Clairemont – Starter Home -> Rental

[yipla]

On schools, right now we’re just not that concerned because we don’t have kids. When the time comes, we might re-evaluate and move to another neighborhood. Or do the private school thing.

On HOAs, I also just can’t stand them. I come from a family that does not like neighborly intrusions on our business. And I can’t stand the idea of making a monthly payment for the rest of my life, without building any equity, and with little control over the amount of the payment.

[livinincali]

[quote=yipla]On schools, right now we’re just not that concerned because we don’t have kids. When the time comes, we might re-evaluate and move to another neighborhood. Or do the private school thing.

On HOAs, I also just can’t stand them. I come from a family that does not like neighborly intrusions on our business. And I can’t stand the idea of making a monthly payment for the rest of my life, without building any equity, and with little control over the amount of the payment.[/quote]

The only problem with that is you build very little equity in the front end of a 30 year mortgage. I see that you’re planning to rent this unit out so maybe that doesn’t matter to you. If you do plan to sell you only have about 9.5% equity at the end of 5 years and a little over 20% equity at the end of 10 years. After a 5-6% commission in year 5 of a $500K mortgage you have about $15K in equity left over. Your total payments have been a little over $100K, you’ve paid $30K+ in property taxes so you’re really -$15K after those first 5 years and I have not even included any maintenance.

In the old days you could count of appreciation to accelerate equity building but I’m not sure that’s a safe bet right now. We’re at the high end of affordability right now and the two relief valves for that are higher incomes or lower interest rates. Neither of which seem real likely.

[bewildering]

[quote=livinincali]
In the old days you could count of appreciation to accelerate equity building but I’m not sure that’s a safe bet right now. We’re at the high end of affordability right now and the two relief valves for that are higher incomes or lower interest rates. Neither of which seem real likely.[/quote]

This is very true. My decision to buy a house in Clairemont was based on rent costs (and lack of availability decent rentals). The house appreciating in value did not factor into my decision, although future rents rising might have influenced the thinking a little bit.

I hesitate to predict the future BUT I think it is UNlikely Clairemont homes will appreciate in value at all. The limit on prices is due to financing. Conforming lending limits of $540,000 (10% down) and the FHA has tightened up their standards.

[yipla]

Yes, our decision to buy at this time is driven by a need to live somewhere. That means, renting at fairly high prices, or buying. I’m not really counting on appreciation in the short term, but hopefully there will be some appreciation over the long term.

[UCGal]

[quote=Supagyrl88]We got our house in 2010 for $450k, our max limit. At the time, there were a bunch of fixer uppers for $330k and under and we gave up on those. Ours was new construction, rebuild so everything was new. We got lucky. It was us or a $430k cash offer. It’s not like we got our house dirt cheap, but we did put $90k down and were able to refinance for 3.5%. I know a lot of people choose to live up in north county for schools and such (clairemont is not known for its schools, we choices into UTC). We looked at del sur and didn’t like the high HOAs and basically no yard and neighbors staring into our windows. I will never get used to that. If you do decide to live in clairemont, stay away from Clairemont Mesa Blvd at least by 2 blocks! 🙂 good luck with your search.[/quote]

Just a note on schools. If your kid tests into Seminar programs, please look at both the UC seminar program (Spreckels) and the Clairemont program (Hawthorne Elem.) They both have strengths and weaknesses. We sent our kids from our UC school (Curie) to Hawthorne because we so impressed with the two Seminar teachers. That said – Spreckels has a good program also… I have to say that – my sister was just assigned to teach the 5th grade seminar class at Spreckels. 🙂 (She’ll be AWESOME.)

[ucodegen]

[quote=spdrun]
As far as grounding, the power company equipment doesn’t care whether it’s putting 10A through a load or an additional 50mA through a human body. The grounding is there so the latter situation is less likely to arise. If a hot wire shorts to the case, breaker will trip vs making the case hot. If breaker doesn’t trip, the case will still be grounded. GFCI makes the latter situation EVEN less likely to arise.[/quote]
Explain double insulation… ie. products without the third wire; like todays drills etc.

[quote=spdrun]H->LOAD->N->human->ground — the neutral/grounded side would be connected to hot through the load, but not tied to ground (0V). Since the load generally has a lower impedance than the human body, you’d have close to 120V across any grounded human that is unfortunate enough to touch the casing.[/quote]
Please explain why you receive a shock when you just touch the hot wire on a single phase 120v supply, even if you are wearing rubber soled shoes and are not connected to any ground or neutral? Do you know what the internal resistance of the human body is? Did you measure with needles or on dry skin? The human body is highly conductive, the skin isn’t.

