The Hunt!/Eric's new dump.

[ericjon262]

It depends on the property, the VA won't lend on just any property, and they almost certainly wouldn't have on this one.

You're 100% right though, cash has other advantages, it's typically the fastest way to close, and doesn't have any inspection requirements.

[pmbrunelle]

For sure. I'm going to check back after it closes to see if my offer was even close...

Anyone who wins a bid to buy a house nowadays may end up with regrets once they realize they overpaid.

"Losing" the bidding war in a sense may be saving yourself from trouble.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Prices go higher, but it's rare that Real Estate markets go down much... at least in the US.

[ericjon262]

For sure. I'm going to check back after it closes to see if my offer was even close...

Anyone who wins a bid to buy a house nowadays may end up with regrets once they realize they overpaid.

"Losing" the bidding war in a sense may be saving yourself from trouble.

yeah, the place needed a ton of work no matter which way you cut it, but it would have been an awesome piece to have, among other cool treasures distributed across it, was a '53(?) Suburban that would have been cool to turn into a bit of a "rat rod"



The other place I made an offer on countered, and I accepted. it's a little more than I wanted to spend, but not outside of my budget. we're under contract now, but there's still a bunch of stuff that needs to happen before it's mine.



The workshop out back is at least wider than what I had in WA, but will need some work. I'll have to install a breaker panel, and wiring, as what's there is questionable at best. for now, it will be a storage unit while I get the house ship-shape, assuming I end up with it.

[Honest Don]

Looks like a decent place. what are the dimensions of the garage? I imagine the concrete block walls and steel roof will make for easy maintenance.

[ericjon262]

Looks like a decent place. what are the dimensions of the garage? I imagine the concrete block walls and steel roof will make for easy maintenance.

I don't have the exact dimensions handy, but I think it's about 36x25 or so. it's big enough for now, but I do plan to build something much bigger eventually.

[ericjon262]

well, looks like I'm now the owner of ~13 acres in South Carolina. I closed on Friday, but haven't had time to do much other than move a few loose items out of storage and into the garage. I would like to get most of the fleet moved over there by the end of the week, but I have work every day until Friday, so that may not happen...

[The Dark Side of Will]

Congratulations!

Welcome to being a serf to the land itself rather than the lord.

[pmbrunelle]

I'm now the owner of ~13 acres

Wow; we didn't see that from the photo!

[ericjon262]

Congratulations!

Welcome to being a serf to the land itself rather than the lord.

thanks, I have a ton of work ahead of me now though!

I'm now the owner of ~13 acres

Wow; we didn't see that from the photo!

yeah, I sometimes keep my cards close to my chest... I have big plans, but I need to iron out some of the details first.

[Honest Don]

Congrats!

[ericjon262]

Congrats!

thanks, I have a ton of work to do... hopefully by the end of the week I'll have a few simple things nailed down, like getting some wiring installed in the garage.

[ericjon262]

been working on the new place... there's a "swimming pool" out back,



I was going to try and clean it up without pumping it dry, and the more I worked at it the more I realized this wouldn't happen. I dropped a pool pump in a concrete mixing tub, and and began pumping it down.



after a while, the pump stopped pumping, I cleaned the strainer and started it back up, and it refused to play nice, the impeller may be clogged up, or the seal bad, I'm not too worried about it, it was a free pump.

I continued pumping it down with a pump from horrible freight.



at this point, there's about 3 feet of old oak leaves and muck in the bottom of the... swamp. I am going to keep at it, and hopefully get it emptied.

I was worried about pumping the pool out, because I didn't want to fill it from the municipal supply, as that gets expensive.... there was a well about 50 feet away from the pool. but there wasn't power to it anymore, and the box containing the starting capacitors, was open and everything inside was rusted to pieces... I didn't have confidence that it would work, until I noticed that the wiring going to it looked like it had been hit with a weed wacker. I ordered a new "control box" and wired it up to a generator I picked up cheap. I didn't want to run new wiring to it yet, if the pump wasn't working. I plugged it in, and it worked! once I have it emptied, I'll refill it from there instead of the municipal supply.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Pool: n. A hole in the ground you throw money into.

