General > General Technical Chat

The 8-Bit Guys house in Texas

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james_s:
Usually the insurance doesn't WANT you to deal with it. In fact if you do interfere and start cleaning up before they've had an adjuster out there to inspect it that can make things harder for you. It's not intuitive at all but that's how it is. Sounds like he was not home when the flooding happened so it may have sat for a while before he knew what was wrong. Particle board swelling and mold damage are going to be very real concerns. Letting the insurance handle it is what you do when a major disaster like this happens, that's what people have insurance for. You might get it all cleaned up and then find out several years later that you've got mold growing in the drywall, or water damage in electrical or mechanical systems. Inches of water sitting for days isn't something you just clean up with a shop vac and dry out with a heater, not unless that's your only option and you don't mind putting up with damage, the extent of which you probably don't fully know. If the power is out he probably can't do much to clean it up anyway, even if he has a generator he may not be able to get fuel for it.

When we had a major storm roll through my area back around 2007 it knocked down several transmission lines and the power was out in some areas for over a week. That included power for gas stations so even a lot of people that had generators couldn't get fuel for them. One can argue that people should be more prepared, gas stations included, but nothing like that had ever happened before in my lifetime. I remember stocks of generators were depleted quickly so there were a lot of people who couldn't get one.

james_s:

--- Quote from: JohnnyMalaria on February 22, 2021, 12:43:38 am ---(I will NEVER buy a house with a crawl space ever again but that's another tragedy I won't tell). How so? The city had been around and installed meters for remote reading and turned my water back on.

--- End quote ---

I don't have a crawl space but wish I did. Not because I enjoy spending time crawling around in them, but the ground floor is much less cold in the winter when there's something other than a concrete slab underneath. It's also nice to have access under the floors in order to run wires or plumbing, mine is all in the ceiling above the ground floor of the daylight basement and only the portion above the laundry room that has a suspended ceiling is accessible without cutting holes in sheetrock. I'd consider a crawl space to be a nice luxury, the edge case of preventing burst pipes during a long term hibernation can be dealt with. Our cabin has drain valves at the low points so I drain the plumbing as part of winterizing it. Pex piping is also fairly tolerant of freezing but I like the fact that copper is anti-microbial and I've had bad experience with the water tasting like plastic in some places I've been.

rsjsouza:

--- Quote from: james_s on February 22, 2021, 02:44:25 am ---
--- Quote from: JohnnyMalaria on February 22, 2021, 12:43:38 am ---(I will NEVER buy a house with a crawl space ever again but that's another tragedy I won't tell). How so? The city had been around and installed meters for remote reading and turned my water back on.

--- End quote ---

I don't have a crawl space but wish I did.
--- End quote ---
I wish as well. When we did a foundation repair on the house, the cost of fixing the pipes under the house was significant and nobody guarantees the clay soil will never move again, thus a damocles' sword.

JohnnyMalaria:
Retrieving half-liquefied possum carcasses from a 2' high crawl space in the middle of August in NC is not fun.
Ripping out 400 sq.ft. fiberglass insulation infested with mouse turds, urine, balls of desiccated ants falling on your face not fun.
Water seeping through the bricks causing major damp issues not fun.
Someone breaking into the crawl space and trying to steal the dehumidifier...it was too heavy to move so they left it unplugged. I wasn't living there. When I went to check on things, I opened the front door only to find mold on all the carpets and walls throughout the house.

But access to the wiring etc etc, useful.

I'll amend my statement to say that if I now know exactly what to look out for with a crawl space and can instantly spot major potential i$$ues.

That house was a nightmare but a great lesson. Coming from a land of masonry houses, I had no idea about typical lumber houses in the US. The sellers knew about the damp issue and saw me coming. During one viewing, I mentioned a musty smell. In the UK, it wouldn't have alarmed me - a quick wipe-down with bleach would have solved the problem. Now, if I sense the slightest hint of mold, I'm gone.

james_s:
Well it's important to keep the crawlspace closed up, one of the vent screens fell off my mother's place and I had to pull a similar animal corpse out of there, as well as rats got in and left droppings all over and peed on the insulation around the heating ducts, yuck! I don't think that's all that typical though, it's just one of those things that can happen but not something I'd expect everyone to experience. Mold is also not typically a problem unless something leaks, however some climates are probably a lot more likely to experience mold from general humidity than others. Then there are challenges in leaving a place unoccupied for any length of time. Stuff deteriorates surprisingly quickly when nobody is there to care for it, and thieves make the situation worse. Having your dehumidifier unplugged is annoying but at least they didn't rip out all of the copper pipes and wiring to sell for scrap. Hope ownership can be a pain, but IMHO it sure beats paying someone else's mortgage by way of rent payments.

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