After two weeks in the new house I can competently say that the heating system works great. How much it's costing me, I can't say yet BUT it keeps the house at tolerable temperatures throughout. There is no need to sleep with open windows when it's 12 degrees outside and all levels of the house remain at pretty much the same temp. Nice.
The plumbing however is another story. I'll cut to the moral of this story first and then provide the backstory for all of you who can't wait to flip ahead: if a house has been standing empty for an extended period of time (say, 2 years or so) the first (FIRST) thing you need to do BEFORE moving in is snake the sewer line -- all the way to the curb. It turns out that this line tends to take a bunch of abuse from roots, sediment, dirt, etc and causes anything beyond the average toilet flush to come rushing back into the house. Nice, again.
Ok, so the photo above is slightly exaggerated. No shark actually came back up into the house BUT we did get flooded - 3 times -- in the basement and lower level. The good news is that it was relatively contained each time (though progressively stinkier). The bad news is that our stuff was already moved in to these levels.
To date, the main casualties of this flood are over a dozen towels, a brand new bathroom rug, several hours of labor to clean the shite up and several more hours letting in, calling and supervising plumbers. The results all drove to the same conclusion -- snake the sewer line.
It has certainly caused us quite a deal of headaches having thought we were rid of housing issues for now. These types of situations also give you both perspectives on the owner/tenant divide. On the one hand, if it was my house I would've (hopefully) had it all taken care of in advance. On the other hand, someone else has to pay for it and deal with it though at the expense of my schedule and time.
Bottom line, it sucked to have but it looks like it was all fixed. Glad to have a dry basement and perhaps now, I can set up the music room without fear of it becoming a floating fortress of stinkiocity.
24/02: The Flood(s)
After two weeks in the new house I can competently say that the heating system works great. How much it's costing me, I can't say yet BUT it keeps the house at tolerable temperatures throughout. There is no need to sleep with open windows when it's 12 degrees outside and all levels of the house remain at pretty much the same temp. Nice.The plumbing however is another story. I'll cut to the moral of this story first and then provide the backstory for all of you who can't wait to flip ahead: if a house has been standing empty for an extended period of time (say, 2 years or so) the first (FIRST) thing you need to do BEFORE moving in is snake the sewer line -- all the way to the curb. It turns out that this line tends to take a bunch of abuse from roots, sediment, dirt, etc and causes anything beyond the average toilet flush to come rushing back into the house. Nice, again.
Ok, so the photo above is slightly exaggerated. No shark actually came back up into the house BUT we did get flooded - 3 times -- in the basement and lower level. The good news is that it was relatively contained each time (though progressively stinkier). The bad news is that our stuff was already moved in to these levels.
To date, the main casualties of this flood are over a dozen towels, a brand new bathroom rug, several hours of labor to clean the shite up and several more hours letting in, calling and supervising plumbers. The results all drove to the same conclusion -- snake the sewer line.
It has certainly caused us quite a deal of headaches having thought we were rid of housing issues for now. These types of situations also give you both perspectives on the owner/tenant divide. On the one hand, if it was my house I would've (hopefully) had it all taken care of in advance. On the other hand, someone else has to pay for it and deal with it though at the expense of my schedule and time.
Bottom line, it sucked to have but it looks like it was all fixed. Glad to have a dry basement and perhaps now, I can set up the music room without fear of it becoming a floating fortress of stinkiocity.
Keepin' it fresh.
[Jeff]