Speaking of quality building...

I've ranted before about how bad our house is, but I realized today that nobody out there understands the degree of poor craftsmanship involved. Now granted, the main problems are;

1. The house is old
2. The house is on a poor foundation which itself rests on hydraulic clay (that expands and contracts with, um, copious amounts of rain).
3. The house is single wall construction There's very little drywall or studs, and no insulation. A few beams and mostly 1" thick solid wood planking around all the outer walls. Prevalent in older Hawaiian homes. I've never seen it anywhere else. Even the mighty Google found very little information on it.
   

So, since a picture speaks a thousand words, here's an essay. You may need to click on some of these and view them full-size to grasp the details.

The door on the left was added on a few years ago and is actually level, but the siding isn't.

The roof extends out over our "garage" from the house. As far as I can tell, that 4x4 post is original, the beam hasn't moved, and the cinderblock wall is definitely original. So why does it lean in about 10 degrees?

This crack in the foundation starts under the Pergo in the kitchen, runs out the Lanai (patio) all the way to the exterior of the house.

More superb concrete work



On the left, the floor in the kitchen, on the right, the floor in my daughter's room at the other end of the hall. The 4 foot level doesn't have a bubble-reading that far off....

Just say the word "hurricane" and we'll be packing off to grandma's.

Home redemption

We just signed the sale contract yesterday to buy the home we've been renting for the last year. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!!!!!!!!! More important than no longer throwing money down the drain as rent, I'm no longer throwing money down the drain as improvements. I like to fix things, and tinker. That's no great secret. My wife, my credit card, and Home Depot know that all too well. I've invested quite a bit into this house over the last year in improvements that I never claimed to the owners. Mainly, because they weren't required. They were gracious enough to allow me to tinker as much as I liked on this old house as long as it was an improvement. I added and replaced several lights, added GFCI protected receptacles in the garage, front and back yards, and in the eves for Christmas lighting. I networked the home with RG6 and CAT5e for TV and internet, and set up a network center in the utility room. My wife and I have both done quite a bit of yard work, too.

Suddenly all of that time and money is no longer wasted, and that felt good. We celebrated by ripping up a bunch of the old concrete burms that made up the property lines 50 years ago and hauling them away. Imagine concrete about the size and shape of those parking lot tire stops. These things were poured-in-place and ran the entire length from the street to the back fence - about 120 feet. I wish I had taken a picture of it, but my poor little truck scraped the mud flaps as I drove off to the dump with about 1500 pounds of old concrete in the bed. I had to air up all four tires before I left, and then let air back out before I left the dump. Although the rear springs strained, my happy V6 thoroughly enjoyed the challenge and pulled it all with no complaints.

One more happy Danger Ranger memory, and one more reason to be sad if we have another kid. Unfortunately, you can't (properly) fit 2 car seats into a Ranger, and while everyone else sees fit to make midsize crew cab 4 door pickups, Ford makes that bastard bobbed-tail Explorer called the Sport Trac. Other countries like Australia, South Africa, and South America get one, though. I don't want a modified sport utility, I want a truck!

But I regress. Now that all of our work will pay off in some fashon or another, there is suddenly a metric buttload more work to be done.....

Big decisions

I'm still alive. I have to work tomorrow, so another short weekend for me. Fair enough. I had a nice long one a few weeks back.

We just got word that our landlord is planning on putting this place up for sale in a couple months, and we get first dibs. It's a good debate. The neighborhood is great, we love our neighbors, the location is good, and its affordable. Due to a combination of ants, termites, single-wall construction (A very unique type of old construction in Hawaii where the walls are built out of 1" thick solid wood planks. No insulation, no 2x4's, no drywall, no plaster, no siding.), and the entire hillside in this neighborhood shifting & settling, this house is really barely standing. The foundation is completely cracked, and it is downhill in any direction from the kitchen. Every time we have heavy rains, the house shifts, and I usually have to make adjustments to a couple doors so they'll close properly. It would be illegal to rent this place out in Cali, but it's all just part of the lovely way of life in Hawaii.

So I need to get some opinions from several of my contractor friends as to what it would take to rebuild on this lot and what kinds of temporary fixes will make the house a little safer for the next couple of years until we're ready for a project that big. I know it can be done, it's all a matter of how much will it cost. The largest factor is that the house sits on clay fill from a marsh, and they didn't understand the hydrodynamics of clay that well in the 50's - especially not here. When it rains, it swells, and when it dries, it shrinks. I know we can have pilings driven/poured down a ways until we hit something more solid, but are we talking $10,000 or $100,000?

I'm excited because I've always wanted to build my own home. Heather looks at homes that are pretty with nice appliances. I look at homes and say, "Here's a nice lot, and the house is CRAP! Let's get it! I'll bring my sawzall!!" I really want to be able to build something to my specs, wire it myself, and know that every bit of work I put into it is saving me serious cash. After years of doing new homes & remodels I've seen what works and what doesn't, and would love to integrate ideas and details that would normally be far to expensive as options for other people or that you can't normally convince them to do until it's too late. Stuff like;

1. Installing the conduit for underground service so that the utility just has to tie in whenever they get around to taking down the power poles.
2. installing conduit and laying out areas for solar power so it can just be "plugged in" when affordable. In the meantime make it compatible with a backup generator.
   
3. Putting all of the low voltage wiring in pipe so it can be upgraded as technology changes
4. Lighted Solatubes - they're just way cool.
5. Extra capacity circuits or extra pipe in garage for vehicles - Plug in hybrids are coming, and full-electric vehicles probably are, too.
   
6. Panic/storm room
7. Rainwater collection - May be better as an augmentation or irrigation source, but I've seen homes further up the mountain that get all of their water this way.
8. Re-install solar water heater - and add anti-scald plumbing fixtures!
9. Install a hot water recirculating pump. The small amount of electricity it occasionally draws is nothing compared to the water wasted every night waiting for hot water at the shower.
10. Have the plumber install a 1/2" cooling loop somewhere cool outside for my computer. It's already watercooled, pump that heat somewhere outside of the room!
11. Whole house surge protection. Why spend $20 each on a surge strip when you can cover the whole house for under $100?