Blessed by the Potato

Phase two of our hot water heater install was finished yesterday. That consisted of putting in a new exhaust duct made out of a plastic tubing that “won’t melt”. Respecting the building codes is always a good thing, or so the teevee tells me. The new water heater has had two problems. The first is that it smells like gas when it runs; I think that has been fixed by the new, better fitting vent (the guy attached the old one at a weird angle, perhaps doing a sloppy job since he knew it would be replaced in a week), though I don’t know how much of the odorous chemical in natural gas is supposed to survive the fire part and get into the exhaust. The other problem is that there is a very deep thrum when it runs. It makes the whole house vibrate a bit, and always makes me think that there’s some giant truck idling outside my window (for the apartment used to do something similar, though to a lesser degree, when exactly such a thing happened). I mentioned it to the guy doing the replacement, and I don’t think he really noticed it, because after looking to listen for a while he said “that’s normal for a superflue” — except that our old one was a virtually identical superflue water heater, and it definitely didn’t shake the house when it ran.

The basement has a pretty hefty crop of mold coming up now after the flood from the last tank going kaput. The usual corner of the laundry room was a little fuzzy, but Wayfare seemed to do a good job of cleaning that one out, there was only a little residual fuzz there. However, where the floor is rough, unfinished concrete and hard to bleach a whole culture has developed, mostly under the washing machine and the water heater. I’ve doused the areas with the last of our very expensive bottle of mold inhibitor (Wayfare thinks we ought to send the bills for it to our landlord), so hopefully that will keep it at bay.

So, shortly after Netbug’s hot water heater woes, my own has decided to give up for the winter. I went to wash my hands for bed and found no hot water forthcoming. In the midst of coming down with a cold, I took some ny quil in the hopes of waking up healthy tomorrow (note to self: shingles + karaoke to 3 am is not a sound health plan). I thought for a few minutes that the ny quil had broken my brain and that there had to be hot water coming out of the tap, and that I was quite possibly burning myself with my hand under the freezing cold water. Then I went out to the kitchen and heard this eerie wailing sound, like a cross between a tea kettle and two raccoons “fighting”.

It was coming from the basement. I went down there with a creeping, knowing feeling washing over me. Yep, the hot water heater was busted, wailing and dribbling water all down itself from the cold water intake at the top, all over the floor… and flooding the basement up to a depth of just over a centimeter. I then went to wake up Wayfare (who was not happy to be woken up suddenly in the middle of the night) before cutting the water and power (I didn’t want to step into the flood without someone else awake in case I electrocuted myself). Unlike Netbug, I have a cutoff for just the hot water heater, so I’ll still have at least cold water in the morning, but this is still going to suck. It also showcased how the foundation/basement tiles of old homes like this can be laid wrong or shift over time: the water pooled like crazy in the laundry room, but the only floor drain is in the furnace room, and there was at least one hump in the floor keeping the water from flowing out into the drain. It instead decided to move under the walls dividing the rooms and flood our storage area and the bathroom (and having the walls/gypsum drywall soaked through is going to suck come mould season). Even what water did meander its way over to the furnace room drain didn’t go in smoothly, instead choosing to overshoot around one side flooding our old window air conditioners before circling back around to the drain.

Oddly enough, the worst of the flooding went away all on its own as we started to shovel. Without the water continuing to flow to top it up it just seemed to seep away somewhere. Which, while saving me some of the effort of cleanup, just can’t be a good thing.

Of course, my landlord is in New Zealand for 3 weeks (I think this is the last of the 3 weeks), so this is going to be a nightmare to fix. The water heater has a big (recent-looking) sticker on it that says its the property of Union Gas… but calling them lead us no where. They couldn’t find a record of who owned the water heater, and unless they knew it was theirs, they weren’t sending anyone out to help us. I know I don’t pay a rental fee on my bill, and after putting me on hold a few times (though the lady on the phone was quite nice, as was their other 24-hour service person I had to call a few weeks ago), finally determined that my landlord had bought out the water heater, so it was up to us to get our landlord to fix it. Ugh.

There was an article in the London Free Press that made my head spin. The government is giving away free money (forgivable, interest free loans).

And very few people are taking advantage of it.

I have no idea why the government has this program (presumably to encourage home ownership or to prop up the bottom of the housing market), and the article doesn’t really give any reasons.

Funded by the senior governments but administered by municipalities, the program gives qualified renters a five or six per cent down payment. The loans usually run between $5,000 and $7,000.

The money must be paid back if the home is sold within 20 years, otherwise the loan is forgiven. Renters must get a pre-approved mortgage amount and have an annual household income below a maximum amount, which in London is $50,000.

No one is sure why the program hasn’t produced the expected flurry of applicants.

The London program had a tight deadline and a price limit of $120,000 on any home bought through the program. London launched the program Jan. 9 and expected to receive as many as 1,000 applications for 120 available loans. Officials planned to decide the “winners” through a lottery.

But by the deadline day Thursday, only 25 people had applied. A late rush boosted the total to 60.

[quoted out of order]

Wow, an interest free down payment, and if I stay in the house for 20 years, the money is free? If I was looking for a house, you could sign me up. Hell, I’d take two. I wonder why I hadn’t heard of this before?

Louise Stevens, London’s director of municipal housing, said the program was well-publicized in London in lending institutions, libraries, realtors and the media.

“We promoted the heck out of it,” she said.