[quote=spdrun]Separating neutral and ground at the main breaker box is done for LIFE SAFETY, not for the power company’s safety.[/quote]Not completely accurate. The neutral and ground are REDUNDANT paths. Neutral is the return path(of sorts) and ground is the safety path. Take a look at power lines (high voltage transmission lines). Identify the ‘neutral’ or ‘ground’ wire. You will find that there are none. So where is the ground wire? On a two or three phase supply, it is effectively the ‘center-tap’ and it is also tied to a copper rod driven into the ground (up to 25 feet sometimes). When setting up a house, it is important to ‘balance’ current draw or load between the two phases on a house supply, else you will have a ‘noisy’ or poor ground. If you have a chance to see the wires coming in through the meter, you will see two ‘bus’ bars. These are not supply and ground. They are BOTH hot. They differ by phase (they are 180 degrees out of phase). This is how it is possible to get the 240 volts for electric ranges, ovens and dryers. The power is taken by going across the phases instead of to ‘neutral’. Home breakers are ALWAYS placed on the ‘hot’ side. That is because almost full power can be sunk straight to ground (partially explained by the answer to one of my questions above).

If you have one of the older houses supplied by power from wires mounted above ground, you will generally see 2 black wires wrapped around a silver bare wire. The black wires are the two 120v phases, the silver wire is the ground or neutral ‘tie’ that will join the ground/neutral of the house to the neutral that is sunk with the transformer. You will generally see two wires tied to insulators on top, not 3 (because there is no ‘return’ neutral wire back to the power plant). When a house power service is installed, a copper rod is sunk (driven) into the ground near the breaker box. On old houses, you could find often find it. With newer houses, it is harder to find – but it is there just the same. The neutral and ground that you have in the house are tied to the same point near the breaker box. The required wire gauges are different though. In general, ‘ground’ is intended to divert ‘static’ electricity generated by rapidly moving insulators, air moving across isolated conductors, or similar static sources (triboelectric effect).

GFCIs work by comparing the current between the ‘hot’ wire and neutral (they don’t look at ground wires). The currents have to be the same. If they aren’t, then current is ‘leaking’ from the correct path and a GFCI will trip. GFCIs don’t care about the total current going through them.

Standard breakers sit ONLY on the hot wire, and measure current coming from the mains and going to… wherever it is going. They don’t care where the current is being sunk. They care only about the total current and are there to protect the wiring (sized to the gauge of the wire being used on that circuit).

NOTE: GFCIs and Breakers DON’T have the same function.

[NotCranky]

With some older houses, grounding to a water pipe was code. after pvc repairs became common that changed. Now the ground rod is used and the water pipes are grounded to that , cold near the house main and the hot water pipe is bonded to cold at the water heater. Thats with copper pipe , with plastic different story.

I believe now, that two ground rods sunk or buried 5′-6′ apart , connected to a continuous solid wire, or a stranded wire in conduit, are required for service mains. Some jurisdictions allow one rod with special testing.

I am possibly a little rusty on the code but that’s what I went through last time I installed a main, about 5 years ago.

[spdrun]

ucodegen —

Correct on all counts.

As to double insulation, you’re talking about a device with a plastic case and with insulated connections inside. Coming in contact with a hot is extremely unlikely, so a ground isn’t needed.

Why do you get a shock when coming in contact with a 120V hot whilst wearing rubber shoes? The amount of current required to shock is very small, and no insulator is 100% perfect. Capacitative effects might also play a role. But I suspect it’s more the former than the latter.

[ucodegen]

[quote=Blogstar]With some older houses, grounding to a water pipe was code. after pvc repairs became common that changed. Now the ground rod is used and the water pipes are grounded to that , cold near the house main and the hot water pipe is bonded to cold at the water heater. Thats with copper pipe , with plastic different story.[/quote]That must be really old code. It is probably during the time when everything was galvanized and the watermain was cast iron.. metal connecting everything. I think that when the pipes became copper, things change. You can cause current based copper erosion from galvanic action.

[quote=Blogstar]I believe now, that two ground rods sunk or buried 5′-6′ apart , connected to a continuous solid wire, or a stranded wire in conduit, are required for service mains. Some jurisdictions allow one rod with special testing.[/quote]One house I built, it was 15 feet deep (about 1976). The 5 feet apart sounds familiar. It depends upon how much soil moisture exists. A company I worked in had a hole in the foundation where the grounding rods were driven, more than 5 of them, oriented outwards from center. The hole was to allow inspection of the electrical connections.

[NotCranky]

[quote=ucodegen][quote=Blogstar]With some older houses, grounding to a water pipe was code. after pvc repairs became common that changed. Now the ground rod is used and the water pipes are grounded to that , cold near the house main and the hot water pipe is bonded to cold at the water heater. Thats with copper pipe , with plastic different story.[/quote]That must be really old code. It is probably during the time when everything was galvanized and the watermain was cast iron.. metal connecting everything. I think that when the pipes became copper, things change. You can cause current based copper erosion from galvanic action.

