All Forum Posts by: Genny Li
Genny Li has started 21 posts and replied 422 times.
Post: Encapsulate a crawl space,New ductwork, rotting floor joists…
- Baltimore, MD
- Posts 431
- Votes 281
Originally posted by @Dave E.:
@Genny Li
Wow thermodynamic steam tables. You must be an engineer. Thanks for giving us all an education.
My point is there are several factors to consider to get this right. Moving the ductwork is not one of them.
Encapsulating the crawl space may be a good solution, but it depends on several other factors as well.
In some parts of the country a property ventilated crawl space is the answer, and yes that also relies on things being properly insulated as you so aptly pointed out.
I was. Now I work for meeeee. lol.
You are right, and that's what I was saying about it. As the ductwork is already in the crawlspace, encapsulation plus insulation is the way to go. *If it wasn't,* then you could put your "inside" line at the floor a lot more easily, and then you'd vent the crawlspace, but that will work best in areas that aren't very hot and humid.
I actually lived in a house with a vented crawlspace that worked great. Why? A) It was in the high desert. B) The mechanicals were all inside the house (except waste lines). What was utterly pointless was they they'd loose-laid multiple poly barriers on the ground. In the desert. I have no idea what they were thinking. The ground under there would never be anything but bone-dry, as the rain practically never soaked down past the footer level.
That was also my passive solar house. I loved that thing. lol.
Post: ADUs legal everywhere?
- Baltimore, MD
- Posts 431
- Votes 281
Originally posted by @Robert C.:
@Max T., Could be, which is why I'm only talking about my neck of the woods (real estate is local and all that). BUT, something to think about - people like to look at West Coast/California/Bay Area as some weird "never could happen to here" type of place. OR, maybe it's not far fetched to think that what's happened in the Bay Area in terms of politics/supply/demand/rent control is the natural progression of things. Other states have gotten a little taste during the pandemic of what happens when the money/demand spreads across the nation. Imagine what happens if Silicon Valley tech headquarters really do fully decentralize to other locations over time.
@Genny Li, In my opinion, the demand side of the argument in the Bay Area is totally moot. It's about supply and solving some of the affordability problems - neither of which are really addressed by the ADU's - it's just incentivizing the wrong people to build for often the wrong purpose. Just to point out a few things... 1.) If you want the brand new, not nasty corporate apartment with the amenities, you need to afford anywhere from $4500-$6500/month for a 2 bedroom. 2.) Focusing on downtown development might solve some of the problem, but it also cuts out a lot of smaller developers that could be building apartment housing instead of luxury homes. 3.) The rest of the housing stock around here is already 50+ years old.
Then what you're talking about is extremely, extremely expensive teardowns, with the so-called "missing middle" being put there to maximize the economic return, which means that you will have extremely expensive rent/buy condos/townhomes/2-3-4-plexs.
California suffers from the perfect storm of stupid policies, bad street planning (that's actually getting worse), some real actual natural constraints to building, and receiving a massive local inflation hit from not only the Fed's money printing machine but also from overseas investors who also have monopoly money looking either a place to dump some cash or somewhere to have an anchor baby.
Post: ADUs legal everywhere?
- Baltimore, MD
- Posts 431
- Votes 281
Originally posted by @Roarke Van Brunt:
Originally posted by @Jay Hinrichs:
Originally posted by @Gary L Wallman:
Originally posted by @Jay Hinrichs:
Originally posted by @Nathan Gesner:
Originally posted by @Jay Hinrichs:
Most people can barely afford what they've got, so it's typically only people with money that can afford to build an ADU and then they'll rent it for a high price.
I'm a fan of less-restrictive laws, but have reservations about the long-term impact. When you double the number of residents on 25% of the lots, that's a big increase in parking. How does it impact traffic flow? Pollution? Landfill? Water and electric demands? Wastewater treatment? And it may work well in an upper-class community where people are better citizens. Population density and low-income do not produce good results.
Anway, I hope it works.
