Lack of House Knowledge Can Be Costly

December 5, 2023

112. Lack of House Knowledge Can Be Costly

In this week's episode host George Siegal shares his personal homeowner experiences. From unexpected generator maintenance costs to comical encounters with roofers diagnosing leaks from the ground, George spills the beans on the highs and lows of homeownership. Learn valuable lessons on asking the right questions, avoiding costly oversights, and navigating the tricky world of home repairs.  Tune in for a rollercoaster ride through the wild world of homeownership!

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Transcript

George Siegal: 0:00

Hi everybody. Thank you for joining me on this week's Homeowners Be Aware podcast. I'm going to try something a little different today Instead of having a guest, I'm going to be the guest myself, and I want to share a couple of stories that have happened to me as a homeowner, and the hope is that when you hear these things even though one of them is kind of a sad reflection on me it will make you realize you don't want these things to happen to you and, if they do, at least you'll plan for them. So I think you'll find today's program pretty interesting. I'm George Siegal, and this is Homeowners Be Aware, the podcast that teaches you everything you need to know about being a homeowner. One of the things I want to talk about today is how many of you have gotten a generator for your house Now.

George Siegal: 0:43

When we moved to Florida back in 2017, that was a must have for us, because not having one to me and being in an area where you can get hit by hurricanes and then spend days or weeks without power, was a very unattractive possibility. So we shopped around. We ended up getting a generator, and I think it's a pretty good one. I'll share the name of the company, because my story is not to be a bad reflection on them. It's more of a reflection on why you have to ask more questions, and that would be. We have a Generac generator and we've had a great experience with it. When we bought it we got what I thought was a pretty fair deal and it came with a five year warranty. That is all I knew about the generator, nothing else. I didn't know about what comes after that five years. I didn't know any other maintenance things that needed to be done, any problems. So that's how we started out this relationship. So every year they would come out, once a year and they would service the generator, which is very important to do, because you want to check the spark plugs and check how everything's working, check the battery to make sure everything's working properly, because you want it to be working when those few times pop up when you actually need it. So they came out and did that for five years. Now flash forward to the sixth year when they came out.

George Siegal: 2:00

I had never asked how much each service was after the warranty or the five years that were part of the sales plan, how much those cost, and I was surprised to find out it was $359. Now, again in the scheme of things, if you have a generator and your goal is to be protected when there's a big storm, that's not something you're going to balk about. But still, when you're buying a house and you're budgeting for things, you need to plan for the fact that every year you're going to be spending $359 after the free maintenance runs out to keep your generator in good condition, because there's no point in having it if it's not in good condition. So that was one area where I kind of screwed up. The other one and this one really caught me off guard. They said oh, by the way, at 25 hours you need a valve adjustment. And then I think it's around three or 400 hours, you need a valve adjustment and that's another $3 to $350 servicing. That only comes up at 25 hours and then much later. It took us a lot of years to hit the 25 hours because we have been very lucky so far. But that's another thing that you have to budget for, because when that pops up all of a sudden you've got to have that $3, $350 to spend for that.

George Siegal: 3:14

So when the guy was out here doing that, I asked him oh, by the way, what are these keys for that you guys gave us. And he goes oh, you need to open it every now and then. And I go why? Why would I ever need to open this thing? To me it's like a car. I would just take it into the dealer, except in this case I would have them come out. And I said if this thing ran for more than a couple of days, would I be okay? And the guy looked at me and said no, you would have to put oil in it.

George Siegal: 3:41

Now this is the part that kind of makes me look like an idiot, because I had no idea that I ever had to put oil in it. So we could have had a major hurricane. The generator would have run for a couple days after the storm and then it would have just burnt out. Now I don't necessarily blame them. Like I say, I've had a great experience with this company, but I should have known that. I should have known those keys that they gave us, opened the generator and he showed me where the dipstick was and where you pour the oil in. I still have to buy the oil, but hurricane season is over, I should have it anyway. But that's something I never thought about. So imagine needing it in your most desperate time and not having a clue that it's like an engine that keeps running, a lot of you are probably chuckling going what a moron. How does he not know that I don't have to worry about that with my cars. I get them serviced regularly, so it's not a problem.

