boxofdelights

I *like* the new vinyl ones. They never need attention, have double panes that aren't broken, seal well enough wind doesn't blow through them with sufficient intensity to blow out adjacent candles, don't get rotted by wintertime condensation running down the inside.
I grant you they're not as pretty. But since I have less time to fix things than I have aesthetic sense, I just hang up pretty art nearby and love the daylights out of my vinyl windows.

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Don't sweat vapor barriers. Uncovered crawl spaces aren't a problem.

Smoke detector and carbon monoxide detector cost $14 for a combo unit that's battery powered. Wired-in is nicer, obviously, but battery ones are plenty good enough.

Foundation subsidence is a big issue. It'll probably be helped massively by gutters and mostly by regrading. It is possible to jack and fill, but it's expensive. If you can stop it moving by getting and keeping water away from the house, it's probably okay to leave it the way it is.

Regrading is a big one. Is it even feasible to regrade the adjacent landscape, to get positive drainage? If there's any possibility, even if it means bringing in a frontloader and digging half the lawn out, that will help things enormously. (And that's not even super-expensive, just mostly an enormous investment of time afterwards to fix things up. A guy with a frontloader will charge you like $150/hour and can rip out probably 10 cubic yards of material per hour.)

Getting an upgraded electrical box will cost you about $2000. Upgrading to 200A would be a good idea.

A way to check the thermostat situation: take the heat-side thermostat off the wall, remove the wires, and touch them together. You should see a slight spark and the furnace should come on. If yes, the thermostat's bad. If no, the furnace has a problem. That could be anything from the fan relay being old, which might only cost $30, up to and including the blower motor having failed or a failure inside the burner, either of which would probably mean new furnace at $5k or thereabouts. (Did the inspector make sure the pilot light was on? Air conditioning is pretty much optional at this point, since by the time you close you won't need it again for 10 months and even then can get by with a room or window unit.)

It would be awfully nice to be able to inspect the attic for leaks because if you have multiple ones, which given the rest of the house's condition, is quite possible, that means either a new roof ($12-20K) or a whole lot of patching and doubt as to whether the patches actually worked.

I think I'd insist on the owners cleaning out the attic enough for an inspection, and get it inspected. That's a likely deal-breaker, insofar as it's so expensive. If that looks okay, I'd hire a civil engineer to take a look and decide whether a regrade is feasible, then get an HVAC person to see if the furnace actually works or is repairable, and if either looks good, it's probably viable, but if they're both bad, I dunno. That's a fair amount of issues.

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You can control wind through the windows by filling in the cracks with felt or foam rubber or what have you (newspaper is traditional). And the upside is that that's ventilation: people in airtight new houses are the ones poisoned by carbon monoxide or radon.

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What outbuildings?

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True, but that's just something else to mess with before I can *use* the thing. Although it is possible to get stickyback foam tape, and that might work pretty well. I use that on the doors.

Also, wrt efficiency/energy savings -- I've never seen double-pane wooden windows that are actually sealed. Do they exist? In Colorado, we have *horrible* problems with condensation on single-pane windows. My mom had single-panes on the south side of her house and she'd pick up a quarter inch of frost on the insides, that would run down and sit on the sills, and that was a once-a-week occurrence from November to April. That really beats up the wood, which is why so many windows in Colorado are painted shut: because of repeated repaintings in efforts to preserve the repeatedly water-soaked wood. The problem's worse with unsealed double-pane because then the water's trapped inside where you can't get to it to remove it or treat the wood when the paint goes. And single-pane windows are *awfully* heat-lossy so I never think that's a good option around here.

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We don't get termites around here. The combination of dry summers and frozen winters, I'm told.

I will definitely put the electricity and the furnace on my request to fix.

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maribou

My neighbor had negative grade and had termites... in Co. Springs, but we live right down the street to a park with a creek in it.

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"I've never seen double-pane wooden windows that are actually sealed. Do they exist?"

I have no idea. I'm in New England; my wooden windows were old, single-paned, and used with storm windows. Yes, somewhat less insulative than double-paned, but I'd rather have insulated walls and uninsulated windows--with ventilation-- than concentrate my insulative efforts on things that block the air.

The storm windows catch the frost and I seem to remember it only being on the outside. And they're metal-framed. And the sills are all outward-tilted so when frost melts it would run out anyway.

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The lot is fairly level even though those crucial three feet next to the house slope the wrong way, so that is fixable. If I understand it, it might be laughably easy to fix. See, the sills of the house are knee-high. If I backfill those three feet, raising the soil level at the house no more than six inches, it'll slope the right way and still be much lower than the top of the foundation. Am I overlooking something?

It had a new roof in 2004, so the signs of water damage are probably old, but yes I will get the inspector up there to check. Fortunately this year has been rainy enough that fresh leaks will show!

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There's a garden shed and a detached garage, both padlocked.

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I hope so!

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And 101-year old clay pipes! Made of clay!

I think they are all fixable. Only question is how much money.

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amaebi.livejournal.com

Wow. I don;t know what to say.

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Oh. That doesn't sound too worrisome. I thought for a moment the outbuildings might have plumbing or other things that can go wrong in a big way. Worst that comes to mind for shed and garage is that you'd have to make some trips to the dump.

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Interesting.
Here it's always on the inside.
I suspect it's because of the humidity difference -- maybe 15% humidity outside, probably closer to 30% inside because of human behavior: breathing, washing dishes, stuff. I'm guessing in your environment there is much less difference.
But I'm still surprised, since inside is warmer than outside and that's where the condensation shows up. Hm.

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And if worse comes to worse you can trench a meter out from the house and put in drains, and taper the dirt up from that to the side of the house to do a DIY regrade. So yeah, not a huge problem, it sounds like.

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