How much are you bills each month.. how does it compare to your monthly income?

Drool-Boy said:
Sorta. The screens deflect most of the light & heat before it hits the window.
It works pretty well, but I wouldnt call it a night & day difference.


I helped my dad put a new floor in the game room of their house, which is above the garage. When the old floor came out we found that there was NO insulation whatsoever. We had always wondered why the hell it was so loud when the garage was opening or closing, but we attributed it to the depth of the floor. Anyway, we had a guy come out and fill the entire floor with spray insulation and now not only is the room quiet, but the temperature is perfect. The massive window on one end used to heat up the room like a furnace. Between the new solar screens and the insulation it's a completely different room now.

I'd insulate the shit out of the attic. New cookie-cutter houses are so shitty these days it's unbelievable. $200,000 ten years ago and they didn't even put insulation in the fucking floors.

Plus, when we tore out the staircase to fix some squeaky steps we found a 3-foot tall pile of garbage and fast food refuse they had stashed away. They actually filled the goddamn space under the stairs with FOOD GARBAGE. We couldn't believe it. We even took pictures. Wendy's, McDonalds, even a Pizza Hut box. Absurd. Rats and mice, anyone? Keep in mind this is a 4,000 square foot, 2-story "luxury custom home". What a joke.
 
Drool-Boy said:
Electric bill is what kills us down here. From march to september the AC runs constantly. And this is in a new house. I put solar screens on the house, and that knocked a sliver off the bill. Next Im gonna go up inthe attic and spray another foot of insulation, and maybe put a couple more vents on the roof.

Exactly how much does adding another foot of insulation really help tho? Did you actually see any savings by doing that?
 
Sarcasmo said:
Plus, when we tore out the staircase to fix some squeaky steps we found a 3-foot tall pile of garbage and fast food refuse they had stashed away. They actually filled the goddamn space under the stairs with FOOD GARBAGE. We couldn't believe it. We even took pictures. Wendy's, McDonalds, even a Pizza Hut box. Absurd. Rats and mice, anyone? Keep in mind this is a 4,000 square foot, 2-story "luxury custom home". What a joke.
Did your dad have the house built?

We didn't have food garbage, but there was all sorts of drink bottles and half-full cups of coffee stashed in various places in the house we had built, along with random trash. I think the only reason there wasn't more is because we looked at it every weekend when it was under construction.

Like the older hand-built Ferarri's where you could find Italian porno mags among other things behind the door panels :fly:
 
ChikkenNoodul said:
Did your dad have the house built?

We didn't have food garbage, but there was all sorts of drink bottles and half-full cups of coffee stashed in various places in the house we had built, along with random trash. I think the only reason there wasn't more is because we looked at it every weekend when it was under construction.

Like the older hand-built Ferarri's where you could find Italian porno mags among other things behind the door panels :fly:



Yeah, we did frequent walk-thrus, so I kept a lot of the trash from getting closed into the walls. But I tell ya were the garbage DID end up. Under the lawn. I was digging a hole for a sago palm a while back and hit the mother-lode of trash. If I didnt know better, Id say my place was built on a land-fill.
 
ChikkenNoodul said:
Did your dad have the house built?

We didn't have food garbage, but there was all sorts of drink bottles and half-full cups of coffee stashed in various places in the house we had built, along with random trash. I think the only reason there wasn't more is because we looked at it every weekend when it was under construction.

Like the older hand-built Ferarri's where you could find Italian porno mags among other things behind the door panels :fly:

I'm in the A/C business and when one of our guys was at someone's house changing out the inside unit, he found coffee cans stashed with empty cocaine baggies and razor blades inside. People are just bizarre...

EDIT: This A/C was in a closet - they were stashed somewhere under the unit in the back.
 
Drool-Boy said:
Yeah, we did frequent walk-thrus, so I kept a lot of the trash from getting closed into the walls. But I tell ya were the garbage DID end up. Under the lawn. I was digging a hole for a sago palm a while back and hit the mother-lode of trash. If I didnt know better, Id say my place was built on a land-fill.
Just as long as it wasn't an Indian burial ground
 
ChikkenNoodul said:
Did your dad have the house built?