[quote=Blogstar]I believe now, that two ground rods sunk or buried 5′-6′ apart , connected to a continuous solid wire, or a stranded wire in conduit, are required for service mains. Some jurisdictions allow one rod with special testing.[/quote]One house I built, it was 15 feet deep (about 1976). The 5 feet apart sounds familiar. It depends upon how much soil moisture exists. A company I worked in had a hole in the foundation where the grounding rods were driven, more than 5 of them, oriented outwards from center. The hole was to allow inspection of the electrical connections.[/quote]

I never had to do anything too complicated, one , or later on, two standard ground rods with wire sized to the service , it was legal to bend a piece of rebar up through the foundation and into the wall cavity with an inspection hole. Also a shallow trench with bare copper wire I think 20 feet of wire buried only 18 or 24 inches nothing crazy. Nobody I know did it that last way though. Good with rock below I guess.

[spdrun]

I think that when the pipes became copper, things change. You can cause current based copper erosion from galvanic action.

Practically, it should be a non-issue since ground shouldn’t have (significant) current flowing through it under normal operating conditions. Yeah, I know some timers and things like that can use it as a return path, but it’s rare.

[ucodegen]

[quote=spdrun]ucodegen —
As to double insulation, you’re talking about a device with a plastic case and with insulated connections inside. Coming in contact with a hot is extremely unlikely, so a ground isn’t needed.[/quote]Thats part of it, but remember my note about the ‘ground’ wire’s use for removing static electricity. The insulated chassis prevents movement of static electricity towards the user.

[quote=spdrun]Why do you get a shock when coming in contact with a 120V hot whilst wearing rubber shoes? The amount of current required to shock is very small, and no insulator is 100% perfect. Capacitative effects might also play a role. But I suspect it’s more the former than the latter.[/quote]Capacitive/Inductive relations play the entire role with AC. That is why there is NO return wire on high tension lines. The driven ground rods act as an immense capacitive sink. The amount of current resulting from the human to 120V hot line is not small. It is easily enough to stop the heart and can cause skin burns. Humans are a larger capacitance sink than a bird (over 100lbs vs just ounces). Take a look at videos of people servicing high voltage lines by helicopter. That arc that is generated is not a low voltage, low current arc. To keep safe, the people doing the service are in silver mesh suits (Gaussian shield) that are very conductive.

[ucodegen]

[quote=Blogstar]
I never had to do anything too complicated, one , or later on, two standard ground rods with wire sized to the service , it was legal to bend a piece of rebar up through the foundation and into the wall cavity with an inspection hole. Also a shallow trench with bare copper wire I think 20 feet of wire buried only 18 or 24 inches nothing crazy. Nobody I know did it that last way though. Good with rock below I guess.[/quote]
The amount of rod sunk or buried wire also depended upon service size. I heard of the shallow trench, but at 20 feet, it may be the old 60amp service or smaller. I think complication comes in with odd soils (dry, non-conductive). I think the other reason why shallow 20foot trench is avoided, is that it can create a differential voltage at the soil surface. I have also heard of a long rock drill being used to go into rock, cementing the rod into the rock. I think there were also restrictions on the type of rock (quartz is a good insulator).

[ucodegen]

[quote=spdrun]

I think that when the pipes became copper, things change. You can cause current based copper erosion from galvanic action.

Practically, it should be a non-issue since ground shouldn’t have (significant) current flowing through it under normal operating conditions. Yeah, I know some timers and things like that can use it as a return path, but it’s rare.[/quote]It is actually quite significant. I know of more than one house where the copper plumbing had to be redone because of the interaction between galvanized steel and copper. It acts like a battery. Direct connection between the two can help create a closed path/short. The two metals adjacent to each other act like aluminum vs silver in an acid. Normally zinc acts as sacrificial in such a reaction, but the zinc is just a ‘coating’, which erodes quickly. With normal galvanized pipe, the zinc starts reacting to protect the steel. It will swell and close scratches. The problem is that there is a second path through the copper. This is why ‘mixing’ pipe types can have unexpected results. Generally when doing copper to galvanized connections, you want an insulator pipe segment in between. It is even in California plumbing code.
http://homeguides.sfgate.com/connect-copper-galvanized-plumbing-20916.html

Remember, you are dealing with the galvanic action occurring over years.. not minutes, and that soil is used to create ‘neutral’ and ‘ground’ for AC supply.

[spdrun]

I wasn’t speaking to dissimilar metal corrosion, only to corrosion due to the pipes being used as ground. It shouldn’t be significant since current flowing through ground is normally zero (and A.C., not D.C. if there is one).

OTOH, using piping as neutral return would probably yield amusing results.

BTW – I’ve seen the videos of people being hooked up to work on H.T. lines from a helicopter — that takes some serious cojones! Thanks for mentioning that again. And you’re basically right about everything electrical you’ve posted here — are you an EE?

[Author]

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