From HousingWire:
Here are the 20 hottest housing markets to close out the year
Discuss:
Here are the 20 hottest housing markets in December
20. Midland, Texas
19. Fort Wayne, Indiana
18. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida
17. Boulder, Colorado
16. Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, Michigan
15. Modesto, California
14. Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, Florida
13. Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, Tennessee
12. Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, California
11. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, California
10. Stockton-Lodi, California
9. Yuba City, California
8. Santa Rosa, California
7. Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, Colorado
6. San Diego-Carlsbad, California
5. Sacramento-Roseville-Arden-Arcade, California
4. Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas
3. Vallejo-Fairfield, California
2. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, California
1. San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, California
Was in Murfreesboro a few times this fall, I think they are out “NJ-ing” NJ with their malls and stores!
HughesRep…I need help!!!
I’m having steam heat issues at my multi. It’s a 2-year old Weil-McLain so we can rule out the boiler(I think). The older Crown we replaced used to require us to add water about once per week. This one can’t go the night without the low water sensor shutting her down. Even if I overfill the damn thing about 10 gallons of water over the standard fill line, she’s empty by morning on the colder nights. I’ve looked all over the house (plaster walls making it impossible to see) and can’t find any sign of a leak. The tenants haven’t complained of any steamy rooms. I’ve had two plumbers look at it (one, extremely highly reputable/expensive) and none can find a leak. The reputable plumber told me we have to start breaking down walls to find the leak. He suggested we wait until it’s really cold out and the boiler is running continuously to try to find a wet wall.
IMO, at ten to fifteen gallons lost per night (estimate based on 3/4″ water pipe delivery to furnace when I fill it and I leave it open for 90 seconds) you would think I would find the leak. No?
Any advice appreciated.
Libturd: Weil-Mclain are reliable workhorses that chug along, so it definitely sounds like a leak somewhere.
Perhaps the leak is right before a room that doesn’t get heat or minimal heat.
I’m more worried about your low water cutoff failing and allowing the boiler to dry fire. LWC should never be relied upon for normal operation.
Do you have radiators with air vents on them?
Does your boiler not have an automatic water feeder? Not that it will fix the problem, just curious.
Given a break in a pipe, you would be losing 15 gallons worth of steam, not 15 gallons of condensate. 15 gallons of water equates to an enormous amount of steam. You would be rotting away huge portions of the wall cavity with that much water loss daily.
Did you ever need to drain the boiler to reduce the water level? Either the new or the old. Did you ever have loud banging pipes? Are there any radiators in the basement? Is there any kind of condensate pump? Do you have any condensate piping below the level of the boiler?
Not to mention that having to top off that regularly (once a week) without blowing down the steam boiler is going to corrode the shit out of it.
Have always had the banging pipes when the heat comes up, but a couple pangs and that’s it. Most of my radiators have regulators on them. I never needed to reduce the water. It always did that fine itself :). The old boiler had an automatic water feeder, but I had them remove it when the new one went on to avoid flooding from a potential malfunction after I finished my basement. I’ve asked my contractor to put one back in this week (for now).
You would think I would be rotting away wall cavity, but how the hell do I find it?
And yes, I’m aware of the boiler rot from adding so much new water. And I do flush it periodically.
Do you have steam radiators in the basement?
Speaking of heat, I had forced air in the last house and this one has baseboard. It pings when the heat comes on but then ceases after about 30 seconds. Is that just thermal expansion? Does anything in baseboard need to be bled periodically?
The pings are thermal expansion of the aluminum fins at a different rate from the copper, or the copper pipe along the brackets. Your boiler will have an air vent. A sound that would indicate a problem would be a “glug glug glug” – meaning the air vent is not working, or you’ve got a significant amount of air trapped in the system.
