All Forum Posts by: Matt R.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional electrician.

1950s sounds kind of late for knob and tube wiring; I associate that more with the 1930s and before.  By the 1950s, it was probably most common to use conduit, flexible armored cable (BX), or maybe the early versions of nonmetallic cable (Romex).  Are you sure you don't have conduit instead?  Knob and tube looks like this, flexible armored cable looks like this, and conduit looks like this.

If it's BX, and it needs to come out for some reason, about the only thing you can do is pull the whole wire and replace it with modern armored cable; you can't easily put new wires in the old metal armor.  You may be able to use the old cable to pull in the new, so don't just wildly rip out all the old cable first.  When you do get the old cable out, the whole pile may be worth a few bucks at your local scrapyard.

If it's really conduit wiring, the things I would look for would be rubber-covered wiring, and maybe rusty conduit.  For a while, the insulation on individual wires was rubber, which tends to dry out and come off over the decades.  Modern wire has plastic insulation, which doesn't go bad.  The nice thing about conduit is that it's relatively easy to pull the old wires out and pull in some new ones.  One thing to watch for - under older electrical codes, the conduit itself was allowed to serve as the ground wire, but now you're usually required to run a ground wire inside the conduit.  If you have to do this, some of the conduit might be too small to handle the extra wire.  Your local building inspector (city/county) will be able to advise.

A little surface rust isn't bad, but if the conduit has rusted through, you'll need to replace it.  If the rusty spot is relatively close to a box, this isn't too bad, but if there's one rusty spot in the middle of a run, it can be a pain in the butt.

For the Cat6 outlets, you'll probably have to use electrical boxes that mount on the surface of the walls.  You can get plastic or metal ones, and both kinds can be painted to match.

You *might* be able to drill a hole into the cinder block where you want the outlet, and another hole above that one at the top of the wall, and fish the cable through the holes in the blocks inside the wall.  If that doesn't work, you can use conduit mounted on the surface of the wall.  Regular conduit (the same stuff you'd use for 120 V) works fine, but for Cat6, you can also use flat plastic "conduit" - Wiremold, among other people, makes this.  If you can run the flat plastic stuff in the corner, along the baseboard, etc, and paint it to match the walls, it doesn't look too bad.

Sometimes holes for pipes are a good place to sneak an Ethernet wire through.  You want to stay away from things like the flue pipe for a furnace or dryer, but holes for the water or sewer pipes work fine.  Then you just have to explain to the tenants why the Ethernet jack is under the kitchen sink or in the bathroom.  :)

I saw a kiln installed in the garage of an (owner occupied) house.  They put it in the corner, and put firebricks over the existing wall, a little taller than the kiln, and a little further along each wall than the kiln.  Depending on your local building code, you might be able to do something like sheet metal panels on the wall behind the kiln, instead of brick.  Either way, if the kiln is removed in the future, then you aren't out much space in the garage.

The kiln probably needs 240 V at 20 A or 30 A (same as an electric dryer).  A quick Google for some home chargers for electric cars seems to show that many of them want 50 A (same as an electric stove).  You might ask the electrician to either 1) install wires to support a 50 A outlet; it's then OK to install a smaller (fewer amps) breaker and outlet if needed, or 2) install conduit large enough to support wires for a 50 A outlet, then run just the size of wires needed today.  Then, somebody that wants to upgrade in the future can easily pull the existing wires out of the conduit, pull thicker wires into the conduit, and install a larger breaker and outlet.

The 240 V circuit in the garage may also be interesting for a future tenant that wants to run a welder or a big air compressor in the garage - somebody that likes to work on cars or build things at home.

From what I remember in art class, sometimes the kiln runs for several hours.  You might clarify with your tenant (lease addendum?) that you expect them to be home when the kiln is running, and check on it reasonably often.

You and the home inspector can check it for obvious silly things, like not having two ways out of the bedroom, or a light switch that is on the far side of the bedroom (instead of by the door), or only one outlet for a 12' x 12' bedroom, or no central heating in the bedroom, or whatever.  Some of these things are not hard to fix, but if you don't fix them before you get the city guy in there, the city guy may be inclined to take a much harder look at *everything*.

As you said, some things will be harder to tell.  The thing that sticks out to me is the bathroom conversion in the garage - basically, it can be non-trivial to tie in the plumbing for a new toilet to an existing house.  For instance, if the garage has a slab floor, somebody would have had to jackhammer through it to install the waste line to the toilet.  If they really did do that, then OK, but the incentive is high to do something sloppy, like plumb the toilet into an existing floor drain.  (Sometimes the toilet plumbing is offered as an extra-cost option by the original builder; they put it in correctly before they pour the slab and just cap off the waste pipe; later on, the homeowner can install a toilet there and it will work just fine.)

Some of the risk depends a little on how picky the city building inspector is, and that information is probably only available from other local investors or contractors.  If you haven't asked anyone local about their experience with building permits and code enforcement, do so.

If you don't have the addresses now, write them down as you go on the tour and research the neighborhoods on your own later.  Also, having the address usually means you can look up the property taxes on the county website, to verify what the seller is telling you.

If you can possibly do it while you're still in the target city, drive back to the properties on your own.  Drive a few blocks in all directions from the property and scope out the neighborhood.  (Sellers are good at driving down the street past the renovated homes to get to their property, and not showing you the local crack house and burnt-out shells that are on the next block over.)  If you can, visit the property both in the daytime and at night.

I haven't dealt with it in a landlord/tenant situation, but from a couple of people I have known who accepted credit cards for their retail businesses, the credit card associations (Visa/Mastercard/Amex) "don't like it" if the business tries to charge the credit card fee to the customer, and can potentially stop accepting charges from that business if they do it.

