Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Early Morning Reality Check

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Early yesterday morning, I awoke to my wife jumping out of bed.  “Do you smell smoke?” She asked.  Let me tell you, there are few things that will pull you out of that just woke up groggy state than a question like that.  And, sure enough, I did.  A quick check told me that there was no visible fire or smoke in the upstairs portion of our house.  It wasn’t clear what the source of the smell was.  I quickly ran downstairs to check the rest of the house, fully expecting to find a smoldering spot somewhere.  Nothing.  Down to the basement.  Nothing.  Back upstairs.  Still nothing, but the smell is still there.  I went from room to room, floor to floor, sniffing the air trying to pinpoint where the smell was strongest.  The good news was that it wasn’t getting any stronger, but I still didn’t have  source for it. The only thing that I can find is that the furnace doesn’t seem to be working.

By this point, my wife has gotten the kids up, and is working on getting them dressed just in case we have to make a hasty exit from the house.  There isn’t any immediate danger, I don’t think, but you just never know.  It just so happens that a close friend is a member of the rural fire department here.  We’re in the city fire department district, but it doesn’t hurt to ask, so we called him for some quick advice.  I quickly fill him in, and he suggests that I call the city fire department and have them come check the house for carbon monoxide and also do a hotspot check with their thermal imager.  I certainly didn’t have to be told twice, so that’s exactly what I did.

A couple firefighters show up, give the house a quick once over and come to the same conclusion that I have.  The furnace has gone out.  And, for some reason, has filled the house with the smell that we awoke to.  They can find no hot spots, and the CO tester is not indicating any CO threat.  We cut the power to the furnace, and everyone agrees that there is no immediate threat.  We can go about our business.  Well, with the exception of calling the furnace repair folks in to figure out what’s wrong with the furnace.  Some of you might not think it’s a big deal, but we still haven’t seen 30 degrees in March.  The nightly lows are in the single digits.  In just the short time that the furnace has been out, the temperature in the house has dropped 10 degrees.

Gas Furnace Blower Motor -- IMG_9823I called the furnace repair company, and, to my surprise, they sent one out right away.  Luckily, I caught the guy as he was headed out the door for a call, so he could easily be rerouted to our house.  A couple hours later, and we had a working furnace again.  Turns out, the blower motor that pushes the air through the ductwork and into the house had stopped working.  It lost its bearings.  Literally.  The result was that it started to leak some lubricant oil and actually melted some of the electrical work in its housing which is what made the stink.  The company bills for the repair, so we only have an estimate as to what the cost of the repair will be.  The repairman thinks less than $200.

We’re lucky.  We’re lucky, because our house didn’t catch fire.  We’re lucky, because we aren’t trying to figure out how we can live out of a motel room until our fire damaged house can be repaired, or, worse, until we can find a new house to replace our destroyed house.  We’re lucky, because we aren’t trying to figure out how we’ll replace any of our belongings.  We’re lucky, because we’re safe.

But, to a lesser degree, we’re lucky, because we can afford the repair.  It wasn’t that long ago that an unexpected bill for $200 would have had us wondering if we were going to have to choose bills to go unpaid.  But, we took control of our finances.  We’ve got a long way to go, but, a $200 emergency doesn’t mean that a bill goes unpaid.  And, that makes us feel safe too.

photo credit: stevendepolo

The Cost of Not Doing it Yourself

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The Problem

Recently, I became aware of a slight water problem (as if the word slight has any business hanging out with the words water and problem) in our basement.  Somewhere between when our house was built and when we bought it, the bathroom had been rearranged.  The plumber (or DIY’er) who did the work, rather than move the lines and start fresh, merely just capped the old water supply lines off.  The standard caps worked (and work) just fine.  However, one of the caps wasn’t really a cap.  It was a shutoff valve.  Whoever it was merely capped the output of the valve and turned the valve to the shut position and left it at the end of the line.  Any engineer will tell you that the more moving parts and connections there are, the higher the liability of failure.  Eventually, the metal of the valve began to corrode.  It corroded until it began to leak.  Which is where I come in.

While downstairs, I noticed that one of our kids’ buckets that was being stored for the winter was full of water.  There weren’t any obvious leaks, and the concrete floor around it was dry.  I couldn’t find a good reason why someone would have filled it with water and then taken it down to the basement, so I took a bit closer look.  Turns out, that valve was leaking.  Slowly enough, thankfully, that it wasn’t causing any problems.  According to my wife, who noticed the leak months ago (BAD wife!!!), it’s been leaking for a while.

November 2, 2010

The Fix

As with any issue like this, I’ve got two choices.  I can call a plumber and get it fixed, or I can attempt to fix it myself.  I’m pretty comfortable with building things and fixing most things.  Electrical and plumbing are probably the two things that I don’t like to mess with.  When we replaced the sink in our kitchen, it took 3 attempts and several months of trying before I had a working sink without any leaking.  I did manage to remodel the bathroom recently though, and replaced the toilet without any major issues.  So, going off of that, I decided to see what was involved by doing a few searches online.

