I have a wife who has been wanting something like this... hurm.... And they don't look all that hideously expensive to boot. We have a 15x30 enclosed patio room on the back side of our house that would give a good place for this I think.
Of course, then we have the problem I actually came here to post about.....
OK. this is somewhere adjacent to home buying, and somewhat adjacent to the home improvement thread, and also touching on my latest rustled jimmies episode but I figure any input/opinions would be appreciated.
Scenario : The wife and I are gearing up to paint the interior of our house as it's a moderately low cost thing to do that the house could use. Whereas we're still considering the "buy land and move to the country" options we're not thinking about resale value here because all the houses in our neighborhood that get sold immediately get bulldozed and new McMansions dropped on the lot. In gearing up for this we talk to a painter we like, he says he can't quote it because the cracks in the walls are bad enough to be screaming "foundation issue". We call a foundation company we've worked with for my mom's house, they take one and say "Oh, 1965 drain under the house is cast iron and has rusted away to the point you're creating a mini septic system under the house and the swelling soil is pushing the center of the house up, call a plumber". Plumber confirms the rusted out drain pipe theory, him and another plumber quote solutions, one is a $20k reroute around the outside of the house, one is a $35k in place replacement of the drain pipe with new pipe, both schedule 40 PVC.
Now, we were talking about moving but haven't made significant motion on that yet (mostly because I've been lazy, and other issues over the last 2 years). But we are thinking :
- Is this the sign we need to just find somewhere and pull the trigger on moving now? (which my patient and methodical planning side doesn't like)
- Is this the sign we need to just accept we're going to live out our days here, bite the bullet, and get the work done. (
Mrs. Haus
has admitted to me she kinda thinks my desire to move to the country was one of those "nice to think about" projects we'd never get around to... Not sure how much I agree/disagree with that)
The situation right now, according to the plumbers is that the drain should continue to function, but the ground swelling probably won't even go down meaning some terminal cracks and separations to deal with if we wanted to go the "ignore it" route. With knowing some day the pipe will fully collapse, and then it won't be an option of fix it or not if humans are going to keep living in the house.
My brain is wanting to go the less expensive "reroute" method on repairing it, but not give up on the house in the country plans. How insane am I? What am I missing here?
