Home ownership... am I right?
Today I got the worst news possible... the upstairs shower, which has started leaking again (and it's worse than ever)... will have to be entirely torn out so they can replace everything the original plumber did. The pipes. The pan. Everything. Which means I will, of course end up having to re-tile and re-paint. Lord only knows how much that's going to cost.
Let's see what this brings us to in seven years of owning a home, shall we? And this is after the complete renovation I had already paid for when I bought the place...
I am positively terrified as to how much this all cost me. A big thank you to my original contractor, who is responsible for half this mess.
Good thing I'm not going on vacations any more. I couldn't afford it.
The good news is that the massive hole in my living room wall is very close to being fixed...
Later today they skim-coat to level everything out.. Then tomorrow morning they prime it. Then tomorrow afternoon they paint.
And how happy will I be that one of four ongoing projects (soon to be five) will be checked off my list?
Very.
It is remarkable how time just keeps blazing by me. Tuesday is wrapping up, tomorrow is hump-day, and then it's a race to the weekend again.
Which would be great, except my weekends are also blazing past me.
The weekend before last I was sick.
This past weekend I worked from morning until night trying to get my home put back together.
I started with my guest bathroom, which had a leak that caused a bunch of damage. As they were putting the bathroom back together, it was found that the leak had not been resolved, so repairs had to be put on hold. I hired an expert who only confirmed that "Yep, you have a leak" but couldn't figure it out. Then, without notice, the leaking stopped. But instead of tearing out the upstairs bathroom and more walls to find out what happened... or seal up the walls and hope it didn't happen again... I decided to build an access hatch in the guest bathroom ceiling...
There's a panel I'm building which will magnetically attach inside the hatch. That way I can put some water leak sensors up there and be alerted to when/if something starts leaking again.
Then there's my new HVAC system. The heat pump outside has a return line to the blower which runs up my living room wall and over to the garage. For whatever reason, the line is noisy as hell. Sometimes when the heat pump is running, the noise gets so ridiculous that I have to turn up the television.
And so... I tore out the wall... installed mass-loaded vinyl panels... secured the line with vibration-dampening clamps... then installed some pricey sound-absorbing insulation on top of it all...
And that was that.
Now all I have to do is wait for my drywall guy to come in and put my walls back together... then wait for my kitchen doors and drawers to arrive... then I'm going to halt home improvement for a while, because I want to live in a home that's not torn apart for a bit.
At least I hope that can happen. Just my luck something else will go wrong the minute I've finished up the current disasters.
As I mentioned yesterday, my kitchen may be mostly complete (sans new cupboard doors and drawer facing), but I'm not out of the woods yet.
The leak in the bathroom, which I thought had been resolved, started leaking again as they were repairing the hole in the wall that got ripped open when repairing the leak the first time. This was, to be sure, a horrible development. Fortunately I have a bathroom upstairs, but the fact that my downstairs bathroom is still torn up means I am not yet done with this madness.
Not that this would be the end of it. There's plenty of other things that I need to work on (though none as urgent as a hole in the wall). And I suppose that as soon as the last to-do is checked off the list I'll have to start all over again. Home ownership is a never-ending money pit, so I'm counting on it.
The water leak could be something simple involving popping off a few tiles in the upstairs bathroom and repairing a pipe or fitting... or it could be something horribly complex, which would involve ripping out the entire upstairs shower and the ducts downstairs. Or anything in-between. Which means it will either be something that wipes out my savings to pay for in its entirety... or something which wipes out my savings to pay an insurance deductible.
The good news is that I won't have to worry about what I'm going to buy for clothes and toys on Black Friday this year!
I've been dealing with a persistent winter roof leaf for the past several years. When I first moved in, I thought the drops of water on my kitchen floor were being left by the contractor crew renovating my home. The next year I blamed it on the cats playing in their water dish. The next year I woke up to water pouring down through a lighting fixture, and was mortified that I had a major roof leak. For the next three years I tried everything... scraping snow off the roof... filling in the valley channel with FlexSeal... and back in October I even ran additional heating cables above the area giving me trouble...
But it didn't solve anything. I'd still wake up each morning and have to clean a small puddle of water off my floor and wipe up the water above my ceiling fixture so it wouldn't mildew. Finally I managed to find a roofing guy to come out and take a look.
