Thermo and sound insulation issues, and many more to come in another post.
BEFORE you buy any home you will need it to be inspected by an engineer. The report will tell you a lot about the bones of the house and where things stand.
When you buy a home, you will also need to retain a lawyer.
As a landlord, and building owner, you will also have to secure someone to do maintenance on the home.
Your HVAC should have been installed after the electrical load has been determined. A mechanical plan must be filed with it as well.
It sounds like you bought a home in Bushwick without checking all the boxes.
Hasty GREED has been motivating buyers, and developers to cut corners. BAD IDEA! This is exactly what happens.
astoriahomeowner
in General Discussion 6 years and 4 months ago
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reginaldodom
in General Discussion 6 years and 5 months ago
I am sorry for the very long post here.
I am also sorry for my not so perfect English, it’s not my first language.
I will have two parts for this post, my story and my high priority issues. If you don’t have the time to read it all and would like to help with the issues on hand please jump to the end of this post.
After living in rental apartments for 20 years we decided it’s time to make the move to a house and we bought a flipped ‘gut renovated’ wood frame row house in Bushwick.
What a mistake!
After almost two years in the house I start to realize and understand the magnitude of this mistake.
As a side note I don’t understand how this fraudulent house flipping industry/business was not already covered by a front page story and also I don’t understand how these houses get the C of O. These properties should have failed on numerous buildings codes.
Back to the house. If I have to describe the house than it’s a nice envelope with some nice looking walls inside, some nice appliances and the rest is a big mess. I would describe it as a hollow house made out of paper. The house was inspected by a reputable inspector and in addition we had a separate HVAC inspector for the two HVAC systems. Both failed on their job.
The reason I’m posting on this forum is to try to fix the mess, or maybe I’ll be advised to sell and start from scratch somewhere else, which if convinced I might do eventually.
The first advise I’m looking for, which is not the only one but on the top of the list, is in regards to thermo and sound insulation.
Issue number one: Thermo insulation
There are areas in the house that are almost at the same temperature as the outside and you can actually feel a breeze of cold air in the winter when standing in these areas.
There is a temperature difference of 40° between the cold area and the other areas in the house. The HVAC system is meh but it keeps the house at the desired temperature accept for these cold areas.
One area is by the kitchen cabinets, where the floor is so cold you have to wear socks or shoes to stand there. We also had an amazing incident of water pipes to the kitchen sink freeze! They are running indoors, under the floor, all the way from the main water pipe and they froze twice already, meaning the temperature was below freezing where it froze.
Issue number two: Sound insulation.
As sound travels by air, this hollow construction between rooms and between the floors causes no sound barriers what’s so ever. There is nothing but the ceiling thin dry wall, with receded light fixtures that are another airway for sound, and the floor thin baseboard and hardwood floor.
We can hear everything between rooms and more annoying between floors. We have tenants on the garden level apartment and we can hear them talking when they have a quiet conversation and they can hear as as well. The worst with the sound problem is in the basement where my kids hang with friends and have sleep overs. The tenants complain about the noise on sleep over nights because kids don’t go to bed early when they have a sleep over 😉
Now to the help I hope to find here. I’m looking for a contractor/architect that can inspect the above and recommend a remedy for both thermo and sound insulation or if anyone in this forum had encountered the same issues I would love to hear what was done to solve it.
Since this post is already longer than I intended it to be I will hold my other questions for another post.
Thank you all for taking the time to read this post.
Your help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
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dorkofwindsor | 6 years and 5 months ago
The frozen pipe issue is somewhat abnormal and sounds related to the cold floor problem. You may want to either invest or have someone over with a thermal imaging camera to find the problem areas. The sound issues are not abnormal. Cheap gut reno flips in NYC tend to be all the same. In general flippers can only make money by cutting corners – but one layer of drywall is all that is needed to pass building code (fire rating) in NYC. Even if these types of bottom feeding contractors know about sound isloation (unlikely), it certainly wouldn’t be in the flip budget. The market for unrenovated properties is so expensive due to scarcity. One thing that can possibly be done is add two additional layers of drywall to the ceilings. You could also add an extra to the walls, but unfortunately all the moulding is compromised and would require all new cuts / sizing. If you don’t have crown moulding I’d start with the ceilings and see what that does. If you like that, perhaps try the walls only between adjacent (bed)rooms. The issue is likely more than drywall, but this might help make it a little more livable. Sometimes electrical outlets placed in the same exact spot in different rooms – basically creating a hole for sound to easily penetrate both rooms – this can be slightly mitigated with sealing them up properly. There are a lot of potential issues, but as you can see there are far too many problems, most of which can’t be seen. Inspectors only do visuals and inspecting a flip can’t tell you very much because everything is covered up.
cate | 6 years and 5 months ago
Just let me say I am so sorry to hear of your troubles. You are not alone. I met someone recently who bought a flip and said they are basically redoing it themselves bit by bit. Looking on the bright side, re the extraordinary sounding cold spots, it’s possible the remedy may ultimately turn out to be fairly simple and quite do-able, with techniques such as caulking, etc. I think it’s great you’re interviewing contractor/architects, that seems like a good strategy.
slopefarm | 6 years and 5 months ago
Yes, the reno/flip business is a dirty one. We managed to find the phoniness of our frame house flipper reno before we closed, ended up in litigation, then closed with a discount which we spent to renovate the house ourselves. Your problem is you paid for a renovated house but just got an unrenovated house dressed up to look renovated.
