/dev/zero

This house has been nickel and dimeing my parents since I got here. Or as Dad put it, not nickels and dimes, more like quarters.

They got the AC that services my apartment upstairs serviced before I got here.
They had to have it serviced again about a month later because the AC people forgot to put a filter in, so the heat exchanger coils got dirty.
They had to have the AC people pay the cost of fixing the ceiling in my office when the condensation off the heat exchanger coils started dripping through, because they knocked the condensation collector drain pipe loose.
The swimming pool filter blew it’s guts apart and let all the DE (diamataceous earth) into the pool water. It was cloudy for a week after our pool guy came. The pool guy also managed to break the hose coupling for the Polaris (the little robot thing that runs around on vacuuming the bottom of the pool). It was like that for a week before the pool guy came back to do the weekly service and noticed the DE. I asked him about why the water was so cloudy and he showed me the DE sitting on the bottom of the pool. He said it so matter of fact, that I’d be willing to bet if I hadn’t mentioned it to him, he wouldn’t have done anything about it. It was almost another week before his technician came out to look at the filter system to figure out why there was DE all over the pool and found the problem. It took another two weeks for him to get the parts and fix it, then the pool guy had to come out and clean the pool. It took two more vacuumings, a week apart, before he got it all cleaned up. A month and a half that the pool was out of service.
We ordered cable internet service. The installer came out and we spent 4 hours trying to figure out why the existing cable into the house was not getting a signal to my office. Finally he ran a new drop to just go around all the bad cable. We smelled gas coming out of the cable box in the back alley.
When another cable crew came out to bury the new cable line in the ground for us, they smelled it to. Dad called the gas company to report it.
The gas company came out an hour later and determined there’s a broken pipe under the alley somewhere and ordered a construction crew to dig it up and fix it. While he was at it, he inspected OUR gas line, found 3 leaks on the service side of the meter, which he fixed, then determined our side of the line was leaking as well and turned our gas off. That was Monday.
Tuesday we got a plumber out to fix our gas pipe so we could have the gas turned back on. He inspected it, found one leak RIGHT by the meter, then told us we’d have to wait for the city inspector to come out and inspect our system, before the gas company would turn our gas back on. The inspector couldn’t get here until Thurs.
When the inspector got here Thurs. morning, he failed our system, as it wasn’t holding pressure. We got the plumbing company back out here pronto to fix it. The guy came out, declared the problem was the wrong kind of pressure gauge, left, came back and put a different kind on and left. We got the inspector out again, and again he failed our system as it was still not holding pressure.
Dad called the plumbers to scream at them because we’d now been without hot water for 4 days. Today the plumbing company sent a different plumber out (the 3rd) and THIS guy actually seems to know what he’s doing. unfortunately he’s found leaks in just about every valve in the house. The first guy didn’t even turn the valves at each appliance off before pressurizing the system to test it. The estimate is $1,600+ to replace all the leaky valves and a few lines that are not up to code. Luckily MOST of that will be covered by the home insurance.
We still don’t have cable TV service.
The foundation needs to be jacked up.
The AC people still need to have the ceiling in my office repainted, to cover the spot where it was repaired.
Our refrigerator motor is dieing. It smells like burned plastic inside the fridge, and it’s not getting very cold.
Both the washer and the dryer need to be replaced. The dryer sometimes doesn’t turn off when it’s done, and the washer sometimes overflows. It’s already done that once and flooded our front hall.
The wood floor in the front hall needs to be replaced, because of the washer flood. The carpet in the lower family had to be replaced because of the washer flood.

Every time we turn around, something in this house is costing my parents more money. For as nice a house as this is, you’d think it wouldn’t be trying to fall apart so quickly.