It's not weird for some water to flow when turning on a winterized house, but 30 gallons is probably too much. If everything was done correctly, you would expect to see around 3 to 5 gallons per toilet flowing into the house, plus a few more gallons as the water compresses the air that is in the pipes inside the house. The water should stop flowing within a few minutes, though.
It could be as simple as whoever winterized the house left a faucet open somewhere, or one of the toilet valves is stuck and not shutting off even when the toilet tank is full. I also agree with @Jon Holdman that you could have a leak; sometimes the person that winterizes the plumbing does not do a thorough job, some water is left in a pipe, and the water freezes and splits the pipe. (This happened at my residence when I was buying it; I had to pay a plumber to fix it before I could proceed with the inspection.) The water company will not go inside the house to check these things - all they do is watch the reading on the water meter.
If I could get access to the house, I would go around the house and make sure all the faucets are turned off - kitchen sink, bathroom sink, tub/shower, laundry sink (if it has one), refrigerator icemaker connection, outdoor garden hose connections, drain valve on water heater, etc. If any of those were open when you found it, that might explain the 30 gallons the water company saw. The toilets are harder to check, but you might lift up the tank lid and operate the valve by hand yourself a couple of times, by lifting the float up and down.
If I didn't have an agent watching everything I was doing, I would then find the main water valve (usually either in the front yard, or next to the water meter in the basement), and see if I needed a tool to turn it. Some of them you can turn by hand; some you need a regular adjustable wrench (Crescent wrench) or pair of pliers; some you need a T-handle wrench or "water key" that the hardware store sells. I would then go get the tool if I didn't have it already.
Then, I would slowly turn the water on to see what happens. It can help to have one person at the main water valve, and another person walking around the house to make sure that the toilets are shutting off when full, none of the faucets are running, they don't see water dripping out under sinks, or from the ceiling in the basement, etc. If there is a problem, and the house is small enough, the second person can yell at the first person to turn the water off. If it's a big house, maybe start a phone call between the two people before the water is turned on, so the second person can ask the first person to turn the water off over the phone.
If turning off all the faucets fixed it, then you can probably go ahead with your inspection. If you have something like a kitchen sink faucet or bathroom sink faucet that drips water, you might be able to close the shutoff valve under the sink to stop the drip, and plan on repairing or replacing that faucet later.
If you find a real leak - a pipe split or broken - then you probably need a real plumber to fix it. If the leak is in an exposed pipe, you can tell the plumber where to start looking. If it's in a pipe that's hidden in the wall, the plumber may need to ask the seller for permission to cut a hole in the wall to make the repair. Expect to overpay for this plumber - they know their job is holding up the sale of a $50,000-$100,000+ house, so a job that would normally cost $150 will end up costing you $250. It sucks but you can't do much about it.
When you're done looking, turn off the main water valve again. Since some of the house pipes will now be full of water, you need to have the furnace on at some low setting (say, 50 F), if you think it might freeze again in your area.
I'm not sure why they are asking for a gate valve. There should already be a shutoff valve either next to the meter, on in a box in the yard, but maybe that valve is rusted or stuck or otherwise not working. If the pipe coming from the street is copper, the water company will have a clamp they can use on the pipe to shut off the water, but for "regular" use, the shutoff valve should be working.
It's an interesting idea for sure.
I have worked with people that had manufacturing (electronic and mechanical) done in China before. More than one of them said something like, "If you want to be really sure what you're getting, you have to fly to China and sleep at the factory." Apparently it's kind of common for the first few units you get to be made in the nice factory they showed you when you visited, and then the production is outhoused to a cheaper factory and the quality declines. Or, the nice factory keeps making the stuff, but they start substituting cheaper materials. (Find a nearby home inspector or general contractor and say "Chinese drywall" to them and see what they do.)
If I understand it correctly, you want to put two 40 foot containers right next to each other, with their long sides touching, and then cut out all or nearly all of the long side of both containers, creating a total interior space about 20 feet by 40 feet. Have you talked to an engineer or architect about removing those "interior" walls? It may turn out that you need to put a beam of some kind above the place you cut out, maybe with some support columns too. I don't think it's a big deal, structurally, to cut a few windows or a door into the long side of a container, but I'm not sure about removing big chunks of the wall.
