Upcoming conference: "Fables and Facts about Rainwater Quality"

A rainwater harvesting event out at McKinney Roughs Nature Park to, in the words of the organizers, Texas Water Savers and Innovative Water Solutions, will address:

Concerns and questions about “what’s in the water in a rainwater cistern” are common among homeowners, businesses and government agencies interested in using rainwater to for everything from landscaping to drinking. Do bird droppings foul the water? Does the quality of the water in the cistern degrade over time as it sits unused? How is rainwater different, in quality, from our groundwater? 

They will even test your rainwater if you bring a sample! August 18, 2012; $10 a head.

Click on the images below to see larger version.

meanwhile, in this month's issue of Consumer Reports...

They have a good section on designing and remodeling bathrooms, including design tips, cost, surfaces, sinks, and poopers. A couple interesting tidbits: (1) They recommend Moen's Velocity 6320 for a rain shower head and (2) they review dual flush toilets (among other toilets). On the dualies, they recommend Home Depot's Glacier Bay (a toilet name that makes me giggle uncontrollably when I hear it...). It apparently does the best (rated 'very good') with (ahem) "solid-waste removal". The Kohler Persuade, the poopster we're looking at for two of our three does fairly well ('good' on solid-waste removal), but is not recommended.

Make sure you don't miss the sidebar on exploding toilets. Nothing can ruin your day more than an exploding pooper!

20,000 hits!

Hit 20,000 pageviews yesterday (wh00p! wh00p!). Here are stats similar to the 10,000 hits! (wh00p! wh00p!) post back yonder in April:

The most popular post continues to be "the miserable truth of Mies van der Rohe" (lots of Mies haters out there...) with "dirty deeds (done dirt cheap)", "neoplastic furniture" (a personal fave of mine) and "haiku for the book 'Gropius'" breaking into the top ten.

 Although "miserable" continues to be the higher post, the "modern homes" page has blown past it in terms of hits.

Financially, I still have a ways to go before I can quit my day job:

In fact the earnings per hit have decreased substantially since 10,000 hits. This won't quite buy a bathroom tile yet (sigh...).

Thanks for tuning in!

demo denied!

After posting last night, I thought I would haunt the digital deed records to see if I could find something about the city condemning the house on the lot. It took a bit of sleuthing (simply typing in the property address was not good enough; needed to find book and page numbers, and then names, and then, finally, landed on searching on the last name and first initial of a previous owner), but I found it: the order to remove the house and the subsequent demolition (documented via a lien) by the city! I sent an email to the city planner with the information, and he agreed that a demo permit would not be required (in other words, there's no demo permit on file because the city demo'd the house, and the city don't need no damn permit!).

There you go.

making the lot whole again; permission to destroy; how to deal with bureaucracies; rise up to appraise

Busy day today...

making the lot whole again

Back in ye old days, some 60 plus years ago, our neighborhood-to-be was platted into various lots. However, when the developer finally developed, he (or she) didn't abide by the original platting and built instead on different lots without replatting with the city. That means I had to take a few hours off work today to research deeds at the Travis County clerk's office (needed to show that the lot existed in its current configuration before 1995 to avoid going through formal subdividing).

I've been to the clerk's office before to research the history of our previous property and to find out what lot holders paid for various lots we bidded on back in our lot-searching days. Searching them deeds is an interesting thing. Fortunately, most of them are digital and online, but you have to go to the office and print them there to be "official". And if you go way back, you have to deal with the dreaded microfilm readers. Not a good way to spend your morning unless you  have a solid prescription of Xanax.

On the plus side, I love researching this stuff and trying to fill in the blanks on the history of the land. For grins, I went ahead and pulled the original deed for the property from way back in the 1860s:

After a couple hours at the county office, I hoop-hogged down to permitting for a pleasant five minute wait before talking to staff and submitting paperwork. We should be whole again tomorrow.

permission to destroy

Got a note from the architect that although there is nothing on the lot to demo, we need to file for a demolition permit. Apparently whomever demo'd the original house (our neighbors say it was the city after they condemned the property) didn't file a demo permit (which kinda makes sense if it was, indeed, the city...). Despite that the house was prolly demo'd back in the early 1990s, the city wants to see a demo permit on file. That will cost a to-be-determined permit fee, and the paperwork (of course) requires notarization. grrrr...

