New England B.S. Thread

That is close to what we paid - the Accentra 52i insert. The roll out option is nice, but the track wheels suck and the unit itself is extremely heavy so it never rolls well. Luckily I had a motorcycle I sold to cover the cost at the time, then along came the kid so not super upset about getting rid of the bike.

Edit: Now I have a pedal bike that costs the same. Sometimes I think I needed to take the short bus as a kid.

 

I have an ATV that I sometimes debate selling that would cover a good chunk of it - I probably only put about 2 hours on it this year. But, then the other day I got the tractor pretty badly stuck while clearing snow and sure was glad I still had the ATV to pull it out.

 

All this talk about houses. And here I am buttoning up the place praying too god the big assed sycamore stays where it is. But that sucker is coming down one way or the other one day.

 

So, this is not about the North East, and not about Toyotas, so I figure this is the perfect place for it! Actually, if Texas had an active BS thread, I'd post it there.

Anyway, my daughter lives in Austin, TX and has a 2012 Civic Hybrid with about 113K miles on it. She lives close to a Honda dealer and they have been very good to her. They went to bat for her with corporate when they determined a couple of years ago that the hybrid battery pack was bad. She got a free replacement along with a rental car while they sorted it out.

She had it in the other day for an oil change and they told her that she needed new ball joints and tie rod ends for $250.00. The price seems reasonable, but I always wonder about those items needing to be replaced.

She also needs to have her car inspected, which has to be done before renewing her registration. That's how Texas does it and since they only do one year registration, it makes sense.

My suggestion to her was to take the car in for inspection first, then if it fails for ball joints, she'll know that the Honda shop was right. If not, then she doesn't need them.

So, does anyone have experience with that generation of Civic? Does my idea sound reasonable?

I told her I'd ask around over the holidays since she'll be out of town until after Christmas.

 

I'm assuming those are checked during inspection. I might gamble at this point. I don't necessarily see a downside to it. Is she the type that could jack up the car and check herself with input from you / YouTube? Those are one of those things that isn't impossible to check on your own to get a ballpark idea.

 

The only thing I would change in what you wrote is that if the car passes inspection that she should not expect that the ball joints and tie rod ends do not need to replaced but they may not need to be replaced immediately. Years ago I worked at a dealership as a service advisor and my experience was that the mechanics never randomly recommended replacing parts that did not need it but they often picked up on parts failing quicker than other garages since they were so familiar with those cars having seen those cars so much. They knew which parts on which models wore out more quickly or had design flaws so they knew what to look for.

 

I don't think she has access to jacks or jack stands. There are actually do it yourself bays available at places in Texas, but I don't think she'd be able to do the check herself. It's been years since I did one, but as I recall, the car has to be jacked up, set on jack stands to take the weight off the suspension, then the tires have to be lifted with a pry bar to check for looseness.

I was thinking that since she reports no problems driving, it's okay to wait until she can get it to an inspection station.

 

That makes sense. Her short term goal is to get the car re registered, then she can take care of the ball joints later on.

 

ah yes...
I have a PROPANE generator and a power conditioner/UPS backup for the stove.
The propane generator can go a lifetime without an oil change. I start it once a year to be sure it runs. The longest we've used it is about a week during one of those crazy october storms we had a few years ago... It can go 24hrs on a standard propane tank...and I always have at least 3 full tanks just in case. It's been a perfect little workhorse. I even built my own pass through for it as it's not one of these beastly whole house...it's a perfect size to run the fridge/pellet stove...Unplug fridge, run the microwave etc...Charge devices...Power the FiOS ONT (Because we've actually never lost FiOS during any of the power outages) The oil in it is still amber gold because of the clean propane...there's no contaminants to foul the oil. Also, with propane you don't have to worry about gas going bad or the generator getting fouled up by EtOh gas. And you can always get propane tanks in a pinch from blue rhino...
This is my winter setup

 

