I love my house. It has it's issues, but most older homes do. I fell in love with my house the instant we stepped inside. I think I liked it so much because it is very much like the house I grew up in. I also love the neighborhood and my back yard is HUGE for being in town. I love the "climbing" tree in the front yard. I love the fact that the Sheriff lives across the street and that someone from dispatch lives next door. I love that it is a semi-quiet (stupid ppl do drive a bit to fast down our street) neighborhood.
Now to the issues with our house. We moved in November of 2007. In January of 2008, we began having issues. You'd flush the toilet and water (it was clean water, not the dirty toilet water) would come up in the shower (the lady we bought the house from was older and had her bath tub converted to a shower type thingy with bench). After months of trying different things, we decided to tear into the pipe that takes the dirty water away from our house and into the city's pipes. Our "drain pipe" runs right between the two trees in our front yard. Low and behold, we found that a piece of the old clay pipe was busted, causing the back up. So, Ayron used a saw and made a clean cut on the old pipe, he also managed to cut the water line. We did have them come and mark before we began our little excavation, but they marked wrong. So poor Ayron and Josh O. were stuck in a huge hole while water shot out of the ground like a fountain, turning our front yard into a mud pit. They managed to get everything fixed and all was well. This spring we were finally able to get grass to grow around our trees again!
About a month ago, I decided to run a load of laundry. I started the washer and took the boys (TJ and Scooter) outside. When we came in, and I was walking down the hallway I heard a "squish" and realized that our hallway carpet was soaked. I thought that maybe I had just overfilled the washer. Well after a panicked phone call to Ayron and some talking with Tom (my father in law) we have come to the conclusion that the pipe under the bathroom floor (our house is on a slab) is cracked and water is seeping up and into our bathroom. Freaking great! You can see the water come up between the tile (I think it's just the peel and stick linoleum). I have stopped doing laundry at home and thus, the wet spot in the hallway is gone, but you can see where it was at.
Looking for an excuse to tear into the bathroom, I called our insurance agent this morning. It seems that our policy has an endorsement that would allow us, at no cost, to have up to $5k of "clean up" done. That would cover mold removal (if we have it...I hope we don't). We have a $500 deductible for the rest of the work (jackhammering up the slab, pouring new cement, retile, etc). What gets me is that our insurance doesn't actually cover the cost of repairing the pipe because they say that is "maintenance." I had to laugh. How am I supposed to maintain a pipe that is buried in cement? I asked my insurance agent that and he laughed too. He said he thought it was asinine as well. The good thing is, we just need to get a formal estimate and send it into our agent. Seeing as how I married into a construction business....I think I know who I'll call for our estimate. I also found out that we wouldn't actually pay the $500 deductible. Let's say that Tom says the job will cost $10,000 (these are the #'s our agent used, I have no clue how much it could cost!). We send in the estimate and the insurance company would send us a check for $9,500. They would keep out that $500 and treat it like we paid our deductible.
I don't really know much about insurance, but I think that we wouldn't really have any out of pocket expense. Sure, we would be inconvenienced for a while, but we can easily figure that out.
I guess I am looking for thoughts, ideas, suggestions? Anyone else have any "old house" horror stories that makes my situation look silly?
2 comments:
Your insurance man may want a second estimate if he knew that the only estimate came from a family member. Other than that, I see no reason for much out of pocket expenses. Do you trust Ayron with a jackhammer?
Travis, I asked our insurance man when I had him on the phone. He knows that Ayron's family owns a construction business and I said, "How odd would it look that the last name would match the name on the estimate?" He said that in the state of Indiana we can get our estimate done by anyone....and NO! I would not trust Ayron with the jackhammer. Did you not read what he did when I trusted him to cut the old piece of pipe in the front yard?!
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