How is the plumbing going to work? I can picture the supply lines better - those can be mostly preinstalled in the containers, with the main cold water connection left hanging. On site, you would bring the water line up through the slab (or maybe through the side wall if it doesn't freeze there), and then install a few feet of pipe to tie it all together.
For the sewer lines, some can be preinstalled in the container, and some could be run in the slab. I picture that you'd need stubs sticking up out of the slab for at least the toilet, tub drain, bathroom sink drain, and kitchen sink drain. You would then need corresponding holes in the bottom of the container for those stubs to go into as the container is lowered into place. This is certainly possible, but requires the crane (or big fork truck) operator to be very good at his or her job when placing the container. (You *can* run all the sewer lines inside the container, to a single drain connection, but then you have to step up when you walk into the bathroom.)
For the plumbing vent(s), I don't think you could fully install those in China, unless you want to pay extra for "top of stack" shipping on the boat (and risk damage). You could run them almost all the way to the roof, but not through it, and then cut the roof and install the last foot or two of pipe on site.
The electric can be almost all preinstalled in the container... you might leave out the conduit from the main breaker panel through the outside wall. On site, you'd drill a hole in the side wall, put that conduit in, hang the meter enclosure, wire from the meter to the breaker panel, and then from the meter to the transformer.
I wonder about making the house survive the trip. I could see hanging the drywall in China, but not taping or mudding it - I think you'd tend to get cracks in the joints if you tried to ship it fully finished.
Would you install the windows and exterior doors in China as well? The labor is lower, but that may also make it harder to treat your container as a "normal" shipping container on a boat - the window frames, door knobs, etc may stick out further than the regular wall of the container, which means they'd have to leave an empty slot on at least one side of your container. "Top of stack" placement on the boat fixes some of this, but costs more.
This is harder to know without trying it, but I wonder about phone and TV reception inside a grounded metal box. For many people, their entire connection to the outside world comes through their mobile phone, so they need it to work when they're at home. For TV, maybe you provide a coaxial cable from each unit to some central location at the development... if the tenant wants cable TV, that cable gets plugged into the cable TV company's plant; if they don't, maybe that cable gets plugged into a plain old TV antenna on the roof of the office.
I agree with @Colleen F. about the veneer. It comes in thin sheets, sometimes rolled up, at the big-box store. The ten-second version is that you unroll it, cut it to size (utility knife or really good scissors), put contact cement on both the cabinets and the veneer, and then carefully stick the veneer down. You have to start at one end and slowly work towards the other - sort of like putting self-adhesive shelf paper (Contact paper) down, if you have ever done that.
The veneers I have seen are just plain wood, so you have to paint or stain them to match what you have. You can get them in different types of wood, so you can probably get something close to the grain of the cabinet fronts.
As a curveball idea... if one of the ends is in a good spot for it, maybe buy some whiteboard material, or a whole whiteboard, and cut it down to size. Glue it to the end of the cabinet, and maybe put a board sticking out horizontally at the bottom for a marker and eraser shelf. (On the other hand, you may not want the dried marker dust against the wall or the rest of the white cabinets...)
I've never had to install toe kicks brand new myself, but from fooling around with things like dishwasher openings and kitchen flooring, I've seen a couple of possibilities. 1) For "real wood" cabinets, they are made out of the same wood that the rest of the cabinets are. They are nailed to the front edge of the cabinet with finish nails. 2) For particleboard cabinets, a piece of relatively thick particleboard (1/2"+) goes on first, and then a veneer of real wood (1/8" or less) gets glued on top of that, for a better appearance.
With either kind of cabinet, depending on what the flooring is, there is sometimes a quarter-round molding in the corner between the toe kick and the floor, installed with finish nails.
If you have time to stop by a Habitat ReStore, they sometimes have complete sets of older cabinets that were pulled out of remodels. The cabinets won't fit your kitchen, but usually they're just sitting loose on the floor, so you can look at the details a little and see how a real official cabinetmaker or finish carpenter did it 40 years ago. :)
My rent house came from the previous owner with 1" vinyl mini blinds in it on every window. It also had a "big" curtain rod (decorative steel tube type) and curtains for the big window in the living room. I left all of that in there when I rented it.