Oh and as far as the cleaning...I have a ravelli RV100.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44rNJ2DBI3o
It's got some great features. There is a metal bar that pulls out from the middle of the heat blower that you push/pull and it scrapes the tubes of the heat exchanger. I can burn about 7-8 bags of quality (LaCrete) pellets before I need to clean/empty. I do a full vacuum out every week. I have an Ash Vac with the hepa bag and filter...and the KEY is to grab a removable flex tube from a plastic funnel. It has the same diameter as the accessories for a standard vacuum. That fits over the end of the vac hose and I can bend it into all the nooks and crannies for vacuuming out the ash. It takes me about 20 minutes and with quality pellets the glass door wipes clean with a damp paper towel...

 

That last piece is the thing. Unless you drastically relocate (out of the state if not the region).

 

I was looking for this thread the other day! I was going to show somebody, but now I forget who.

 

Are you happy with the school system in your town or are you looking to relocate?
We specifically chose our town for the schools...We bought a not quite dream house, but good enough for us house...and that's been a blessing as it allowed us to save so much money over the years and vacation like champs...Looking back on it it was a fantastic decision. Every time I think "Dammit...I wish I had a garage/basement for storage..." I also have to remember we got to take family trips to europe, cruises, disney east and west coast...universal studios...etc...
I may not have the nicest house in the bunch, but I've got a top notch school system, a kid who seems to have learned a thing or two...and the added value that school system gives us when we eventually sell.

 

Anyone! It's the best for literally anyone who has turned a wrench.

 

D.i.ying tools today...been wanting a pocket bit driver that's actually comfortable to throw in your pocket. Sacrificed a HF pick for the experiment...time will tell if it holds up

 

I was having a conversation with someone either on here or maybe YT. They were saying something along the lines of people are lazy and vehicle maintenance isn't difficult. That thread popped in my head remembering how quickly things went wrong.

 

Have you figured out how deep your foundation wall and footings are? They most likely aren’t much deeper than the crawl space floor. The biggest issue is undermining and pouring a new footing under the existing foundation or stepping it out in the interior of the basement which loses space.

 

My thoughts exactly when it comes to hogging out a crawl space! Remember, zone of influence when digging near footings, 1:1 from the bottom corner of the footing, you don't want to impede on that as a general rule of thumb.

 

There's a difference between IS checked, and IS WRITTEN IN THE RULES to be checked

Ugh, reminding me I need to figure that out. Our furnace is hard wired in a junction box, I want to get an electrician to re-do it to a plug so I can run it off a generator. Maybe something to do over next summer. Don't need much, just want a fair backup in case we go down for a couple days. We're pretty close to some critical infrastructure though so, if we lose power it's not for long.

True - but for me the less enticing part about jumping ship, say, next year is: 8% interest rates and being underwater probably almost immediately. For more than it costs to do the work on our house to get it to the same spot.

Wife wants an inground pool, THAT one is where we might have to delay a bit

We bought in '17 with the mindset: we don't care about school system, if we need the school system, we have minimum 7 years from finding out we need it to needing it, so we can re-assess at that point. Wasn't worth it for the first house, with >=7 years on the able.

Hm, I looked back at my posts - I thought I mentioned that, but no I assumed we're going to have to rip out the foundation. Heh, now that I think of it, I think I was talking about it with @kairo last night in our degenerate gamblers chat! - if we rip out the foundation it might actually be easier to get some earth moving equipment in there.

But yeah, I'm assuming:

1. Jack up house, level, sister joists (not sure if that's done in step 1 or at the end, but, whatever)
2 or 3. Remove earth
3 or 2. New foundation + slab (currently dirt floor, so we aren't yanking out a slab, fortunately)
4. Set house back on new foundation
5. Stairs
6. Electrical/plumbing, heating runs, etc that might have to change with the full basement
7. Finish some/all of basement, this might come in stages over time.

 

AH, I think I see what you're saying.



I didn't even think of that....hog out the middle and leave the existing foundation.