LOUD DRIPPING - A/C condensation drain behind the wall

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Dana

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Don: My circa 1923 house is pretty sub-code in many respects too, and couldn't meet current code for R-value without truly onerous expense, but I still fix the cheap & obvious stuff like air leaks when I find them, and it's made a measurable difference on both comfort and energy use. (Total heating energy use is tracking about 30% lower on a source-fuel BTU/heating degree-day basis than the day I moved in, while adding ~500 square feet of additions.)

You only bulldoze and start over when there are a sufficient collection of serious repair issues that would cost at least half as much as the newer-better house. A buddy of mine bought a derelict of a 3-family rental property on the cheap a few years ago- the clapboard siding was splitting, roof starting to leak, the circa 1890 window sashes hadn't seen new putty since 1950 or earlier, and the central steam boiler had crapped out sometime in the 1980s. The slumlord had installed some pretty-good wall furnaces, but there was nothing close to code on it. I helped him figure out how to do a full-gut rehab on the place for less money than a code-min knock-down & replace solution, while taking the energy use down to something like a quarter of what a code-min building would do. Yes, there was a substantial amount of subsidy money behind it (from the local utility), but doing things like using reclaimed roofing foam from demolition (from enterprising scrapyard entrepreneurs) saved well over 10 grand on the insulation upgrades it took to get there.

Without subsidy it still would have been worth taking to a bit better than code-min at the comparatively high energy costs in New England, strictly on a net-present-value basis looking at it as a 10+ year investment, even assuming no energy price inflation. YMMV. But we DID run the numbers several ways- a full-gut rehab at code min would have cost slightly more out of pocket than the subsidized full-gut with deep-energy retrofit aspects, and he had no moral/political issues with taking the subsidy money the way jeff might. A code-min rehab would still have come in significantly less than a new code-min building it's a high labor-cost area for construction labor compared to GA or TX, and even with the Portuguese & Spanish speaking non-union subcontractors he used for most of the non-energy aspects project it wasn't exactly cheap. But the fact that the utilities run well under $100/month year round and the super-comfort of ~R40 (whole-wall average all thermal bridging factored in), makes it easy to rent the place out for more money than the average, and it has a VERY good internal rate of return on the project as a whole. (Good thing too- he has 4 kids to put through college, starting in another 5 years or so.)

My in-laws have other projects on commercial buildings where they actually DID bulldoze and start over. (It's a long story that started with water table contamination of dry cleaning fluid presumed to be from one of the tenants in the building being discovered by an abutting property owner... ) The building could have been rehabbed, but in that case the costs would have been higher, and the resulting value lower than the new building.

It's a lot cheaper in cost/performance to do the really big things when you're looking at full-gut rehab vs. knockdown situations than it is for a pretty-good house that has been kept in pretty-good repair like mine. But that doesn't mean you can't make back the cost of a few cans of foam or spot insulating where it's easy in short years.
 

Jeff_Bathroom

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For the record, it was jeff_bathroom that politicized the thread with the "...until our country is returned to a working free market..." statement, which was completely uncalled for given that what I'd suggested in the prior was completely technical &/or code related.

Characterizing me as an "anti-American liberal", would be pretty far off the mark too. (Need new glasses? :) )

I'm proud to be an American, an engineer- and I work the numbers on what is/isn't cost effective, which is pretty far from what could rationally thought of as "...at the cost of destroying the economy, the free market system and the country in the process, particularly when it's being rammed down our throats by idiots who create stupid ideas like Solyndra." I didn't invent the D.O.E. nor do I endorse their budget, but I sure won't ignore the basic math when available, whether it comes from D.O.E. publications or elsewhere.

It's neither liberal or anti-American to make your house more comfortable and energy efficient using methods that have very short financial payback periods. It boosts the economy by putting more money in your pocket to spend as you see fit. If you prefer to hand that money to (the regulated monopoly) Georgia Power to pay for their (federally subsidized by your tax dollars & mine in several ways- you're welcome!) nuclear power projects, that's entirely up to you, but don't pretend it's the free-market at work, that it'll save jobs, or that it's our patriotic duty to spend more on utilities. Whether you believe the GP nukes are the most cost-effective way forward or not (and there are more than two sides to that particular issue, as well as to it's relative cleanliness), using less power frees up more grid capacity for more local economic development to use, which isn't exactly an economy-destroying free-market destroying act.

I'm glad you got your condensate drain issues under control, but I'm sorry you're so easily offended with the suggestion that you could tighten up the place a bit on the cheap. None of my prior posts on this thread contain political content, yet somehow you seem to see some phantoms there. I still don't understand what you meant by "...until our country is returned to a working free market."- thought mayhaps you'd spell it out, but I'm beyond caring what you actually think at this point, given the shallowness & mis-directed bile of your response. Good luck!


Dana, (for the record)
Unlike your first of many snide comments, there was nothing I said initially including "...until our country is returned to a working free market..." that was overtly aggressive or nasty towards you or anyone else. It WAS my post about a leak, not about insulation. Point was; many people don't have the money even to do upgrades like the ones you mention even if they make long term economic sense. I simply voiced my opinion in what used to be my post about a leak, as to the reason why the economy is bad. Your tangents about DOE, nuclear and building codes and all the other conversations you were having with yourself have absolutely nothing to do with what I said.
Now, having said that... I loath liberals/progressives because "it is my opinion" that they are destroying our country. Actually it's fact, but anyway. You looked like the typical green radical who HAD to stick your face in, off topic, and start blabbing green manure. Well, if I got that wrong, then I'm sorry I threw a label at you if it didn't belong...and I mean that. I'm just utterly sick of the gigantic pie-hole of the left.
But for the record, YOU got sarcastic and personal first. I just implied that you should start your own post which I think is what this is really all about.
 
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