Imagine my surprise when I found out it wasn't the roof. It was a leaky pipe.
Which meant a call to the plumber so he could come out and take a look. And, sure enough, he was able to look up through the lighting hole in my ceiling and confirm that it was a nice long split along the kitchen venting return pipe. Unfortunately it was not something that could be fixed through the lighting fixture hole. He had to rip out a big chunk of the drywall in my ceiling...
The pipe wasn't just cracked, it was really cracked. The split was over a foot long. For whatever reason... whether it's freezing or condensation or whatever, this wasn't an issue except in the Winter. The rest of the year, there was no leak to be had. Fortunately it was just venting and not a pipe actually carrying water. That would have been disastrous, likely flooding the entire ceiling in my kitchen and causing a collapse.
The hole left by the repair looks worse than it is. That's actually a pretty easy repair to make. I've done many a drywall project, and have all the tools to fix it. What I don't have is a way to transport sheetrock, and a texture gun. And so... I'm going to get a repair estimate from a restoration and repair company. If it's not outrageous, I'll just have the HOA pay somebody else to patch it up. If it's insanely expensive, I'll take care of it myself in the Spring. In the meanwhile, I've just piled the insulation back up there and stapled up some cardboard to save on heating bills.
I am once again shocked at how expensive it is to hire a plumber. To repair the pipe was $715.41... which is kinda crazy. But, once again, plumbing is an area where I am not going to gamble with a DIY repair. Since I live in a condo where I am only responsible for what's within the sheetrock-to-sheetrock space of my home, it's not like I'm having to pay for it. Well, technically I am... my HOA fees have to be paid every month... but I'm not the one cutting the check this time, thankfully.
This morning when I woke up to feed the cats I first ran to look at my ceiling.
No water on the cardboard covering. No puddle on my floor.
Just two very anxious cats wanting me to hurry up and feed them.
Kinda makes me regret that I didn't take care of it sooner, but since I couldn't diagnose the problem I never knew what it was I was supposed to be taking care of. Oh well. There were no mold or mildew issues, the problem was relatively minor, and all's well that ends well.
Weird how 2020 had conditioned me to anticipate a catastrophic issue that costs $10,000 to fix. I had almost forgotten how it feels to have something not turn out worse than expected.
It's funny how something can start out as a lark but snowball into something else entirely.
On Monday I wrote about how the tiny house craze might not work with me having cats, then designed a tiny home with cats in mind. The friend who asked me how I felt about tiny house communities posted my plans to a tiny house forum and, next thing you know, I've got a list of ideas from people who might actually want to attempt something like this!
As I had mentioned, I started with the idea of having a ventilated loft for the Litter-Robot litter boxes. The idea being that foul odors will tend to accumulate more easily in a tiny house, and it's better to plan for that from the start. Everything else just kinda fell into place.
There were some really, really good suggestions passed my way.
The biggest was that since I have a cat walk going all the way around the interior, I might as well add some storage underneath. I was also told that while I might not mind eating on the couch, a guest might feel otherwise, and it would be good to have a dining area... even if it was all collapsible.
And so... this morning while eating my Corn Flakes, I took the ideas that people had and revised my tiny house idea.
To make room for the dining table and add a window so you're not staring at a wall while you eat, I built cat "stairs" on the back of the door and added a pole so cats could climb up if they wanted to... along with small storage cupboards below the catwalk...
And here it is from above. Having a "catwalk" adds a lot of space for cats, and I changed the litter box loft so that they can access from both sides now, which would avoid congestion with more than one cat...
One person who was most enthusiastic about my plans asked if his-and-her closets could be added rather than hanging clothes everywhere. That sounded like a great idea, so I added closets (extending the home from 30' to 34') and also added corner shelving to the bedroom. Note that there are also cat stairs on the back of this door as well...
Plus dual poles in the corners so cats can climb up to the catwalk that way if they prefer...
I had to switch from barn doors to actual doors for the bathroom to accommodate the cat stairs, but I actually like that better. I thought that barn doors would be better because you wouldn't be opening the door into somebody but, hey, people can be careful. PLUS... now that I think about it, there's no reason the doors to the bathroom/passthrough couldn't open inward which would solve everything. There's definitely enough room for both doors to do that. Hmmmm...