Libturd,
Find someone who can loan you an infared camera, like a FLIR. When I bought my house , I borrowed one to check for a broken wire and it worked perfectly. They can detect water leaks (cold spots) and in your situation, a hot spot from steam. Beats tearing down walls….
http://www.flir.com/instruments/sim/?pi_ad_id=60523037185&gclid=CI69govug8oCFYQXHwodTIINWg
No heat in the basement. I’m really at a loss here.
I’ll start asking around, but besides the Uber Inspector…I don’t know anyone who has one.
Have your contractor shut down the boiler, overfill the boiler with water, check to see if there is a leak or crack in the cast iron. I’d think you wouldn’t have that problem, but if there is no signs of a leak inside the house, and 15g is a lot to lose in 24 hours, you may be leaking somewhere near the combustion chamber and sending the steam up the chimney. You may need to take off some sections of housing to check for wet insulation and rust. It could be very small, and you might only be leaking under pressure.
No clue.
Buy one of these, have it overnighted for tomorrow (get one with pins).
http://www.amazon.com/General-Tools-Instruments-MMD4E-Moisture/dp/B00275F5O2/ref=lp_553270_1_2?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1451488787&sr=1-2
Probe every single wall near every suspected pipe or ceiling until you find any kind of anomaly.
Clifton Grainger has a more expensive version in stock right now:
http://www.grainger.com/product/EXTECH-Digital-Moisture-Meter-With-1UKE2?s_pp=false&picUrl=//static.grainger.com/rp/s/is/image/Grainger/1UKE2_AS01?$smthumb$
You could always sell it on eBay when you are done with it.
Look at det making the top 20. lol
Wow, documentary was dead on. Great job.
“In late 1980s, a battle rages between longtime residents of Hoboken, N.J.’s ethnic enclaves and the developers who want to convert their inexpensive housing into high-priced rental units. Filmmaker Nora Jacobson investigates the issue, focusing her lens on the city’s pro-affordable housing mayor, Tom Vezetti, and a cast of locals ranging from elderly and immigrant residents being forced from their homes to aspiring artists who rely on the area’s cheap rents.”
“Nora Jacobson’s 1992 documentary was recently shown at the AMMI (In Queens, NY) and while it could not be more specific as to place and time (Hoboken, NJ in the late 80s); it grows more universal and timeless with each passing year.
Filmed over the course of 7 years, she captures an urban drama in real-time; the sudden gentrification of a quiet and ethnic backwater community of New York City during the crazy days of the real estate boom of 1982-1988 and beyond.
Carefully nurturing interview subjects, ranging from local developers licking their chops over undervalued housing stock, young artists enjoying cheap rents, aged pensioners clinging to disappearing rooming houses, minority households being bribed to move out; Jacobson also documents the rise and fall of the populist mayor Tom Visiello, as well as state and local council meetings and some smoke-filled back room dealings.
There is no surprise as to how the story of Hoboken ends, but the grace and compassion with which the filmmaker treats her subjects makes Delivered Vacant a must see for anyone who cares about urban life and the social forces that shape it.”
Wily Millenial says:
December 29, 2015 at 9:46 pm
We watched “Delivered Vacant” in a college class. If you want to see some foreshadowing of Brooklyn in the 2000s, you can pretty much watch the same process occurring to the stevedores and lowlifes on film, complete with proto hipsters who you never see in Hoboken anymore now that Maxwell’s closed. Not that they were around much anymore before that.
Good idea Grim. I ordered the Amazon one. Will probably come today (love that same day shipping). I also asked around on Facebook for a thermal camera.
If you have an old iPhone 5 OR 5S – there is a Flir camera attachment they made that was only for that phone that trades pretty inexpensively. I’ve seen them sell for under $100.
It’s not magic, and doesn’t compare to the multi-thousand-dollar imagers.
I just so happen to have an iPhone 5 I was keeping around for this. If you don’t make any progress with the moisture (which should work just fine BTW) – I’ll buy the Flir and loan it to you for $20. :)
Deal!
Stu
Sorry it took so long.
Grim emailed me, I’m redoing a bath and have been in destruction mode all morning.