After my research, I found that there are essentially only one or two ways to go about fixing the issue.  All involve cutting the pipe off, and re-capping it.  Or, properly capping it, as the case may be.  The 100% best way would be to cut the pipe, and then flux and solder on a new cap.  Done right, it’s almost impossible to break and a pretty good guarantee to never leak.  The problem here is that I’ve never done any of that and don’t own a torch, so would have to buy one of those.  They’re not expensive, but would certainly add to the cost for a tool that I have infrequent enough use for that I don’t already own one.  The second way would be to put what is called a compression fitting over the end of the cut off pipe.  The idea there is that there’s a compression ring in the fitting that, as the nuts are tightened, compresses the pipe into the fitting and creates a watertight seal.  No special tools necessary.

I hadn’t done either before, so it was still up in the air.  Add to that the fact that there is no water cutoff to that part of the house and the water to the entire house would have to be shut off once the project started and remain off until the project finished.

In the end, I did decide to give it a go myself.  My reasoning was that the worst case scenario wasn’t all that bad.  Worst case, I can’t get it fixed and have to call a plumber.  I’m out the money for the parts (~$10) and the water in the house would be off until the plumber came.  Even if the plumber is super busy, I doubt it would be more than a day of waterless-ness.  Inconvenient?  Sure. But, it could be a lot worse, so not horribly worrisome.  Worst case, it costs me some money and some water free time in the house.  We’ve got friends who live close enough that we could use their house for water activities like showering.  And a couple of gallons of filled water jugs would be enough for emergency flushing of the toilet.

How it went down.

I’ve never had the pleasure of a DIY plumbing project going right the first time.  Until now.  The procedure was certainly not an overly complicated one.

  • I turned the water off to the house.
  • I cut the old fitting off, making sure to get the cut as square as possible.  As a note, I tried to drain the pipes before cutting the old fitting, but very little water came out.  I left the drain hose open while I was cutting.  Once I had the old fitting off, the rest of the water drained from the drain hose.  I believe this was because it had created a vacuum of sorts and it was only released when I opened up the other end to vent.
  • I then took a bit of sandpaper (160 grit, I believe) and sanded all the old grime and corrosion off of the end of the pipe.  Not sure that this was really necessary for the compression fitting that I decided on, but better safe than sorry.
  • As soon as that was done, it was as simple as putting the fitting on the pipe and tightening it down.

Not only was it pretty simple and easy, but it didn’t leak when I turned the water back on.  Awesome!

The Cost of Not Doing it Yourself

There’s one other cost involved that I didn’t mention, and, it may be the most important.  It’s the cost of not doing it yourself.  Sure, it would have cost me the cost of the plumber to fix it.  But, it would have also cost me in experience.  I learned a new skill.  Granted, capping a household supply line isn’t necessarily high up there on a list of desired skills, but I won’t hesitate to do it again.  Plus, I’m now able to assist others who have a similar task and save them money too.  To me, that adds value to having done it myself.  It’s like getting paid to do it.  When you add all that up, the cost of not doing it yourself is almost always too much.

photo credit: silkolive

Saving Money by Cooking at Home

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On the long list of things that you can do while saving money, one thing that invariably makes it’s way to the top 10 is to brown bag lunches and to cook at home.  If you’ve ever sat down and figured out how much you spend eating out each month (we have, it’s in the budget), you know that food, and dining out in particular, can be  a real drain on the budget.

One thing that really holds many people back from cooking at home and even from taking bag lunches to work is that they never really learned how to cook.  Either their parents never brought them into the kitchen to help, or their parents just never cooked at home either.  Either way, many of the simple skills that those who do cook take for granted are a complete mystery to others.  Some of those skills are being replaced with machines and such that can do the task, but those are usually expensive and if you’re trying to save money, aren’t really an option.

Pork Chop with Apples and Blue CheeseBut, it’s not an excuse!  You can learn those skills rather easily.  Need to know how to boil an egg?  Search for “boil an egg” on the internet.  Anyone who can read, can make their own food.  With the internet at our fingers, you can easily search for recipes.  Stuffing?  How about Pineapple Stuffing.  Chicken?  Here’s a whole list of chicken breast recipes! Here’s instructions on how to make beef jerky!  Most have pretty detailed instructions.  And, besides, what’s the worst that could happen?  You ruin some food?  I’d bet you could try at least once or twice more and still not equal what the same meal would cost at a restaurant!

The bottom line is this.  Not knowing something isn’t an excuse.  Some things will take time to learn, but you can learn many of these basic skills, with repeated practice, in less than a month.  Challenge yourself!  Take a month off of eating out.  Only eat in for those 30 days.  And, no, I don’t mean delivery.  Or Digiornos.  Start with raw ingredients and go from there, using a recipe.  After a while, you get to know how certain things taste and how they go together and you can even forget the recipe.

Photo Credit: thatedeguy, on Flickr