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Helpful tips to help avoid property damage from frozen pipes

January 17, 2014 by Gerald Light

Earlier this month, we first heard about the “polar vortex,” which brought extreme cold and snow to large swaths of the country. With a second round of polar air expected from the vortex later in January, it’s a good time to make sure your home is ready to withstand the bitterly cold temperatures.

While we know to bundle ourselves up to keep warm, many people forget to make sure their pipes stay warm as well. A pipe that bursts can cause significant damage, so homeowners should pay special attention to pipes that have frozen in the past or that are near exterior walls.

Here are some tips to help avoid property damage from frozen pipes:

Remove hoses from outside yard faucets to allow for proper drainage. If you have a sprinkler system, drain all outdoor pipes and turn off the water supply to the system.
Insulate areas where vulnerable pipes are located, or use pipe wrappings embedded with electrical coils that provide an outside source of heat.
Open the doors to the cabinets under your kitchen and bathroom sinks so heat from the room will help warm the pipes.
Running water doesn’t freeze very readily. During severe cold weather, keep a stream of water trickling out of faucets or spouts that are attached to vulnerable pipes.

Getting Ready for Fall

September 21, 2013 by Gerald Light

Fall arrives this weekend, and already the mornings have been brisk. Along with the arrival of colder weather are a number of key maintenance tasks homeowners should tackle in order to prevent structural damage, save energy and keep their home’s systems running properly.

By completing these tasks now, you will allow plenty of time to sit back and enjoy all the fun activities typical of the festive autumn season:

Clear all debris from your gutters, even if you have a covered gutter system. Any leaves or other materials left in the gutters can freeze and damage the gutters themselves, and could also force freezing water up under your shingles and damage the roof.
Start the season with new wicks for your portable humidifier, and also check your air filters. In addition, be sure to clean the humidifier every few weeks throughout the winter to keep it free of mold, bacteria and mineral deposits.
Protect your outdoor air conditioning unit from icicles and snow by placing a sheet of plywood over the top and draping a dropcloth over it. When doing so, don’t create a fully enclosed space, as that can trap moisture and offer a cozy winter home for rodents.

Exterior Home Improvements

April 22, 2013 by Gerald Light

According to Remodeling magazine’s 2013 “Cost vs. Value Report,” Realtors consider exterior home improvement projects among the most valuable. In fact, a majority of the Top 10 projects in terms of value recouped at resale are exterior replacement projects. This makes sense given the importance of curb appeal in attracting homebuyers.

Based on interviews with real estate professionals throughout the country, the Remodeling report found that the top project is steel entry door replacement, which typically recoups 85.6 percent of costs. Making this project an even better investment is that it is also the least expensive to complete. In addition, three different siding replacement projects and two other door replacements were among the Top 10.

When it came to improvements to a home’s interior, there were two projects ranked in the Top 10. Ranked fifth, a minor kitchen remodel is expected to return 75.4 percent of costs, while adding an attic bedroom and bathroom came in tied for eighth with 72.9 percent of costs recouped.

The right remodeling project, when done well, also has the potential to make for a quicker sale and reduce negotiations with buyers over perceived shortcomings. Click here to access the “Cost vs. Value” website, where you can download data for all regions of the country.

Easy Ways to Get Kids to Save Energy

October 8, 2012 by Gerald Light

By: Courtney Craig
Published August 29th, 2012

Want your kids to pitch in and help save energy? Green parenting bloggers weigh in on getting kids to flip the switch and stop wasting energy.

Kids have more important things to think about than turning off the lights. But discovering the lights blazing in an empty room for the umpteenth time is enough to make any parent scream, especially when the power bill arrives.

The good news is, you can train your kids about the importance of saving energy right from the start. Here’s great advice from some of our favorite bloggers who know a thing or three about kids.

1. Let them take charge.

Jenn Savedge, who blogs at The Green Parent, practices a little reverse psychology — she urges her kids to remind her to turn off the lights.

“They get such a kick out of ‘telling Mommy what to do’ that it’s first and foremost on their minds,” Savedge said. “If I walk out of a room without doing it, they’re happy to point it out and then dash back and do it for me.

“Works like a charm and keeps the whole thing from becoming just one more thing that Mommy nags them about.”

The key to getting children to do anything is to make it “theirs,” says Monica Fraser, a mother of two who blogs at Healthy Green Moms.