I’d bet money on a cracked cast iron section or blown seal between the sections. The water is either down the floor drain or like grim says going up the chimney.
Continually adding water to a castiron boiler creates mineral build up on the on the cast iron sections. Heat doesn’t transfer through the calcium buildup and can easily crack a castiron section. I’ve seen it happen in as little as year in hard water areas.
When the cast cools down the seal or crack gets smaller, and it won’t leak as much.
Did either plumber take the jacket off the boiler and check for leaks internally?
Auto fill valves are the devil.
Off to Lowes. I’ll check back in after.
I know they looked at the boiler pretty well. The fact that the leak existed with the old boiler in place is probably the giveaway that it’s not the boiler itself.
Wouldn’t I be able to see steam coming out the chimney on a cold day if the leak was in the boiler?
Do they serve Jello Pudding pops in jail?
An arrest warrant has been issued for entertainer Bill Cosby for allegedly drugging and sexually assaulting former Temple employee Andrea Constand at his Elkins Park, Pennsylvania mansion in January 2004, Montgomery County District Attorney-Elect Kevin Steele said at a Wednesday press conference.
Cosby is expected to be arraigned later this afternoon in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania.
You can rent a real Flir branded camera at home deport for $53 half day.
They have it in stock in Clifton.
http://www6.homedepot.com/tool-truck-rental/Thermal_Camera/FLIR_i7/
By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.
Chipotle’s troubles may provide grim satisfaction for its competitors and onlookers who didn’t care for the large side of sanctimony served up with their calorie-laden burritos. Just possibly, though, the company’s e-coli travails will have a socially redeeming impact. A new dawn of non-idiocy may be aborning, wherein lexicographers and the public rediscover that “natural” and “healthy” are not synonyms.
A few months ago we mentioned that Chipotle frolics in the marketing safe harbor the U.S. courts created for “puffery.” No, we didn’t mean that bloated feeling you get just before your trip to Chipotle Mexican Grill turns into a bout of tummy madness. Puffery is the zone of permissiveness carved out by the courts for exaggerated, even absurd, advertising claims “expressed in broad, vague, and commendatory language” that customers instinctively know to discount.
Case in point: Chipotle co-CEO Steve Ells’s carefully phrased slur on genetically modified foods: “They say these ingredients are safe,” he told CNN in April, “but I think we all know we’d rather have food that doesn’t contain them.”
Notice that Mr. Ells doesn’t say his competitors’ food is unsafe, but he clearly suggests that Chipotle places such a priority on providing its own customers with safe, healthy food that it turns up its nose at practices and ingredients used by its rivals. That implied assurance has now become a big problem.
Going by its own published warnings to shareholders, Chipotle has always understood that serving up raw, unprocessed, “fresh” ingredients puts customers at higher risk for food-borne illness. Which is fine: Customers are also at higher risk in sushi restaurants and in high-end restaurants where fresh ingredients are hand-prepared in hit-or-miss conditions.
Most cases of food poisoning are mild, most go unreported, so it’s likely an upset tummy has always been part of the Chipotle experience for a modest percentage of customers and just didn’t get the attention that has befallen recent outbreaks (including 136 college students sickened in Boston this month). Where Chipotle gets in trouble is its relentless campaign to equate “natural” and “unprocessed” with safer and healthier.
Last time we wrote about this subject, Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi, who has tried to steer her own company into greater compliance with the natural-foods fad, complained about millennials who think gulping large amounts of sugar is good for them as long as it’s “natural” sugar. Now corn manufacturers have dragged sugar processors into court over what they call a deliberate campaign of misinformation about high-fructose corn syrup.
We also pointed to admirably skeptical media reports about Blue Buffalo, the pet food company created by a former cigarette marketer whose ads tout “antioxidants” and “phytonutrients” to guilt-trip “pet parents” into switching from cheaper brands. The company’s stock is down 30% since its July IPO.
