| Grex > Agora47 > #166: Winterizing a house |
| response 25 of 42: | 
Nov 12 22:57 UTC 2003 |
Have you considered renting the house instead of leaving it vacant, Jamie?
| response 26 of 42: |
Nov 12 23:47 UTC 2003 |
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| response 27 of 42: |
Nov 13 00:14 UTC 2003 |
23: When things get colder, they get more brittle. The same thing'll happen to pipes which don't have foam tubing round them.
| response 28 of 42: |
Nov 13 00:28 UTC 2003 |
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| response 29 of 42: |
Nov 13 01:32 UTC 2003 |
You can have the post office forward all your mail, for free. My neighbors take in my mail for free and we pick it up once a week. Why dust every couple weeks? I wait until I have visitors. Why heat an empty house?
| response 30 of 42: |
Nov 13 01:55 UTC 2003 |
Without people there will not be dust. Strange but true, and back when I checked on a friend's vacant house every couple of weeks I never had to dust.
| response 31 of 42: |
Nov 13 03:54 UTC 2003 |
Human skin cells make up a lot of dust.
| response 32 of 42: |
Nov 13 04:15 UTC 2003 |
My apartment was pretty dusty after I did not live there since July. The house is not well sealed, the drafts probably blow bits of fuzz off of blankets.
| response 33 of 42: |
Nov 13 10:20 UTC 2003 |
Yes, everyone is right about the dust. A well sealed house in a clean environment wouldn't get a lot of dust. My parents' cottage, built in 1920, had plenty of gaps everywhere and the problem abated with rope caulk. But for most of the time, the use of newspapers as dust covers was not sheer silliness. Regarding insurance: If the insurance company already rated the dwelling as a vacation home, the additional risk factor would already be part of the premium. I don't think that the premium goes up much: I might ask my ex-wife if she knows what is typical.
| response 34 of 42: |
Nov 13 12:49 UTC 2003 |
Foam tubes on pipes.
| response 35 of 42: |
Nov 13 16:08 UTC 2003 |
Re #27: at best, foam tubes on pipes in an unheated house only slows down temperature changes by a few hours, if that. Also, the "brittleness" of pipes will not be a problem, especially because they are empty, but also because such types of pipes are used in refrigeration service with no problems from being "brittle".
| response 36 of 42: |
Nov 13 19:04 UTC 2003 |
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| response 37 of 42: |
Nov 13 19:33 UTC 2003 |
Re #36: If you leave the heat on you *definately* need to have someone check on the house every couple of days. The heating plant can fail -- by staying off *or* by staying on. When I was a kid we came back from a day trip once to find the basement thermostat had failed and it was 95 degrees in the house.
| response 38 of 42: |
Nov 13 19:49 UTC 2003 |
[my apology for echoing #6 regarding refrigerator care: It's the hazard of
not reading the entire item after it has run for several days.]
Regarding insurance for a vacant house, John in #18 had it right. My ex-wife
wrote this to me:
As far as a vacant house is concerned, it is not so much how much
more it would cost to insure, but whether you could get insurance for
it at all. It almost goes into a "high risk" category because it
could be a target for vandalism losses. If insurance is available,
things like glass breakage wouldn't be covered. I think all you
could hope for is getting some fire insurance. I would think that
the premium level for a vacant house is at least 50% more than for an
occupied house, if not more.
| response 39 of 42: |
Nov 13 20:11 UTC 2003 |
If there is no water in the pipes (drain them) they won't burst, and this is much cheaper than paying to heat a house. We don't heat the house we are building and it still stays above freezing, but it is well insulated. The ground heat comes up through the uninsulated floor.
| response 40 of 42: |
Nov 13 20:23 UTC 2003 |
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| response 41 of 42: |
Nov 13 20:27 UTC 2003 |
My ex-wife added a postscriptum to her other comment: "The other thing about the vacant house, is whether it is truly vacant (no stuff, no people) or unoccupied (stuff in the house, no people). If a home is unoccupied for a few months, like for remodeling or an extended stay in Florida, then it is not vacant."
| response 42 of 42: |
Nov 27 09:35 UTC 2003 |
Whores! Whores! Whores!