And here's the updated main floor plan with the dining table, closets, shelves, storage, and catwalk access poles and stairs (click to embiggen)...
Note that the bathroom is slightly larger because I was told my electronics/water-tank closet was not big enough. Now it's plenty big enough for that and maybe some linens and towels! And now that I think about that... perhaps the washer/dryer unit would be better in the bathroom so the water tank and electronics were closer to the shower and kitchen sink. Nifty!
This was a really fun project! I may continue to tweak it as new ideas occur to me.
A pity I don't have millions of dollars laying around so I could buy a chunk of land for a tiny house community and actually build the thing. But who knows? Maybe somebody with money who wants to try tiny cat house living might take the idea and run with it?
Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day! Technically I have the day off but, given how behind I am at work (something not helped by being sick this past weekend), I really didn’t have the day off.
Yesterday afternoon I had somebody float the idea of creating a tiny house community. After ten seconds of thought, I decided I liked the idea. As I get older I am trying to rid myself of all my possessions so that cleaning up after me when I’m gone won’t be so much a burden. What better way to get rid of 90% of your stuff than to move into a place where there’s no room for it? Assuming a location existed where I could find work, I’d build my tiny house, drive it there, then set up until retirement. After I retire (assuming I get to retire) I can drive my home to wherever I want to end up.
Tiny house living might be a great option for me. Assuming I could find one which has a ground floor bedroom so I’m not having to climb up to a loft each night when I’m 90 years old (knock on wood).
Except...
What about Jake and Jenny?
Tiny house living with cats seems an almost impossible idea. For one thing, I think they’d go crazy if they were confined to a small space for extended periods. As it is now, they like to run all over the place and cutting down their room to roam by such a huge amount would be cruel, wouldn’t it?
And then there’s the smell of their litter boxes. I have Litter-Robots which actually do a pretty good job of containing smells, but that’s when there’s 1,800 square feet for it to dissipate. What happens in 240 square feet?
And so... I guess perhaps tiny house living isn’t such a great option for me after all.
And then last night I got to thinking... unless... what if the tiny house was built from the ground up with cats in mind?
An hour later I had roughed out an idea in Chief Architect Home Designer.
And here we are. Note that I don't know how to make a slant-roof in Home Designer, but that's the kind I would definitely use on this so the snow would slide off. It just has to be tall enough at the front-side for the Litter-Robots, and could slant towards the back no problem. Cat's don't need more than 18"-20" to run around...
Also not shown... wheels. The entire thing would be built on a trailer bed so it's movable.
Here's the back side with the catio attached. Note that Jake and Jenny would access the catio from a door in their loft...
Here you can see the upper track for the cats leading to the ventilated loft where their Litter-Robots would be located...
Here you can see how the Litter-Robots would be accessed from a door in the bedroom. An incline staircase would be lowered from the ceiling, the bed would be flipped up, and the staircase would attach beneath the door. You can also see how there are stairs leading up to the cat track (just as there are in the living room)...
You can see the vents in the cat loft here. I'd think that I'd probably get some near-silent, slow-moving fans to install in each. That would help keep small flying bugs which might get past the screen from entering while keeping any smells blowing outside...
Tiny houses are, well, tiny. There's no getting around it. I would likely have to build a small shed that I could transport with me to hold stuff I don't use that often but want to have handy. I still love the idea of a metal pipe hanging under the upper catwalk so I can hang stuff from it. As you can see from this render of the living room, there's plenty of room for it. Note that the catwalk has windows all the way around so Jake and Jenny can look out everywhere and not feel so confined...
A view from the catwalk in the bedroom for looking down at the unsuspecting human sleeping there...
The bathroom features a full-size toilet, vanity, cabinet, medicine cabinet, good-size tiled shower, plus a closet for electronics and a water supply (plus small water heater)...
In the kitchen I prioritized a good-sized refrigerator/freezer, a micro-convection oven, range top, and a decent-sized sink. You can see the "stairs" for the cats to access their catwalk here on the left...
Here's the blueprints. You can click on them to embiggen...
The best part? $80-$100K and you're done. Assuming there's space where you want to live, you'll never have to buy another house. You can just take it with you.
