Failures

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I think everyone has unforeseen problems with their homes that cost big bucks that they had no idea would occur. This messes up our budgets and puts us in a financial bind for a while, but we always seem to get through these times. I guess that’s just life. Here are a few of the problems we have run into.

 

 

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Failures

 

Air Conditioning

 

In Oklahoma City, the summers were hot and long. The first year. When we lived there we had noticed that our air conditioner was running all the time night and day so we called the air conditioning man and he checked out our outside unit and told us it was working very well. We went on the rest of the month with the air conditioner running full time. We got our bill for the month, and it was over $700. Well I just about crapped my pants. We had an all electrical house with electric resistance heating so I called the heater guy and he came out and took a look at the heating system. He informed us that we had a short in our system and the heating coil had been running on high full time for over a month. So we were running our air conditioner full time over our home heating coil shorted out on high. I couldn’t believe there wasn’t some kind of a fail safe in the system that would prevent this catastrophic situation. But there was nothing we could do, so we bit the bullet and paid the bill. I swore I would never ever buy and all electric house again and I never did.

 

Imagine all your cold air blowing over this coil before it cools your home. No wonder the air conditioner ran all the time.

 

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Stopped Up

 

After we had lived at Arroyo Verde for about 5 years all the drains in the house stopped draining so we had to call out a vacuum truck and crew to dig out our septic tank and pump it out. First they had to take down part of our backyard fence. Then they tore up my garden, dug out the tank and finally vacuumed out all the sewage. By the time the job was finished we had run up a bill of $1000 which we hadn’t budgeted for. It was nice to be able to flush the commodes and take a shower again. Fortunately we were able to last until we moved away from the area before another pump out was necessary. We were very careful what we put down our drains after that.

 

A nasty tank to have to pump out. We also had to add new perforated laterals to the drain field.

 

 

 

Termites

 

About three years after we moved to Bartlesville, I noticed on the inside of the house by our bedroom window that termites had eaten all the way into our bedroom from the outside. We had no idea how much damage had been done. We called the termite guy and fortunately, the damage was localized. But by the time they treated the area and the rest of the house, along with the bedroom repairs our Bill was $1000. We had $1000 deductible on our insurance, so we ate the whole bill.

 

These guys can do a lot of damage in a hurry, so keep your eyes open for signs and get them early.

 

 

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Answers to last blogs guess the movie poem.

Verse. Movie Title

1. Good Will Hunting
2. Star Wars
3. Dances With Wolves
4. Steel Magnolias
5. Gladiator
6. Apocalypse Now

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Thanks for reading Failures
Bill