home repairs

One of the nice things about having a home is that you have a yard and some land that you can call yours, or in our case we like to think it is ours but actually the bank owns it for us. One the other side is it means you have extra headaches when things break down.

Last weekend our upstairs A/C broke as the water pipe got clogged and when that happens an automatic switch turns off the A/C, which is a good thing as you don't want water running through your ceiling. I called my favorite repair man at Bar-Co mechanical, who happens to be a close friend who I can trust with my $200 that I handed over to him. While we were amusing ourselves at King's Dominion, he fixed our A/C for us so the house was back to the normal coolness when we returned. It always seems like something is in need of repair.

For the last three weeks we have done without a clothes dryer. The button to turn on the dryer did nothing at all. I searched on-line for a timer as that was the indication a bunch of self-repair web sites noted could be the problem. I bought a timer as I could not locate one locally. We waited for it to come and last weekend while we were away, my eldest son took it upon himself to try to install the new timer. When we got home, although we were glad to find a cool house, my bubble quickly burst when he told me he could not get the dryer back together. I was pretty angry as we had waited two weeks already for the timer and now it looked like I would have to call the local appliance repair man. After putting the dryer back together as best I could, I finally gave up and called M&H Appliance. They came out at the first of the week and told me the motor had failed and we had put the timer together correctly. At least we had one thing going for us. I then tried to locate a motor for our dryer. I called Maytag to find the part number, but they would not give it to me, even though I had just the week before called them to get the part number for the timer! I called a local parts distributer, who gladly gave me the part number even though I did not buy it from them. I searched the web and found a new one for $75, whereas from Maytag or locally the same part was $150. The motor arrived yesterday and was waiting for me as my wife announced when I got home. I think she was tired of taking the laundry to the nearby laundry mat every day! I called the man who had come to our house from M&H and he told me how to take the dryer apart to get to the motor, which was nice of him as I had paid him $50 to diagnose the problem, but this was free advice. After a couple of hours, a couple trips to Home Depot and my daughters help for a couple of hours, we got it back together and working by 8:30pm. I already have the next problem waiting for me.

As I crawled under the house to check on the dryer exhaust vent I saw water standing under the house. I wanted to finish the dryer so continued on that task, but after we were done I went back under the house. The downstairs A/C is leaking under the house, so I have to call Bar-Co back today and tell them I have a new emergency for them to take care for me.

Such things remind me of other long term problems we have suffered as home buyers:

1) When hurricane Fran hit this area in 1996, we lost our power for one week. That was not much fun as it was in the first week of September and it was pretty hot at the time. There was nothing we could do except wait for the power company to fix the electricity. After a week of being hot, we went to Greensboro for a night to get a good night's sleep in A/C.

2) We bought a new refrigerator when we switched to a larger house and then it failed within a couple of months. We called for a replacement and it took two weeks to get another one. We used a large cooler packed with ice instead of a refrigerator. They did give us $100 to buy a small refrigerator but that can only hold so much as it was the size most college dorm students use.

3) During the last drought in NC our large-bore shallow water well went dry. That was a pretty big deal, so I called a well driller and forked out $4500 to drill a 400 foot deep well. It only took a couple of days for him to complete the work.

4) Our heat pumps went bad in that same house and since they were 25 years old, there was no hope in repairing them. That little inconvenience cost me almost $10,000 as the whole heat and A/C systems for upstairs and downstairs had to be replaced. Although done quickly the lost of that much money hurt.

There are many, many more house repairs over the years, but those are all of the major ones I can think of that had a lasting impression on the family and myself.