PennSilverTaco's "Perfect 5-Lug Regular Cab" Build, Aspergers, and General BS MegaThread!

Yeah, it's a big deal in the south, I mean we drive 4 hours each way to the closest one and I don't mind doing it

So, I looked into it, the one I "normally" go have 100 pumps. The biggest one is in New Braunfels, TX and that one has 120 pumps and it's the Guinness Record Holder, I visited that one on the way back from AZ.

 

I rode down to Woodstock, GA in June for a funeral and we started seeing signs for this "Opening Son Bucee's" for at least 150 miles out. We noticed it from the interstate on our way south but it was when we headed for home that Sunday before daybreak that we REALLY saw it. It was lit up and had a glow that you could see for miles. It was HUGE! I swear I've ridden past some airports that too up less space. Made me wish we'd had more time just to stop and check it out.

 

I like this one. Contemporary rancher with a fairly simple roof. Also, two bathrooms are close together and then the powder room is next to the kitchen...

Contemporary Style House Plan - 3 Beds 2.5 Baths 2734 Sq/Ft Plan #72-866 - Eplans.com

 

@RustyGreen
@TnShooter

My parents' house is the Empress II built by NV Homes. This is the floorplan for the original Empress, but the 2nd floor doors not differentiate much between each version. My parents' bedroom has the optional Roman shower. Our laundry room does not have a sink, but other than that, this is what the second floor of our house looks like. My room is the one in the left rear corner...

 

The Empress 1st floor is bit different than the Empress II, but the basic layout is the same. The kitchen is the biggest difference. The sink and dishwasher are located in the island, and we do have the morning room, but there is open space between the counters in our house where the sink is located on this plan. Our fireplace is located on the side of the house, our garage is front entry, our elevation does not have the covered front porch, and we have a window on the side of the house in the living room but no bay windows...

 

Up until 2007, I never lived in a house that had a cooktop and a separate wall oven. Every single house my parents owned or rented prior to September 2007 had standard range with a self-cleaning oven. Our house in Montgomery Township, Pennsylvania was built in 1990 and my parents bought it new in November 1990 for $20K off the original price when the original buyer backed out of the dealer and the builder kept their $20K deposit. That house had this massive 3-in-1 combo unit with the stove, oven, and microwave/hood all built into one (see the photo below). I remember that in about 1991-1992, the microwave quit working and my parents had to call a repairman, and I can even remember watching the guy take the thing apart even though I was barely potty-trained at the time. It had a gas stove and a self-cleaning oven, and it is butt-ugly by today's standards but it certainly got the job done.

We live in that house in Montgomery Township from 1990 to 1996, and it was the only house we lived in that had a gas stove until my parents bought the new townhouse in 2007. The Montgomeryville house was built by the now-defunct David Cutler Group, and I refer to it as "The Dunhill" in casual conversation because that was the name of the floorplan/model. It had central A/C and gas heat.

With the exception of government housing where we lived in California from 1996 to 1998, and the place we rented in Doylestown from 2005 to 2007, every single house we lived in after I was born had gas heat. With the exception of the house on Whidbey Island and the two government houses in California, all of the houses we lived in had gas forced air heat. The house my parents owned in California when I was born had electric baseboard heat, the first Navy house in California had this floor-to-ceiling electric forced-air heater, and I honestly don't remember what out second Navy-provided house in California had. The place in Doylestown had central air and oil forced air heat.

 

The Dunhill, which again was built in 1990, had a range/oven/microwave combo like this one...

 

Every house we had from 1996 until 2007 had an electric stove with the ugly coil elements, even though all but three had gas heat. The house in Virginia Beach even had a remote-controlled gas fireplace in addition to gas heat, but for some stupid reason it had an electric stove. Even stupider was the fact that the Virginia Beach house didn't have a built-in microwave. It had a hood with a light and a ventilation fan above the stove, but my parents chose to buy a countertop microwave rather put a significant amount of money into a house that we lived in for barely two years. It was also when we moved into that house, in 1998, that my parents bought our first refrigerator with a built-in ice maker and water dispenser. That fridge served us well for many years, and though the ice maker didn't work that well, the fridge itself still worked fine when we let the buyers of our house in Northern Virginia keep it with the house in 2005. The Virginia Beach house was only two years old when my parents bought it, so while the appliances were builder-grade, they were practically new and worked great.