Nathan as for the new ADU rules Portland is the poster child for this as well as most of Oregon.. I can do an ADU here in Lake Oswego and if I put a covenant on it that its a true granny unit direct relative going to live in it then NO permit fee's If I am going to rent it permit for a ADU is about 50k in our market so thats before you put a spade in the ground. Portland Metro has very high density rules and has had for years so its already here.. I built 3 homes in city of Portland in 2019/2020 it was a 40X100 lot and I put 3 SFR's on it 2 were attached and one was free standing.. zoning did NOT ALLOW for any off road parking.. I wanted to go under and have parking below but that was not allowed the city planners want people to take metro and ride bikes .. so yes you look at the street and its a mess when those 3 units bring 3 to 6 cars with them and no place to park .. the laws are changing now to get even more density in these areas of SFR.. Every lot now can have a duplex.. So you can imagine in areas were you have stately 1 to 3 million dollar homes and someone all of a sudden wants to build a duplex LOL.. not popular.. I just sold one in the Historic district close to downtown and the investors is putting ADU in Basement building a garage with ADU above then on the side lot another ADU.. and that house was basically a tear down I sold for 700k.. so to make the math work he is going to be in this 1.2 at least and now you have the main house an adu above garage an Adu in basement and the other adu.. so rents will all be well over 2k per door to make that work.. so affordable Na planners and city fathers puff their chest out about how great they are doing proving additional housing YA..
Jay,
A 50,000 dollar permit fee for an ADU is freaking obscene. Why do taxpayers tolerate this nonsense?
Then our politicians wonder why there are homeless people on the sidewalk in front of their businesses.
Give me a break. Throw these people out of office immediately!
Gary
Gary they hit us from every angle.. ON my phase 3 of the current project 30 of 90 new builds. we have to build a 1200 foot pedestrian path that hooks up to nowhere.. just in case sometime in the next 50 the trails go through but thats probably 100k.. And now the Fire Marshall again after the fact.. wants 1000 feet of 8 inch water main outside of our project there would be zero homes protected with this water line. thats 100k.. so right there on 30 lots about 8k a lot increase.. then in this city add 30k for permits and other 50k per lot to put in sewer water power etc to their standards and well you have 88k per lot round up to 100k because its always more.. Before you even bought the dirt.. so how are we to build 200k affordable homes in our area.. add in 150 a foot for vertical and now cost is right at 400k or a little more per house. add in carrying costs and builder profit and you can see why a 2k sq ft home needs to sell for about 600k in our market to have a reasonable return on risk .
In charleston SC permits are 5k per house total although they just hit us with some extension stuff we never had to do a few years back but still. so 500k is starter in the inner city..
I am building in N. FLA right now and we can put out a dinger 1200 sq ft 3 2 brand new and make a profit at 225k. investors are buying these up from us.. as they are nice rentals.. really bullet proof houses with very little wood .. and modern codes. strong demand and I can see why given other markets.
Its why this whole RE game is so very market specific one size simply does not fit all. And U folks that have a sand box filled with homes you can buy for far less than replacement cost your in the drivers seat when you choose correctly.. If I lived there thats what i would be doing :)
Gary,
If you think what Jay is saying is scary, let me tell you it's the tip of the iceberg.
Rock climbing gym project derailed because planners want sidewalk
ramp up to building for wheelchair accessibility form street level on
elevated site, Bend OR. Only way to do it was eat up property with
switchback or elevator. Project tips over budget, doesn't get built.
Hillsboro OR adopts development code requiring 3/4 street improvements
or 20 year warranty of existing street/sidewalks on development. Good
luck proving that it has 20 years of lift left. Hope you owned a flag
lot, and not something that's narrow against a street. Kills projects
left and right. How do you build less than 50k square feet and not get
destroyed by the half mil in public improvements you have to do? They
built the city out, increased their tax base, and now just want to let the big whales in.
Dundee OR, 3/4 street installed from intersection to railroad behind
building that has no crossing. I mean project still went because the
business expanding was booming, but that was 125k of useless pavement. I
think the only use it has is when the city parks vehicles on it...
The fire/life/safety (aka fire marshal) games that Jay is talking about area a universal constant in OR.
There were some earlier comments in this thread regarding local vs
federal, and lets be honest, incentives are what matter local or not.
Cities/Counties can be as inviting or not inviting as they want and the
average person has no idea.
I love the small town I invest in. I called up the fire marshal to make sure it was allowed to have a microhood vent onto the outdoor emergency exit. Fire marshal was appalled at the suggestion that it wouldn't be.
(I wanted to make sure there was a reason other than cheapness that the builder made it recirculating.)
Post: ADUs legal everywhere?
- Baltimore, MD
- Posts 431
- Votes 281
Originally posted by @Max T.:
The root of the affordability crisis is lack of supply.
It’s not by accident. It is due to decades of exclusionary zoning policy, almost always rooted in racism.
The same policies also encouraged suburban sprawl - many of the problems @Nathan G. Mentioned.
In my opinion if you own a home you should get to do with it what you want (within reason). Splitting into 2 units is within reason. Preventing your neighbors from splitting theirs is not within reason. And If an owner doesn’t like the changing character of their neighborhood they can move.