There were also enough basic white steel telescoping curtain rods to do most of the windows stashed in a closet. Some of the hooks for hanging them on the wall were missing, though. I didn't install the curtain rods before I showed it. When I got tenants, I asked them if they wanted the curtain rods installed, and they said yes, so I put them up. (They didn't move in immediately, so I had a little time to do it.) I bought a few more complete rods to do all the windows, more hooks for to replace the missing ones, and hung the curtain rods with screws. The tenants got to buy (or bring) their own curtains and put them on the rods.
One thing I heard of (I think here on BP), and considered but didn't end up doing, is this: Get some 1x3 or 1x4 lumber, and cut it a few inches longer on both ends than the window trim on the top of the windows. Cut to length, maybe chamfer the corners, maybe run a router along the edges if you're feeling really fine. Paint or stain - match the window trim, match the walls, or contrast. Put the lumber flat on the wall, centered above the window, and screw it into each stud that you find. Then, tell the tenants that any blinds or curtain rods they want to hang up should be screwed into that piece of lumber, rather than the wall. That way, they just have to use short wood screws to hang stuff up, which reduces the chance that they don't use the right fasteners (like a drywall anchor), which leads to the wall getting beat up less and fewer things falling down.
@Andrew Postell, @Dave Skow - thanks for the replies! I have a bit of an update.
I went to the local regular bank where I have my real estate accounts and asked about a loan. They turned me down, on account of not enough income.
I went to a different local bank (kind of a community bank, with 4 branches in the area) and asked about a loan. The loan officer there was more willing to listen to what I proposed than the one at the first bank, but they turned me down, on account of not enough income. That officer did mention that "if we had an asset-based loan program, you would qualify, but we don't offer that".
The only income on my tax returns for 2017 was the rental income, which started in summer 2017. A couple of years back I have some income from "daytime" jobs (both W-2 and 1099), but nothing recently. I have rental income in 2018, too, but that's obviously not on a tax return yet.
I don't think either bank was interested in a HELOC against either my existing rental property, or my residence... they were trying to send me through the conventional mortgage route.
So... what is my next step? Darken the doors of more local banks until I find one that's willing to lend? Talk to a local/regional/national mortgage company? Talk to a hard money lender? Go get a "real job" for long enough to qualify for a loan? Drink heavily? :D
Thanks!
Thanks!
This is based on experience in the Midwest, but I think California should be similar.
Once you've found a house, one place you can look is your county land records. For heavily populated counties (which Orange County, CA definitely qualifies as), these are usually on the Web and free to look at. Sometimes they are on the Web and cost money, but if you go down to the county courthouse, there is a PC you can use to look at them for free. For rural counties, sometimes you have to go to the county courthouse and look at the paper records.
Google for "Orange County land records" and see what you find. These days there will often be a map, where you can either click on the property of interest, or enter the address, and get a basic report - whose name is on the property tax records, how much the property tax is, the square footage, year built, etc. Often you can get a history of the past few years of what the property tax was and when it was paid. You can usually get a name and address from this, but you may not be able to get a phone number. You can always Google the name to see what you get.
Sometimes you can also get stuff like the subdivision plat or land survey from the same place you got the tax information. Other times, this stuff is on another site at the county (like the county recorder of deeds), so you have to take the parcel number, or the subdivision and lot number, from the tax records, and do another search on that second site to find more information. The maps and things are possibly not as critical at first, but they will tell you if there are things like utility easements or (maybe) flood zones that you need to think about. The other records for that property will sometimes show how often the property has changed hands, or if it was foreclosed to a lender, etc, in the past.
Tips: If you live in Orange County now, or you know someone who does, try to look up your/their house in the county land records for practice. The stuff you find should match the things you/they already know about the house - who owns it, which bank holds the note (if any), the name of the people they bought it from (if not bought brand new), etc.
Sometimes it takes a little digging through the county website to find the right property, and depending on the software the web site uses, it's not always easy to bookmark the page in your Web browser when you find the information you're looking for. You might print the Web page to a PDF, and either keep those PDFs in folders on your computer/phone for each property, with folders named like "101 S Main Long Beach", or "1217 W Oak Huntington" or similar, OR name the PDFs like "101-s-main-county-taxes.pdf", "1217-w-oak-old-mortgages.pdf", so you can find them again later.
I hope this helps!
This depends a little bit on whether the trash is handled by the city or private contractors, and also whether the custom in that city is to keep the trash cans "hidden" when not in use (like, in the backyard, or in the garage), but: if you can't see any trash cans around the side of the house or at the corner of the garage, or in the driveway on trash day, whereas the neighbors' houses do have trash cans in those locations, maybe nobody is living there. It could also mean that somebody is just on vacation or has a seasonal home, though.
