All Forum Posts by: Joe Jor

@Judy Parker, Yup cranking the heat is a classic, I tried that one as well as pumping they system's PSI up to 27 lbs.  Unfortunately neither worked. :-/

Thanks for the ideas!

Joe

@Jim K.  I asked the plumber if there was some kind of snake that existed for the radiator pipes.  He looked at me like I was crazy!  I guess you and I were both thinking the same thing.  Thanks for the suggestion, I will give it a try.

I had never see this possible solution before.  I wonder if it would work.  I also don't know where it is being done as I have never seen a radiator pipe that skinny in NY.

Joe

When I filled the system, all radiators on all floors were bled, including the cold one.  They were bled again while the plumber was on site.  Additionally, the plumber who stopped by disconnected the radiator and tested both valves (it has one on both the fill and return sides) to ensure they worked.  This was the process that he determined that the return line was blocked: fill side feed pipe got hot (while bleeding), return side never got warm.  While the radiator was fully disconnected, he shined a light through the rad end-to-end to make sure there was no blockage.

One more detail: this is a 3 story house, cold rad is on the 3rd floor.  The other 4 rads on the 3rd floor are hot.

Joe

Couple more details, I missed.  I had plumber replace the values in 2014.  I did many of them over the summer.  The whole HW radiator system has a single hosebib; A hose was hooked up to drain into the main sewer access.  To fill, we just turned the HW system water feed on again and got it up to pressure.

Joe

@Jim K.  Sorry about the typo, I meant **valves.**  The 90 degree right angle radiator valves were swapped out on many other radiators; this one was not modified.  The valve on the cold radiator were replaced in 2014 when the valve started leaking; it had been working since.

It is a monoflow system as it is similar to the one shown in the video at 3:30 - 5:00.

Joe

Once the heat started being used this winter, the tenant reports that a single radiator that will not get hot; all the other radiators work perfectly.  I called a plumber out.  He diagnosed that the return pipe is blocked.  His suggestion was to rip out the plaster walls to trace the pipe to either replace the piping or determine the location of the blockage so it can be addressed.

This sounds very drastic and expensive to me.  Has anyone heard of another way to jar a blockage loose?  The pipe is a 3/4 inch; there are no drains on individual radiator runs in the basement ... only a master drain for the boiler.

Joe

@Thomas Hartman, as others have said, it depends on your goals. With that said, if you want to buy in the area instead of remote, you could target something in Westchester that reduces your "rent." This may actually cashflow, but if your PITI+expenses payment is less than your rent, you have reduced your expenses while building equity.

Joe

@Edly Destine

Those tenants who work the legal system to not pay rent are known as professional tenants.  As Alex said, they exist in every locale with very tenant-friendly laws.  My father has first-hand experience with them in Baltimore MD.  Develop a strong screening process and should should reduce the risk that plague.  Similarly, they aren't going to be able to afford a $2k+ rental, so their income should weed them out.

Joe

Howdy all, I am an Alpha Geek, a fullstack developer (Microsoft C# .NET) and a Data Architect.  I have 15 years experience in the insurance space.  I LOVE solving challenging tech problems.

In real estate, I am doing MFH in Westchester County NY. This is the side item right now and looking to offset living expenses.  I am fairly handy; there is something to be said for building something physical rather than just banging out code.

As a data guy, it seems one could build a neural net to predict which houses are most likely to go up for sale and reach out to those folks before they cross the Rubicon to the MLS. Still in the theory phase, but working on ingesting all the the tax rolls from Westchester into a Database.

Joe