And it's not so bad, really! I mean, sure I'd rather have a proper-sized house... but if that's not possible, I could certainly live like this. And I'm pretty sure that since it was designed to keep cats happy, they could live like this as well.
One of these days when I have some free time, I'll have to figure out how to slant the roof and add scratching posts and stuff. Fun times. Fun times.
The lady who owned my home before me loved flowers. She had them planted everywhere. Particularly impressive is the flower bed in the back yard, which is filled with roses and other beautiful stuff. She also had a bunch of flower pots in the front yard, but I removed them one-by-one as they died off because I'm not home to water them when I have to travel.
The flowers in the back yard continue to flourish because there's a water line that's connected to the sprinkler system. My front yard flower bed is just a bunch of river rock. I've always felt bad about this, because everybody else in the neighborhood has flowers out.
Last Fall as I was cleaning up leaves, I noticed that there was a water line poking up from under the river rocks. Turns out that there was automated watering there all along but it wasn't used for some reason. So I decided that this year I would plant some stuff so my home fits in with everybody else.
And yesterday was the day...
I didn't want to completely fill the front flower bed because that would cost a fortune... and I really didn't want stuff growing up next to the house where bugs could breed, so I decided to clear out a space in the river rock for my new flower bed. I found some nice grey brick to keep the rock from intruding. I finished building just as the sun was setting and it started raining...
This morning I woke up early to start planting stuff. After setting things up I realized that I didn't have the parts I needed to tap off of the water line, so I had to run to the hardware store... where I picked up another couple plants. I didn't notice that one of the of the purple things I bought was badly damaged, but decided to plant it anyway...
Everything turned out quite nice. I threw away the tags with the names of all the plants, but here is what I got...
Because I'm old, all that crawling around in the dirt left me pretty sore and I decided to call it a day and watch television.
So there I was... lounging around watching Ask This Old House when it occurs to me THAT I DIDN'T TEST MY NEW SPRINKLERS BEFORE I BURIED THEM! It would be just my luck that I screwed up the install and kinked a line or something, so I managed to get up off the couch (I am SO old), tell Alexa to turn on the water, then waddle out to see if they work. I am soooooo lucky...
And that's that. Now my house will be pretty just like everybody else's. And since all the flowers I bought are perennials, they'll be back year after year.
Assuming I don't end up killing them.
Flowers are out everywhere, which means my allergies are exploding, which means I'm drugged up on Flonase, Zyrtec, and Allegra all the time. This is better than the old days when I had to be drugged up on Benadryl all the time. Benadryl makes me so drowsy that I can barely stay awake to work. All I wanted to do was sleep.
If there's a bright spot to be found, it's taking pictures of it all with my iPhone. It's shocking how good the camera is on the X, and it kinda freaks me out that I get better photos from it than I do the last pocket camera I bought...
When I moved into my new home, the woman who owned it previously planted loads of pretty flowers in my back yard. Including the hydrangeas I butchered which have miraculously come back. Much to my surprise, it looks like I'm going to have flowers again. Don't ask me how. This thing was razed to the ground a month ago...
I had irises on the side of my house, which is nice, but they always fall over and last for only five minutes, so I don't understand the point. What I'd like to do is pull them out and replace them with more stuff like this...
Pretty.
Even though it's making my life an allergy-induced haze.
My favorite flowers are crocuses and California poppies. Perhaps this weekend I'll look into getting some of those. It would be nice if the front of my house looks as good as the boack does.
Internet-enabled security cameras are all the rage even though there are inherent risks to having them. Hackers are exploiting webcams with increasing regularity, which means that your privacy could be violated if you're not careful. Personally, I'm okay with the risks. Being able to remotely view my cameras from wherever I am in the world is the whole point of getting them in the first place. I want to be able to see what my cats are up to and check on possible security problems, and this is the easiest way to do it. But I don't put them in private areas (like bathrooms or bedrooms), I change the default passwords, and I have all interior cameras turn off when I walk in the door, so... if somebody wants to look at my kitchen while I'm away, have at it.
I actually have two sets of cameras. One is all local storage only with battery back-ups in case the power or internet goes down, the other is my webcam system that records to the cloud. After buying four different brands that were rated "the best" so I could test them out, Nest is the one I liked most and bought into...