Also, occupied houses sometimes will have signs like kids' toys in the yard, or well-kept flowerbeds in front of the house. If there are no toys and the flowers are all dead from last year, that's another sign that it might be unoccupied.
I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. Don't go trespassing just to find out about the trash cans, toys, flowers, etc, but my understanding is that if you are standing on the public street or on the public sidewalk, anything you can see from that location is knowledge you can use. Again, I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.
I hope this helps!
Disclaimer: I am not a professional plumber or electrician.
The thing about running the dishwasher hoses behind the stove is that there's a chance you could melt them. Look up the manual for your stove's model number, and it will probably have a "clearance required to noncombustible surface" section - see what that says about clearance behind the stove. Usually it's a small number, like 1", but not zero. Plaster and drywall count as noncombustible, but a plastic dishwasher drain pipe doesn't.
If there's a basement, or even a crawl space, under this kitchen, you might consider running a new water supply pipe and drain pipe down there. My residence has a kitchen layout similar to this, and the dishwasher was added later, on the far side of the stove from the sink. The dishwasher water supply comes up through the floor from the basement, and the shutoff valve is in the basement. The dishwasher drain goes through the floor into the basement, into a P-trap, and then runs over to the drain coming down from the kitchen sink.
If all you have is a crawl space, you might want to bring the supply line up into the kitchen, then have the shutoff valve, and then the flex pipe to the dishwasher - it's easier to reach under the dishwasher and turn the shutoff valve than it is to go fool around in the crawl space to find the valve. Or, running the dishwasher supply line over from the hot water connection under the sink, through the back of the cabinets, may be OK. You can buy a shutoff valve for under the sink that has two goes-outas for exactly this purpose - one goes-outa to the sink faucet, and one goes-outa to the dishwasher. Having a copper hot water line behind the stove is not as big of a deal, as long as the stove doesn't squish the water line if somebody tries to push the stove all the way back - either run the water line in the bottom corner of the wall and floor behind the stove, or maybe install some small wood or metal blocks against the back wall to prevent the stove from being shoved back that far to squish the pipe - but make sure the anti-tip bracket for the stove still engages. (If your stove is getting hot enough to melt a copper line behind it, you have problems that plumbing alone cannot solve.)
Note that whatever you do with the dishwasher drain, you at least need to take the dishwasher drain hose *up*, all the way to the bottom side of the countertop, before heading back down again to the house drain. This creates an air gap, which helps keep stuff from the rest of the drain system from siphoning into the bottom of the dishwasher. This can be as simple as a bracket or pipe strap to hold the drain hose up against the bottom of the countertop. Your local building code may require an "official" air gap, which is a little widget that sticks through a hole drilled in the countertop and has a couple of connections under the countertop - one for the drain hose from the dishwasher, and one for the drain hose to the house drain system. The big-box store will have them for sale either next to the dishwashers or in the plumbing aisle, labeled "dishwasher air gap".
For the electric for the dishwasher, you may have a couple of options. If that house was built to allow either an electric or a gas range, there will probably be a normal 120 V outlet behind the range, that was designed to run the oven light and timer on a gas range. You can probably put a cord and plug on the dishwasher and plug it into that socket. Use 14 gauge wire in the cord (good for 15 A) to remove all doubt. It may also be helpful to have a right-angle plug on the cord so the stove can be pushed back against the wall.
If all you have is a 240 V outlet for an electric range, you can't tap that outlet for the dishwasher. The usual solution is to come up through the floor with a nonmetallic cable (Romex™or equal) for the dishwasher. I think that modern electrical code wants the dishwasher to be on its own circuit... you're not supposed to tap the circuit that serves the countertop outlet to the left of the stove, because that should be one of the two 20 A kitchen circuits. If you have a basement or crawl space, arranging a new circuit for the dishwasher is not a very big deal. If you have an attic right above this kitchen, it's a little more work, but doable.
I hope this helps!
Disclaimer: I own exactly one rental property and have rented it exactly one time. Here's what I did.
1) I advertised mine on Zillow, Trulia, Hotpads, and Craigslist. I also have my own Web site, where I put a couple of the listing pictures and a link to the Craigslist ad. I also put a sign in the yard that just said "House for Rent", my website, and my phone number. I got hits from all of these methods.
