All Forum Posts by: Uwe K.

The trimming/cutting was my first thought, but it may be cumbersome with cutting in the corners to keep the back etc. But maybe the only option in some places.

The recess is a good idea, haven't thought of that. Should be easy when drywall is behind it. Thanks!

Wouldn't that actually depend on the tenant if the thought is comforting or not? ;-) For everything else there is insurance...

But for real, yes, I do worry sometimes over similar things. All my house are old, too, 100 years and so.
Not so much the ground wire thing, because if the line is not grounded (e.g. through the shield), I put a GFI in or epoxy in the ground hole. Out of my responsibility if the use the two-prong adapter, and grounding is overstated anyway :)
Plumbing, yes, I always wait for that phone call that something irritating is happening. Water drips from the ceiling, shower doesn't turn off, no pressure, basement floods when the washing machine drains.

All these things you cannot really plan for but really mess up your day. However, I am not staying awake from that, those are all small worries. But they accumulate when I am on vacation a few thousand miles away and cannot just run over and check it out.

Al, how do you go wireless with cable? Wouldn't that be a paradox? :)

For Internet I would probably not go wireless (if we're talking WiMax here...). I've had to use that for a satellite location of a company I worked for, it was the only solution as it was still a bit rural, and the cable company wanted to charge me about 11,000 to dig the cable in for 500 feet or so. Pain in the freaking butt, especially when you had to run a VPN over it. If it's not highly reliable, the tenants will call you first, and it gets really old when they call 5 times a day. There is this one tree that is shaking in the wind and messes up the signal, there is the snowstorm and the rain and the birds and the mosquitoes...

Depending on what you pay, you can check out a T1 connection that can also get your phone channels on it (assuming you provide phone lines, too). For phones, you can also look into VoIP systems, but the business grade ones have usually less cost savings if any on such small scale, as the advantages are barely being used.

Maybe some kind of triple triple play: three times the phone-Inet-cable from the cable provider (would that be a nonuple play?), talking to the business department they may be able to make you a deal. Or the Uverse folks at Ma Bell, I mean AT&T or similar.

Or for Internet, you get one big pipe into the building and either just put a simple router and give each one a cable in the hand, or you go more fancy with a router/firewall combo that gives you three separate networks etc.
You could then even go that far to offer other tenants Internet at some good price, although you have to be careful with the super suckers and Netflix watchers.

Otherwise:
- Motion detecting switches in bathrooms, storage areas, maybe kitchens with shut-off timer
- Used furniture if you need to replace. I am not taking the Habitat store, I am talking real business furniture dealers that have used stuff, often good things to have
- Efficient heating system, depending on age, plus fancy thermostats that can limit the range they operate in (or just a lockbox). Plus program them for lower heat at night times, depending on work hours. Problematic are the special late workers or overtime projects.

How are the window ACs controlled? Like a basic unit directly at the unit, or with wall control?
I've been in hotels where the HVAC only works if you put your key card in a slot, i.e. if you are in the room.

This is a problem I don't even know what to type in Google for to not just get baseboard offers offered for sale.
I am helping a friend to fox some odds and ends in an office he is renovating, incl. putting new baseboard diffusers, the standard kind that sits in the corner between wall and floor.
Obviously these things are designed for a 90° angle, but how do you work around it if that angle is significantly more than 90°? You either have a gap on the wall or on the floor. I haven't seen how big the gap is yet, he just told me it is quite obvious and visible.
Anybody got an idea for a nice looking workaround? There are potentially 23 of those problems, but hopefully only one wall with 4-5 of them.

A few cents of my own (some were already mentioned):

- Background image makes me feel like I am in an arcade back in the 80s :)

- The form lower left... don't have it open right away and block content. Most people that go to your site don't want to contact you right int he first second. First they have to find out if you are the guy they want to contact. Just like the car dealership I went to today, they are standing out there like vultures and get all disappointed when you continue to the service area.

- The call button... get off me, leave me alone :)

- Dawn's picture in the lower right: Well, she has an expression that tells me "oh no, someone called...". Make it a friendly, inviting face that I WANT to talk to.

- For me, it is too much text on the first page. Your home page is the entrance and give you the overview, suck you in the page, with details elsewhere. For example, I didn't even read it, so I can't comment to the content. Others may not have a problem with it, but generally the attention span of people is getting shorter by the day almost. Grab their attention with something they know will not take 3 minutes to read to decide if they click further. You can also apply some visitor analysis and see how many people will click-through to other pages before changing.

I've designed web pages in the past for customers and may be a bit picky there (semi-perfectionist):
- You logo has a wall missing. By now it distracts me so much because I always want to see the roof collapse...
- the top navigation - two things:
a) The white typo looks fuzzy on the background. Can't tell what it is, maybe font size, anti-alias settings or some other combination of things.
b) the mouseover blocks paired with the light blue color looks so nineties and outdated
c) a third thing I just notices, some mouseover buttons don't show right, they don't have red font, but blue or nothing or so. E.g."home" button under "how we do it" and "about" button under "about". There may be others.

I would also add a contact form other than the one that's called " no time for forms" (and then pops up - a form). I am sometimes too lazy to type up an email address, since yours cannot be copy and pasted.

Middle right, I like the "look familiar" box, although I would use one ?, and I think it should be "looks".

Also picky: the pics old-new at the bottom of "about" could use some form of frame. Would take the shadow away then. Reason is mostly the first picture: compare to the one right to it, and you think they are different sizes because of the white sky in the first one. Just a design aspect, though.

And lastly, before my wife gets mad because I am not coming down, I was briefly wondering if you would buy my house in Milwaukee. You may have to put it in more places which locations you target, e.g. under "sell your house".

I see, kind of like evictions in process are thrown out if you accept any payment during the proceedings.
In fact, in WI that law was recently change and now you can accept payments after filing without that being a reason for dismissing the case.

Agreed, like a 3" flush valve will help. Unfortunately I think those are mostly on the pricier models.

Why would you say you cannot evict with partial payment?
if the contract (i.e. lease) says they have to pay $500 every first, and they pay only $400 without any other agreement, they are not fulfilling their responsibilities. But then, might be a state issue, too.

I used erentpayment a few times with one tenant. Most my tenant have no bank accounts, and some of the ones that do somehow prefer not to write checks, but buy money orders. Not sure what the point of that is...

Anyway, erentpayment works like a charm. I stopped because the tenant had a erentpayment bounce, they weren't allowed to use it anymore. Good thing was, it didn't cost me (and consequently the tenant) a NSF fee when it got reversed 2 days later.

I have one tenant deposit money into my account, but it's gets confusing since it won't show who deposited it. Once I happened to deposit something the same day for a similar amount, and it left me scratching my head for a second.

Tenants could also use their bill-pay service from the bank.

Darn it, I really had no idea that there was an FCC rule and the tenant has the right to a dish. From reading it also appears that even forbidding to drill holes for the cable seems to be illegal, since it would "unreasonably delay or prevent installation".
Maybe you can start by simply forbidding a CenturyLink service, you will do your tenant a favor :) Sorry, recent bad experience. But then it's a horse a piece with all those crooks anyway.