inflation and the housing market - Page 2

[gentlemango]

We are just above the income cutoff for assistance in NH for a family of 3. We are thinking about asking someone into our home as a guest so that we would become a household of 4 and qualify, but we are sketchy about the ethics of that. That is a good book, we have it. Large custom size storm windows are about $900 each. We've drilled plexiglass onto the exterior frames instead. We caulk and weatherstrip but the problem is the 1800s glass itself, it is very thin.

It's hard if you live in a modern house to understand how much the cost of everything goes up when you multiply the size of the house by a factor of 2 or 3. The Pella vinyl window people laugh when you say your windows are 102 inches tall. It takes a lot of heat to deal w/ 16' ceilings. We had no idea what living in a historic home would mean.

[chirp]

Originally Posted by sunnmama

I wish I could say yes (and I hope I am wrong!), but--no

We have a house we would love to sell (we don't live in it; we moved to another state), and have finally resigned to renting it out--even though it could potentially be a lot of work renting a home 3 states away. We really resisted renting it (it has been vacant for 2 years....), and renting it represents us conceding that the market is not coming back any time soon. Luckily, we bought 10 years ago and we aren't upside down...but it is simply impossible to sell anything in that town right now because it is glutted with foreclosures (FL).

Your house sounds HUGE! Could you rent out rooms to help pay for the utilities? Do you have any family members who could move in and help pay for the heat? Or, possibly rent the entire house out and rent a more manageable home for your family to live in? It sounds like your mortgage is reasonable, so maybe you could rent it to cover the mortgage and let the renters take care of the heat (be up front about the costs, though).

i wouldn't feel comfy unloading my burden onto someone else...like renting out the home knowing they would have to be paying 600-800 bucks more to heat it in the winter.

could you just go live with relatives and keep your current jobs. obviously you can afford the mortgage...just not paying the heating bill would help you save SOME money.

it just seems shady to rent it out knowing what a terrible deal it is...unless you find someone for whom money is no option...but then, why would they be renting?

[sunnmama]

Originally Posted by chirp

it just seems shady to rent it out knowing what a terrible deal it is...unless you find someone for whom money is no option...but then, why would they be renting?

I did say to be upfront about the heating costs...

If the place is as big as the op is describing, it could easily house a multigenerational family with several workers. If the op doesn't have extra family members to move in, maybe another family does One large house with reasonable rent and high heating bills is still cheaper than, say, 3 houses with their own utilities.

[chirp]

Originally Posted by sunnmama

I did say to be upfront about the heating costs...

If the place is as big as the op is describing, it could easily house a multigenerational family with several workers. If the op doesn't have extra family members to move in, maybe another family does One large house with reasonable rent and high heating bills is still cheaper than, say, 3 houses with their own utilities.

maybe in NH...but heating alone costing 6-800 bucks a month is a lot for NJ. i would say that's WAAAY more than three separate houses.

anyway...no snark intended...just expressing my own concerns...i missed the being "upfront about heating" costs part.

[cschick]

Originally Posted by gentlemango

It's hard if you live in a modern house to understand how much the cost of everything goes up when you multiply the size of the house by a factor of 2 or 3. The Pella vinyl window people laugh when you say your windows are 102 inches tall. It takes a lot of heat to deal w/ 16' ceilings. We had no idea what living in a historic home would mean.

Pella should sell vinyl windows that height . . . we have Pella wooden windows of that height (102 inches) across the front of our house. If we hadn't upgraded to wood when we built, they would have been Pella still.

But, you don't necessarily have to install 102 inch windows when you replace. You can build a box around, and install a smaller window. It may only cost a little bit less though, especially if it's hard to match the outside trimmings of the house.

It may also detract from the historic look of the house; are you in a preservation district?

But I'm also worried that the windows aren't exactly the primary problem here. The house you're describing doesn't actually sound that different from the houses my father has renovated during my life. (He likes to renovate large houses from the late 1880s.)

First, Windows: Does the draftiness come THROUGH the window, or AROUND the window? If around, a heavy-duty caulking and repair job around the windows (this can be cheap if you do it yourself, but time-consuming) may be in order. Tacking plexi over the windows isn't going to do a thing if the weatherproofing around the windows is what is at fault.

Second:, has anyone during the life of this house actually insulated it? If the walls are still plaster, the answer is probably no. Insulating the walls may bring you far better return than replacing the windows. I believe there are methods via which they can cut holes into the plaster and blow in expanding insulation (then patch). Having this done is probably going to be less than the window replacement price.

Third: installing ceiling fans in the rooms with the 16 foot ceilings. You're losing a lot of heat straight up. Ceiling fans can bring it back down into the room.