 

When my dad was transferred to NAS Whidbey Island in 2000, my parents rented a house from one of my dad's Navy buddies. It was a 4-bedroom rancher of just under 2,300 square feet, which had been built in 1988. The house was in great condition and well maintained, but except for maybe getting new carpet, it had not been updated at all since it was built. The kitchen appliances, like the stove and microwave, were from 1988. The microwave worked, but it was old and my parents didn't want to be on the hook for a new microwave when we moved out, so we used a countertop microwave. I accidentally destroyed the countertop microwave in December 2000 when I put a bag of popcorn in for several minutes...



The Whidbey Island house had gas forced air heat, but no central air. It would have been easy to add central A/C to the furnace, but it rarely got above 75 degrees in the summer and we never needed A/C more than a few times out of the year. If my parents actually owned that house and planend on staying there for more than two years, they probably would have added central A/C.

 

The house in Northern Virginia, which we lived in from 2002 to 2005 and which my grandparents colonized from December 2002 until May 2003, remainds one of my favorite houses. My parents bought it cheap right before real estate prices went through the roof, and made a hefty profit when they sold it in 2005. That house was built in 1989 and had the original Trane HVAC system from 1989. Well, the air-conditioner was definitely original, but I don't know about the furnace.

The EPA introduced a mandatory minimum 10 SEER rating for residential central air-conditioners and heat pumps in 1992. That house was built in 1989 and had a Trane XE 900. The "900" means it was a 9 SEER, which would be about right for a house built in 1989. Trane introduced the XE-series in 1986-1987 and produced them until 2002. I once saw a Trane XE 800 heat pump from 1987; "800" means 8 SEER, which is what most residential units were prior to 1992. You could get 12 SEER units as early 1986, but these were not builder-grade units. The Trane XE-series was virtually unchanged during it's production run of nearly two decades, but from 1992 onward, obviously the the XE 1000 was the lowest efficiency you could get. I have also seen XE1100 and XE1200 models. The most efficient Trane split-system you could get in the 1980s was the XL1200 (not including the rare inverter compressor model), and the oldest one I've ever seen in person was manufactured in 1986.

So yeah, our house in NoVa had the original 1989 Trane XE 900 and I'm presuming the original furnace. The heat worked great, but in that the huge house the A/C was a pretty significant shortcoming. One thing I loved about that house was that every single bedroom had a ceiling fan already installed when we bought it, with the fan and light wired separately! That house was almost 3,000 square feet not including the finished basement, and while my bedroom was fine in the summer, my parents' bedroom was directly above the garage and sucked in the summer. Unlike previous places we had lived, my parents believed we would be there until I finished high school when we bought the house, at a bare minimum. They were planning on installing a ductless mini-split just for their bedroom or installing a second system, but in late 2004, my dad had the opportunity to ditch desk duty at the Pentagon and go back flying on P-3s. Best of all, we'd be moving back to Pennsylvania! We had a family meeting in the kitchen of that house, and we unanimously agreed that moving was the best course of action. In roughly three years of ownership, we had to replace the original dishwasher and the house had to be sprayed for termites once. Other than the central A/C struggling to keep the master bedroom at a tolerable temperature in the summer, that was a pretty solid house.

 

@RustyGreen

The house in Doylestown where we lived from 2005 to 2007 was a shitbox. My dad's Navy buddy bought it cheap at a few years prior to us moving in, and had done an excellent job fixing it. However, it was still a pretty shitty house for numerous reasons. Like the house in Whidbey, we rented it.

The house was built in 1988, but the layout and general design of the floorplan was so outdated that my grandmother told me that she thought it had been built in about 1968. For starters, the master bedroom had a tiny bathroom with only one sink and a bathtub/shower combo, and it didn't have a walk-in closet.

Some of the windows were probably newer, but a lot of the windows were inefficient single-paned windows. One window in the computer room/guest bedroom had a crack in it. I had the opportunity to chat with the new owners maybe two years ago, and that cracked window is still there!