Lawsuits are piling up. At this year’s Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, prominent trial attorneys were enlisted to host several panels. The Food and Drug Administration itself, after years of cultivating an unhelpful ambiguity, has opened a docket aimed at settling what “natural” means when used in food marketing.
The best outcome would be a devaluation of the word “natural” altogether, to the point where food hucksters no longer find it useful. Interestingly, FDA’s own proposal indicates a definitional safe harbor for food irradiation. Mother Jones, a lefty magazine that has nobly fought the junk-science prejudices of its lefty allies, points outs: “Hundreds of studies have proved that irradiation neither adds compounds to food nor takes nutrients away, and that it can help prevent the food-borne illnesses that sicken 48 million Americans and kill 3,000 every year.”
A true breakthrough would be if Chipotle were to announce that, to keep serving fresh, raw, unprocessed food, it would adopt irradiation in all its kitchens. It won’t—not for safety reasons but because it would conflict with the disingenuous marketing message Chipotle has worked so hard to instill.
The company’s food-illness crisis even raises a question about whether the Chipotle trade-off—fresher food for increased risk—remains viable. The media are on alert; fewer cases of Chipotle tummy are likely to go unnoticed. CEO Ells admitted to the Associated Press that he doubts the company will ever fully explain the recent outbreaks (with some Chipotle partisans even murmuring about “corporate sabotage”).
Of course, an alternative would be to drop the claims equating “natural” and “healthy” and prominently remind customers that eating fresh, unprocessed foods involves risks. Then we could also acknowledge the flip-side: The industrialized food processes that so many of us claim to abhor were developed partly to make it possible to distribute edible products on a commercial scale without committing serial acts of mass food poisoning.
Nevada
transmission, delivery and grid maintenance costs.
check this out……consistent with my rabid mouth foaming from several weeks ago….
OPINION REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Nevada’s Solar Flare
State regulators roll back the net-metering electricity scam.
Solar energy is no longer in its infancy, but the industry is refusing to grow up. See the tantrum the government-funded industry is throwing at Nevada’s rollback of its net-metering subsidy.
Last week the Nevada Public Utilities Commission voted to sunset the state’s net metering program, which compensates customers who remit excess solar power generated from their rooftop panels at the retail rate of power. The retail price is about two times higher than wh0lesale because it also includes transmission, delivery and grid maintenance costs.
More than 40 states have net-metering programs. The principal beneficiaries have been solar-leasing companies like SolarCity and SunRun, which install solar panels at no upfront cost to customers, pocket the sundry government subsidies, and then rent the panels at rates that typically escalate by about 3% annually but are initially lower than power from the grid. Homeowners can shave 20% from electric bills.
Sounds like a great deal—but there’s no free green lunch, and non-solar utility customers must underwrite this hidden subsidy. Nevada’s utility commission estimate that non-solar ratepayers—who tend to be lower income—subsidize each solar user in southern Nevada to the tune of $623 per year. Most of this flows to solar-leasing company investors such as J.P. Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.
In short, net metering is regressive political income redistribution in support of a putatively progressive cause. Several states including Hawaii, Arizona and California have recently proposed changing their net-metering policies to reduce the cost shift. In October the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission cut by roughly half the rate paid to new solar customers after finding that the subsidy was unnecessary to encourage solar adoption.
Nevada’s regulators went even further by slashing payments to existing solar customers from retail to the wh0lesale rate and raising their fixed charge for using the grid. Solar can strain the grid because the sun doesn’t shine all the time.
You’d think the solar companies would be grateful for the subsidies they still receive, accept the policy change and move on. But SolarCity reacted by announcing that it would cease sales and installations in the state. CEO Lyndon Rive griped that “the Nevada government encouraged these people to go solar with financial incentives and pro-solar policies, and now the same government is punishing them for their decision with new costs they couldn’t have foreseen.”