Like anything in life, it's a mixed bag. There are good things and bad things to the deal.
THE NEST CAMS...
Despite my many issues with Nest, the quality of their cameras is absolutely not one of them. Indeed, the only thing that keeps me a customer is that the cameras are just so nice. Dead simple to set up. Beautifully designed. 1080p resolution with a generous wide-angle view. Excellent night-vision. When it comes to security cameras, they are the total package. You pay for it, of course. An indoor Nest Cam is a whopping $199 (around $169 street) and the outdoor Nest Cam is also $199 (around $179 street). I don't know that they are worth the price tag... $129 seems a more reasonable cost (especially considering you have to pay an additional fee for all the features)... but I've found nothing out there that compares at any price.
NEST AWARE...
Where things go off the rails with Nest Cams is the necessity of paying for their Nest Aware cloud service. Yes, your cameras work perfectly fine without it, but all the best features of Nest Cam are unavailable unless you pay. And it ain't cheap...
The least expensive program gets you 10 days of video history at $100 for the first camera (annually), then $50 for each additional camera. I have ten cameras. If all of them were on Nest Aware, that would be an insane $550 a year. I can't afford that, so I only have some of my cameras using the service. What you get when you subscribe to Nest Aware is the afore-mentioned video history retrieval (with the ability to create downloadable clips or time-lapse videos) plus the ability to define "activity zones" so you can choose which locations in the camera's view will trigger an alert. Without Nest Aware, you can tune into a live view any time you want... and you can get a "motion snapshot" history for the past 3 hours (but only on your phone, not from a web browser). I wish they had a 2 day history option for $20 per camera so all my Nest Cams could be Nest Aware... or even have a 1 day history freebie so all Nest Cams could be Nest Aware. But, alas...
UPDATE: Nest has added a 5-Day video history option which is much more affordable. I was contemplating ditching Nest because the Aware features are just too expensive, but $50 a year for the first camera plus $25 a year for each additional is perfect for me.
UPDATE: Well, that was fast. I thought that $25 was a reasonable price, so I changed my plans to dump Nest in favor of Amazon and bought some new Nest cameras. Just now I went to add Nest Aware to one of the cameras only to find that they raised the price to $30... after just five months. This company is nothing but dick moves. I will never trust them again.
NEST AWARE ACCESS...
The Nest Aware service can be accessed from an app on your phone or a web browser. Both have an easy-to-use interface that's beautifully designed. A while back Nest added a "spaces" overview of all your cameras, which is what you see when you login. The only problem is that if you have Nest Protect smoke/carbon monoxide detectors, they bundle them together for some stupid reason, ruining the perfect grid of cameras. I've blurred the feeds so you can't see how messy my house is...
No clue why they do this, but it's incredibly annoying and I haven't found a setting to "unbundle" them. Hell, I can't figure out any reason why you would want them bundled in the first place.
NEST AWARE INSANITY...
Recently I have been having major problems with the video stalling on the screen when I view it on a web browser. Things have been working great for a year now (assuming I had a good internet connection), so what's the deal? I chatted with Nest support, telling them that the video is definitely getting to Nest Aware because I can download a clip as a Quicktime movie and the motion is there... I can even view it in motion on my iPhone... but 9 times out of 10 on my browser, the image doesn't move. Whether I am trying to watch the video live or review my video history, the image is static. So obviously there's something wrong with the Nest Aware streaming service for browsers, right? WRONG! First they blame the browser (that's tech support 101). But stalled video happens regardless of which browser and which computer I am using. Then I'm told not just once... but multiple times... that the problem is probably my router because the Nest Aware Service is "fine." This, of course, is insane. If the problem were my router, then motion video wouldn't be getting to Nest Aware. Except it is. My router doesn't even enter into the equation when it comes to getting video OUT of Nest Aware, only into it...
Long story short... the problem fixes itself when I use shitty "Flash" instead of "HTML 5" video to connect to Nest Aware. I thought of relaying this back to Nest but, given their fixation on my router, they probably wouldn't believe me.
NEST AWARE ZONES & PEOPLE DETECTION...
My favorite feature of Nest Aware is being able to define "zones" where I want motion reported. In my front yard, for example, I want to know if somebody is on my driveway or walk... or trying to steal my garden hose. I don't care about the people cutting across my yard or the tree moving when the wind blows. Defining a zone where I'll get alerted is a piece of cake (shown below in orange)...
