The Hidden Costs of Home Ownership

Homeownership can be a cascade of comical events.

If you’re not familiar with the term “money pit” or the movie that made it famous, you should give it a screening. (Just be sure to ignore those rotten tomatoes.)

Our very own personal money pit adventure might not warrant so much as a titter, much less a chuckle. But you might come away informed and mildly amused.

By the end of it all, we’d sunk north of $10,000 into an otherwise pretty solid old house. It’s not an astronomical amount of money and we didn’t come away with anything glamorous like a bidet mind you.

But, certain protections like emergency alert systems or mold remediation are always worth the investment.

Nope. This whole sordid affair was simply a chain of events that started with a common problem in many old homes: water in the basement. I’d have preferred the bidet.

What Expenses Come With Buying a Home?

Old houses often come with two features: One is a basement. The other is cracks in the foundation. So when the monsoon rains fell one hot and humid August day, Mrs. Cubert and I came home to find the carpeting in our finished basement soaking wet and spongy.

Since we were still paying the credit card bills on our honeymoon to the British Virgin Islands, I had a frugal notion of fixing this problem all on my own.

I spent the entire day one weekend digging all the dirt out of our front flower beds. I put down heavy plastic and glued that sh*t to the foundation walls. And I even shoveled the dirt back on top of the plastic. We were impenetrable!

Until it rained again.

We were greeted with still more water in the basement. This time I said, “Screw it. We’re getting drain tile.”

Mrs. Cubert was cool with that. She felt bad about my sore back and calloused hands from all that manual labor for naught. The seeds of our love affair with Mike Holmes were planted.

When You Need Drain Tile

Right off the bat, things went pretty well with this project. The contractor decided that we only needed half of our basement drain-tiled to solve the water intrusion problem. This was great news since we’d save over $5,000 and avoid having to rip out drywall and bathroom tiling in the finished half of our basement.

We spent $2,500 on the drain tile/sump setup, and now we’re on to new carpeting. $800. Ring it up! The basement looks great, and it feels great. No more worries about stepping into the wet, spongy carpet. No more fears about mold. I even took the bull by the horns and redid a section of drywall all by myself.

Total invested: $3,300.

The thing about drain tile and sump systems is…

If you’ve never heard of the dangers of radon gas, it’s definitely worth a few minutes of your time. The stuff creeps up through the foundation of your home and is odorless. It can cause lung cancer.

From Radon.com: The US EPA has set an action level of 4 pCi/L. At or above this level of radon, the EPA recommends you take corrective measures to reduce your exposure to radon gas. This does not imply that a level below 4.0 pCi/L is considered acceptable, as stated in the BEIR VI study.

After our drain tile was installed, our contractor, by law, ran a radon test in our house. The level of radon came back at 11. The second test (to be sure of things) came back at 13. Break out the hazmat suits.

How Much Radon Is too Much?

Already in for $3,300, we now had to spring for a radon mitigation system. Radon mitigation works something like this: imagine sticking a straw in your Mentos-agitated Coca-Cola, and sucking on it forever to keep the fizz from pouring over.

The cost to run the PVC tubing that taps into your drain tile, all the way up behind wall cavities and through the roof of your house? $1,600. There’s a little fan that constantly runs up in the attic, attached to the end of the “straw.” This little hummer eats up about $5 a month in electricity.

Radon mitigation system costs factor in the size and layout of your house, and how easy (or difficult) it is to vent that nasty somewhere outside and high up. We now have a cute 2-foot PVC stack poking through our roof with our system.

Radon Mitigation System Effectiveness

System installation runs anywhere from $1,000 to $1,800. Our guy knew his radon, and ten years later, our system still purrs like a kitten.

So we weren’t put off about paying $1,600. He even came back later to swap out a higher-powered fan with a low-powered fan, since we didn’t need that level of “suck” and it was creating serious negative pressure (bad for natural venting mechanicals like water heaters – known to spew carbon monoxide into living areas.)

We’re now at $4,900 total invested. Not including the ongoing cost of running the radon fan. At least our radon levels are lower than the outside ambient air. The hidden costs of home ownership are not so hidden anymore…

A few byproducts of a radon mitigation system: One, since the “straw” is constantly extracting the damp air from under your slab, you get a much drier basement. Within a day, we noticed how much less damp it was downstairs.

On the downside, the constant pulling of air out of your house creates negative air pressure. That means your gas-firing appliances (like a water heater) can leach carbon monoxide into your living environment with ease.

