Status Report, 6 Feb 2023

Big Picture: Where are we?
Duncan St. is completed and handed over to tenant.

Now that Duncan is settled, I went to California to address some issues at our property there. Good, productive trip.

Goals from week of 30 Jan

Repair sewer line at Orange Ave. (done)

Corp Update

Continuing evaluation of new subject properties.
Hosted a successful open house at Mintwood for the folks who did the work. Lots of fun to see people come in and see the results of all of that labor. We had a small give-away (a Milwaukee heated jacket). To enter the drawing, you just had to provide a suggestion for how we could do things better next time. The winner was a member of the demolition team, and she’s looking forward to her warm new jacket.

Accomplishments

Mintwood St

(Jan 30) Roof leak seems to have been sealed up. No additional indications of water inside the building. I’ll let it be for a few weeks, then I’ll repair the drywall on the ceiling in the office.
{Jan 23} We have a small leak in the roof over the office. Last weekend I spotted a nail pop in the ceiling with a tell-tail ring of rust. This weekend, there’s joint tape bubbling up. I went onto the roof and caulked everything that looks like it might be even close to suspect. Fortunately I’m pretty good at drywall repair- though it won’t be fixed before next weekend. (And for obvious reasons, they team that did that roof wasn’t invited to the party- this just served as proof that it was the right decision.)
Landscaping: No big change- other than the fact that I hauled the trash from the back yard to the dump. Worth noting that dump fees have gone up 30% in the past 6 months. I haven’t done anything with the landscape plans bc we learned that the neighbor in the back (with the failing retaining wall) is selling her place. We’ll wait for the new owner to take possession and then we’ll approach them about sharing costs on the wall.

Pearl St.

No particular news.

Orange Ave

We dug up and replaced the sewer line at Orange Ave. There was a total blockage on Dec 25th (yep). We had been able to snake it out enough for them to be functional, but wanted to address the underlying issue. We hired a local plumbing contractor to excavate the line, pull out the old line, and replace with new ABS.
The core of the problem was that the wisteria by the porch had found a large hold in the sewer line that had been (sort-of) patched up. Plants ALWAYS find moisture like that, so it was not a surprise. The team dug out the line, replaced it, and backfilled it all. Happy with the result, and I have a new plumber in the Bay Area.
While I was there I also attended to a number of other maintenance issues – things like replacing a corroded supply line on the hot water heater, etc.
Tenants have given notice that they’ll be moving at the end of their lease, so I’m going to need to figure out how to lease the house as an absentee landlord.
(1/16) The plumbing I thought I was going to use jacked up his price when i actually shrank the scope, so he’s out. I have chosen someone else, and have scheduled the work for the end of Jan/ early Feb. I’m going to fly out there to be on site during the project. It’s too big a job to ignore.
Meanwhile, they were able to snake the line again from the street-side clean out. The tech on site said not to flush paper, but I’ve told the tenants that they can do so. My thought process is that this pipe was this bad for > 1 year, and it only recently backed up. We have now removed all of the roots (via the second snake) so it is better than it was in November 2022 (when it appeared to be working fine), so there’s no reason to continue to inconvenience the tenants.

(12/25) Tenant had a sewage problem in early December, which we had snaked. Unfortunately, they did a lousy job and it all backed up in an ugly way on Christmas day. Had a sewer cleaner out, and they got flow re-established, but there are some root intrusions under the deck that we need to address. This may be a significant cost item.

Duncan St.

I have some remaining punch list items at Duncan which I will start on the week of Feb 13.

Goals for week of 6 February