As for the comment about forcing people onto public transit. That’s dumb. Right now cars impose a lot of costs, externalities on society that car owners themselves are not directly paying for. Public transit is much cheaper and better for the environment.
Public transit is about the government determining where you go, when you go, and how you get there. It is the delight of social engineers and tyrants. Yet the single most important factor for a person who is working to escape poverty is that person's jobshed from their place of residence, and the single most important way of increasing a 30-minute job shed is to give that person access to individualized transportation--i.e., a car. Not only that, but in the vast majority of towns and cities, it would be more cost effective to give every poor person lacking a car an inexpesive car with free gas, insurance, and maintenance than it is to subsidize transportation for them.
The elites never give up their cars. There is a reason for that. Those who want individual choice for all, not just the elite, support cars for all. My family's rich relatives in Hong Kong have cars.
Post: ADUs legal everywhere?
- Baltimore, MD
- Posts 431
- Votes 281
Originally posted by @Max T.:
@Bruce Woodruff
climate change and racism in housing policy are well documented.
I could recommend some books for you but I get the feeling you wouldn’t read them.
Racism was institutionalized by the FHA during the City Beautiful movement, as they set the standards of redlining which the states were forced to follow. Now the same people who created the problem are claiming that they're the solution to the problem. In reality, you could destroy ghettoization pretty fast with just a few changes.
First, explode all school districting and end public school monopolies. The money follows the child, period, to any school that will accept that money and not a cent more. (Last bit is important, too.) Universal vouchers, and special needs kids get more money. Right now, you can only have the very poor, the very rich, and the very single living in places with poor schools. Anyone in between avoids them. This is the source of much of the gentrification conflict, because it's a conflict of extremes.
Second, make every district responsible for paying its own bills and also for its own zoning. No transfer of wealth from one section of a city to another. Each city must stand on its own. They'll find the economic highest use really fast when the power gets shut off, and if they don't, then the new developers who buy it up at pennies on the dollar because of their disfunction will do so.
As for global warming, you're absolutely hilarious. Don't you know that Miami was submerged in 2012? That's what we were told. The poles warm faster than lower latitudes. When there is once again free-grazing cattle, widespread lowland forests, and barley in Greenland, we will have achieved the global temperatures that are more normal of the Holocene as a whole and will have finally recovered from the Little Ice Age. If that happens, then it will be good for humans and for life because warm = wet. There is a reason there's a period called the Holocene Climatic Optimum that was much warmer than now. Until then, there can be no net warming at all. It is impossible. So either you're one of those people who rejects basic history in favor of propaganda, or you're not.
Post: ADUs legal everywhere?
- Baltimore, MD
- Posts 431
- Votes 281
Originally posted by @Matt Devincenzo:
@Genny Li unfortunately factory built modular can only compete so much. I've explored the cost and the requirements both personally and professionally as a site and land use civil, and the biggest savings is in reduced construction time. Your transport and installation costs are higher which offsets some of the benefit of the construction savings.
The factory built manufactured homes on permanent foundations which meet the new MHadvantage or ChoiceHomes lending guidelines do offer construction cost savings, but these are HUD standard (1X top and bottom plates, smaller plumbing sizing, different materials allowed) not building code standard and they are constrained to single story etc. Site built will always be more flexible in being able to address a specific challenge a site may have because it can be built piece by piece to accommodate that challenge. I do think they could be a great option, but there isn't a magic bullet to this.
As far as the WW quote, my point wasn't the accuracy or validity of the show it was the quote being relevant. People generally look for the one thing to fix this problem instead of creating smaller changes across the broad context and shifting the overall perspective associated with addressing the issue.
Yes, there are a lot of problems to fix, that's true. This is just one that sticks in my craw. lol.
Labor costs are better overall on factory-built homes, and laborers themselves have better, steadier incomes, too. They work regular hours regardless of weather, which I think is important for many people who want to have predictability in their lives. It takes less labor total, more efficient labor, and in better working conditions.
It can also move most mass-production efficiencies and cost reductions to the factory rather than the main builder. This lets little guy builders tap into these efficiencies.
Post: Hvac guys don't like to install gas boilers from home depot
- Baltimore, MD
- Posts 431
- Votes 281
Originally posted by @Bruce Woodruff:
Originally posted by @Genny Li:
But does he have his own Contrs license? Because if he doesn't, everything and everyone involved is illegal and subject to issues down the road.....
This isn't for a flip but for my "forever home" (because my husband's job opportunities are basically here regionally and almost nowhere else). So, who's to say who did what work when? The heavy up will be with a licensed contractor.