Sound isolation is going to be difficult in an old frame house. If you have old pine floors, there are gaps. If you have heat risers, there are holes. There isn’t typically insulation between floors. Sound is going to travel. That one is on the house, not on the flipper.
I would focus on the weatherproofing/insulation issues. Follow dork’s advice and get someone in with a thermal camera to ID the worst sources of cold. Cate’s right, you may be able to attack some of it with simple weatherproofing measures around windows, doors, outlets (definitely check outlets on or near exterior walls, and if there is cold air, you can get weatherproofing for under the plate covers), etc. If cold air is coming in where the floor meets an exte rior wall, you can do come caulking or weather stripping and cover with a simple quarter round toe molding to hide it.
Get someone in before it warms up too much so you can map the problem, then you have all spring and summer to work on it before it gets cold again.
greenworks | 6 years and 5 months ago
Agreed on slope’s, cate’s and dorks sage advice but just FYI, a few years ago, I got a thermal imaging camera as a gift (yes crazy lady I am, I asked for it) – it simply plugs in to your cell phone and uses the cell phone screen as a display. Mine is the “Seek” thermal imaging camera sold on amazon but I’m sure there are newer better ones now, tho the Seek has been just great. A few years ago they were around $250 and we have gotten so much use out of it it’s ridiculous.
We’ve also thermal imaged each other, the dogs, etc etc.
So you can probably pick one up for significantly less than hiring someone.
cate | 6 years and 5 months ago
booisgolden, this is intriguing, but I am scared — what if I get one and the camera tells us we have heat escaping absolutely everywhere, as seems only too likely? What did you do to address?
greenworks | 6 years and 5 months ago
Oh you will find heat escaping everywhere! But never fear, just think of it as the first step towards fixing the issue, lowering your heating/cooling bills, and just being more comfy in general. A lot of the fixes were simple and easy to fix with caulk and Roxul.
It’s also kind of fun. You’ll see your home (and your family and pets) like you never have before.
cate | 6 years and 5 months ago
Ha, thank you!
slopefarm | 6 years and 5 months ago
Short of getting NASA engineers involved, no old house is going to hold temperature indefinitely. The point of identifying heat loss is to find the worst culprits, as well as the easiest fives, and address those problems, first. The goal is to slow down heat loss until it is basically manageable, not to hermetically seal the house.
slopefarm | 6 years and 5 months ago
Easiest “fixes” – sorry.
stoopsitter | 6 years and 5 months ago
So sorry to read about your situation. We had an experience of an internal pipe freezing. The kitchen supply line was positioned too close to the back wall of the house. Where it passed through the ground floor, an old door to a now demolished lean-to had been permanently closed off. But as a result the area was at least 2 inches shallower than the rest of the wall. We built up the thickness externally using a rigid foam panel and brick veneer. Problem solved. All of which is to say it sounds like the flipper removed actual layers of the physical envelope of your house and never replaced them. You can consult with a company like Federal Conservation (Dix Hills, LI) about insulation solutions. Or, contact Bright Power who have done brownstone and rowhouse energy audits for Pratt Institute. I fear the fix will be expensive and require you to move out of your home while the work is done. Also, can you add heating strategically in the rooms that need it most, e.g. floor level HW rads in the kitchen?
reginaldodom
in General Discussion 6 years and 5 months ago
Thank you all for all the advice and the comforting words. I know it’s a cliche but as long as we’re healthy and happy the house problems are just a minor headache we have to deal with…or maybe a major headache but still just a headache.
I might get a thermal camera just to play around with, imaging the house and the dog ;-), and I also might be able to fix some leaks of cold air but I also think I need someone to come and analyze/diagnose the weatherproofing issue because as I see it we might need to redo the whole back wall of the house with proper insulation. This, in my opinion, might be a better solution considering some other problems I didn’t mention like some water leaks around the windows.
Thank you slope for the reminder to run these scans before it gets warmer, I did think of waiting with it but now I think I should do it sooner than later.
I would like to raise another issue we have that I need to address sooner than later.
We have a sliding door to a deck, at the back of the house, it is an aluminum frame and the draining water holes were covered with the st ucco, which results in water leaks into the house when it rains because the water can’t drain through the draining holes.
Can anyone recommend a contractor that can fix this issue? I think that the whole thing needs to be redone, meaning taking the frame out and installing it back the right way so the water can drain out of the house through the draining holes. I might be wrong but a professional windows guy can figure it out.
Once again thank you all very much for everything.
cate | 6 years and 5 months ago
Re the window leaks, might just need caulking and flashing. This was the case with ours when we had new replacements installed.
reginaldodom
in General Discussion 6 years and 5 months ago
@cate This might be needed as well but the frame has draining holes, which the water should drained through to the outside and these holes were covered by whoever did the stucco on the outside wall.