So even with the smaller powered fan pulling out the radon, we keep a low-level CO detector just outside the laundry room to monitor.

Why You Need Sidewall Insulation

Thanks to the radon fan creating negative air pressure, the house now tends to get a bit drafty in the wintertime. With newborn twins, we’re no longer willing to put up with it. You can’t have cold air making babies (or their parents) cranky. Oh, and we’ll have to eventually fix that little carbon monoxide nuisance too.

The solution? Let’s cut softball-sized holes all around the outside of our house in an uneven zipper pattern, and pump in newspaper filling.

That’s exactly what the contractor did. And for the privilege of making our house look like it’d been shot up in a tee-shirt bazooka-gun clown-car drive-by, we paid about $2,000.

To be fair, the sidewall insulation had the effect of throwing a blanket on our house. The furnace now runs much less often, and the house is much less dry and drafty in winter.

The problem (as we soon learned) is that sidewall insulation turns your house into a wine cellar. The climate stays more constant and that’s a good thing. But there’s also not much air exchange going on.

All of a sudden, the stale, clammy, and moist air starts to form droplets on the insides of our windows. From the street, you’d think we were running an illicit Finnish sauna. If there’s one thing you should know as an aspiring homeowner: moisture in all forms is a plague from the gods to be purged at all costs.

Total invested: $6,900. And we’re not done yet.

Why You Need a Heat Recovery Ventilation System (HRV)

The granddaddy of comfort living in northern climes. The ultimate deliverer of fresh air in the darkest, coldest days of Canadian-induced Minnesota winter. Welcome, HRV. I love you.

Check this thing out: It’s a whole-home air exchanger that brings in fresh, cold, dry outside air, and passes that air over-exhausted stale warm air to warm it up. Hence, “Heat Recovery.” The things people think of these days.

An HRV is worth every penny. It solved the problem of too much moisture in our house while bringing in fresh air during a period when viruses run rampant. Our HRV solved the problem of low-level carbon monoxide creeping in from the negative air pressure caused by the radon mitigation system.

Some might ask, “Why don’t you just open a window?” It’s a great point. But to fully resolve the dripping wet windows we’d have to leave all of our windows open while running the furnace fan constantly. That’s (ironically) how effective sidewall insulation can be.

The benefits of conditioned air during the winter months are impressive. Our heating bill is roughly a third lower than in previous winters. Also, the improved air quality helps us all sleep better at night.

It’s really important to clear out trapped particles that accumulate when a home is all closed up during the winter months. An HRV helps to remove dangerous indoor air pollutants including carbon monoxide, smoke from cooking, and diaper stink. It also performs an additional layer of radon mitigation, according to the EPA.

Total invested: $9,500

And Finally, Why do You Need a Range of Vent

Hanging in there? We also put in a range vent during this five-year saga. Our home air quality has improved significantly, now that our frugal home-cooking cooks can send those polluting particles up and out through the roof.

This is very important for homes with gas ranges. If you live in Los Angeles, then it’s exclusively electric cooking, baby.

That was a DIY project. Yes, I managed to sneak in more than just a little drywall repair from the original drain tile effort. However, I will tell you with all vehement honesty that installing a range vent sucks. The only enjoyable part was poking a hole through our roof to put the vent cap on. At least I was outside.

The worst part? Chiseling away ever so gently on a section of roof framing inside the attic during a hot summer’s day to allow a duct elbow to connect to the roof cap. See, this project sucked because attic work sucks. Ever wonder why you don’t see Mike Holmes up in attics on his shows?

Anyhow, that project ran about $500. I got a nice, used range vent from Craigslist. About half the cost was having an electrician hard-wire the thing.

Total invested: $10,000

Singing the Home Improvement Blues

Homeownership ain’t cheap. Moisture and water intrusion can lead to a chain of events you can’t always anticipate. And when you’ve got perfectionist tendencies and a honey-badger mindset like I do, things get complicated. That said, I’m confident the $10,000 invested has increased our home’s market value, dollar-for-dollar.

However, I’d certainly pause before investing in a second home (or cabin), unless you’ve got loads of patience (and dough!) You might just need drain tile, radon mitigation system, HRV, insulation, or range vent put in to keep you dry and pollution-free. Yeesh…

For now, we’ve got the freshest air on the block, a cozy “blanket” to keep our house warm, and no threat of water to send us off the deep-end worrying about mold. The safety of the air you breathe is all too important, especially with kids in the mix.