All Forum Posts by: Genny Li

 Lol. Lots of asbestos from 1909? Not likely at all.

 Popcorn ceilings weren't popular then. If you don't have an old "fix" with old acoustic ceiling tiles, you are probably fine. You can put VLP right over any asbestos VCT tiles and walk away happy that everyone is safe. 

Lynette has the right idea. I'm just concerned that you don't have the knowledge for this sort of job. 

Excel. I de minimis everything I can lol. You might change CPAs. Good chance this will happen in the next 27.5 years, right? So you need to track it yourself. 

 It was $36k. I made a mistake when I bought this house. I didn't imaginet hat the AC had been retrofitted by blowing air without ducts through wall cavities. Ahahahhah. So when my AC was dying, I had to redo all the ducts. That was the geothermal plus ducts but not with the drywall work required to make it look right. 

Also, it only makes sense if your options are resistance electric and oil or propane. It doesn't make sense if you have gas as an option. 

i would recommend hanging on a few years for direct geothermal to become more common. It will be much, much cheaper than traditional indirect geothermal because they are allowed to bury the copper lines with coolant directly in the soil! I had to have a well digging service put in multiple vertical loops for mine. 

This is NOT an investment property. I'd never do it on an investment property. This is our forever home. 

 I can't get NG in my own home, so I went geothermal when I had to redo the AC, which beats oil and propane hands down for costs.  I'm down from $5-6k per year in total utilities (high local electric rates and also oil in an older house that's about 3300 sqft with vaulted ceilings everywhere, and I work from home) down to less than $3k.

My geothermal's oversized enough that I took out the baseboard hydronic as back up heat after the house stayed super toasty during the last deep, deep freeze, so now I want the indirect tank gone.  My choices are electric and electric lol so I'm doing the heat pump electric--should be fine even on the geothermal.  Too bad I didn't have the indirect pack installed in the geothermal originally. I'm going to see if I can and then go to an inline instant WH as a booster, which would give me free hot water all summer long, but that may not be reasonable.  I've got a few more big projects in this house before I want to do that, including the heavy-up.  But that's the only use that I can think of where I'd actually want an instant today, except for like in a guest house.

They're probably misclassifying a manufactured home. 

I watch Matt Risinger for the over-the-top stuff mostly, but this is actually practical for anyone, with lots of helpful comment tips!

I think that's not displaying, so here's a shortlink:

https://bit.ly/3h4me26

If that still doesn't work, search "Matt Risinger Pest Control."

While on demand are super hot, they don't actually save enough over NG to justify the switch, and they have higher lifetime costs, so it comes out in the wash.  Electric on demand would actually cost more than NG tanks....  NG on demand requires more ventilation.  The new heat-pump electric tanks put electric almost on parity with NG, so I'm actually not inclined to do tankless at all anymore in any application.

And I like cool new things.  I have a PEX manifold in my house right now. lol.

I've never had an oil on-demand! I have an oil indirect now. lol.  Exotic. I thought I'd had practically every way to heat residential imaginable....

It really depends on the age of your clientele and how trend conscious they are.  If you rent to old people, they are going to be behind the trends by a lot.  If you rent quite downmarket, they also don't follow the trends as closely, either.  For those 2 demographics, you can look at what RV companies are putting in their RVs and what manufactured housing makers are putting in theirs.  I bet you'll still be seeing word art in model manufactured housing for the next 5 years, minimum!  RVs are 10-15 years behind, and MHs run 5-10, but they're pushing it now to about 3-7.  In general, the middle and south of the country drags about three years behind the coasts, too.

But even if you're downmarket, watch the trends that stick and that disappear on the cutting edge of the coasts to know what you need to be doing to stay ahead of becoming out of style.  And if it ain't in Clayton Homes' fanciest homes anymore but it was, stop doing it!  They know their market. Clayton Homes is GREAT at adopting what was peak style about 5 years ago.  (They never did any tile because it can crack in transport, so for subway tile, it's not a good idea.  But you can check them for other things.)  Even Clayton Homes is moving away from gray toward a true beige in its model homes.  That tell you something.

For what's popular now in a very democratic sense, check out Houzz's popular today page.  https://www.houzz.com/photos/k...  This is what average people like, so it includes the majority of folks running 3+ years behind.  The "new hotness" are these handmade super gloss wavy tiles that have a name. You'll hardly find a plain white subway tile among the bunch now, and this includes all the average people looking and pinning.

I'm old enough now that I would become numb to trends, too, if I weren't making a point not to, not because I love trends but because I don't want to make the mistakes that so many landlords do.  They become blind to their building going from B+ to B to B-.  The previous owner raised the price on her rental by $100/mo when she painted the dark taupe that was super popular, but she missed the gray wave entirely and had to drop the price, just because her paint was outdated and make the whole place look tired.

 Oh, geez, I forgot about that.  I had a friend in Vegas at the time. The carnage was incredible.

Here is a building science article which explains why MOAR VENTILATION is stupid: https://www.buildingscience.co...

(You don't actually need a flooring in a retrofitted encapsulated crawlspace, because you can just choose not to insulate the ground at all, which is the cheaper solution that is smarter for older houses, as the insulation of the ground returns fairly marginal gains for the huge cost of doing it.  You put a vapor barrier on the ground and crawlspace walls and insulate just the crawlspace walls.  You can think of the ground like an uninsulated slab, which was the standard until like the 90s.)

https://www.buildingscience.co...