The kitchen was sort of updated, and I remember that it had Corian countertops, but the over-range microwave was ancient and sometimes didn't work. It had an obnoxious habit of not working when I had a random popcorn craving, and I would resort to punching the control panel, which pissed off my parents but surprisingly got the damn thing to work. It had a newer electric stove with the ugly coil elements as well, and my parents bought a new refrigerator and washer/dryer when we moved in.

The house had 8-foot ceilings throughout and felt closed in at times. It did have a fireplace and a nice backyard, but the negatives far outweighed the positives.

 

The A/C and heat in that house actually kicked some serious ass, when they actually worked. The house was your standard 2-story colonial, and probably about 2,500-2,600 square feet. Typical of larger 2-story homes with only one A/C unit, the second floor was noticeably warmer, but my parents' bedroom was more comfortable than in the previous house.

When we moved into the house in July-August 2005, the A/C was working great. It was almost 100 degrees that day, and we had the A/C cranked. Our new neighbors came over to say hello, and it was so cold in the house that when my mom opened the front door, the heat and humidity from the outside caused the smoke detector to go off. Within a day of us moving in, the A/C quit working. I believe that the first time, a part failed due to old age. My dad's Navy buddy, who owned the house, paid to fix it. The A/C broke down a second time in the summer of 2005, and when the HVAC guy came out, it was discovered that the system was leaking freon. The HVAC guy recommended replacing the entire system because it was so old, but my dad's friend didn't want to pay that kind of money and opted to have it recharged to get us through what little remained of the summer.

When we fired it up for the first time in May 2006, it was blowing warm air again. My dad's friend called out his HVAC guy, who again recommended replacing the system, but ended up only recharging the system because he didn't want to spend the money on a new system.

The house was built in 1988, and I am pretty sure that entire system was original to the house; I don't remember the brand, but from what I remember about the basic appearance of the outdoor unit, it was like a Goodman or a Janitrol unit. I believe that Goodman bought out Janitrol and started selling Janitrol units as Goodman in the early 1990s, though a beach house my family rented in 2011 had brand new Goodman units branded as Janitrol. Goodman units all come out of the same factory, and the most common brands are Goodman and Amana. However, the cheaper units are also rebadged and sold under dozens of different companies. I've seen GmC (Goodman Manufacturing Company), Emerald, Alpine, and numerous others.

 

Goodman/Janitrol seems the most likely brand that our house in Doylestown had, as I remember the outdoor condensing unit looking a lot like these. All of these units are Goodman/Janitrol...

 

Armstrong is also a possible, but much less likely, possibility...

 

From about 1981 to 1989, Bryant made air-conditioners and heat pumps that looked a lot like the units above, but I would have remembered the distinctive red Bryant logo if that's what our house had...

 

I am 90% that the Doylestown rental house had a Goodman/Janitrol that was installed when the house was built, or that the original A/C failed prematurely in the 1990s and the present owners replaced it with what they could afford. This is a definite possibility because I don't think that the oil furnace was the same brand as the air-conditioner. The furnace was trouble-free for the first year and a half we lived in the house, even surviving a flooded basement in about September 2006 when the sump pump failed, but it quit working twice in the winter of 2006-2007. I do not remember what was wrong with it, but my dad's friend called his HVAC guy to fix it both times.

Now that I'm thinking back, the blower motor in the indoor unit is what failed the day after we moved in, and then freon leak manifested itself for the first time later in the summer of 2005.

The second time the furnace quit working, in February 2007, it got down to 48 degrees in the house and I piled on like three blankets in addition to the bottom sheet that night.

The air-conditioner had to be recharged in 2005, 2006, and 2007. I still drive by the house fairly often, and the people who bought it from my dad's friend in 2007 replaced that past-it's-prime system with a Trane XR-Series A/C and presumably a new furnace, maybe ten years ago.

 

I don't really care for the microwave in that location.

 

That one is fucking hideous, being attached to the stove, but I don't mind the smaller microhoods. Our last house and the one we're in now have the microwaves built into the wall above the oven. The previous house had a downdraft cooktop with the vent in the center of the stove, and our current house has a vent above the stove.

 

A built in one would be a huge improvement!