We didn't have food garbage, but there was all sorts of drink bottles and half-full cups of coffee stashed in various places in the house we had built, along with random trash. I think the only reason there wasn't more is because we looked at it every weekend when it was under construction.

Like the older hand-built Ferarri's where you could find Italian porno mags among other things behind the door panels :fly:


It was part of a subdivision that was brand new at the time, with maybe 6 homes built total. Now of course it's full, with about 75 homes. So we didn't design and build it, we just selected the lot and the type of house we wanted built out of 5 or 6 designs.
 
Candy said:
I'm in the A/C business and when one of our guys was at someone's house changing out the inside unit, he found coffee cans stashed with empty cocaine baggies and razor blades inside. People are just bizarre...

EDIT: This A/C was in a closet - they were stashed somewhere under the unit in the back.
:lol: yeah, that's probably not a good place for them huh









:shifty:
 
Oh my, our bills.

Now this would be our household:
Mortgage = $1685
Car Payments (two brand new) $900
Car insurance = nothing monthly, paid $1800 oin full for both vehicles for 6 months (im not counting this i our total since it's money spent)
Electric = $278 last month (oddly enough, we had an A/C issue we were unaware of; just got it corrected tho and the bills hould go WAY down)
Water $181 for two months
Garbage for three months = $45
Shawn's Cell phone = $65 (mine is paid by the company)
Gas = paid by the company (THANK GOD)
Student Loans = 53.00
Credit Card bills = Approx. $500 (GOD that makes me sick; hopefully wont be that way for too much longer)
Shawn's health insurance - $125 (mine's paid)
Life insurance = not yet but next monnth somewhere around $100 month

Incidentals: depends on whats left over at the end of the month. We go out about once a week and that can get pricey depending on what we do.

Remodeling = whatever we can afford to do that month. Varies.

$3700 in expenses, before the incidental and remodeling bullshit. I'm going to go throw up now.
 
fly said:
Actually windows are the worst... :p

And get one of those fancy timer thermostats.



We had one of those, but the fucker never worked right and was a huge pain in the ass, and eventually broke. I had it replaced with one of those slider types.
 
What kind of home builders are you guys dealing with? That's crazy. We don't seal pockets of trash in our houses or bury trash under the sod. Ever lot has it's own trash bin and the superintendents are responsible for sweeping out the houses once a week, or as needed. We do walk-thrus at the end of construction with the homeowners and generate a punch-out list. And we warranty everything for one year.
 
Bubbles said:
What kind of home builders are you guys dealing with? That's crazy. We don't seal pockets of trash in our houses or bury trash under the sod. Ever lot has it's own trash bin and the superintendents are responsible for sweeping out the houses once a week, or as needed. We do walk-thrus at the end of construction with the homeowners and generate a punch-out list. And we warranty everything for one year.


Larger companies are more likely to do the trash thing. They just don't care.

And everyone does the walk through and year warrantte, but that doesn't mean they don't make youre life a living hell during that warranty. I rarely hear about people who were happy with their builders.
 
Drool-Boy said:
We had one of those, but the fucker never worked right and was a huge pain in the ass, and eventually broke. I had it replaced with one of those slider types.

They have these cool, new touch screen thermostats that work GREAT. They are prgrammable, so you set it to your schedule and never have to worry of you left it on while your now home. They are pricy (my COST is $122 so you could prob have a contractor install one for around $350) but well worth it. It's VERY easy to use.
 
Coqui said:
Larger companies are more likely to do the trash thing. They just don't care.

And everyone does the walk through and year warrantte, but that doesn't mean they don't make youre life a living hell during that warranty. I rarely hear about people who were happy with their builders.

A few years back I had a Ryland home built and had very few warrenty issues and when there were - they handled them well. The was a great house... :(
 
Drool-Boy said:
We had one of those, but the fucker never worked right and was a huge pain in the ass, and eventually broke. I had it replaced with one of those slider types.
Ya just set it once fgt. How did you break it?