All Forum Posts by: Matt R.

On the sliding door... if you can figure out why it won't lock, and something simple is busted, maybe spending $5 on parts now lets you kick that decision down the road a little bit.  :)  If you have some other way to get into the house, the classic solution is to cut yourself a piece of 2x4 that you can wedge in between the jamb and the sliding part to "lock" it from the inside.

My residence probably originally had a sliding door on the back, but it had a French door installed later.  One nice thing about the French door is that it makes moving big stuff (appliances, sofas) in and out of the house a *lot* easier.  Appliances are designed to fit through a regular door, but sometimes you have to take off the handles.  Sofas usually fit through a regular door, but you have to turn them, or maybe stand them up and do other gyrations.  Opening the other half of the French door gives you a 5'+ wide doorway to get things through.

My residence and my rental house both have steel-skin front doors (not sure which brand) which seem to work well.  If you get a steel door, try to get a pre-hung one, already cut for a handle *and* a deadbolt.  The steel isn't *that* thick, but you need a high-test hole saw to install a lock in one if there isn't a hole already; a previous owner at my rental didn't understand this.

On my rental, I used the interchangeable cylinder locks from Landlord Locks.  With these, when I have a tenant turnover, I use a special key to remove the lock cylinder and install a new one... takes 15 or 20 minutes to do the whole house.  They can also set up a master key system for you if you want... you have a key that lets you into all your properties, while your tenants can only get into their own property.

The lever handles they sell come with optional through bolts that the handle manufacturer recommends for frequently used doors, and I found it somewhat "entertaining" to install those bolts... the holes have to be aligned *very* well.  I practiced on the garage-house door before I went to work on the front door, and I'm glad I did.

In a past life, I wrote software.  I've also had to clean up a Web server that somebody broke into.  As a result of those experiences, I don't want any door lock that has software in it that I didn't write.  I also don't want any door lock that has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, or any other wireless anything in it.  :)

I am not affiliated with any companies mentioned.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional electrician.

You can run (or have an electrician run) your own co-ax (RG6 quad shield) to each room.  Cut a hole in the drywall, use a long drill bit to drill through the floor, install a wall plate in the hole.  Run the cables from each wall plate through the crawl space to somewhere on the outside of the house.  Use those "nail with a U-shaped plastic clip on it" things to keep the cable off the ground.  In the crawl space, maybe right before the cables go through the outside wall, coil up a couple of feet of extra cable - this lets you do tricks later like cutting off the last inch of cable and installing a new connector.

Hopefully you can put all the cables through the outside wall near where the cable TV comes from the street and/or near where the satellite companies like to install their dishes.  (If those aren't the same place, put it closer to whatever seems to be more popular with your tenants.  If they want the other service, it'll only be one cable from that point to where the other service comes in.)  Buy your own gray plastic box, hang it on the outside wall, and run all of your cables into that.  Label each cable inside the box, like "master bedroom", "northeast bedroom", whatever.  Get whatever splitter you need to hook up all your cables to the "out" ports on the splitter.  Then, hopefully, the 18-year-old professional installer from Dish/DirecTV/Scumcast/whoever can figure out that all they need to do is hook on to the "in" side of the splitter, rather than use an entire mile of cable on a 900 square foot house.  :D

If the tenants want satellite, you are still leaving it to the professional installer to get the cable from the dish to your gray plastic box.  They may or may not "trust" a cable you install to do that.  You might run a plastic conduit from near your gray plastic box, up to the roof... that way they at least have a defined spot to install the cable to the dish.  Note that any turns in this conduit need sweeping bends, rather than a ell fitting, because co-ax can't bend as sharp as regular wiring.

I hope this helps!

Yeah, I know this post is old.  Disclaimer: I am not a professional repairman.  In a past life, I did sell appliance parts - over the phone!

Check the "obvious" stuff first... dishwasher drain hose not kinked or blocked.  If the dishwasher drains into the kitchen sink drain, make sure that drain is clear.  If it drains into the Disposall, does the tenant know to run the Disposall to clear it out before starting the dishwasher?

Like Colleen said, make sure they've got the "heated dry" switch or cycle selected.

Sometimes you get lucky and the diagnosis is easy, like they've dropped a pot on the heating element and it's bent like a pretzel or broken in two.  In that case, a new heating element will probably fix it.  Sometimes you have to go digging, though.

If you decide it really is busted, it might pay to get a used, working dishwasher, swap it out so the tenant is happy, and then fix the busted one at your leisure.

The way most older and less expensive dishwashers work is...

All the power runs through the door latch, so nothing works unless the door is closed and latched.

The timer turns on the water valve to let water in.

A float switch turns off the water valve once enough water has been let in.

The timer starts the main motor, which pumps water through the sprayer arm(s).  They move around by the force of the water, like a lawn sprinkler - they don't have their own motors.

After a while, the timer stops the main motor, turns on the drain valve, and then turns the main motor on again.

The main motor then pumps water out to the drain.

After a minute or so, the timer stops the main motor, turns off the drain valve, and turns on the water valve again.  Repeat from 1 to 3 times or so.

At some point in all this, the timer also turns on the release for the main detergent cup, to let detergent in.

After the last pump-out cycle, the timer turns on the heating element in the bottom of the dishwasher, and leaves it on for an hour, plus or minus.

There isn't a thermostat that turns the heating element off and on (like an oven).  There will be a thermal fuse or high-limit thermostat that turns the heating element off if something has gone badly wrong and it gets really hot inside there.

When the timer is done, it shuts off the heating element, and hopefully the dishes are clean and dry.

The end.

