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Tag Archives: air conditioning

It’s Summer. How’s Your Contractor Doing?

This part of the house was sheltered. Much of the time, this guy was working in the blazing sun. This was Septermber.

I always wondered how people who build and renovate houses manage to make is through the summer. And summer is especially hot here in Texas!

When the amazing brick specialist was putting the limestone on our ranch house (see photo at right), I noticed that when he was in the sun, he always had his head completely covered, and drank water constantly. I think, secretly, that he’d built up a resistance to heat, like Lee’s farmer father did. A cool head keeps the rest of you cool, for sure, as does wetting a cloth and putting it on your neck.

Where there are teams building the infrastcture for a new neighborhood between Austin and Cameron, I have noticed that there are a couple of small trailers set up like gazebos, with benches and a roof for shade. Each has one of those misting fans at one end. That has got to be a welcome spot for breaks.

That’s a big fan, isn’t it?

Workers who are inside the house before there’s air conditioning set up can hope that there’s a lot of insulation, like we have at the Rattlesnake house. It really hasn’t been too bad in there. Plus, Chris has some massive fans. Moving the air helps a LOT. We do have a few window air conditioners now, and this week, where it’s been over 100F and very humid, I would not be surprised to find out those boxes have been opened. If it was me, ceiling fans would go in very quicjky, too!

If you’re a redeveloper, make sure your GC is treating the teams well. Heat stroke is not fun, and pushing people to work longer for some deadline is not worth risking their health.

 

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Mandi to the Air Conditioning Rescue, Etc.

Patsy Catsy just hides under the house when it’s hot. What a cutie!

The air conditioning system at the Cameron office suddenly stopped working last week. That was making it hard for Sue Ann and Mandi to work there. It takes a while to get somone out to look at air conditioners in the middle of summer, so poor Mandi was having to work at night or early in the mornings.

Luckily, someone on our team has some common sense. Last night, Mandi checked, and sure enough, we’d forgotten to change the filters. Poor system was just tired of trying to push through the dust.

We feel like the renters we always complain about who don’t do their monthly filter changes! Glad this one wasn’t so expensive.

So the lesson is: change your A/C filters, people! Including us.

Got Any Money? Want It to Make You More?

We’ve actually been looking at quite a few houses lately, and have another prospect our fingers are crossed for. We’re looking for some private money lenders for one of the houses, so if you would like to help us out, give us a call at 512-807-8777 or hit me up for Lee’s private number.

This fierce animal will keep random salespeople and rabid animals away from the office!

Closing on Hold

The Mattress 8 house in Temple did not close on schedule yesterday, thanks to yet another title company mix-up. That’s becoming more and more common lately, not a trend we are happy with. We’ll get it closed this week, we hope. We want to go in there and check out the junk!

Another Guard Animal?

We seem to have another security guard in training. The office cat, Shadow, has produced an offspring, Patsy Catsy (OK, I made that last part up). We’ve been making sure she’s not feral by playing with her, now that Shadow brings her out of hiding. It looks like Patsy will be a fierce guardian of the property, because she’s practicing subduing Mandi’s feet quite assiduously. Way to go, baby cat.

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Even More Air Conditioning Problems?

Hello blog readers! Apparently we have a posting trend going this summer, and it’s the proper use of air conditioning filters! I know, the excitement on this topic can be felt around the world…but at least it’s a distraction from current events.

Yep, that duct goes nowhere. But the one that works is the shiny one.

So, we’ve already talked about the water issues in our Blue Ridge rental property and the BIG problems with the drain pipe at the Bobcat house. Those were both solved by using the correct filters.

And by the way, Carol wants everyone to know that she’s pretty sure the some of the bubbling floors at Blue Ridge are caused by the tenant mopping the wood floor with a very wet mop. Plus, Russell found a leak in the shower, which explains more of it. Aha. Still, the filters WERE a problem.

Hint: don’t wet mop wood floors, either. They make really nice products for cleaning laminate and hardwoods. We love that Bona stuff (not paid advertising).

Next?

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Rental House Horror Story: The Case of the Wrong Filters

The beautiful floors are all bubbly.

It doesn’t take much to cause a real disaster, especially when it comes to air conditioning systems. Heck, Mandi accidentally tilted the window unit in the rental house she’s staying in the wrong way, and was frightened by a big ole puddle on the floor. At least that was easy to fix.

Unfortunately, not all tenants are so quick to report an air conditioning issue, nor are all easy to fix. Today’s horror story is a case in point. You, too, can learn from it!

Blue Ridge Blues

Our Blue Ridge house is one of the first ones we did as a company, and it’s one we learned a lot of lessons on (such as, sometimes a contractor delays a project because he is secretly living in it with his large dog). It’s been a rental property for the past year and a half, and that also taught us a lesson about property management companies (that they will charge you a LOT for minor things).

Oh my, that is NOT what you want to see on recently renovated walls.

Well, they were in quite a panic because suddenly their floors were flooding. They had no idea what was causing it, and were quite upset. Well, when we saw it, so were we. Carol went over there and took the pictures that accompany this post. She was not pleased, as you can imagine. Our nice floors and carpets are looking bad, and worse, they waited so long that there is mold. MOLD. We hate mold.

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Adventures in Malfunctioning Utilities

We’ve been experiencing rampant system failures at our Cameron office these days. Some of them are pretty funny, and some of them we don’t even have to pay for. Still, it’s always something these days!

Action shot of the trench to hold our electricity lines being dug. Ooh.

Electricity Struggles

The Hermits’ Rest Enterprises office in Cameron is in an old house, probably 80-100 years in age. As you can imagine, its infrastructure is also old. The house does have trendy underground power lines, which sounds pretty modern. Unfortunately, after one of our recent rain storms, the power went out in half the house. It turned out not to be something simple like a circuit breaker or a downed line outside. No, something underground had given up. That’s not so easy to fix.

So, for a week or more, the office was running on this handy portable electric thing that looked like a hybrid meter and furniture dolly. Whatever it was, it worked.

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