how to deal with bureaucracies

In short, jump through the hoops and smile (unless you reach a point where you truly need to raise hell). No one likes bureaucracy, but it doesn't get you anywhere to rip into the dude or dudette in front of you who had nothing to do with putting the bureaucracy in place. I've never understood the propensity for folks to shoot the messenger, especially if you need that messenger to do something for you. Shoot the messenger, and the messenger may passive-aggressively delay your permit (or cause other problems). Would you go out of your way to help someone if they just ripped you a new one for something you have no control over? Didn't think so. My advice is to get through the process and then talk to the folks that can really deal with the issue, generally the elected officials. Run for mayor if you need to. We may even put your sign in our front yard.

Note that the county and city folks we dealt with today were quite pleasant. In fact, the city guy seemed surprised I didn't yell or complain. Maybe that's why he said he could get our paperwork done by tomorrow (despite the paperwork saying it takes two weeks).

The other thing to do is to READ THE PAPERWORK CAREFULLY. Make sure you have addressed everything. Saves a trip (and a potential blow-up).

rise up to appraise

After some struggles with digital files (I'm discovering that the building bidness is still pretty much oldskool), the appraiser is at work appraising the property. From what I've read (it's in that Dummies book...), unless you're in a sooper-hot market (ha!), don't expect the house you're going to build to appraise for what it costs to build it. OK. We won't expect that. So I guess the question at this point (oooo: suspense!) is: How much lower will the appraisal be? Since we're rolling a lot of cash from our previous nearly-paid-off house into this one, it won't be an issue for us, but if you're minimizing your cash outlay on a build, it could impact your ability to get a construction loan.

Despite the aforementioned "ha!", the housing market is Austin is, indeed, hot right now. It is a seller's market with reports of houses going under contract in mere hours in certain neighborhoods. In fact, we've had two inquiries about buying the lot (it would take a bit of coin at this point...). That bodes well, wethinks. We shall see...

housewerk: permits, loan, pain

permits

The architects heard back from permitting. Them permitters redlined the plans with some (reportedly) minor stuff for the architects to deal with, and we have to deal with a land status determination. Apparently, when the lot was developed, the lot did not line up with the original platting, which means our lot is not a legally buildable lot (our lot includes bits of two original lots). But before you (or we!) have a heart attack, we can seek a land status determination and take advantage of an exception from platting. All we need is to prepare some paperwork, write a check for $171.60 (no joke), and stand in line between 9am and noon somewhere downtown. After that, we should be in bidness.

loan

The loan is progressing with a closing date set for August 14th. The Good Faith Estimate (what the cool kids call "The GFE!") isn't made for construction loans, so we had to talk to the banker to make sure that (1) we only paid interest on the construction money as we used it and (2) if we don't use all of the money the payment will snap to reflect what we used. We included something north of 10 percent of a contingency in the loan amount; ideally we won't need it, but in case we do, it will be there. The builder was approved by the bank (yay!), the loan approval is in process ("Shouldn't be a problem," says the banker.), and an appraisal of the project is in the works.

pain

This part of the process has been painful (in a first world sort of way). Not horrible, mind you, because of what we have to do, but painful in the sense that: WE WANT TO GET ROLLING!!! It will start in good time.

Need to find a golden shovel...

more on that geothermal system at the guv's mansion

I expressed surprise in an older post at the reported number of boreholes drilled for the geothermal system at the newly remodeled governor's mansion here in Texas. Various sources reported between 40 to 53 boreholes between 300 to 350 feet deep.


I sent a note to the contractor that put in the system, Redding Linden Burr, Inc., who forwarded my email to the Bob Bullock History Museum. A nice fellow there responded that the guv's system has 45 wells, each 350 feet deep, spaced 20 feet on center. The system also has a fluid cooler to remove additional heat during the winter because of our unbalanced heating and cooling loads (smart).


That nice fellow noted that number of wells per square foot is higher than a modern house because of the uninsulated masonry walls, the 17-foot tall ceilings on the first floor and 13-foot tall ceilings on the second floor, and the large groups the mansion often hosts. 


In that older post, I speculated that only the debbil would need a house with a 45-ton cooling system (the debbil and that dude in "Hands On a Hard Body" who bought a Wal-Mart class AC for his doublewide). Turns out it's only one cool cat...