I live in a state where licensing is kinda a racket and I come from one without licensing at all, so I'm a bit curmudgeonly, I admit. I know the risk. I take it.
Post: how many tankless water heaters for quadplex?
- Baltimore, MD
- Posts 431
- Votes 281
Originally posted by @Mike Reynolds:
Originally posted by @Genny Li:
Originally posted by @Mike Reynolds:
Originally posted by @Genny Li:
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....
I agree, the gas is better in the long haul. Plus they heat water better. Electric just is not feasible for most remodels anyway. Most old electric service is even 100 amp and many if you are lucky 150 amp. Back in the day we didnt have cell phones and PCs and every thing under the sun to plug in. Usually it was one plug per bedroom wall, no GFCI or arc fault. Dont even get me started on Zinsco breakers and fuses.
I built a 19,000 foot party barn and the owner insisted he wanted electric on demand heaters. I cheated and ran a gas line to the unit also and capped it off. Come the following January he asked me how hard it would be to convert it to gas. I told him it would take a good day and a new heater. I never told him that I already had a gas line ran there. I knew he would want it sooner rather than later. He thinks I am the man and I have got so many recommendations from him I have lost count. I just dont trust the electric ones at all but some people swear by them.
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.
Geothermal is awesome to say the least. Most wont do it because of cost not realizing it will pay for itself in short order.
With other taxpayers footing part of the bill, that was certainly the case. lol.
Post: how many tankless water heaters for quadplex?
- Baltimore, MD
- Posts 431
- Votes 281
Originally posted by @Colleen F.:
@Genny Li we considered it in a previous property but the guesstimates were crazy, and I am waiting for them to make it a better option for hydronic then a new boiler. I thought that would be a logical application.
I made use of about $10k in taxpayer-funded rebates for mine, so the final bill was "just" $26k, and taxpayers also partly picked up the bill for the ductwork because of how the local laws were written, which made it the same price as a regular system plus ductwork.
Check out the new direct exchange geothermal systems. They're getting much cheaper. Probably in another decade, they'll make sense for normal people.
Post: Help me understand the extent of rehab required
- Baltimore, MD
- Posts 431
- Votes 281
Originally posted by @Account Closed:
Originally posted by @Genny Li:
Originally posted by @Account Closed:
Everything in the house probably contains asbestos. You need to post more numbers in regards to your purchase price and after repair value. If you purchase the house for $50k and it is worth $1.5 million when finished then maybe you have a good deal. Otherwise, you need to do the math a hundred times to project your profits before you purchase the property and not after. Only you have the numbers to do that.
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.
There is asbestos in more than 2,000 building materials. Most likely, a place built in 1909 has has asbestos in the plaster walls in floor tiles in the kitchen and roofing materials have asbestos. Drywall and drywall mud used to have asbestos in it. Asbestos and horse hair used to be put into plaster to stop it from cracking.
Dealing with asbestos is much worse that dealing with mold. Unfortunately, asbestos is almost invisible and when workers smash down walls the asbestos can float on dead air space for 3 to 5 days. You may hire licensed contractors, but most-often the workers are illegals from three countries I will mention (Honduras, El salvador and Guatemala) and attorneys are constantly sending workers emails telling them to visit their office because there just may be something they can sue you and there boss for. Unfortunately, the internet has made every worker very well-informed in regards to the laws and the millions of dollars workers can get and all they need to say is they breathed in some asbestos, whether or not they really did.
The proper thing to do is to get asbestos testing before you smash down plaster walls and get an asbestos clearance from the testing company.
In California, the Air Quality Management District is a huge $50 million building with maybe a thousand workers and not one penny of the AQMD comes from a government agency. Every penny that runs the operation comes from fines. The fines are something like $37,500 for every worker for every day every worker is exposed to asbestos and then the business owner receives $37,500 per day fines for every violation in addition to his employee's fines and the fines always exceed $500,000 and are usually more than $1 million.
I have a license to abate asbestos and was on a job one day. An AQMD inspector drove up to our job and these were his first words he spoke:
"Everyone on this job, pull out your asbestos abatement certifications and anyone who does not have his certificate with him is going to jail".
This is wildly overstating the case. Asbestos was rarely added to building materials before the start of WWII. Yes, it was added sometimes, but your statements are extraordinarily misleading and hysteria-producing.
Extremely low levels that appear simply because a material is naturally sourced haven't ever been show to be a particular danger. That said, if you do nothing but drywall/plaster demo for 30 working years, it probably doesn't matter what the stuff is made of if it's really fine dust, c.f. silicosis.