Hailstones bring out the Roofers and Chicken Little

This past April a hail storm blew through my neighborhood. The hail was marble size, with some being the size of two marbles. In addition to the damage that my 20 yo asphalt shingled roof incurred, numerous holes were blasted through my porch covering and the stain on my 700 sq feet of wood deck was chipped away to bare wood in hundreds of spots. Fortunately, the house roof does not have any leaks and most amazing of all my garden of peas, green beans, peppers and tomatoes survived with minimal carnage.

It didn’t take long for the roofing companies to bear down on the neighborhood. Within one day of the event, I had several calling cards at my door and within weeks roofing company signs were sprouting up in the yards around the area. However, it has taken more than a month for the first new roof to go up. I had intended to wait, check out each roofers work and decide which to call – then a roofer caught me at home.

He explained how prices were escalating weekly, shingles were getting scarce and there was even talk of rationing shingles to certain areas of the country. Heavens to Betsy, the sky is falling. He also explained that with time, hail damage can become obscured, so I needed to act quickly. Furthermore, he stated whether you file a claim or not, your rates will increase, since nearly everyone in the neighborhood is filing. This high pressure approach may work on some, but it was way over the top for me. I asked him for an estimate and politely kept my sarcasm to myself.

After the roofer made some measurements, his initial rough bid nearly doubled. Wow! He noticed my shock and suggested that they could do some things to help me with my deductible. Hmmm. So, the roofer over charges the insurance company and refunds the money to the homeowner to get the roof contract. I despise insurance – the incentives are all misplaced. Does anybody repair roofs anymore? If there was no such thing as insurance, home owners would try to get a lot more mileage out of their roofs and save a lot more landfill space in the process.

I thought it was interesting when the roofing contractor told me that no one replaces their roof unless the insurance company is paying – even in Ross Perot’s neighborhood. This particular roofer did not convince me that the roof was actually damaged and even suggested that he should be there to talk to my insurance adjuster to help seal the deal.

I wanted another opinion – did I really need a new roof? I called my insurance agent who informed me that I had to file a claim to get an adjuster to examine the roof. The agent assured me that the claim would not go against me unless they paid out money. Thanks a lot. So, I called another 1-800 number to get a claim number and was told that a third party contractor would be my adjuster and that he would call to set up an appointment within 3 days. He called me at 9:47 PM on the second day to arrange to view the roof another 4 days later. He gave me a window between 2 and 4 PM and then didn’t show up until 5:15 PM. Darn, I missed work for this.

The adjuster climbed up on the roof, made some measurements and then pronounced the roof “totaled”. I have heard that some adjusters are able to give an estimate of the insurance payout right on the spot, but not this guy. He said he would get back with me via e-mail once he figured up the squares and itemized the costs. Hopefully, I will hear something within the next week before the sky falls in. ;)

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An Easy way to make your Home more Energy Efficient

Chalk up another fun project completed. This past weekend I installed a reflective insulating material on the inside of my double garage door. The door faces West, so it receives a lot of direct sunlight in the afternoon, plus there is indirect reflection from the concrete driveway.

Because I wanted to reduce the radiant heat transfer through the door, I chose a foil based, reflecting bubble material. The idea is to reflect the heat as opposed to sealing or simply insulating the door.

I found just the right material at Home Depot called Reflectix®. A lot of folks get hung up on R-values, but in this application R-value is not the driver. The Reflectix® website provides a good explanation comparing the foam insulation of a styrofoam cup to that of a glass-lined thermos. The foam cup has a higher R-value than the thermos lining, but the internal surface of the thermos reflects the heat or cold from the liquid back inside the thermos keeping the liquid much warmer or colder than the cup. Think about it, would you rather drink coffee from a thermos jug or a foam cup hours later?

I bought three 25 foot x 24 inch rolls of the material at $21 each and had 10-12 feet left over that I plan to use later to wrap AC/heat ducts in the attic. I measured each door panel, cut the material to fit the length and cut the width to allow at least an inch and a half overlap on the top and bottom. I then tucked the top and bottom edges (overlap) into the channels of the door panels. The material stayed in place very well without any adhesive, but you could use a light dusting of spray 77, if desired.

The low emittance surface of the reflective insulation blocks up to 97% of the radiation. And I can definitely feel a difference in the temperature in the garage. I can only assume that this will help keep the house a little cooler as well. Especially since I have a doggy door between the wash room and the garage.

