All Forum Posts by: Pat L.

We've had a lot of luck with 1/2 price scratch/dent &/or overstocked/discontinued at Lowes/HD. But we always check with our appliance repair guy on which makes to avoid. In fact he will not work on Bosch.

For the high end rentals we (& our kids) will often upgrade our own appliances & move the older good qualify models to the rentals. We are currently avoiding everything Samsung.

I noticed one of the above posted their billing, so here is ours for 2021... but couldn't get the table to format better.

We own a 3 story 7 unit that has a 15yr old boiler servicing a network of poorly designed 3/4 inch hydronic heating runs. The home was an old farm house divided up, at the will of the farmer over 30 years (& 14 permits), into a conglomeration of apartments built as each of their 7 kids became emancipated. 

I have learned a LOT about hydronic boilers, air purging valves, Taco pumps & Honeywell solenoids & replacing a boiler blower motor for the cost of parts ($163) instead of a $975+parts HVAC guy quote. 

I also had fun installing an AO Smith 240NI to replace the old 75 gallon HW tank, so that dropped the gas bill a lot more. Trust me the logistics of installing separate HW & heat is just not viable in this Frankenstein of a building . Thankfully the rents more than cover our avg NG $296/winter month billing, (Oct 1st-May1st). Summer bills avg $114/mo, but several units still have gas stoves/dryers.

During apartment rehabs I replaced the large disgusting 1950's & 60' rads & baseboard heaters with new units as well as hydronic kick-space heaters with blowers. During the summer months I picked up 10 clearance 4 & 6ft hydronic baseboard heaters for $6 each & several kick-space hydronic heaters at Lowes/HD for $75-$125. These blowers have provided the most effective & most tenant appreciated heating so far & they literally run like forced air heat. They have a temperature switch activated blower with Hi/Low speeds, so I installed separate wall switch circuits so the tenants don't need to lay on the floor to fumble for the switching. In fact, one tenant (our maint guy) said his kitchen kick-space blower can heat their 2 bedroom up to 80deg F on high speed. 

I am in the design phase of installing a new on-demand boiler system as the existing boiler could go anytime. Who ever though you would have any use for "Heat Transfer by Thermal Convection" once you graduated.

Good luck...

We always like Behr but we have a friend & a relative who are professional painters both of whom only use Sherwin Williams. We grab anything they has left over & my wife mixes it to produce a pallet of colors. However, she still grabs any Behr $9/gallon Oops paints for mixing. We have had vacating tenants requesting the color swatch for paints she had mixed & used in their apartments, so they could paint their new abode.

Grey shades were in for some time, but now the trend is to pure whites that are tough to keep clean but the young kids like it. But we did have one tenant go a grey purple on us.

I'll double that on Melanie

I feel your pain & in 30 years I have never had a "high demand" HW tank last longer than 5-7 years. They go at the most inconvenient time, flood the area & the removal/install is a painful 2 man job. 

We have a 1960's era 7 unit & when the 5yr old 75 gal HW Tank decided to burst at the seams @ 5am the calls came in. Being Covid Dec 2019, I could NOT get a 75 gal anywhere, so I threw in a spare 30gal we had in the barn & picked up the only AO Smith 240NI Lowes had on the shelf. Trying to service each apartment with its own HW tank was impossible, but our rents more than compensate for all costs. Overall demand above the usual showers & faucets includes 3 dishwashers, 3 washing machines & 2 full sized baths.

With the 30 gal online & with a lot of tenant patience, I spent several days installing the AO Smith 240NI (the 3" PVC runs in an old hand dug basement with whole oak tree trunk rim joists made for a logistical nightmare).It immediately fired it up & NOT a single "no-HW" complaint since. I did install my own recirculation pump setup that has been very effective in cutting down on the proverbial wasted HW water wait & winter cold water sandwich phenomena. Gas bill has dropped about $98/month & the flow rate rarely exceeds 4GPM, with 90% of demand running @ 1.4GPM. 

HVAC guys quoted me $3500 just for the install & my BIL had one installed last month for $7200, to replace two 75 gal HW tanks. So I did it myself (this is my 5th) & with the 240NI ($810), my recirc-system ($100) & ancillary materials, it ran about $1275. The oldest on-demand I installed replaced a 75 gal tank & is going on 8 years. It cost me $350 complete & has definitely paid for itself. Every 2 years I do a 10 min descale/flush of each system.

Now planning the next install in a large high end rental home we have. The current configuration is two (failing) 7yr old 40 gal (connected in-series) tanks that are constantly 'cooking' on HIGH heat. 

I was on my third buy when rates were hovering 18-19% 

Never looked back .... 

I agree with Jay. The build, stay, sell every couple of years strategy would net you the highest return & you're in control. We have several friends who have done exactly that, one retired to Naples Florida in 2000 & is on their 3rd million++ home, all paid for from previous builds/rehabs. 

 Thanks for referring to the IRS Sect. of code in question. Using that I then found this which explains it so well.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cf...

Always enjoy your posts.

I have a quick question, but a true story. 

In 2005 I buy a home for $110,000 & 5 years later (2010) sell it for $121,000 & hold seller financing. 5 years later they refi with me to $135,000 to complete very major renovations. They then divorce & I take it back deed in lieu of, but also offer them $45,000 cash for the renovations completed, plus all remaining building materials. The $135,000 mortgage is summarily discharged. Back when they originally bought the home (2010), the Town states on the property tax records that the Fair Market Value was $210,000.

It immediately becomes a rental, so assuming land is the conventional 10% of the property value, what would you guesstimate the in-service Cost Basis for future depreciation to be, at the time it became a rental.

Thanks for your time