Please wait...
My gas & electric bill seem excessivly high to me, but I'm not sure why. Is
there some way to figure out in the house the biggest users of electricity
or if some one appliance is sucking up much more than it should?
Wed Feb 19 2014 08:10:33 AM EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored Subject: Re: arrghActually, the Mouse House has a couple of places where a mouse can move between the basement and the first floor (pass throughs for various pipes, etc) so we've seen them in the kitchen from time to time.
However they do not last long because the Mouse House also has cats.
We have a partial basement. About half of the house is built over crawlspace with dirt underneath, so I would imagine they simply burrow in. I could be wrong.
Used to have the felines, but they have passed on. Might need to get another one.
I have not used one of these (Kill A Watt) meters, but know some folks that have and like how easy they are to use to measure usage for different appliances (15 amp max it looks like from the website).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16882715001
Block foundation, but I suspect there are some issues under the deck that butts up to the back wall of the house. Might need to do some investigation after the snow melts and trap them for now.
Wed Feb 19 2014 11:58:43 PM EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored Subject: Re: arrgh
Actually she's had more than enough already. Tonight she called me in a panic and said that the basement was filling up with water. When I got home I found that I had forgotten to shut off the patio spigot from the inside this year, and the water-filled spigot reliably did its job and exploded, sending lots of water back into the house.
This is just what I needed the night before I have to get up early for a long drive. And I can't even run my pump yet because the hose it attaches to needs to thaw out.
But at least the mouse is dead.
Thanks for the reminder. Need to do that at lunch as I don't remember shutting it off this fall either. Good luck with your pump out IG.
Wed Feb 19 2014 11:58:43 PM EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored Subject: Re: arrgh
Actually she's had more than enough already. Tonight she called me in a panic and said that the basement was filling up with water. When I got home I found that I had forgotten to shut off the patio spigot from the inside this year, and the water-filled spigot reliably did its job and exploded, sending lots of water back into the house.
This is just what I needed the night before I have to get up early for a long drive. And I can't even run my pump yet because the hose it attaches to needs to thaw out.
But at least the mouse is dead.
Ugh, that sucks. Maybe you can drown any surviving squeakers during the pump action.
They usually don't go that low. I've seen them on the sill (the top of the
foundation wall) but never on the floor in the basement. So far the score
is: traps 1, cats 0. Let's see if they can pull out some pussy power in the
second half.
Ok, here we go again ... Round 2.
We've got buyers on the line, we've agreed on a selling price ... let's see if we can close this one.
Well, that was two weeks ago. The septic system failed inspection and the buyers got scared and withdrew their offer.
Turns out it was just overdue for a pump-out.
We have new buyers on the line (so this is, I guess, our *third* accepted offer) and the inspections were done today. By coincidence, the *same* guy came to do the septic inspection. So he knew what he was looking at -- but it passed inspection today.
Termite inspection went well too. No problems in the house; one tiny spot in the garage needs a small remediation for some beetles that showed up after I put a woodpile too close to the garage. One small plumbing repair is needed which I agreed to cover.
Naturally I will not consider this chicken sufficiently hatched to be counted until there is ink on a contract. However, we are closer to the finish line than we have ever been before. I think we will soon get to the fun part -- finding our new house.
I can't believe this sh*t ... this one may fall through because the buyers'
attorney is insisting on a contract that is contingent upon completing the
sale of their current home. That's almost as bad as no contract at all.
I can't go house shopping based on that.
[#]
Sun May 11 2014 10:37:19 EDT
from
vince-q <vince-q@ns1.netk2ne.net>
May 11 2014 6:26am from IGnatius T Foobar @uncnsrd (Uncensored)
I can't believe this sh*t ... this one may fall through because the
buyers' attorney is insisting on a contract that is contingent upon
completing the sale of their current home. That's almost as bad as no
contract at all. I can't go house shopping based on that.
Not sure how your local market is behaving right now, but back in normal times (the last east coast house I sold was in 2002) I used to insist on that contingency whenever I was buying a house (for myself to actually live in).
Of course, "back in the day" I would be very confident in being able to sell
my house in 4 to 6 weeks so it was absolutely never an issue.
And - if memory serves - that contingency was something everybody did when buying a house.
In fact, "back in the day" the bank underwriting the new mortgage would put a clause in the mortgage approval letter stating that the approval was contingent upon closing on the sale of the buyer's "old" house.
Not to worry. Everything will most likely work out just fine (assuming your local market has regained a semblance of normalcy).
Thanks for the boost of confidence. We did decide to go through with it,
and are waiting for the contract to be signed. It still beats having to go
to our backup offer (which is probably gone by now) and start the whole inspection
and renegotiation process over again.
Of course, if we want to put an offer in on our next house before this thing closes, we'll be forced to put an identical contingency in our contract to buy....
Of course, if we want to put an offer in on our next house before this thing closes, we'll be forced to put an identical contingency in our contract to buy....
[#]
Wed May 14 2014 20:50:33 EDT
from
vince-q <vince-q@ns1.netk2ne.net>
Of course, if we want to put an offer in on our next house before this
thing closes, we'll be forced to put an identical contingency in our
contract to buy....
My experience has always been that the mortgage company for the house you will be buying will put that contingency into their mortgage commitment letter anyway.
Best to put it into the Offer to Purchase and let it "flow" into the Contract to Buy. That way it protects *you* and not just your new lender-to-be.