The system works really well. Alerts are messaged to my iPhone quickly and, unlike other cameras I tried, motion outside the zone is actually ignored (this turned out to be a bigger problem than you'd think). An additional feature of Nest Aware is their claim to be able to send you "People Alerts" when your camera "thinks it spotted a person"...
Nest's website claims that its system is so smart that it can distinguish a person from a thing or a pet. Except... not so much. Their accuracy rate, so far as I can recall, is 0%. A team of landscapers arrive to mow and trim and not one "people alert" is ever sent. The only people alerts I get always turn out to be my cats. The alerts above, for example, were Jake and Jenny wrestling in the catio...
So... if your sole reason for buying into Nest is the "people alerts," then you might want to keep looking.
UPDATE: While still far from perfect (my cats are still registering as people from time to time)... actual people are now being recognized correctly most of the time. Guess a benefit of having a cloud-based service is that it's easy for the supplier to update the tools available.
NEST AWARE SETTINGS...
The settings available for Nest Cams are fairly standard, but organized really well. Some settings can switch automatically based on whether or not I am home (the system uses the Nest App on my iPhone to figure that out). As an example, I have all the interior cameras automatically turn off when I am home, then turn back on again when I am gone. If you don't want your location reported to Nest, you can always set home/away manually by clicking on the big toggle button that shows up at login...
If that's still too much information for you, there's also the ability to set a schedule for your cameras to follow. The rest of the settings allow you to decide whether or not you want to have the microphone on, what kind of alerts you want, what kind of image quality you're sending, whether or not to use night vision... that kind of stuff...
A feature I wish were available is setting the video quality based on whether I am home or away. When I'm home, I'm using the internet for all kinds of things and would prefer the cameras send low-res video so they're not hogging my bandwidth. When I'm away, I don't care how much bandwidth the cameras are hogging, and want them to automatically switch to maximum resolution. Don't know if this is possible, but boy would that be handy.
NEST AWARE PAYMENT...
If there were one thing that could be a complete and total deal-breaker for me when it comes to Nest, it's the disastrous billing system that they have in place for Nest Aware. It's insanely stupid. Beyond insanely stupid. First of all... if, like me, you bought your Nest Cams six months apart so you could split the annual Nest Aware payment into two parts so the financial hit isn't so terrible... Nest would like to kindly ask you to go f#@% yourself. They don't allow it. If you already have cameras on Nest Aware and want to add more of them six months later, they pro-rate the annual fee for the new cameras so the billing cycle is in-sync with the original purchase. There is absolutely no way to do otherwise unless you have multiple Nest Aware accounts, and I don't even know how that would work. I'm guessing you have to set up guest access to your own damn cameras on the new accounts? I'm sure Nest thinks they are doing you a huge favor with the pro-rated billing, but it should at least be the customer's choice as to whether this is allowed.
And, oh yeah... about that pro-rated account syncing bullshit...
It's horrendous. The system billed me twice... with wrong amounts... but not really. At least according to Nest. I spent months trying to reconcile the statements I received with what was actually charged to my credit card and simply could not do it. And neither could Nest. They ultimately told me that I would just have to trust them that everything was billed the way it's supposed to be, even though nothing they could produce would back that up. To this day I have no clue if I was billed correctly.
And that's not all.
Not by a long shot.
Because of the absolute nightmare I had when I added my second batch of cameras, I thought I would be smart and add my third batch after my Nest Aware expired. Since Nest is forcing me to pay for everything all at the same time, I might as well make sure that they don't screw things up again by taking matters into my own hands.
Except you cannot tell Nest Aware not to automatically renew.
Thinking I could outsmart the system, I decided to remove my credit card so they couldn't automatically renew.
Except Nest doesn't allow you to remove your credit card information from their system.
Yes. You read that right. Once Nest has your personal information, it belongs to them! Something I verified after spending a crazy amount of time in chat with Nest Support. Apparently the only way to remove your personal information and credit card from the system is to cancel your entire service... even if it's pre-paid in an annual payment!
SUPPORT: Here is how to cancel the Nest Aware subscription:
ME: Again... I know how to cancel the subscription. That is not what I am asking.