Is it worth it? How long will it take to recover the initial costs? It may take a year or two to recoup the costs, but it’s really irrelevant because it has already made the garage a lot more comfortable place to be in the summer time.

Because the material is reflective on both sides, I anticipate that in the winter time the warm air in the garage (warmer than the outside air temperature) will be reflected back into the garage keeping the area a skosh warmer. Along those same lines, I have also noticed that the heat from my vehicle when pulled into the garage with the door shut – heats up the garage more so than before! Exactly as one would expect, right?

I seem to have alleviated one problem only to be “foiled” by another. So now I leave the door open for a short time to let the vehicle cool or if the weather is nice I park in the driveway. I can rationalize that having the garage door up or down in the evening is not that big of a deal because by the time I arrive home on a typical work day, the sun has set below the tree line and is no longer impinging on the garage door.

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Early retirement was always the plan

From the day I started my engineering career, I already had a plan to retire early. On that first day, I learned that I would be eligible for full retirement at age 54. I was 23 yo and that sounded like a long ways off. I decided right then to make it a challenge to better that date. At the time, I didn’t even know whether I would like my job, let alone engineering in industry. A few months later, I was certain that early retirement was for me.

As I looked around the halls, I noticed that there were a lot of old people working in this place. I know everyone looks old to a 23 yo college grad, but these guys were really old. Some engineers just never quit. For instance, even today, I work with people that are in their late 70’s. They have no plans to retire. It’s frightening to think that one day we will probably find them expired at their desk. It has happened here before.

I know these people love engineering and they enjoy being with their work families, but come on. There must be something else? Surely they have a hobby or even a desire to sleep in occasionally? Did they lose their something else? How many years does it take to lose it? Is there some switch that gets flipped and one day you walk in to work and you never want to leave?

Or maybe these folks always wanted to work forever? Hmmm. I can’t imagine that. Nobody says they want to work for a large corporation for fifty years of their life and die at their desk. Do they?

Very few of these geriatrics are driven by money. At their age, they are triple dipping: they are required to draw their pension, eligible for social security and still earning a salary. These guys are rolling in the dough. Money and wealth is no longer the target.

I hope I never understand this desire to work for someone else to the end of time. To me, retirement is a chance to explore anything I want in life. To these guys, retirement is doing the same thing they have been doing for many, many years.

I keep thinking that they are missing something in their lives, but could it be that they have completed their explorations and found whatever it is that the rest of us are looking for?

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Simulations have their Limitations

Okay, I appreciate the fact that a lot of animals lives will be spared by using this software. The software allows students to skip the hands on dissection of frogs with a virtual simulation. But, when I read this article, all I could think about was my own experience with recent electrical engineering graduates. It seems a lot of universities are saving money by buying software to simulate oscilloscopes. We actually have electrical engineering graduates that have never used real scope hardware.

Oscilloscopes are a critical design and diagnostic tool and no design or test engineer worth his or her salt would ever be without one. Yet, I have had new hires point at the trigger control knob on a scope and ask me, what is this for?

All that we can expect from colleges and universities is to teach students basic fundamental engineering, but now so many are not even grasping the core skills. This is a problem for the future of electrical engineering and really frightens me when I see the same thing could happen with medical students who one day may only use simulation software even though they will eventually deal with real living and dying humans daily.

Surely, we will never get to that point, right? If you had told me 10 years ago that I would be working with engineers that had almost no hands on, lab experience, I too would have thought that impossible.

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Back in Black (Ink) Deal of the week – All-in-one printer/scanner/copier/fax

I have been in need of a printer for months and finally found one on-line that was compact, met my needs and was easy on the pocket book. I ordered it from Staples.com on Thursday morning and it arrived Friday at 230 PM via UPS. Awesome. I was skeptical about the next day delivery claim, especially since the shipping cost was less than 5 dollars.

The All-in-One is a refurbished Brother MFC-240C that came with two rebates. One was an instant $10 off at checkout and then another $20 off with an on-line rebate. I didn’t have to print anything out (which is fortunate because I didn’t have a printer, yet). To get the 20 dollar rebate, I just clicked a link, typed in my order # and sent off the rebate form. The final cost including shipping will be $34.

I also found a link for ink cartridges for my model that cost $5 each. Not bad!

The setup was easy; the instructions were very clear and the software install a breeze. I was printing, copying and scanning in no time at all. I can’t believe I waited so long to get a new printer!

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