If you read this blog (and I know you don’t because right now I still have single digit readers), you’ll know that last summer I was hit with a number of high priced setbacks, including a gaping hole in my pool liner, and refacing my driveway that was growing far too much grass.
You’d think that having spent roughly $100k on updates for my house in the past two years, and more like $150k in six years, updating and fixing everything the previous owners had neglected, that I’d be in a good place. Nope. My first mistake is that I forgot there were more old appliances lurking in my basement. My second mistake is forgetting that the more things you own, the more things will break.
Here is the complete list of things that broke in the month of August:
- My truck
- One of our basement mini-split HVAC units
- My desktop computer
- Our dryer
- The inverter for our solar array
Let’s break this down:
My Truck
When you buy a 32 year old truck, you expect things to break. The whole reason I got the truck was because I knew I could fix the majority of things that were likely to break. So it wasn’t a surprise when I was driving to Home Depot and suddenly my exhaust got really, really loud. When I got home I discovered that one of the headers connecting the engine to the rest of the exhaust, had cracked and broken off.
This, in itself, isn’t a difficult fix provided everything goes to plan. Given the age of my truck and the amount of rust on all of the parts under the hood (the header rusted through), I don’t expect everything to go to plan. This cost me about $250 in parts and should only cost me an afternoon of my time.
The Mini-split
We finished our basement last year, and as part of the project we included a two head mini-split HVAC system. It wasn’t exactly necessary, but I work down here and the basement gets humid in the summer and cold in the winter so it was worth the $3k to me.
Earlier this summer, I noticed the unit in my office kept rebooting, and then making a gurgling noise for up to 20 minutes. This didn’t seem like the correct behavior to me, so I called the installer. After three trips to my house, they decided the pump for the unit was defective. Thankfully they replaced this for free. But while they were here, my wife asked about a funky smell coming from our central air for the rest of the house.
As it turns out, the installer for the central air didn’t put a “trap” in the drain line to prevent the unit from sucking in its own condensation water, and we were blowing a mildewy smell around the house. It was quick to clean the inside of the blower, but the trap cost us $200 to have installed.
My Desktop Computer
For the past 23 years I have built my own desktop computers. I have had to do ground up rebuilds three times. That’s just shy of 8 years per computer and something I would challenge anyone to get out of a machine used for everything from work, to video games, to video conversion. Last week, I saw a CPU heat alert that quickly cleared. I thought nothing of it and went to get lunch. When I came back, it was fried.
At this point, I was left with the decision to replace my six year old motherboard, the CPU, the RAM and the CPU cooler I no longer trusted, or buy something fully assembled. The former option would have cost me roughly $600 and an afternoon dedicated to properly rebuilding my PC. The latter would cost $1000 and include a new graphics card, tri-band wifi card, case with additional cooling, power supply, hard drives and more.
For me, computers are my lifeline. I work remotely for a tech company. I’m a deeply technical person who spends the majority of my time immersed in technology, building, conceptualizing, and using it. I don’t mind spending extra money on a computer that will literally pay itself off in a week. For the first time in 23 years, I bought a fully built computer. It’s a custom build and I know every single part that’s in it. I know I can upgrade it and keep it running for a decade easily. I just hate laying out the money!
The Dryer
This was a kick in the pants. We just completed a kitchen renovation including around $8k worth of appliances. I thought I’d put the appliance thing to bed for a long, long time, when suddenly our dryer stopped drying things. The dryer was old when we moved in, and almost seven years later it was showing much more age. There was no sense even attempting to fix it. Although the washer was mostly functional (it was missing the main knob and some of the LED’s stopped working) we decided it would be best to replace the pair. After much shopping around and comparing models and prices, we settled on a pair from LG that set us back $3100. I had no idea laundry appliances were so costly.
The Solar Inverter
If you’re not familiar with the inner workings of solar equipment, there are two major components: the panels, and the inverter. The panels on the roof generate direct current (DC), which is unusable by your appliances. The inverter, as the name implies, converts that direct current to alternating current (AC) which you can use in your home.
Most inverters are warrantied up to 10 years. I’ve had mine for five years, and it seems like a storm we had in mid August sent a surge through the house that fried the inverter. Thankfully, sometimes warranties are a great thing, and the company is replacing the whole unit for free. Plus it starts the clock on a whole new 10 year warranty!
An annoying downside is that our solar array will not generate any power for a month during peak sunshine and air conditioning season. This has already caused a $200 electric bill to pay for the energy I’m not generating. It doesn’t sound like I’ll be reimbursed for the power I wasn’t able to generate, so we’ll call this a $200+ fix. Of course a new inverter would have cost $7k, so I think this worked out in my favor.
This is the third summer in a row that I’ve laid out large amounts of money either for fixes or planned goals, and it seems I’m just doomed to expensive summers (see expensive summer #1, and expensive summer #2). Thankfully we were very well prepared financially to handle all of these curveballs, but the demand on my time is stressful. Dealing with all of the warranties, and shopping for parts, and having to do the work in many cases would be easy without a full time job and full time dad duties.
Hopefully at this point I have no more appliances left to break and I can ride out the year without any more surprises. Changes of seasons are usually a bit of a financial strain, and I have chimney sweeps, firewood, oil deliveries and the like to look forward to.
Freed by 50 