How's your "housing boom era" house holding up? (hardwood floors, refrigerator)

[ChristineVA]

Originally Posted by car54

Really? I have half dozen Goodmans I installed myself at my rental properties, some are 15+ years old...and have needed little to no repairs. Improperly installed equipment will fail, regardless of the brand.

Goodman gets slammed by the HVAC crooks because Goodman will sell their equipment to DIYers like myself, the others sell only to the "trade". All you need to be your own HVAC tech is half a brain and a refrigerant license.

A note on residential A/C compressors....I believe Copeland is the last manufacturer still around....no matter what brand of equipment you buy it will have a Copeland compressor. Many of the other components are from the same manufacturers, like Robertshaw for the electric bits.

The main difference between brands is the styling of the condenser cabinet and the size of the advertising budget.

My HVAC tech told me the same thing about the compressors. They are all made by the same company now.

[Denton56]

Originally Posted by VRE332

Built in 2005, So far our housing boom era house has been the biggest piece of crap. We've had to replace the air conditioning compressor, the stairs going upstairs had to be replaced because they were not assembled right, I have one window in the basement that keeps leaking, water line to the house exploded and had to spend 10k to replace it, GE dish washer died, GE refrigerator died 2 years ago.

My house, built in 2005, has a kitchen full of GE Profile and GE Monogram appliances. Every single one of them has needed a repair. The GE Monogram dishwasher has needed repairing twice. I might also point out that we moved here in 2008 and we were the first people to occupy the house as it had been the model home. Within the first two years of use, all of the kitchen appliances needed work. Me thinks it's GE. Both the AC and heat pump also needed to be replaced.

[BOS2IAD]

We have owned 2 houses that were new when we bought them---both were built by Ryan. The first one was a townhouse built in 1987. It was built with the flame-retardant roofs that disintegrated but Ryan replaced ours free of charge. The compressor on the fridge went right before it turned 5 years old---so it was still covered by the warranty. We found a few issues with the house after moving in and Ryan addressed them at the 6 month inspection. Long term, the windows were lousy Rollyson ones. We ended up having to replace 2 defective ones.

Yet in 1997, we bought yet another Ryan home. This one is a single family. The quality of work was better. Since we lived nearby, we checked up on the progress every day and if we saw something that didn't look right, we told either the sales agent or the construction supervisor. The house still has the original appliances that we got from the builder. We bought the washer and dryer on our own---and had to replace them last year. The worst problem---the motor on the heat pump went after a year.

Again, at the 6 month inspection, Ryan addressed what problems we found.

Houses built up to around 2000, were constructed better. After that, builders hired subcontractors who often picked up day laborers off street corners. Those laborers would lie and say they knew carpentry or how to paint, etc. so there ended up being a lot of shoddy construction. Before 2000, much of the new housing was built by workers who lived in West Virginia who would come to this area in their campers and stay in the local campgrounds during the warmer weather. These were folks who were experienced and knew what they were doing. Sadly, as time progressed, they got displaced in the work force...

[Caladium]

My house was built in the mid 90s. Not sure if that qualifies for "housing boom." No big problems yet although we've have some small settlement cracks and several nail pops. We've replaced several windows that fogged, repaired wood trim that was attacked by woodpeckers, and recently remodeled the master bath. We replaced the bathoom lights and all the chandeleirs, but that's because the builder put in that goldtone look that we never really liked and is now dated. As far as appliances go, we've replaced the dryer, dishwasher, and AC. The next big project will be the carpeting--After 15+ years it's starting to look pretty worn.

[smarterguy]

Kinda crazy stuff to read. My parents house was built in the late 60's. Not sure if they're original or not, but the AC unit outside has been running strong since they bought the place in the mid 80's and the dishwasher that was there too ran strong until they remodeled the kitchen last year.

[Forehead]

Our townhouse was built in the mid 70's. It certainly could use some updating, and the central AC unit, I'm not sure it could even be repaired, it's located in an odd area over our washer/dryer. But the outside unit...it has the date 1982 stamped on it, looks old as hell, but never breaks. I keep expecting it to go, but nothing.

[VAFan]

My home was built in 1998. We moved in 2003. The prior owner bought the place "bare bones". No painting, unfinished basement, no landscaping, etc, etc.

We bought for a pretty good price and have ungraded quite a bit. I did stick with the original applicances in the kitchen which were black but the frig. died so that was replaced. We added an over the range microwave which died within 1 1/2 years....replaced and still going strong. The washer and dryer died so replaced with front loaders when we finished the basement and made a seperate laundry room.

The AC/Furnace will be lucky if it lasts another year or two (thanks to a great company that I found who has serviced us for the last 3 years for little charge).

We have had some leaking issues in the master bedroom/bath due to how the siding was put up and huge nail holes just filled with caulking. Shingles that have come off of the roof several times due to high wind storms and the shingles being cheap.

That's really about it. All and all not too bad.

[elias9193]

Our 2006 house has had a couple of roof leaks that has been fixed by the company who installed the roof and we have a few cracks in the drywall mostly from the earthquake we had last year.

[ngadude]

Originally Posted by Denton56

My house, built in 2005, has a kitchen full of GE Profile and GE Monogram appliances. Every single one of them has needed a repair. The GE Monogram dishwasher has needed repairing twice. I might also point out that we moved here in 2008 and we were the first people to occupy the house as it had been the model home. Within the first two years of use, all of the kitchen appliances needed work. Me thinks it's GE. Both the AC and heat pump also needed to be replaced.

My house built in 2008, within a little over a year my GE Profile cooktop started acting up, the igniter would start sparking all by itself! Eventually found the control unit was going bad and needed replacement. My neighbors all have had issues with their GE Profile appliances. One the refrigerator went bad after just two years, another the dishwasher started having problems, and several have had the microwave go bad. We think our builder maybe gets factory rejects or something at a cheap price, given the large percentage of failures in such a short amount of time.

[VRE332]

Originally Posted by ngadude

My house built in 2008, within a little over a year my GE Profile cooktop started acting up, the igniter would start sparking all by itself! Eventually found the control unit was going bad and needed replacement. My neighbors all have had issues with their GE Profile appliances. One the refrigerator went bad after just two years, another the dishwasher started having problems, and several have had the microwave go bad. We think our builder maybe gets factory rejects or something at a cheap price, given the large percentage of failures in such a short amount of time.

yea that GE side-by-side refrigerator. Almost everyone in my neighborhood had a problem with the ice maker on them. Then the darn thing would not get cold. I had to change the board on the back of mine because of the wooooo sound on the fan. Then I said screw it and went to go buy a new fridge at Lowe's.