Par for the course

I’ve been co-renting the current house I live in with two roommates for about 5 years, I think. I’ve done a lot of things in that time. A friend of mine put up a rant today, so I thought I would as well. Check the rambling for the details.

The house had a small fridge hemmed in by built in cabinets. I disassembled the cabinets and rebuilt them, so that the landlords could get us a normal size fridge.

We are required to mow the grass and keep the yard. The used lawnmower the landlords provided was finicky at best. We had them take it back to be worked on once, and it didn’t get any better. I looked at it after it came back and there was a plastic cam on the carburetor that was worn and couldn’t run the mower consistently. It either ran at full throttle or slow idle. It was up to the mower which it chose for the day. I got fed up and bought my own mower after several months of that mess.

I reglazed the den windows to keep them from rattling when the subwoofer was working during DVD watching. Not only that but one of the panes we took out was an inch too small and we had to get a new one that fit.

The house had a 100 amp electrical panel with no main breaker and no outlets were grounded. The wiring was far below standard. In fact I dare say a building inspector may have forced renters out of the house while some of the items were fixed. I posted a few pics that we took below. We rewired the house from the power company connection outside, through a new meter box, to a new 200 amp panel. We grounded the whole thing. We put in all new wiring to the lights and outlets and added outlets where needed.

This is the old panel. As said there is no main breaker. When I took the panel cover off I was too scared to touch it to put the cover back on. I used insulated gloves and a wooden dowel to turn the breakers off and on. If you see the two small wires coming out of the main terminals at the top, those are the wires going to the dryer under the house. See the picture below.

That wire coming out of the wall and running down the corner is the one for the dryer. That's right it went from the main service line to 2 screw fuses in the basement then to the dryer. Any short before those fuses could have drawn over 100 amps down those wires probably causing a fire. Having it in the corner of a closet was really safe. Yeah nice.

This is a picture of an air splice, not an uncommon thing in the house. Who needs a junction box?

This is the apparatus that ran both window air conditioners on opposite ends of the house, the clothes washer, and the sump pump in the basement. Yup, we couldn't wash clothes and run the air conditioners at the same time. You can see another air splice with electrical tape on the right and you get a good view of the uninsulated ductwork.

This is some of the wiring that ran the basement lights. Thats' right those are exposed wire terminals, at head hight, in an underhouse area that has water flowing through it when it rains. Who needs GFCI?

This is the sweet new electrical panel we put in. See the main breaker. See the GFCI breaker. What you may not notice is that there is a wood section below the panel that can be removed to give access to the wall cavity and the bottom of the panel. There is another one at the top. My understanding is the A/C contractor said he would never again be that lucky to have that easy access.

After the new wiring was in we were able to talk the landlords into buying a new air conditioner for the dinning room, so that we could move the smaller unit to one of the bedrooms.

We also requested insulation be put in the attic, since there was only about 1.5 inches in the attic. I’ll come back to that later.

By this time one of the coils on the stovetop no longer worked. The vent over the stove had never worked, and we had requested a new vent while the electrical wiring was going on. The oven consistently ran at 15% above the temperature set on the dial and the door had to be wedged shut with a stick. We kept asking about the vent and stove every 3 months or so. After more than 1.5 years a second coil on the range top started to malfunction. Finally I sent a note in each rent payment for 3 months with no acknowledgement of any kind. In the final note I stated that if I didn’t receive any answer I would assume I was authorized to purchase a working stove and vent, that the law required the house have, and take the money out of the rent. We had a new stove less than 2 weeks later and a new vent 1 week after that. It pisses me off when I have to do crap like that.

I had complained about the furnace for some time after the first winter, and continued to do so. The furnace must have been original to the house. The thermostat, that we replaced soon after getting there, was the original bakelite one with an alcohol bulb thermometer on the front and a small wheel on the bottom. It was gas and had cast iron burners with a single pass cross flow heat exchanger. My educated guess is that it was about 55% efficient at best. We had 3 Decembers with gas bills of at least $250 each with a thermostat set at 63 degrees.

I cleaned the gutters every fall and spring, and I even ran new drain pipe from the downspouts to try to keep water out of the basement.

Oh yeah, when it rains water flows under the house where the washer and drier are. Oh and the washer empties into the back yard. The weeds love it.

And I painted the front of the house.

So in mid December, after much complaining and expressed concern over the upcoming natural gas price increases and winter, the landlords finally put some insulation in the attic. Quite a lot actually. The husband seemed embarrassed that the house was so poorly insulated. We had half the month without insulation and half with, but there was a power outage for 3 days in the no insulation period that kept the furnace from running during that time. So actually it was more like 16 days with insulation and 11 without. The gas bill was $240. My fear that the gas bill would have been $300+ seemed to have been well founded.

So this week the landlords had a contractor come in and install a heat pump and finally insulate the ductwork. I think it is a great move that will help a lot next winter. It’s just very appropriate that they do it as we are leaving. I guess they wanted to fix it up for some new tenants. I also like that the contractor used my new house vacuum to clean up some sawdust and plaster dust from the new return hole he cut. I love having fine white powder all in my vacuum.

The thing is these arent the worst landlords I've had. It's sad really. My understanding is that the neighbors are scared of who might rent it next. They apparently really like us. I’m just glad to be getting out of here though.

Go Go Gadget house of my own.