Does the circulation system work? Do you have pool chemicals? Are you ready to clean it every season? Do you have a winter cover?
Pools are probably more common there than here, but that just looks and sounds like so much expensive pain. (Says the guy who bought a 200,000 mile Jeep and is building a Cadillac powered Fiero)

[Honest Don]

Is this Real Homeowner Tech now?


Pools can be chore, but if it's already there and you get use out of it why not?


Not to brag, but my new place has a city pool I can see from the front yard. $2 admission for adults and somebody else deals with the chlorine

[pmbrunelle]

Is this Real Homeowner Tech now?

Sure, houses are kind of like cars, in that folks like the modify them, and sometimes screw them up in the process.

I actually have a house thread on another Fiero forum.

[ericjon262]

I'm still in the evaluation phases with the pool. At this point, it hasn't cost me much more than time.

honestly, I would already be caving it in if it wasn't for the fact that a supervisor at work gave me a pump, filter, and "carefree" system for free (because he caved in his pool...)

once I have it cleaned out, I'll make a more thorough assessment of condition and make a move from there, if it's as bad as I originally feared, the tractor will push it in easy peasy.

[ericjon262]

I worked on the car early in the morning, the garage gets more sun in the afternoon and heats up kinda quick, which seems to coincide with shade being cast on the pool err swamp area.

I want to home depot and picked up a garden rake, as I couldn't seem to find mine, I started raking as much leaves out of it. I raked and raked and raked. I ended up with this in the shallow end of the swamp



that took about 3 hours of raking... next I shoveled all of that onto the patio, and then from the patio, into the bucket on the tractor, it took 6 trips like this to get all of it out...



then out came the pressure washer, again...




tomorrow, I'll do a ton of cleanup and try and maybe throw some clean water in it.

[ericjon262]

I got the pool completely emptied a while ago, and mostly cleaned out. Then I used a "Drain bladder" in all of the pipes entering the pool, to force water into the pipes so that hopefully, I could find where the pool filter was installed last. I found the filter was installed outside of the fenced area of the pool behind it, but also found it was under a tree stump... erg. I fired up the tractor and went on a bit of a rampage, there were 4 stumps in that area, so I dug each of them out with the tractor, extracting as much of the root mass as possible. Potato quality pictures, but you get the idea...



The pile of roots, stumps, and small trees...



it's been a huge amount of work, but it will work out way better than grinding the stumps when I go to run wire to the pool and well pumps and am not hitting roots every 5 seconds.

I really need to get power run to the garage, at a minimum, I think I need the capability to run about 75 amps at once for the shop, this would run a compressor, and the plasma cutter. I would like to be able to have up to 125 amps, as I am plan on picking up other new tools as well.

My plan is to run power to the shop, and then from the shop to the pool and well. this should avoid the maximum number of potential root issues, make for the least overall amount of digging. The red box is the meter, green is the panel in the house, orange is the new sub panel in the garage, purple is the pool pump/filter, and brown is the pool. I'll also install a large disconnect in the house to de-energize the entire drop to the garage,

While I have trenches dug for the wiring, I'll bury some PVC or PEX so I can hook the well pump and use it. I need to see what code is regarding the distance between services, if there is a code for that. either way, I'll do both at the same time.



Speaking of other tools, I picked up a surface grinder the other day, and was looking at a mill and a lathe, unfortunately, they sold before I could get there.

one of the machinists at work informed me that the magnet vice alone could be worth what I paid for the whole machine, it seems to be in fair condition, but I also don't need to make mirrors with it. I'll need to pick up a VFD to run it, but it shouldn't be too hard to setup otherwise.



If anyone knows of a good place to buy 4/0 copper that won't rake me over the coals, I'm all ears.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Have you looked into getting a 2nd meter for the garage? All the cool kids are doing it.

Nice find on the grinder.