“I get them to police me because they get inspired to turn off the lights ‘better than me,’” she said.

2. Find their motivation.

For Sommer Poquette’s 8-year-old son, it’s money.

“If I have to ask more than three times for my son to do anything in particular, he loses $1 out of his piggy bank,” says Poquette, who blogs at Green and Clean Mom.

“I do this so he learns that leaving the lights on costs me money, but also because he’s very motivated to earn money and spend money, so I hit him where it hurts the most: the wallet! Amazingly, he listens very well and never lets me get to the fourth ask!”

Fraser’s kids are motivated by the idea of helping out friends and neighbors.

“Because my children are quite young, I have said that we must remember to turn lights off and shut water off when brushing so that our neighbors have enough,” she says. “They know their neighbors, and certainly wouldn’t want to use all the water.”

3. Incorporate non-verbal reminders.

Gentle reminders, such as stickers on the light switches, help kids remember to turn off the lights when they leave a room.

“They’re each in charge of shutting off their bedroom lights each morning and during the day,” Poquette says. “We have stickers above the light switches to remind them. As a family, we all offer each other friendly reminders.”

Sticky notes don’t just apply to light switches, either. Tiffany Washko, who blogs at NatureMoms, places Post-It Notes labeled “Turn Me Off” and “Unplug Me” all around the house as reminders.

“Putting them by the light switch, on the side of the TV, on the wall next to the power bar that controls game consoles, etcetera, is a great visual reminder,” Washko says.

“We also require each child to do a walk-through each morning before they leave for school and turn off anything that may have been left on. Once they consistently remember, we stop requiring it … that is, until they have a few lapses, then we rinse and repeat.”

4. Explain to them why it’s important.

The full implications of saving energy may not immediately be clear to kids, but they’ll be more likely to remember to turn off the lights if they understand why it’s important.

“To teach them about the importance of turning off the lights and saving energy, we’ve read them several children’s books,” says Poquette. “My son understands the value of a dollar, so I’ve shown him our energy bill and explained to him what this means and how energy is produced.

“I think being up front with your kids, and explaining things to them in simple ways they can understand, is the best policy.”

“Visit HouseLogic.com for more articles like this. Reprinted from HouseLogic.com with permission of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®.”

Rehabber’s Guide – What is a 203(k) Loan?

August 22, 2012 by Gerald Light

By: Dona DeZube
Published March 6, 2012

Lenders’ weak stomach for extending credit doesn’t have to sour your upgrade dreams. The old but new again FHA 203(k) loan rolls remodeling and mortgage costs together, whether you’re buying or refinancing an existing home loan to pay for upgrades.

First, some 203(k) basics:

15- or 30-year term option

ARM or fixed-rate option

3.5% down payment; other FHA loan qualifications apply

Interest rate a tad higher than market

Higher fees compared with equity or other FHA loans, for such things as title checks, architectural plan reviews, appraisal, and FHA inspections

No balloon payment

Loan amount = projected value post-rehab, including the cost of the work

FHA loans take longer to close than conventional mortgages

More paperwork than a straight mortgage loan

Now, 13 rules for what you can and can’t do with a 203(k):

1. You can buy a fixer-upper so awful it wouldn’t qualify for a regular home loan. Whether buying or refinancing, all that needed work might keep your home from qualifying for a regular bank loan. Banks don’t finance homes in ill repair because they’re too hard to resell if they have to take the house back via foreclosure.

2. You can DIY with a 203(k) if you can show you know how to DIY. You can do the work yourself, or act as your own general contractor, if you can prove you’ve got the chops, and can get the job done on time (the maximum timeframe is six months). Of course there’s a catch: When you DIY, you can only use the 203(k) proceeds for supplies. You can’t pay yourself to do the work on your own house.

3. You can use a mini 203(k) for mini-sized projects. If you’re just doing your kitchen, bathroom, or another project that costs $35,000 or less, there’s a streamlined version of the 203(k) designed just for limited-size projects.

4. You can’t use it to buy a new-construction home. The house you’re fixing up has to be at least a year old.

5. You can’t use it to buy and install a new toilet, even one of those fancy Totos. You have to spend at least $5,000 on your renovation to use the 203(k) program. And the whole mortgage, including those remodeling costs, has to be under the FHA mortgage limit for the area where you live.

