The Home Owner
Herein I delve into home ownership topics, including products and techniques and
advice, based upon my many years of experience as a handy kind of guy around the
home.
Specific topics
Click here for
my info on the house in winter.
Click here for
my info on dealing with plumbing issues.
Click here for
my info on grounds care.
Choosing a house
Here's one piece of advised based upon my experience:
try to choose a house with an uncomplicated roof arrangement, with no gullies
(aka roof vallies), if possible.
Gullies are terrible on roofs.
They are where segments of the house meet at a right angles such that the roof has
to form a 45 degree down-sloping intersection, with a joint.
The first thing this means is that water streams running down the two roof
segments run into each other and form a higher volume of water, which in a heavy
rain storm you see as a torrent coming off the roof, as contrasted with just
casual amounts you see coming off the main roof areas.
(A torrent shoots off your roof and chews into the ground it hits: there's no
way to get it into a gutter.)
Second, the shape of the gully will aid in trapping leaves, twigs, and other
debris which gets onto your roof, forming the beginnings of a dam, which is
particularly bad in the winter. (More on that in the winter section.)
Gullies also increase the work involved in re-roofing, and thus the cost.
General outdoor things
Garden hose reel
Many years ago I, when I moved into my latest home, I enthusiastically bought a
wheel-around plastic hose reel from Sears.
As is everyone's experience, I soon learned that this was a stupid waste of
money. Quality garden hoses are heavy, particularly when filled with water.
Winding the hose around a reel results in substantial forces.
The combination quickly warps and breaks the absurdly-plastic reel assembly.
Keeping the reel outdoors is a further death sentence for plastic, as it dries
out and cracks.
Lesson learned: plastic is no good for any structural purpose.
Jaded, I ended up leaving my hose pulled into a coil on the grass in the back
yard. This results in the hose getting walked on, the whole hose subjected to
the aging powers of the sun, it getting filthy, and grass under it getting
killed. Putting a loose hose away for the winter is a chore.
Continuing this practice == no good.
So if plastic is no good, then certainly steel is the way to go; so I surveyed
steel hose reels. Mixed bag out there.
Some are painted; some are more durably powder-coated.
However, all of us who have experience with the outdoors know well that nature
is bent on degrading and recycling anything we subject to the open range.
The smallest uncoated surface is the foothold that nature seeks to begin
oxidation, and with these hose reel carts, there are plenty of such exposures in
the form of axles, shiny but uncoated fasteners, and joints.
Indeed, the consumer reviews which accompany such hose reel carts recount the
deteriorations that they undergo.
Buyers also reveal the flimsy aspects of these hose holderss, such as reels formed by
stamping too-thin metal.
Most of them also sadistically come with pneumatic tires, notorious for going
flat. Verdict: learn from the mistakes of others and avoid these.
So what does this leave? Not much.
What we yearn for is an "Apple" type of company in this product space, thinking
differently, marketing a truly innovative and well thought out hose reel.
Well, fortunately, there is one such company:
Eley.
These are made from rust-proof aluminum alloy, with flat-free rubber tires,
all in a clean, innovative design. Very well-thought-out products.
If that wasn't enough, their well engineered website features a selection of
replacement/augmenting parts you can purchase for your reel, where you can
increase its capacity or add wheels.
Further, the website sells high quality hoses, nozzles, and other things.
While Eley reels can be found on Amazon.com, they are actually sold and shipped
by the Eley company: it makes the most sense to just go directly to their
website to order.
In response to your order, they send a clear email which contains a very
convenient link to track your shipment over the few days it takes to arrive
(in my experience, via Federal Express — no signature required).
Be aware that the reel arrives in a compact box, thus requiring considerable
assembly. But they cover that, too, with professional quality PDFs and videos on
their website.
These people are really on the ball, making you wonder what the heck is wrong
with other companies which linger in ineffectuality.
It is so easy to excel, and yet so many companies choose mediocrity.
House matters
Gutters
The purpose of gutters is to take the large amount of water from your roof and
direct it away from the house, to thus keep it from splashing against the side
of the house or pooling around the foundation.
There are traditional open gutters, and then there are the "gimmick" gutters.
You've seen countless ads for the gimmick gutters, with a closed top to keep out
leaves and an opening under the lip for the water to enter. These are extremely
expensive and, if you read homeowner experiences, the cause of costly regret.
What you'll find with these is that leaves and other debris either cling to the
surface of the gutter or get caught between the gutter and the house, resulting
in water running down behind the gutter or over the front, where little water
actually gets into the gutter.
Always keep in mind that when you create any kind of enclosure, as these gutters
represent, that's valued habitation space for any creature small enough to
enter, and so you can end up with bees or other insects taking up residence inside.
An obvious other problem is that various stuff will collect inside these closed
gutters, where you then have no realistic way of getting it out of there.
Always think through any new invention before committing to it.
Siding cleaning
A good paint or siding surface will shed most dirt, but there are areas that may
warrant cleaning.
The way to deal with that is a good brush and detergent, most conveniently
applied where the brush is on the end of one of those hose-connected poles, made
easier where at least part of the brush spins with the water pressure.
You will see ads for pressure-washing siding, where you buy such a unit or have
a company come to do it.
Do not use pressure cleaning on your siding!
High pressure water can do great damage, not just to the surface of your siding
but in driving water up under the siding.
Siding is meant to shed water that comes from above.
When you're standing on the ground you are pointing that high pressure spray
upward, in a direction that the siding is not designed to deal with.
That's a very bad thing to do: don't do it.
Home valuation and details
Realtors and the general public may look to online sources of information such
as Zillow and Realtor.com for what your home is worth, and its particulars.
However, those online sources commonly have wrong information.
Looking at my own home's information in those commercial sites, I find one
specifying "Construction: Steel". Wrong: it's wood. "Style" Raised Ranch.
Wrong. Number of bedrooms, wrong. Heat type, wrong. Last sale date, wrong.
You will also find home value estimates all over the place on these sites.
So, no one should depend upon such commercial sites for reliable information.
More to come...
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