For the online ads, I borrowed a camera and a tripod. I tried using my own point-and-shoot camera, but it wasn't wide-angle enough (the numbers on the lens are "6.7-24 mm") to capture all of the room. The camera I borrowed was wider-angle (smaller number on the lens was "4 mm") and worked better. I also picked a sunny day and shot different rooms at different times of day, depending on what side of the house they were on. If you can, look at the photos on a bigger screen (not the back of the camera) soon after you take them, so you know if you need to re-shoot or not. I also put a copyright notice and the property address in text on each photo before I put them online.
For the sign, I did the artwork myself, uploaded it to Staples, and had them print and ship it - they were the cheapest that I found at the time (mid-2017) for small quantities. If you don't want to do your own artwork, they have some "canned" designs that you can use by filling in your phone number and URL if you want. You can get a double-sided corrugated plastic sign that will come with a cheap H-shaped wire post. I had a slightly sturdier signpost that a roofer had used at my residence, so I ordered two single-sided corrugated plastic signs and attached them to both sides of that post. My rental is a suburban house with a front yard; if yours is in the city and doesn't have a front yard, maybe a sign in the window or on the front of the house would work better.
I got replies via email, phone, and people knocking on the front door. I found it helpful to keep a spreadsheet with the person's name, phone number, email, source (which site they saw it on), and if they wanted to stop by the open house, what time I proposed to them. A couple of the door-knockers were just neighbors who were curious, but I showed them around the house anyway. (Sometimes neighbors have friends and relatives that are looking for a place to stay!)
2) I added a clause for most of the appliances that says, in essence, "if it breaks, I will replace it, but it may not be exactly the same as what is there now". My thinking was that if (say) the 20 cubic foot fridge goes out, and all I can find for purchase today is an 18 cubic footer, then the lease lets me use that slightly smaller fridge. For a couple of things, including the garbage disposal and the storage shed that was in the back yard, that clause also says that I may not replace it at all.
Check with a lawyer on this, because it may not work in all states, but: I put in a clause that says the tenants waive their right to a jury trial. They can still go to court, and have a lawyer if they want, but it would just be them, their lawyer (if they have one), me, my lawyer, and the judge. The reason for this is that trials with just a judge happen quicker; if they ask for a jury trial, it gets scheduled a few weeks from now, which may not be what you want.
I have a clause that says that any vehicles kept at the house have to be licensed and insured, and if one becomes inoperable, it has to either be put in the garage or removed from the premises within a reasonable amount of time. It's in the kind of neighborhood where nobody cares if you do an oil change or brake job in the driveway on Saturday, or if the car has to sit until payday, when you can go to the car parts store, but I wanted to have something to cover me if they have a dead car sitting there for weeks at a time.
3) There were a couple of steps in my screening. I had an application that I asked tenants to fill out. I called and talked to previous landlords myself, and looked at what the tenants provided for employment verification (pay stubs, etc). Once I had a candidate from that screening, I used Cozy.co to get a credit report and background check. The tenant pays Cozy for the reports and the results come to me; I don't have to handle the tenants' Social Security number or bank information. The tenant does need to have some kind of Internet access to do this - they can do it from a computer, phone, or tablet. (I also use Cozy to collect the rent - it comes out of the tenant's bank account and into mine - but you don't have to; you can just use them for the credit and background check if you want.)
I am not affiliated with any companies mentioned.
I hope this helps!
@Dennis S. Some Independence landlords are getting letters from the city telling them that they need to do an inspection on their properties before they renew their landlord business license, and some aren't. When this was first passed, the city hinted that they would go after "out of town" landlords first, but there isn't anything in the law that requires the city to do that- they can go after whoever they want.
I, personally, got my license in May 2017, right before the inspection requirement kicked in. I will have to renew my license in a couple of months. I haven't gotten any letters from the city yet, myself.
The way the paperwork is supposed to go is that after you hire the inspector to do the inspection, he or she files the inspection results online with the city. When the landlord applies for or renews their landlord business license, they are supposed to list all of their rental properties in Independence on the application or renewal. The city is supposed to check that inspection reports have been filed for all of those addresses before they grant the business license.
Also note that not every home inspector can do a Rental Ready inspection. The city picked about 6 or 7 people/firms that are allowed to do them, so you have to hire one of them for the inspection.