Haven't been posting much, there hasn't been too much new stuff to discuss and I have talked about my trucking life to the nth degree.

However.

Jame's mom/grandma came down for the weekend.  She was looking for something in a hall closet and was looking at the wall. There is the back side of an AC vent that goes down the wall, it's an outlet on the other side of the wall facing the boys room.  It was covered with mold/mildew/  

See, the situation here has been the flooring all over the house has been buckling up.  It continues to get worse.  I kept wondering how it could possibly be the AC drain for condensation after all of this time and mentioned it a few times? I mean, there is only so much water coming out of it, the problem should be isolated and near the area around the central AC unit. Edited. There WAS only so much water coming out of that AC condensation drain, that was dealt with months ago. No water since then, yet the entire house worth of floors excepting my room has continued to have buckled up flooring. 

But even an experienced insurance adjuster had come over and declared it was that as well.  

But we found out last night that that was the furthest thing from the truth and what we found was rather shocking.  See, a tree branch fell off the giant oak tree onto the house like 5 years ago.  It did 12 grand worth of damage. That branch was the side of a tree itself.  They came and put on a new roof, or so we thought.  

No, they didn't put on a new roof. They put on new shingles, yes.  But....

James got the ladder out, came into my room and climbed up into the attic to see what the deal is with the ac vent.  The only way to find out was to get up in there and take a look from the top. He came back down 20 minutes later, visibly agitated.  He got out his camera and said take a look at this.  He had taken a large number of pictures of the roof from the bottom side. There were gaping holes in the plywood.  The roofing company did not fix the damaged wood, they just put shingles over empty space!  That was shocking.  For a reputable roofing company that is widely respected in this area?  

Let me just say I've never heard of a roof being replaced without fixing any wood issues underneath it and especially with a tree that has fallen and damaged the wood.  

There is FAR more damage to this house than just some water under the flooring.  This from an unscrupulous roofer who charged for everything but didn't do everything.  There was black mold on the wood where water had seeped in through the holes every time it rains.  yes, BLACK MOLD.  This all of a sudden made MUCH more sense.  The entire house, literally, has flooring buckling up and we really couldn't understand why it was doing that.  I mean, we had accepted the ac unit theory in the absence of any better reason to explain why the hardwood floors are literally starting to lift up from the wood it rests on underneath. 

Lord only knows what kind of black mold might be under there or in the walls.  All of that water is coming from the roof, through the attic, down the walls and into the flooring.  I'm literally ready to move out of here.  Like, call the insurance adjuster tomorrow morning - which is Monday - and get some emergency action going here to rent a house and get the bleep out of here.  No wonder people are having respiratory problems and allergy conditions going in here.  I'm telling you, I do not want to live in a house with black mold.  They will have to tear down the roof, parts of the ceiling, as much wall/drywall and rip up literally all of the flooring to fix this mess. 

You can bet that isn't going to happen overnight. We are literally going to have to move out of this house to have this damage repaired.  And what is going to happen with that roofing company is unknown.  They want to call the insurance adjuster and get his thoughts on what to do next first.  Whatever, but we need an immediate plan of action.  I feel like I'm breathing in poison being in here now, especially knowing that there are several holes right above my bedroom.  Again, how do you put shingles over nothing and sleep well at night taking that kind of money?  Is this some standard in the industry to do this? I've really never heard of not replacing bad or missing plywood, you do all of that first and make sure you have a solid roof before you put down any shingles, yes? 

I guess I"ll have to look it up, but I feel like the insurance adjuster might know - tho this guy missed the mold in the closet so who knows.  

I can't even imagine the price tag to fix all of this after all is said and done. An entire house' worth of flooring? A whole new roof again plus removing all mold laden wood and replacing it?  Walls? Ceiling? Other damage we don't even know about?  That's 30 to 40 grand minimum.  Probably a lot more than that.  Paying for another house and utilities.  Really I can see double that money or even more.  Almost to the point of replacing the whole house.  Because that's really what you're doing with that much damage.  

So we were all reeling with thoughts in our brains of the aftermath of all of this.  What if insurance doesn't pay for it, citing the faulty roofer and going after them instead? but I think the insurance company paid the roofer directly, if  that's true then that's not going to happen. I doubt the insurance company complicit in this matter, not fixing a problem correctly the first time will lead to greater costs down the road.  if they are going to cover the damage, then they should insure that the damage is corrected the first time.  

