If you presume that we are extremely unhappy campers, during this season when cheerfulness is the expected norm if not required by law, then you are correct.
As of early last Thursday our lives were turned into a total disaster.
We had been struggling along in this time of radically lowered expectations for senior citizens.
We had our home, in a really nice suburb. Unlike many we are not underwater on it.
We bought it new in 2003. Honestly at the time it was sort of one those houses lower middle class folks dream of having. Or maybe we are sold the idea that this is what we should dream of having. At any rate 2003 was before Bush the Lesser and his merry band of Bank Fraudsters, Wall Street thieves and Corporate Liars/Criminals had totally tanked the economy.
In their quest for grandiosity and homes that sell to buyers fantasies developers in Texas and many other places build in fatal design flaws. It is as though the process of hiding everything that makes the house function requires them to make compromises.
I sometimes feel as though these homes are supposed to last for as long as the mortgage and no longer.
One of those major design flaws our builder included was putting the hot water tanks in the attic.
Now I can see the reasoning. Heat rises and and isolation from the living area lessens air conditioning costs, also it increases our anemic water pressure.
But when something goes wrong as it did for us last Thursday the result is a disaster that isn’t far short of a house fire or tornado. On Thursday the expansion tank joint ruptured sending huge amounts of water spraying throughout the attic. We first became aware of this when major waterfall started cascading down the wall of our family room.
First we had the plumber in, then the drying out damage mitigation people started. Because all that water plus insulation and dry wall represents a great mold environment they are telling us they are going to have to take down a bunch of walls, take up flooring, ceiling and basically rebuild half of our house.
Our house is currently filled with huge dehumidifiers and blowers, which means the place sounds like a factory floor.
We are stressed to the max with insurance claims people, facing the possibility of being forced to find a different place to live while our house is torn apart.
These bastards act as though our expecting them to provide for our losses is an affront. They seem to think they should be able to just keep the money we paid in premiums while we eat the loss of of our home.
Hell of a way to end the year.