Some newer dishwashers have separate "main" and "pump out" motors.  Some fancy ones don't have a heating element... they have a blower that attempts to air-dry the dishes.

There is probably a wiring diagram and some service information on a small sheet of paper folded up underneath the dishwasher - maybe in a little envelope.  You'll have to take the kick panel off to find it.

If the problem is electrical, it will help a lot if you know how to drive a multimeter (digital multimeter, volt-ohm-meter).

I hope this helps!

I have hired Norm Clark twice now and been happy with his service.  Once was for my residence and once was for a rental property.  His office is in Kansas but he does inspections in both Kansas and Missouri.

I will mention that he is a little pessimistic on furnaces.  He recommended replacement on both houses, which I did, but I also looked at both old furnaces after they came out.  One of them definitely had a rusted heat exchanger and needed replacing for sure.  The other one may have been OK.  I consoled myself with the knowledge that now I probably won't get a "help, I'm cold" call in the middle of January.  :)

I am not affiliated with Norm Clark in any way, other than as a previous customer.

About the best you can hope for is that the utility might bury the line from the transformer to your house/building.  My parents live in a town with a city-owned utility, and a few years back, the city got a grant from the feds and was offering that service for free to any homeowner who signed up.  (In Austin you probably don't care, but in Missouri, having that line buried might be the difference between having power or not during an ice storm.)

> Additionally, besides being an eye sore, there has to be some type of magnetism,

A little, but not that much.  The power company wants the magnetic field to stay more or less inside the transformer; any that "leaks out" is electricity that they don't get paid for.

> electrical current, etc. coming from that thing.

There are millions of coulombs of current coming from it.. that's kind of its job.  :D  If you really don't like it, get yourself a long fiberglass stick.  Near the top of the pole, there's a vertical white insulator, about 8 to 12 inches long, with a little white stick the same length off to the right.  Stand on the balcony and use your long fiberglass stick to knock the little white stick out of the bracket it's clipped into.  This will eliminate all hazardous electrical current coming from that transformer.  (It might also kill you, so be careful.)

Why do you need new ducts?  Is the current electric heat not central, or is it just one furnace for both sides of the house?

It's probably also worth a call to the gas company to make sure they have a pipe on your street, and to see if they have any incentives/rebates.  Sometimes they have one for switching fuels, and sometimes there is one for installing a more-efficient furnace.

I don't have any experience doing college rentals as a landlord.  My other half has experience being a tenant in a college town in Iowa.  The thing I noticed was that the city regulations on rental property / landlords seemed to be more in tune with a big metropolis than a town in the middle of corn fields - in other words, more extensive than you would expect.  Nothing particularly onerous, but it was more involved than just putting up a "for rent" sign in the yard and cashing the checks.  :)

My *guess* is that at one time, there were people trying to make a fast buck by putting 10 college students in a 1,000 square foot house, so the city cranked up the regulations in an attempt to prevent that.  Probably a good idea to check into what the city requires before buying.

Matt R.

I live in the KC area and I own one SFR in Independence.  I haven't dealt with any of the turnkey companies in town, other than looking through their listings and sometimes driving by some of their houses.

My standard advise is to *come to KC yourself* and check out the neighborhoods and properties before you invest.  Spending a few hundred bucks on a flight and a hotel for a weekend is cheap eduction, in my opinion.

I live in the KC area and I own one SFR in Independence. I've looked at their listings and driven by a couple of USREEB properties - in fact, there's one for rent now that's just down the street from my rental, and it looks pretty OK to me. But I've never done business with them.

I think some of their properties are probably a reasonable deal, and some of them (mostly in the not-so-good neighborhoods) might be priced a little high for the neighborhood.

I would echo the advice of the others to *come to KC yourself* and check out the neighborhoods and properties before you invest.  A quick Google shows round-trips flight from San Diego over a weekend(ish) in mid-April around $300.  Spending 0.3%-0.5% of your investing budget on a trip is money well spent, in my opinion.

Matt R.

Like the others have said, the shutoff valve has worn out.  I've had that happen before on a toilet; I needed to swap out the fill valve inside the toilet, so I tried to use the shutoff valve at the wall, but it would still let a little trickle of water through even when it was turned as far as I could get it.  I ended up turning off the water to the whole house and replacing the shutoff valve, and *then* replacing the toilet fill valve.

One thing I have also done is to not rely on a shutoff valve alone when doing rehab, if it's going to sit for more than an hour or two.  I close the shutoff valve, take out the toilet or sink or whatever, and then put a pipe cap on the outlet of the shutoff valve.  Every hardware store has the caps, they're cheap, and nearly infinitely reusable... just toss them back in your "plumbing" toolbox when you're done.

A couple of tips on replacing shutoff valves: if the existing valve inlet has a compression fitting on copper pipe, 95% of the time you can re-use the old hex nut and compression ring/ferrule/"olive".  This saves you from having to cut the copper pipe to get the old ring off- in many cases, if you cut the pipe, it won't be long enough to get the new valve on, and you'll have to open the wall and/or solder on an extension.

Also, if you have a compression fitting, put a small dab of pipe joint compound / pipe dope on the male threads before screwing the nut down.  (Use the paste-type compound, not Teflon tape.)  This isn't needed for sealing, but it helps you get the nut down tighter, and also helps you get it apart again later if that is ever needed.

Shutoff valves are available in various combinations of straight, right-angle, and even double outlets.  Sometimes you replace a valve with the same style that is already there, but sometimes changing from a straight to a right-angle (or vice versa) makes things easier to work with.  (The double-outlet kind is handy for putting under the sink, on the hot side to feed a dishwasher, or on the cold side to feed an icemaker.)

Matt R.