The solar lobby, which intends to challenge the commission’s decision in court, has also denounced the retroactive change in policy. But the state has always maintained its prerogative to modify net metering. Solar customers must sign an interconnection agreement with the NV Energy utility stipulating that “the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada (‘Commission’) or the Utility may amend its tariffs upon Commission approval.”
SolarCity’s financial statements have long acknowledged this regulatory risk to investors. “Our ability to sell solar energy systems and the electricity they generate may be adversely impacted by” changes in net-metering policies including “reductions in the amount or value of credit that customers receive through net metering,” the company’s third quarter 10-Q notes.
Most current solar customers won’t even be affected unless solar-leasing companies jack up their rates to bail out their investors. One lesson is that corporate welfare encourages dependency and entitlement that’s difficult to break. The 30% federal investment tax credit for solar began in 2006 with a two-year sunset. Congress recently extended the subsidy through 2021 in its year-end budget.
Nevada’s three public utility commissioners and Governor Brian Sandoval deserve credit for attempting to wean the overgrown solar babies. As the Governor stated, “Nevada has provided tremendous support to the solar industry” but the government must ensure that “families who consume traditional energy sources are not paying more just to finance the rooftop solar marketplace.” Lawmakers everywhere, please take note.
grim: what the hell is wrong with the word “wh0lesale”?
This solar energy thing reminds me of when my town went out and sealed up water leaks that increased that was something like 40% of our water usage. The result?
Increase in water bills due to drop in revenue…bottom line, the utility still has same “revenue” needs and will get that money.
Mah plums!! I feel it in mah plums.
Looks like from yesterday’s comments many here believe that millennial s will come to their senses and all coming flooding back to the suburbs. Some will but overall I just don’t see it for numerous reasons.
And from what I can see in brigadoon both in my area and friends the house s being sold are bought by older multi generational immigrant families.
30
Tell them to put their money where their mouth is (companies and customers) and completely untie from the grid.
Someone on Facebook gave me the HomeDepot FLIR tip too. Thanks. Will run around the apartment looking for moisture tomorrow.
ChiFi – regarding Chipolte, how many times have you heard people argue against big pharma and their conspiracy, yet blindly take the word of some corner bodega owner that has the undiscovered cure in some root bark from the Amazon sitting on his shelf. Its all natural and would never harm you.
Yestercades is more crowed today than an arcade in 1985.
“Yestercades is more crowed today than an arcade in 1985.”
If ever out in Vegas, visit the Pinball Hall of Fame. Best of all…pinball is priced at what it cost when the games were popular. You can often find great games at 5 plays for a dollar (and 5 balls per game).
Let the EZ Pass wars begin. NJ drivers who want a commuter discount on the Tappan Zee bridge will need to apply for a NY Thruway Authority EZ PASS. Perhaps the Turnpike Authority will raise prices on NY Benny’s from May to Sept?
I already switched from NY to Delaware to NJ to avoid the $1/month fee on principle. Of course, they all charge it now. I do not plan to change again. I still don’t get why I am being charged to save THEM money. Just rip out the tolls already. Only charge people with non-nj plates tolls and NJ drivers can pay in the property taxes. Or get rid of county government and no one has to pay.
#40 I think NJ started first by restricting discount on GSP and turnpike to NJ passes, o have Old NY so only get Ny discounts
Essex says:
December 30, 2015 at 12:48 pm
Mah plums!! I feel it in mah plums.
https://youtu.be/mYgJF0C5tnI?t=1m20s
Oh yeah.
#2 – I agree with Grim – Bleed the lines, FIRST. Steam radiators have a key type thingy (cheap at HD, Lowes your local hardware store ect.) that lets you do it EASILY. Look it up on youtube. Had a similar problem a few years back at a rental prop. Water loss and banging stopped after that.
*I’m NOT saying this is the issue but for a couple bucks and couple hours you can find out if it is before spending a small fortune.
Natural Gas goes Deep Water Horizon!
http://gizmodo.com/las-gas-leak-disaster-is-a-bigger-problem-than-you-real-1750035270