit was originally mounted in the basement … where we got a lousy signal (digital or analog) … so, after a number of false signal loss indications, ADT moved the unit to the kitchen pantry. The guy wanted to install the new digital unit back in the basement. I convinced him to install it in the same spot as the old one so we could get a good signal.
3. He didn’t bring a staple gun … he had to use mine.
4. He couldn’t figure out how to snake a wire behind a wall … I had to tell him to try fish a stiff wire (that I provided) up from the control panel up the wall and then attach the wire he was trying to bring down to the control panel so he could pull it down.
5. He had a wimpy little pocket flashlight … so he couldn’t see in the closet that the wireless unit was mounted in … which caused him to wasted at least 20 minutes because he had secured two wires to the same contact point. I had to let him use my big maglight flashlight so he could see enough to get the unit wired correctly.
6. He spent about 2 1/2 hours doing the install … I suspect that I could have had it done in 45 minutes.

All that said … the new unit is kind of interesting. It’s uses a GSM network … so it has SIM card. Not sure what the advantage of that is … probably just cheaper to manufacture.

Of course all this costs me $199 (less a $20 credit because they blew off the first appointment). I’m sure I’ll have much better service (picture sarcasm dripping off this sentence).

Well so far so good … the new driveway was poured today. The construction crew, seven guys, were here fairly early and got to work immediately. It took longer than I thought it would, but they sure knew what they were doing.

Here’s what the driveway looked before … it was pretty wavy and cracked. It had been resealed once, but that didn’t help a lot. It was hard to shovel and the snow thrower would get caught up on the various dips & cracks.


I applied for the village construction permit, and posted it in the window, about a week later (middle of the next week), I noticed on the web cam that there was a crew breaking up the old driveway. Here’s what it looked like after they were done.


The work itself was kind of like a dance … the guys dumping the concrete were followed immediately by the guys spreading it. Once it was spread, the guys with the float were there to smooth it out. Then the guys with the hand trowels & floats were in to touch it up. Finally the guy with the grooved trowels laid in the expansion joints.


After they were finished, it looked pretty good. Obviously the proof will be when it’s dry, we can drive on it (which will be in about 3 days), and we have a few snows.

I noticed that the contract with the construction company specifically voids their warranty (one year) if we use chemical deicers on it. I’ll have to look into getting it sealed. The folks on DSL Reports Home Improvement forum suggested that I get it sealed in October. It’s probably going to be an ‘every two years’ thing.

Aside from the amount of time & effort it took to get an actual estimate, I’m pretty pleased with it so far. The cost was good, the work was done quickly & professionally, and there was a minimum of fuss.