ME: I want to cancel THE AUTO RENEWAL.
SUPPORT: I understand. Currently the only way to cancel Auto Renewal is to cancel the subscription for the Nest Camera, itself.
ME: And you cannot remove my credit car so that it won't auto-renew that way?
SUPPORT: I definitely cannot remove your credit card but I am checking on the steps you can use to get that done.
ME: Wow.
ME: Okay.
SUPPORT: Thank you for waiting. After you go to the "Nest Aware" part of the app, you will see the type of subscription and be able to change your payment information. Please know that as long as you have an active subscription, at least one credit card will need to be in this account.
ME: Sorry I remain so incredulous as to how Nest chooses to treat their customers, but this is the wackiest thing I have ever encountered for somebody providing me a service. 1) You get double invoices with different numbers for every transaction. 2) Nest is not able to offer any explanation as to how the billings work or even tell you how things were billed. 3) You are forced to have your service plans pro-rated so everything syncs up on a renewal date... even if you can't afford to renew everything at once, which is why you staggered the purchase of your cameras in the first place. 4) You are forced to auto-renew Nest Aware, even if that's not what you want. 5) You have no control over your credit card information and cannot remove such private information from your account. 6) Nobody at Nest finds anything odd about all of the above. I mean... wow... just wow.
This is some seriously sketchy shit.
Nest Aware is like the f#@%ing mafia.
And yet nobody at Nest thinks there's anything strange about the way they conduct business. Nor do they appear to have any interest whatsoever in updating their system so it's not so abusive and stupid. It's for this reason that I hesitate to recommend anybody buy Nest's shit. Yes, they have incredible products, but is dealing with their absurd billing practices worth it? If I weren't already invested in the system, I'd probably say "no." But since I am, I guess I'm stuck here unless somebody comes up with a "jailbreak" for the cameras that allows you to pair them to your own "cloud server" for storage and access.
But anywho...
As I mentioned, I have ten Nest Cams. In order to get the coverage I want, I really need one more. And if the cameras end up going on sale one of these days, I'll probably get it. Despite having to be chained to Nest Aware's high cost... despite the stupid billing system... despite my running out of bandwidth. Because even when all that's taken into consideration, it's still the best security camera system I've found.
For now anyway.
Yesterday afternoon we had freezing rain.
Yesterday evening I had water pouring down from my kitchen ceiling.
I knew it most likely wasn't the roof. It's been inspected three times in four years as a part of people moving into the condos. All three times we were told it's in great shape. And so my guess was that the freezing rain was pooling in a valley on my roof, getting trapped behind some ice, then flowing back up under the shingles. These condos are some of those modern-looking structures with complex and idiotic roof designs that encourages this kind of thing... despite the fact that we're living in an area with harsh winters where simple roof designs are far smarter.
Oh well.
This morning I thought I'd head up into the crawlspace and see what the damage was. But, not surprisingly, the complex and idiotic roof design means that it's impossible to get anywhere near my kitchen. There's a construction plane completely blocking it off.
So my only option was to remove the recessed lighting can in my kitchen so I could investigate that way. And while it's not easy trying to access an entire ceiling through little holes, I did manage to clean out the water that had pooled there and find out it wasn't too bad. The only thing I have to worry about is mildew and mold forming, so I've elevated the insulation with slats to help things dry out.
If that doesn't work, I'll have to pull the insulation out.
If that doesn't work, I'll have to hire somebody to cut out my kitchen ceiling and repair things that way.
Yay.
I'm trying to think of just how much is left that could possibly go wrong with my house where I've lived just under a year. The obvious answer is the HVAC furnace/air conditioning... but something tells me it will be something more subtle than that. I've already had two electrician calls... but maybe third time's a charm? I've already had two plumber calls, so ditto for that. Hot water heater, perhaps? I dunno. Last year I had to come up with $2000 for the HOA's stucco repairs, this year it's $2500 for paint. Next year it will probably be thousands more for a roof.
In the meanwhile I guess I need to buy some heating cables so that I'm not up on a ladder in the middle of the night chipping ice off the roof. On the bright side, at least I was smart enough to buy myself a ladder for just such an occasion.
Welcome to home ownership.
Bring your wallet.
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