The only good thing is if this house is basically rebuilt from the flooring on up, you basically are getting a new house for nothing.  So in that sense, that would be worth the trouble.  This house has hardwood everywhere, including crown molding on the ceilings and wood around everything really.  Expensive stuff.  Hardwood flooring is some of the most expensive flooring there is.  

This is s developing situation.  Hopefully know more tomorrow.  

Thanksgiving was fun.  Was glad I was home for it.  Food was great, company was great, a few games as well.  I went to Brownsville the next morning - no detention pay to be found there with fully 3 empty trailers available and I was the only driver coming down.  That's 4 trips in a row down there with no detention.  Guess I best alter my view of that run. The money is good enough tho with the miles and being only a 2 day run.

I got up 4:10 next morning, got on the road and  100 miles up the road?  A bunch of warning lights came on, including a stop sign and a constant, loud, incessant ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding noise going off.  I've had this happen before, it went off. Then came back, on, off and on and so forth for a while and then? I just stayed on. I stopped at a Love's and checked the fluid, everything good there.  I could smell exhaust in the truck.  After contacting my manager, I stopped at the TA in Ganado and they did a diagnostic on it - an EGR valve and something they couldn't fix.

Lovely.  I already knew what was going to be requested of me.  Drive it back.  I had already driven 150 miles with that dinging noise, 300 to go.   Sure enough, the manager contacted the lead mechanic, who said it wouldn't be a problem to drive it back in that condition. What that meant was it wouldn't cause any more damage to the truck. It did NOT mean that I wouldn't have to suffer some ridiculous amounts of noise and having to leave the windows open the entire trip back.

If it had been the previous manager? She would have found a shop to take it to and I would have sat there until they fixed it and not subject me to that kind of utter bs.  

Whatever.  I toughed it out, put in my earphones and tried to drown out the noise as much as possible for the entire trip.  By the time I got back to the yard I was highly annoyed and irritated.  Good thing there wasn't anyone there.  I was in no mood.  Foregone conclusion the run I was supposed to go on today was given to someone else, no way I was going to just say sure, I'll take that run! with that thing like that, they won't fix it until Monday.  And win or lose, I am still intent on going to that auction.   I'm just going to take some more vacation time to make up for what should have been another run to help buffer the next pay period.  

So, last night I got out a bag of navy beans, dumped them in a pot of water and then today made delicious navy bean soup with the ham bone left over from Thanksgiving. Absolutely delicious.  

Tomorrow I'm going to the city to find a listing of condemned properties and also any properties with liens on them and compare them to the properties I want to potentially buy.  I'm reading this paper with the properties on it as tho there are potentially other liens on these properties as well. That doesn't really make any sense to me, why wouldn't they include all of that on the sale? So you could get hit with a backdoor assessment of thousands of dollars for removing buildings or upkeep. 

More research I'd like to get in before going to the auction 2 days from now.  But there are certain properties that obviously have no violations, were not condemned and have not had any kind of city intervention. Such as the house I'd like to get.  Or the 5 acre property south of town. It's never been developed and I don't think it's even in the city limits.  Another property I'm not so sure about and a couple of others that may have had houses on them and potentially were cleaned up by the city.  

  I'm just trying to get some Christmas shopping done well in advance.  Not sure what my son wants. He always asks for movie theater gift cards but is Arizona even allowing people to go to the theaters? I'll have to look that up. Mom is taken care of, my oldest brother will get his normal thing.  Then there's the boys and James and Taylor here and that's probably going to be the extent of my Christmas stuff this year. I didn't even buy anything for myself on Black Friday.  I wanted a much larger screen monitor for my desktop but the one I wanted was sold out shortly after it was put up for sale.  

Spending money - besides investing in property - doesn't seem to be a good idea right now.  I've set a limit to what I will spend on property, I can't deplete my entire savings, gotta leave something in there for emergencies/fallback.  But I have some funds that I think I can get something if people don't bid stuff up higher than what it should be at an auction.  Enough for one post.  

G'day.