But, the card associations seem to be perfectly OK with the idea of a business advertising or giving a "cash discount".  In other words, if you want to end up with about $600 in your pocket, you can say the rent is "$620/month, $20 discount for cash".  If the tenant pays you $620 on their credit card, MC/Visa keeps $18 (3%), and you end up with $602.  If they pay you $600 cash, you end up with $600.  Adjust the numbers as needed for whatever rates you can get from the credit card companies.

Disclaimer: I've never tried to buy or sell investment property in Texas.

I lived in Dallas in the late 1990s and the company I worked for (doing software) gave us a document that explained how some things in Texas are done differently than other states.  One thing I remember from that document was that often times, mineral rights are not sold along with the lot.  It wasn't presented as "watch out for this problem" - more like "the contract might say this, so don't freak out about it, it's normal for Texas".

Most of the people getting this document would have been buying suburban-type houses, new or existing, for maybe $130K on up (1997 price).

If you work at the coal mine, I bet they don't mind if you take some home to put in the furnace...  :D

I've never used Rosetta Stone.  I learned Spanish in high school and have taught myself a little German.  Some suggestions...

Look up the web site of the national radio broadcaster for the "home country" of the target language.  Usually there will be a "learn the language" link, with podcasts to download (back in the day these were broadcast on shortwave radio).

Look up news sites / newspapers for the target language.  The news is usually written to be easier to read, and a lot of times there's a photo that clues you in to what the story is about.  For stories that are covered worldwide (US presidential elections, the Olympics, etc), you will already sort of know what the story is, which can help you fill in the gaps.

If you get any TV channels (satellite or cable) in your target language, watch them with the closed captions turned on.

If you are very familiar with any religious writings (like the Bible, Torah, Koran, Bhagavad Gita, or anything else), look up a version of that in the target language.  Compare the verses you know to what they are in the target language.

This post http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2010/01/koreans-eng... is by a Korean guy who moved to California when he was in 10th grade (about 15 years old), and wanted to improve his English skills beyond what he had learned in public school in Korea.  He describes in detail what he did to learn English.

I had another brilliant idea, which unfortunately doesn't seem to match reality.  Are any of your tenants letting the water drip/trickle when they think it might freeze at night?  The spikes don't match the cold days in KC from Weather Underground, though.  People who have previously lived in mobile homes (with pipes underneath) or apartments with pipes in the exterior walls and not much insulation may have dealt with burst pipes before; they would be happy to "waste" a little water to prevent that, especially if somebody else is paying the water bill.

Leaky toilet flappers can waste water when the toilet runs by itself.  You can put a little food coloring in the tank water, and wait 10-15 minutes to see if the color shows up in the bowl water.  Sometimes the water department passes out dye tablets for doing this test.

If it were me, I'd buy a new kitchen faucet, a new bathroom faucet, a couple of toilet flappers, a couple of complete toilet valve kits (Fluidmaster 400 has always worked well for me), and figure out where to get parts for the shower valves and maybe the existing faucets.  Then, give the tenants proper advance notice of maintenance, and then start looking.  In 12 units you'll probably end up using both faucets and all the toilet parts.

Have you been in the mechanical room of the buildings?  Does each separate unit have its own, marked, water line?  If it does, you might consider buying your own water meters ($80-$100ish) and installing them, just to see what happens.

I am not a lawyer and the following is not legal advice: Even if you can't legally submeter and charge the tenants for actual usage, I'm pretty sure you can install the meters for your own personal entertainment and education, and see how much each unit is using.  I am not a lawyer and the preceding was not legal advice.

I know you can also buy your own electric meters and wire them up.  I *think* you can buy your own gas meter, but I've never looked.

Are you sure the meter reading happens at the same *time* each day?  If not, that could throw things off.  In other words: imagine the world begins at 12:01 AM Monday, and the building is using a steady 10 gallons an hour.  If the next two meter readings are at 12:01 AM Tuesday and 12:01 AM Wednesday, you'd see 240 gallons for Monday and 240 gallons for Tuesday, which is what you expect.  BUT, if the next two meter readings are at *noon* Tuesday, and 12:01 AM Wednesday, you'd see 360 gallons for "Monday", and 120 gallons for "Tuesday".  The numbers would look lopsided, even with a steady usage of water.

Part of the reason I'm asking is that both buildings have a few days that only show 75 gallons of water being used.  That's only 12.5 gallons per unit, for one day.  Even if only one of your tenants takes a shower that day, the average should be more than that.

Do you know if all the toilets have been replaced with relatively modern ones?  Recent toilets (the past 10-15 years) use about 1.6 gallons per flush.  Old ones (like the mid-60's original in my parents' house) uses about 3.5 or 4 gallons per flush.  If you have some apartments with old toilets, and those tenants happen to use their toilets a lot on a particular day (off work?  kids/friends are over?), you might see spikes like that.

Don't forget that 11/26-11/29 was Thanksgiving, and may have involved 1) more cooking/guests, or 2) people leaving the apartments to visit family elsewhere.

For Building 1, I agree that the occasional >1000 gal spikes could be laundry.  It could also be car-washing.  (Yes, even if there isn't an outside hydrant, people will run a garden hose out the window... maybe to the hookup for the coin-op washer.)  It even could be the nights that one of your tenants has a few friends over to watch Netflix and drink beer, which involves more flushing of toilets.

For Building 2, the spikes are not as defined, but they are still there... maybe the same causes.  Interestingly, it seems to have dropped off around the end of November, at about the same time the other building picked up.

For what it's worth, I live with one other person in a SFR in an east suburb of Kansas City, MO. If I am reading my water bill correctly, then in the 88 days from 27 July 2015 to 23 October 2015, the average daily use was about 91 gallons. I don't get daily readings, so I can't speak to how "spiky" or "lumpy" the usage is.