[shayinme]

Originally Posted by chirp

i wouldn't feel comfy unloading my burden onto someone else...like renting out the home knowing they would have to be paying 600-800 bucks more to heat it in the winter.

could you just go live with relatives and keep your current jobs. obviously you can afford the mortgage...just not paying the heating bill would help you save SOME money.

it just seems shady to rent it out knowing what a terrible deal it is...unless you find someone for whom money is no option...but then, why would they be renting?

As someone who also lives in a old historic house in New England, I find that most folks want nothing to do with these types of houses because they are money pits. We bought ours when we had only been here 2 years and frankly didn't know better, coming from a different part of the country all I saw was the beauty and potential. LOL

I have a few other friends in old houses and all of us were not from here and we all have crazy heating bills. So I really feel for the OP because it really is hard to understand unless you are living it.

I think the OP would find anyone hard pressed to rent her house unless the rent was super cheap to compensate for the heating costs.

[Denvergirlie]

Originally Posted by cschick

First, Windows: Does the draftiness come THROUGH the window, or AROUND the window? If around, a heavy-duty caulking and repair job around the windows (this can be cheap if you do it yourself, but time-consuming) may be in order. Tacking plexi over the windows isn't going to do a thing if the weatherproofing around the windows is what is at fault.

Third: installing ceiling fans in the rooms with the 16 foot ceilings. You're losing a lot of heat straight up. Ceiling fans can bring it back down into the room.

I can relate to both of these.

Our house was built in 1900, the windows are single pane, but that is not where the heat loss is. The normal window shrink wrap stuff did nothing for us the first year, as it just covered the window, and not the casing/ trim around the window. The following year, we bought sliding glass window sized plastic wrap and were able to encase the trim, as this is where our heat loss was, not the window itself. Once we made this change along with putting bubble wrap between the window and plastic, made a big difference over the previous years application.
Within the casing/ trim around the window is weights on rope, this is what makes the windows slide open and close, and this was nothing other than a thin piece of trim on either side with a lot of airspace for the weights to move up and down (Hope that makes sense).
This trim, is where the major heat loss was, as well as where the wind was whistling thru.
Caulking all the window trim to the wall as well as wrapping window and frame in plastic really helped.


Likewise, on the ceiling fan thing. I would love to install some of these ourselves to drive that heat back down, but this is a rental and the ceilings would not support the weight of the fan (we've looked into it at our cost already). But if this is an option, I would certainly pursue.

Finally, we are in final stage of installing some home made window solar heat collectors this year. I can not yet speak for it's true value, but every little bit helps, and we were able to find most of the materials for free, with maybe $30 spent out of pocket at the hardware store.

Here are some plans online of what we've made:
http://www.jrwhipple.com/sr/solheater.html
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects...ce_Heating.htm

[cschick]

Originally Posted by Denvergirlie

Within the casing/ trim around the window is weights on rope, this is what makes the windows slide open and close, and this was nothing other than a thin piece of trim on either side with a lot of airspace for the weights to move up and down (Hope that makes sense).
This trim, is where the major heat loss was, as well as where the wind was whistling thru.
Caulking all the window trim to the wall as well as wrapping window and frame in plastic really helped.
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When I was a kid, I always thought those weighted windows were so freakin' cool. Now I know so much better . . .

So you caulked both inside and out? That's a pretty good idea, I was just thinking of caulking outside. I remember in mine and my husband's last house, when we did have the windows replaced, they forgot to caulk around the outside of one window and the wind whistling around even that modern window, uncaulked, was pretty amazing. (We had our windows replaced in mid-January at a major discount for being willing to do it at that time of year, so the missing caulk was pretty much immediately obvious.)

[Denvergirlie]

Originally Posted by cschick

So you caulked both inside and out? That's a pretty good idea, I was just thinking of caulking outside. I remember in mine and my husband's last house, when we did have the windows replaced, they forgot to caulk around the outside of one window and the wind whistling around even that modern window, uncaulked, was pretty amazing.

Yes, we caulked outside, wall to trim and inside, wall to trim.

We also caulked a few windows shut ... trim to sliding frame and sliding frame to glass pane of windows that just plain do not open ever (house has settled in certain parts as well as those windows have been painted shut).

Supposedly there is also some removable bead caulk that one could apply to windows that you want to open in the summer, to seal that trim to glass frame connection as well. We have never done this ourselves, as we had limited funds of stuff we were willing to try.

[madskye]

[QUOTE=cschick;14630437].

Second:, has anyone during the life of this house actually insulated it? If the walls are still plaster, the answer is probably no. Insulating the walls may bring you far better return than replacing the windows. I believe there are methods via which they can cut holes into the plaster and blow in expanding insulation (then patch). Having this done is probably going to be less than the window replacement price.

[QUOTE]

If you have the book, you've probably thought of this, but we have a 100 year old farmhouse in NJ and when we did our renovations we found no insulation in the old part of the house, the walls were stuffed with newspaper and clamshells.

Is there anyone at the State level that can help you out personally? Or at the heating company?