Allen,
Thank you for the links, i will definitely check them out.
I dont know my landlord very well as he is basically an absentee landlord with only two managers who manage all 97 of his rental properties between Seabrook, NH to Manchester, NH along with trying to do repairs themselves or allowing some tenants to work off any back rent they owe by doing repairs as well ( many of whom, haven't a clue as to what they are doing).
i didnt share too much only because i didnt know how much information you needed, i am more than willing to share anything else you need or want to know. i have worked hard all my life for everything i have, it may not be pretty, fancy or expensive like my parents and brothers things but its mine and i paid for it with my own hard earned money, my parents may not have approved of my way of life and how i live it but i was not happy with my father telling me what to do and how to do it. i have struggled a long time, always living paycheck to 5 days to the next paycheck but i am happy. i am smart and very resourceful if the need arises ( my oldest calls me a "mental ninja" what ever that means) and I like doing for myself rather than "hiring" someone to do it ( OMG i am my father!) i actually helped a friend make his small
wood stove more efficient just from a picture i saw in a
magazine once, by having him add a small steel drum on its side above it, with legs welded to the bottom so it sat about 4 inches above the top of his
wood stove .. the stovepipe connected from the rear top of the stove to the bottom rear of the drum then had him cut a hole on the top front of the drum for a short piece of stove pipe and an elbow then add a straight piece of stovepipe that ran straight out the wall to outside with an elbow there and then more straight pipe to above the roof line and a cap to top it off. The small drum captured more of the heat that way while still allowing for the smoke to escape out the pipe. he would add some wood in the morning and bank it when he left for work an hour later and add a couple more pieces when he went to bed, he was actually able to use only 1 cord of wood for the whole winter that way instead of two .... his electric stove died on him a year later so he put one of the oven racks on top of the
wood stove and showed me how he was able to make grill cheese sandwiches in a pan without flipping it over due to the heat coming from both, it actually toasted both sides of the bread at the same time.
Jeff,
Our dryer is in the kitchen because it along with our washer, which connects to the kitchen sink, are portable and the kitchen is where the dryer vent is rigged to fit into a double hung window in the room and since our stove/oven is in there as well mold hasn't been an issue, quite the opposite really as the house is very dry, static electricity all winter long even with a humidifier going, i have 2 fish tanks, 40 gal and 75 gal, in the big room at the front of the home and i have to add about 5 gallons twice a week to both as the dry air just sucks the water right out of them, even with covers on them. the only mold i have seen in our basement was on our plastic totes once which is where anything we have down there is stored in, vent holes in the handles are covered with duct tape on the inside of the tote. while the basement gets a little water, in the 4 yrs i have been here, its only happened twice and was maybe an inch or so deep but was gone within a day or so, the mold appeared only when it was very hot and humid outside but was easily cleaned off then after that we just sprayed all the totes down with Lysol and haven't seen any since. i wasn't aware it was legal for wood/pellet stoves in rental properties with a property owners approval as long as it passed inspection by the insurance company, back in 2007 i was looking at a single family home with one, the property owner was getting married and moving into her new husbands home but didnt want to
sell and was renting the place for the first time, she told me she would have a professional come in and clean the pipes every august as long as i made sure to clean out the ashes but i had to keep the stove a secret because rental homes were not allowed to have wood or pellet stoves in them at all.
As much as i would love to move ( i would love to own my own home but i have no credit or money for a down payment for one), it isnt really an option at this time because of money. our landlord has no
mortgage so the rent is below fair market rent value because all he has to pay is property taxes, water, sewer and trash. its a 4 bdrm apt with an optional 5th for less then 1000 per mo, i know some 2 bdrms in the area are going for 850+, with 3 and 4 bdrms running between 1100-1400 or more. we have 3 incomes coming in, 1 FT and 2 PT and he allows me to divide the monthly rent up and pay by the week which helps me be able to know exactly what we have to pull out of our paychecks to at least make rent with the rest being set aside for the rest of the monthly household bills.
there is no back pressure on the dryer hose at all as we just removed it from the dryer vent and let it hang around to the front with a stocking covering the end of it so i dont have more dust bunny's on top of all the pet hair i have to vacuum up every day, its a small apt size dryer which to me has too small of a drum to dry a full load from the apt size washer, we have to split the wash load to dry in a single cycle.
my oil company is the only one in the area that will deliver 50 gals at a time but they charge an extra 30 bucks to do it so instead of paying 175.00 for 50 gal it costs 205 for 50 gal, they dont offer a budget plan because of this like some other oil companies do which we wouldnt be able to get from another company as the home has to have at least 1 full year of history with them so they can see how much oil is used in a year and then they can set your budget amount. so far from what i learned all previous tenants have used the same company as i do.
from what i have learned talking with the neighbor next door, many many yrs ago ( she has lived in her house for 75+ yrs), this lot used to be a single family home that had burned down, the lot was cleared but sat vacant for about 5 yrs until the previous owner of this current building bought the property and built this 3 apartment house, from the outside it looks like a single family home but each floor is its own apartment, the 2nd floor is almost a mirror image of mine and the 3rd floor is a 1 bdrm with large bdrm and a large kitchen livingrm combo. To me tho, the floor plan of mine and the 2nd floor apartments were not very well thought out as the livingrm has a bdrm off of it and the kitchen does as well as a bath, with a narrow hallway and 2 more bdrms at the rear, almost like they were an after thought of "hey we have some extra space here lets put a hallway and two rooms here just to use it up" with window placement making it hard to achieve a good breeze/draft in summer even with fans going in them. A year before my landlord bought this building, the previous owner converted the laundry rms on both 1st and 2nd floors, located next to the bathrms, into small bdrms to make selling it more appealing i am guessing. there is a small yard if that's what you can call it where a garage used to be, located in back but no front yard so my front porch is where my container garden resides in the summer as its the only location that gets sun all day long, i even rigged up a watering system for the containers using drip lines.
R Scott,
We have caulked everything we could find that needed it, both inside and out either with caulk or small and large crevice filler stuff, we had some huge gaps around the heater pipes in the floor coming up from the basement to the baseboards, both sides of doorway frames where drywall was cut to fit them in (some spots had nothing between the walls for the gap stuff to grab on to so we had to stuff carpet padding in those spots) as well as large gaps on the outside between windows frames and where the vinyl siding was cut for them, we currently have .6mil plastic sheeting on all 7 of the old wooden windows since those are the only ones with drafts as well as around our porch to help cut down on the wind that blows through there, we have applied clear rubber sealant from Rustoleum to seal up any tiny cracks on window panes and 2 wooden front doors ( with the main entrance door to the building open you could see light from the other side), we have a thick heavy blanket covering up a rear fire proof door, that is slightly drafty, which we dont use but is easily accessible in case of emergency, we put a blanket wrap on our
hot water heater, added pipe insulation to all our hot water pipes in the basement for both furnace and hot water heater, we have blinds and insulated curtains on all our windows as well as the plastic that you shrink on the inside of your windows with a hair dryer and we put down large sections of carpet remnants in the livgingrm and front room both of which have bare floors .. all of this was done out of my own pocket. being warm after i go to bed isnt the problem, its just making our place warm enough to be semi comfortable without jacking our electric bill skyhigh when we are home and relaxing after work ( we are still paying down last winters high electric bill).
.png)
1
