Random thoughts thread

Status
Not open for further replies.
Have you considered a percolation test to determine drainage capabilities? Standing water and/or silt rings on grass indicate pooling, which indicates high saturation. Developers are out to sell lots; they won't always tell you about the suitability of the lots for building purposes.

If you build with a basement on ground that stays saturated, you'll want a really REALLY good sump pump. The reason I asked about rural is if it's "undeveloped", you can look up the soil type online and find out what the properties and suitability ratings are for that soil type. I'm not sure how to do that for Wisky soils...maybe contact the DNR? That information is less useful if the developers moved all the topsoil around (or away) because they have effective changed the properties of the soils.


I may do that - thanks for the info! I'm really just wondering if there would be a wet spot in the yard during a 2008-type year.
 
250K isn't always about bigger=better, sometimes it's market. My 250K house in Johnson county was a 3BR without a finished basement.

I agree. My house in Johnson County (Kansas City) would probably be $20K less on the Missouri side. My paragraphs were sorta mutually exclusive thoughts, but looking back at it, it didn't read that way.

My sister in San Diego might be able to live in a refrigerator box on someone else's property for the same amount as I spent on my house.
 
I agree. My house in Johnson County (Kansas City) would probably be $20K less on the Missouri side. My paragraphs were sorta mutually exclusive thoughts, but looking back at it, it didn't read that way.

My sister in San Diego might be able to live in a refrigerator box on someone else's property for the same amount as I spent on my house.


Ahh, OK.

Bold part: There's a reason for that...no one wants to live in Missouri.

And SD: Yeah, I remember when I was out there for work, seeing FSBO signs on the curb for houses the same size as mine, 4X the price.
 
House values vary so much by location. The house we bought down here in the Wichita area is now valued at 176k and it would easily be 200+ in most Iowa cities.
 
If I'm not posting tomorrow then a tornado ripped my house apart

6e1f2a80f80f23da5afa6f1f15133a544929030c297d75df13f2a753d397add9.jpg
 
I slept in my bathroom in the basement actually. At least I didn't have to walk to the shower this morning lol.


where do you live? My coworker and her husband slept in their basement bathroom as well! Sounds like I should have slept in the car in the underground parking last night.
 
and we've talked to a couple people who built (one locally) and it went very well for them. But the horror stories are why we had stayed away for the most part. We'll see what happens but there are some definite potential positives for us if we go this direction

It can go either way and you can do a lot to keep it positive based on contractors, etc. Also bad weather can wreak havoc at inopportune times.

I just don't even like the idea of - if it turns out perfect and on time - you still have a mud-hole yard for at least a year and probably nothing very lush for 3 or 4. Not a big deal, but all that mud and dirt tracking into a new house.

Anyway. Best of luck!
 
This ISU football poster is creeping me out. I have it at my desk and it's just a big guy in a helmet looking at me and 5 little boys smiling and pointing.
 
It can go either way and you can do a lot to keep it positive based on contractors, etc. Also bad weather can wreak havoc at inopportune times.

I just don't even like the idea of - if it turns out perfect and on time - you still have a mud-hole yard for at least a year and probably nothing very lush for 3 or 4. Not a big deal, but all that mud and dirt tracking into a new house.

Anyway. Best of luck!

oh, the new houses we've been looking at all had sod yards. Even the ones with grass seed have looked pretty good. There was one we drove by in early April that was just getting finished and they had put the seed in, and when I drove by yesterday, they had a pretty good looking yard. There's no way I'd let them leave it just as dirt - and people we've talked to said you just don't do that. The runoff from the rain would be so bad and you'd run the risk of getting water in your basement.
 
This past weekend, I introduced my daughter to the old Bugs Bunny cartoon where he was a matador. Her belly laughs made me realize I deprived her of good cartoons for too long.
 
where do you live? My coworker and her husband slept in their basement bathroom as well! Sounds like I should have slept in the car in the underground parking last night.

Southwest Cedar Rapids near westdale mall. Not much damage where I was at, but after I drove a bit I found a bank with no power and around it trees snapped everywhere. Right next to the bank was a road ranger with a gas tank flipped over.
 
This past weekend, I introduced my daughter to the old Bugs Bunny cartoon where he was a matador. Her belly laughs made me realize I deprived her of good cartoons for too long.

By the time my kids were growing up, they had sanitized the Warner Bros cartoons on network TV, taking out the "violent" scenes, questionable dialog, etc. They weren't even worth watching. I think cartoon network had the original versions on when they first went on the air. Best cartoons ever.
 
I had emergency oral surgery today to remove an infected molar. This was ten times worse that having impacted wisdom teeth removed 20+ years ago in college. For 4-5 hours after surgery there wasn't enough Vicodin in the world to stop what felt like electricity moving through a nerve in my face. All this got me thinking - dental issues had to be the top reason for suicide in pre-modern medicine times. I can't imagine dealing with that kind of unending blinding pain in a sod house on the prairie.

And now, now, back to truly bizarre dreams thanks to narcotics.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.