Dude said:
Welcome back bro--let us know how you are doing. Settled in yet? How's the job? More important, are you brewing yet?
I gess most of what I have to tell is about selling and buying a house, so I'm not really hijacking your thread.
When we had the home inspection of the buyers for our house in NC, a tropical storm moved through the area. It dumpes 7 inches in a few hours and whole neighborhoods were flooded. And that is the worst time to have a home inspection as a seller!!! needless to say that they found water where there has no water been before. And I was pissed when I heard what the sellers asked to be fixed. Mostly because they were not local and their agent was their representation at the home inspection. So they were very picky.
Another problem that I noticed well before we were putting the house on the market was a crack in the foundation. Oh sh!t, I thought and asked a contractor friend for some input on that. He showed pics and measurements to a structural engineer of his. The SE told us that there is nothing to worry. It's a non-supporting wall and settlement like this is common in the aera. Just grout the crack and done. If I wanted that in writing he could do this for $125. So I felt easier about the crack and when we put the house on the market I asked him to come out and give me the assesment in writing. Well he didn't realize how far I was away and it would cost me much more than $125 for him to come out and write a report. But he referred me to a more local engineer which would be able to do this cheaper. Well, this engineer suggested that the issue be fixed. Doooh!!. When I asked him If I can fix this myself by jacking up the settled piece of the wall he actually said yes and we went over specs on what to do. Basically 2 18x18x8 footers supporting 4 ton hydraulic jacks:
The remaining cavity (under the foundation) was then filled with concrete. Needless to say that this was a lot of digging and concrete mixing in a humid NC summer

. But it fixed the problem for $200 (jacks, concrete, mixer rental) as opposed to $2200 for 2 helical piers. Surely not the best solution from a buyers point of view, but I got a letter from the engineer saying that the work was to spec and the buyers were happy with that. I guess they really wanted to have that house after they offered full price on the day it went on the market !!!. Mostly because they have been looking around for a long time and had to head back to CA the same day.
Then we came to MA where it is so much of a buyers market right now. Houses are on the market for 6+ months, but sellers are not willing to drop the price significantly to sell the house faster. When we were looking we weren't in a rush at all. Thanks to a corporate moving plan that put us in temp housing for 2 months. We found that we can get much more for our money if we look further away from where I work. So we made an offer on a great house in Pepperell. After the air radon test came back high, we wanted to have the water tested for radon as well. But the sellers didn't agree to that because they were financially so stapped that they would not have been able to mitigate anything and didn't want to risk having to disclose such a test result as well if it would have come back high. The same day the house second on our list dropped by $30,000. The sellers of this house already left and wanted to get rid of it quickly. Knowing that we can still hold our closing date, we executed a release and made an offer on the other house which turned out to be the better house.
Now I have a 35min commute each way and lots of time to listen to the various brewing podcasts out there.
But I'm busy at the new job (AMD) so I have to stay away from the HBT during work.
Even while I was in temp housing I was still brewing. But hats off to all you appartment all grain brewers

. It is much different when you have to mash and boil on the balcony and chill in the sink b/c there is no faucet outside.
But once I moved into the new house I started brewing full force again. And I had a lot to catch up.
So, that's how I'm doing.
(I'm not going to spend time on a spell check now )
Kai
Did you know that smilies count as images !!!