6. You can expect the lender to be up in your grill about how and when the home improvements get done. An inspector will be dispatched to your home multiple times to check in on the progress, which is why rule #7 is so important.

7. You have to keep your contractor from going on a long vacation to Europe.

Your contractor has to start work within 30 days of the loan closing.

He can’t stop working on the project for more than 30 days.

He has to get the whole job done within six months.

Doing it yourself? The same timelines apply. So no long vacations for you until the work gets done.

8. You can use the loan to make your mortgage payments if you can’t live in the house until the work is done. This is one sweet provision of the 203(k) program because it means you don’t have to make a mortgage payment on the home you’re remodeling and pay to live somewhere else while the work is going on.

You can use the 203(k) loan to pay for up to six months of principle, interest, taxes, and insurance payments when your property is going to be uninhabitable because of the renovation work.

9. You can use it to make energy-efficiency upgrades like installing a new furnace, windows, or attic insulation. You can get a 203(k) loan to pay for 100% of the cost of energy-efficiency improvements. You don’t have to get those improvements appraised, but they do have to be cost-effective, meaning they’ll pay for themselves over their useful life. The HUD inspector will make the call.

10. You can rip the house down if you plan to build something in its place. As long as you keep the foundation of the home, you’re good to go.

11. You can have a little shop downstairs. It’s kosher to use a 203(k) loan to remodel a home that includes some commercial space, as long as you use the money only for projects in the residential part of your home and the amount of commercial space doesn’t exceed these limits:

25% for one-story building

49% for two-story

33% for three-story building

12. You can use a 203(k) for a condo unit, but … your condo building must have FHA approval — which is tough to get these days — or meet VA, Fannie Mae, or Freddie Mac guidelines. Also, your building can have no more than four units, though there can be multiple buildings in the association.

13. You can’t break these rules or the lender can take its money back. Like immediately. Your lender can also refuse to advance you any more money or apply any money left in the escrow account to reduce what you owe on the mortgage.

“Visit HouseLogic.com for more articles like this. Reprinted from HouseLogic.com with permission of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®.”

Drought Friendly Plants – 5 Plants You (Almost) Never Have to Water

July 18, 2012 by Gerald Light

By: Lisa Kaplan Gordon
Published May 29, 2012

Every plant needs water. But drought-resistant varieties need only dainty sips once they’re established, making them perfect for low-rainfall areas and low-energy gardeners.

Susan Gottlieb, an expert on drought-tolerant gardens, says native plants have the best chance of surviving dry summers or whatever nature throws at them.

“Natives have evolved to thrive in your climate without a whole lot of extra work,” Gottlieb says.

Include these 5 stunners in your landscaping and retire your watering can.

1. California lilac (Ceanothus): This beautiful shrub flowers in late winter/early spring, emits a lovely fragrance, and shows flowers that run from white to purple. The “Concha” variety is prized for its deep blue blossoms. California lilacs grow best on dry, sloping land or in front of any structure that protects them from wind. They also prefer well-drained soil, and they don’t do well in clay.

2. Deer grass (Muhlenbergia rigens): Found in many desert gardens, deer grass is a spiky and dependable ornamental. It loves full sun, but also will grow in a little shade. Water every three days until established. After the first year, water only every three weeks.

3. Salvia, heatwave series: These dependable perennials were developed in Australia to withstand extreme weather. As a bonus, they bloom spring through fall, to the delight of hummingbirds and butterflies. Colors include white, pink, and salmon.

4. Dusty miller (Senecio cineraria): This low-growing perennial is known for its silver-gray foliage, looks good as a ground cover, and thrives in containers stuffed with annuals. It hates standing around with wet roots, so plant it in soil that drains well.

5. Tickweed (Coreopsis): These yellow perennials add a burst of sunshine to any garden or border. More than 100 species are long-blooming (so long as you deadhead) and low-maintenance. They range from long and leggy to small and mounded. Also, they are easy to divide, creating many more plants season after season.

More than 30 states host Native Plant Societies, which can guide your selection and help you save water in your garden. To find a local society, check with your local extension agent or with the Native Plant Conservation Campaign, a friend to native and endangered plants.

For more ideas, check out these drought-resistant plants with an emphasis on color, and these lawn alternatives that don’t hog water.

“Visit HouseLogic.com for more articles like this. Reprinted from HouseLogic.com with permission of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®.”