House Issues-Painful!

I haven't written about my house lately. Well, here's what I've been dealing with...


As I've said before, the stove went wacky at about 14 months, there's electrical anomalies, and a drainage problem...

OK, I now have 2 burners on the stove that aren't working. So much for Whirlpool appliances. If this is what their bottom-line stove does, I'll replace it with something better. Meanwhile, I have only 2 burners on an electric stove that are working - both in the back, both small. The cost of a repair is more than 60% of the stove's cost, so it isn't worth repairing.

I have ants. In the kitchen and living room. I can't figure out what they are going after. I've sprayed the perimeter just like the product says to, and had no problem for the first year. I got rid of all the bugs, but not this year. It seems I have a couple of ant colonies right under the house, coming through the concrete foundation. One under the living room and one coming through around the pipes in the wall behind the kitchen. It's the main plumbing wall, and the pipes go under the house & foundation, and come up through the concrete. The ants are following the pipes, coming through the wall behind the cabinets and have a trail on one of my kitchen counters near the stove. I've moved everything, cleaned everything, and still they come. The only thing I haven't moved is the stove.

The doorbell quit working. I wasn't sure what to do so I called a friend who used to do electrical construction. He checked it out, said the doorbell got stuck, burned out the transformer and everything else should be fine. However, he took down the "bad unit" and I have no idea how to wire in the replacement unit. Should a doorbell "get stuck" after less than 2 years?

Now for the next item...
I have two bathrooms. It's a gift, I'm sure, but the one attached to the master bedroom, the en suite bath, has a problem. The toilet decided to give way from the floor. It's the ring with the bolts that broke. The toilet rocks back and forth, and there are sewer gasses around it. That's really weird, since that isn't supposed to happen.

But, if you take that in concert with the drainage problem - which is next, you will understand what's happening...

This lot is on an incline. The shed was placed right next to the house, and all the rain water from the shed was going right under the house. I've had the shed moved at a cost of $350. I still need what they call a "French Drain" to get the water away from the foundation. Within about 6 months of moving into the house (I moved in on October 6, 2009), I noticed cracks all around the house foundation. It's a continuous line front to back, all around the foundation. I was told this is "normal" but I don't buy that at all. Not when you consider how this place was built.

This lot is on an incline, the soil is clay. They put stone/rock/pebbles on top of the clay and poured the foundation. It goes down about 12-18 inches, no more. Right into the clay. With the drainage from the shed, from the driveway, from the rain, the house is shifting. I need to dig down about 36 inches, put in drainage, top it with gravel and move the water away from the house, or the house will end up in the street.

The residents here, all Habitat home owners, know we have rivers between our houses. It's a little stream of water that just washes out between our houses. I've chosen to plant trees, blueberry bushes, and other plants that love the wet conditions. It's a way of keeping the soil on the property instead of washing away and eroding. But once the drainage is addressed, this lot would be like an island without those plants. It would be a little house standing on a little hill, water gushing all around it.

My aunt and uncle don't understand why I spend so much on trees and plants. My aunt is actually unhappy with me because of this. Well, I'll just point her to this post and she can see what I'm dealing with, and maybe she won't be quite so angry. I really am dealing with stuff when I plant a tree.

So, yeah. Home ownership, at least through Habitat Knoxville, isn't such a wonderful thing. For the want of saving $12, I have NO air in my bedroom. They cut the ductwork off at the first wall instead of carrying it through past the point of the door. They then built a closet that completely cuts off the air from coming into the bedroom. Yeah, if you stand right under it you get air - but my bed is across the room and on a different wall. I have a fan to put up in the room, but again, nobody I can trust to put it up.

The electrical issues? I specified that I needed one of the bedrooms (the front one) on a completely different circuit than the rest of the house, because of all the electrical stuff I do - computers, modems, printers, fax, and so on. I have a full home office because I work at home, not in an outside work place. I got most of it, but for one thing. There is an outlet in the adjoining bedroom on the same circuit. Plug something in, and the whole office goes dark. That includes the phone, so there's no way to call for help. I've taped over the outlet in the bedroom, so it can't be used, but it needs to be removed from the wall.

Yeah, a house with a zero-percent mortgage is great, especially one I can afford, but with the attendant issues, I might have gotten a house in a better part of town that would cost me less in the long run. I'm going to have to completely rebuild this house over the next 10 years, just to address the problems. I'm paying for it, alright. Twice.

Ask any Habitat homeowner from my era about the issues with them, and you will find similar stories.

Oh well, I guess I should be happy I have a home at all, considering. I'm just really fed up with the problems. A house that's only two years old shouldn't have this much wrong with it.