Now granted, I’m not shopping for a house so I don’t talk to realtors or shop for mortgages, but I still never heard about it in the media or libraries. They must have hired the same advertising agency who spread the word about electoral reform. (What? Exactly.) In fact, here is an article on this program, and through the whole thing the program is never given a name! It’s simply “the program” or “a program”, no name, no website, and no managing department to contact (the closest we come is the “Municipal Affairs and Housing Ministry in Toronto”, which is I gather not the London part administering this program, and the name Louise Stevens).

Still, it seems like a somewhat silly program: while an interest-free loan of $5000 is nothing to sneeze at, it’s probably not going to make the difference between a renter getting a house or not. The article doesn’t mention whether that 5% down payment figure is the only down payment the prospective buyer would be allowed to make: i.e., could they take $15,000 of their own savings and make a 20% down payment? If so, that might be a killer, as the extra payments from having to carry mortgage insurance would quickly eat into the government’s interest free down payment.

Or maybe it’s that price ceiling: $120,000 doesn’t buy a heck of a lot in London these days. If I had a salary of ~$50,000 I could rent some awful nice houses (like the one I’m in now!) or 2/3 bedroom apartments and have some income left over for a car, savings, etc. (whatever it is people who don’t use all their money on food and housing spend it on). According to MLS, there’s only a handful of places under $120k in North London: 11 condos and 2 houses; half of those are one-bedrooms; about 120 in all of London. Granted, that’s just right now, and there could be more over a longer period of time (or before the “rush” on Thursday); but it would be a close thing indeed to potentially enough to fill this program in the span of just a month. I highly doubt there would be 1000 such places, as the London officials seemed to expect.

Sometimes I wonder where people get their ideas from. In searching for this program, I found an article from Jan 9 in the London Free Press announcing the beginning of the program, where they say that there were “22 homes and 83 townhouse or apartment condos for less than $120,000 in London.” Having read that then, how could they have possibly expected so many applicants? Sure, more renters can apply than there are homes, but to get 10 unique prospective buyers per house? That earlier article also gives this snippet of information: “If the home is sold within 20 years, the buyer must pay back the original loan, without interest, plus five per cent of any increased value of the home.” Now I think that this would probably work out quite well for the homeowner, but if you’re expecting your home to double in value within 3 years and then move, that little clause might send you off. On further thought, there’s another good reason why this program was doomed to failure: let’s say you were a renter/prospective homeowner, and wanted a house in the $120k neighbourhood. Or even more appropriately, someone who didn’t qualify for this program (an existing homeowner, or someone making over $50,000/year). Knowing about this program, you’d realize that there would potentially be a bidding war fueled by government money on houses/condos under $120k, and that all those bids would be capped at $120k. So if you really wanted a particular place, you could probably safely bid $120,001 and come in as the highest bidder (at least, higher than the government-handout mob).

Oh, and that earlier story has a web address for the program: but it’s wrong and points to a domain squatter instead. The proper address should be http://www.housing.london.ca/

God the Free Press sucks. One of these days it’s going to get to the point where I’d rather do work than read the LFP. I think that day might be tomorrow.

On The Fork is a high-end restaurant on the Forks of the Thames inside Museum London. I was thrown by this when trying to find it, I wasn’t expecting it to be inside the museum, way in the back. Museum admission is free, so this actually gave me an excuse to run quickly through a floor or two of it while waiting for the rest of our party to arrive. The view out the back is quite good, overlooking the forks of the Thames (hence the name) out behind the museum.

The waiter warned us right away that the portion sizes were quite small, and that there weren’t separate appetizers and entrees: instead, we were expected to order two (or three) items off the menu, and whichever was faster/easier/lighter would be brought out first. Everything is roughly “appetizer” sized, with a focus on presentation and style over portion size, though even after two plates and a dessert, some of our group was still hungry. This plan does allow for some variety (in fact, it’s a favourite of ours at Kelsey’s, where we can just order 3 appetizers to share instead of a main course) but also can make a meal get really unexpectedly expensive. Each dish ranged from $7 to $16, which is about what an entree costs at a more casual restaurant, so plan on a night at the Forks being about 2-3 times as much (which is not out of line with other upscale restaurants).

There were only 4 vegetarian options: a “warm salad” with goat’s cheese that didn’t sound, smell, or look very appealing to me; the gnocchi and tomato sauce; a very heavy creamy soup; and a squash ravioli which I figured would either be quite nice or be really grody. I played it safe and stuck with the gnocchi, and ordered it again for my second course, much to the disparagement of the waiter, who was quite a character (and really pushed a second course on me, even though I wasn’t very hungry). He was also very pushy when dessert time came around, really trying to sell everyone on a dessert, even though he didn’t really know what each option comprised (it was the first day with the new dessert menu).

On the Fork is definitely out of my usual price and haughtiness range, so I wouldn’t ordinarily recommend it. I also don’t think I would recommend it for dinner: for a larger meal, you’d be looking at most likely 3 dishes to satisfy, and that would just be ridiculously pricey. Plus, at night, the view of the forks wouldn’t be as good (AFAIK, there are no lights on the river) so half the attraction of the restaurant would be gone. If you do go there and are driving, be sure to check out the municipal lot directly in front of the museum doors first: we saw that it was pretty full and just went across the street to the ImPark lot, which ended up costing us $7.50 — while the municipal lot was quite full, there were about 3 spaces left as we walked through, and it would have only been $2.50 for the same time period!

Here’s a neat idea from London Hydro and the London Public Library: you can borrow a Kill-a-Watt energy meter from the library using your library card, and find out how much energy things around your house use (with the idea being that it would help you find ways to conserve). I think it’s a pretty neat idea to share equipment like that through the library.