The "Looking to become a homeowner" Thread

[dodint]

Ouch.

Ours was installed in 1991. Financial timebomb, that.

[George]

Ouch.

Ours was installed in 1991. Financial timebomb, that.

Same here, and ours is so large I think the house was probably built around it. No idea how they'd ever get the old one out of the basement and a new one down there, unless they come in pieces and are assembled on site. An interesting phenomenon: we bought this house in 2005 and for the first few years, I could easily find the 20" x 20" x 2" filters it requires at Home Depot, Lowe's, and Ace Hardware. In the last few years, I haven't been able to find them at those stores, nor Wal-Mart or Sears or K-mart or grocery stores (who knew grocery stores sell HVAC filters?) or anywhere else I looked. I even tried an old hardware store that has been there for decades. Nope.

I finally had to order a case of filters from Amazon. I'm getting the message that nobody is stocking filters for a 27-year-old furnace because the demand for them has fallen off. That can't be a good sign.

The hell is up with quality control these days?

That would be a great title to a thread I've thought of starting many times after being disappointed in the quality of so many common items these days. I guess it's because they don't want to sell you one or two of Item A in your lifetime. They want us all to have to buy Item A every few months.

And then there are the cost-saving measures that manufacturers take that are just infuriating. Case in point: a few years ago, my wife replaced some original plastic light switch covers and outlet covers with some cool metal art-deco ones. The have little steps around the edges so they end up farther away from the wall (but only by maybe 1/16" or a few millimetres) than the builder-grade plastic ones. Ours look something like this.



Recently we painted our laundry room and added more of those same switch plates in there. Amazingly, and I am grateful for this in today's retail situation, our local home improvement store still carries the same switch plates that she bought a few years ago.

But, the screws that came in the blister-packs with the new switch and outlet covers were too short!

Some manufacturer must have changed the screw spec to save $0.0000001 per unit, and we get to go back to the store to purchase longer screws separately.

Screw you, Mr. Switch Plate Tycoon.