Some Follow-ups: Basement, Bugs, and HVAC

Here are a few follow-ups on some topics mentioned in previous blogs.

The Basement
A few weeks ago, I noted that the goal of doing my own jackhammering in the basement was to save money. At the time that I blogged about the hoped-for savings, I hadn't yet received the bill from the city for the rental/dumping charges on the roll-off container. The savings quoted by the company that installed the sump system was $1700 if I were to do my own jackhammering. Offsetting that savings was a cost of around $210 for a week's rental of a jackhammer. I just received the bill from the city for the roll-off service, which came to $270. Then there were also a couple of tools that I bought (a pick axe and a shovel with a straight forward edge, which made it easier to shovel the debris from the concrete floor). I'm including the cost of these tools, even though I will have them for the long term, because I wouldn't have purchased them had it not been for the basement project itself. They came to around $38. So bottom line, the savings ended up to be something like $1700 - $210 - $270 - $38 = $1182.

My wife asked me if I would have done the jackhammering myself if I had to do it all over again. I think the answer would still be "yes". The savings weren't as much as I had originally hoped, but money saved always amounts to more than just the obvious amount that wasn't spent. For example, let's say I'm in the 20% tax bracket. (Note: I have no idea what the actual IRS tax brackets are, or which one I fall into. I just plug the numbers into TurboTax every year and let it handle the rest.) If I were going to spend $1700, that means I would have to have earned more than $1700 in wages to bring home the $1700 to be paid to a contractor. I would have had to earn $2125 in order to have $1700 in take-home pay with which to pay the contractor. ($2125 - 20% income tax = $1700 take-home). Rather than paying that out to someone else though, I still have managed to keep $1182 in after-tax savings that I can now spend on something else that I need to do to the house. And since I like doing things myself, that $1182 will go a lot farther than it otherwise would.

But probably one of the best advantages to the whole thing is that I got to enrich my "life-experience" (and the experience of a few of my friends) by running a jackhammer! This is nuts, I realize, but hey....

The Bugs
We had the exterminator come about a week and a half ago. Our primary inspiration for inviting the exterminator was to get rid of the carpenter ants that, despite the lovely Midwest weather, wanted to come indoors to see us.

With the spraying complete, bugs are dying in droves. The basement seems to be their preferred place to expire. The ones that are the most dramatic about dying are the crickets. These guys do it up big time, which I will describe shortly.

I'm not sure what kind of crickets we have. They are utterly repulsive. They aren't like the black chirping crickets that I remember from growing up in Texas. These crickets are a light-tan-almost-albino variety. They don't even have a charming chirp. Their bodies are somewhat bulbous, and the don't crunch when you step on them -- they pop. Did I mention that they are absolutely repulsive? I'll take a roach over these things anytime. My wife still thinks roaches are worse. Well, at least she did think that. Thursday evening, we were working on getting the house cleaned up for a visit from my sister. My wife was tending to some laundry down in the basement. As she ascended the basement stairs, our conversation went something like this:

She: Augh! Augh! Disgusting!
Me: What?
She: The crickets! Augh! Disgusting!
Me: Are there a lot of them?
She: Not that many, but they are disgusting when they die!
Me: What do they do?

(Here comes the cricket drama I referred to earlier...)

She: Augh! Their legs fall off, and they lie there writhing and oozing liquid! Augh! Disgusting! Absolutely disgusting!

Seriously folks, leaking crickets are not something you want in your basement. I mean, we're glad they're dying, but the whole death process is as dramatic as something from a Shakespeare tragedy.

HVAC Update
We've heard back from one of the HVAC contractors with a bid for a dual (upstairs/downstairs) geothermal system. I'm meeting with one of the other contractors tomorrow to talk over his company's proposal. It seems odd to me that I haven't heard a peep from the other two contractors that are supposed to be bidding the job. Maybe with the hot weather we've been having, they're up to their eyeballs in requests from other people who want their system replaced now.

In the meantime, we're actually muddling through the hot weather pretty well. We have a window A/C in our bedroom which makes for pretty good sleeping, and there are lots of fans scattered throughout the house. Needless to say, shorts, T-shirts, and flip-flops are our standard uniforms here at home when we're not suited up to do demolition of one kind or another.

Well, now that the basement is cleaned up from all the jackhammering and plaster smashing, I think I'll go down and start putting my workshop back in order.....