George Siegal: 4:35

In this case, you need to ask questions. What's the moral of this story? You need to ask a lot of questions. If somebody's setting up a generator, or they're setting up a hot water heater or they're setting up any kind of system in your house, make sure you ask maintenance questions, ask how am I supposed to take care of this? What's the cost of taking care of it going to be, and then try to get an idea of what it will cost if you have to replace things on it. Not knowing the answers to these questions can be a very expensive process and you certainly don't want to get caught off guard, because when it's something that is as important as a generator, you really can't afford to be without it.

George Siegal: 5:11

The other story I wanted to share and I've had a lot of bad luck with this is when people come out to actually do work at your house and fix things. We had a problem where there was a water leak that was dripping into the house and then coming downstairs. Now this was a concern for me because, first of all, why is that? This was a fairly new house, so I called three different roofers to get estimates on what it would cost to fix this. One guy gets out of his truck, he walks over to the front of the house, he looks up at the roof and he goes that'll cost you $2,500 to fix. And I said $2,500 to fix what? And he goes where the water's leaking. I said how can you even see the water leaking from down here? You're on the ground. The water leak is up there.

George Siegal: 5:57

If you ever hire or are getting an estimate from a roofer to come out and bid a job for you and they don't go on the roof, don't use them. I don't know how they could be on the ground and pinpoint a leak. And it turned out we were able to get the guy that originally did the roof to come out and they found a problem that they had created when they were doing it where they didn't do the flashing properly, right in a corner spot. But you couldn't see that from the ground. So if I had paid this guy $2,500 to fix who knows what. He never would have found this if he didn't go up there and spend time testing it to see what the actual problem is.

George Siegal: 6:36

And that's the problem we all face when you wanna get an estimate or you wanna get something fixed. Maybe you're giving too much credit to the person coming out and assuming they're going to number one, know what the problem is and two, know how to fix it at the best price. That's why you wanna get more than one estimate. I always recommend getting three and then checking on the company, and there's a lot of great resources for that. You can use Nextdoor, you can use Yelp, but see what that company gets as far as ratings and reviews.

George Siegal: 7:04

And sure, every now and then they're gonna get a bad one. Anybody that does business might have a bad experience. But did they come on and respond to it? I've seen some trades that come on there and they just are angry back at the customer, saying it was the customer's fault. I don't really know if I wanna deal with that kind of situation. I want somebody that handles that with a little more finesse, maybe explains their side of the story and then you understand that, yeah, they could have been working for a real A-hole and it might not have been their fault, or they might just be terrible at customer service. Either way, you wanna make sure it's not something that affects you and that you've done your homework. So, anybody that you come out, do your research. Find out who they are.

George Siegal: 7:41

Some of the sketchiest ones I've heard stories about lately, especially here in Tampa, are pool builders, where people have given them money up front and the pool builder just was jockeying jobs from one to the other and they ended up getting ripped off. And a lot of people were ripped off by some pool builders around here. Roofers I've also heard some stories where people have done poor jobs. There's a lot of great people in these professions. Some people build amazing pools and there's roofers that do an excellent job. Just mentioning that as a couple of examples. If it's an electrician I've had electricians come out here and gotten a range of a few thousand dollars on a job.

George Siegal: 8:20

Don't always take the lowest bid. Sometimes the lowest bid is that person is available and doing it for that price for a reason, or sometimes the higher bid ones are just overcharging you. So you definitely wanna do your homework. Don't go into these things blind because you feel like there's a target on your back when you're a homeowner and you wanna do everything you can to improve your chances of getting the best deal.

George Siegal: 8:44

Now I always say every week at the end of the podcast if you have a story good or bad about home ownership, I'd love for you to fill out the contact form in the show notes. Reach out to me, let me know what that problem was. Maybe you can come here on the podcast and talk about it so other people can learn from your mistakes. I have dozens more I could share of mistakes that I've made over the years and generally, when you make a mistake, do you learn from it or does it come back to bite you in the end because you didn't fix something properly, you didn't get a permit to fix it, you took the lowest bidder.

George Siegal: 9:17

There's a lot of different things that come up in a job and, as the person who owns that home, you wanna make sure you get the best quality work and you also wanna make sure you get it at the best price possible. So definitely fill out that contact form. Let me know what issues you might have had with your house, good or bad. Maybe you were in a big storm. I'd love to hear from you and share it on the podcast. Thank you so much for listening today. I'll see you next time.