Episode 1380
Homewoners Insurance and Caroline's Electrical Chaos
We start out talking about Caroline's electrical issues at her house and how it looks like a new panel upgrade is in her near future. Eric also thinks that her Electrician was pulling her leg with a comment and then they dive into Homeowners Insurnace. Is your home covered so that it could replaced? If you have NOT looked at it recently you might be massivly under insured. All this and MORE in the mid-week special.
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Mentioned in this episode:
A new kind of decking and siding from Millboard
For more information about the latest in decking and cladding head to https://www.millboard.com/
Baldwin Hardware
Transcript
[00:00:23] Eric Goranson: this is around the house. Welcome to around the house with Eric G and Caroline B. This is the midweek special. How did we get to the middle of the week already? I don't know. It's insane.
[:[00:00:50] Caroline Blazovsky: My body hurts. You're
[:[00:00:56] Caroline Blazovsky: Yay. Yay guys. , [00:01:00]
[:[00:01:04] Caroline Blazovsky: Oh my gosh. We had, you know, all this stuff we talk about on the show is so real. And so every day, I mean, we pulled out a window and we ended up finding water pipes within the wall.
[:[00:01:36] Caroline Blazovsky: So all of that had to be changed and, uh, yep. Fun stuff,
[:[00:01:45] Caroline Blazovsky: talk about that because we were talking about what do you upgrade to, and what's really enough with all the technology and all of the electric you're gonna have.
[:[00:01:59] Eric Goranson: [00:02:00] well, you know, I've done the service upgrade stuff before and it sounds like you have like 150 amp and you need at least a 200 amp because we're, is that what your electrician? Right.
[:[00:02:16] Caroline Blazovsky: And these things you have to think like when you're doing this upgrade, like what am I gonna need? And then you brought up a whole other. Ball of wax, if you
[:[00:02:41] Eric Goranson: So yep. If you've got a water heater and you've got a car charger, you've got a swim spa or a hot tub. Cool. You've got an oven, a dryer and a heat pump. All of a sudden you can get up to 200 amps really quickly and oh, wait a minute. You still gotta power the [00:03:00] rest of the house.
[:[00:03:04] Caroline Blazovsky: So, I mean, you, I mean, typically you hear about 200. I mean, that's what I'm familiar with, but can you go higher and how, how can you go? Oh yeah. And what's safe. Is it safe to go, to have 400
[:[00:03:21] Eric Goranson: So the it's all safe. I mean, you look at a hospital and that's got, you know, like, you know, three phase, basically what you see it on the, on, on the, uh, On the pole outside is coming into the building. So, I mean, it's, that's perfectly safe as well, but it's just depending as, you know, they gotta put it in there and make sure you've got enough, many times, you'll see over 200 amp service coming in when you've got two huge panels sitting right next to each other, which is pretty easy.
[:[00:04:21] Eric Goranson: And what's interesting
[:[00:04:37] Caroline Blazovsky: Two guys came out and
[:[00:05:02] Eric Goranson: It was really close and we swapped that out. I think my electrician here was about 6,500 bucks for the panel swap out which isn't and we had to move it and do some stuff, but yeah.
[:[00:05:23] Caroline Blazovsky: We're waiting to see.
[:[00:05:26] Caroline Blazovsky: he was talking about about 8,000. What was interesting is if anybody out there has an older home and you get the flickering of the lights we were talking about like the older panels you'll. Plug something in mm-hmm , you know, so you, I don't know, you're plugging in an extra vacuum or a sauna or whatever you're plugging in.
[:[00:05:57] Caroline Blazovsky: So that's good to know. Yeah. What
[:[00:06:13] Eric Goranson: But long story short. Yeah. You can be overloading that circuit that's when you start to see flickers and stuff as well, and it might not be hurting or causing. Too much heat, but you think about it when you turn on a vacuum, there's a starter on it. That's that, that has to get the motor moving for it to go.
[:[00:06:55] Eric Goranson: Yeah. So hopefully
[:[00:07:03] Eric Goranson: get other things done. Now you will have to put in the new arc fault breakers and not just the regular breakers. And so those are a new, special kind of breaker that I think national code brought in in 2021.
[:[00:07:38] Eric Goranson: Um, you have to reset those a lot more than you will a normal. Normal like GFC or just a regular ally. I learned something
[:[00:07:59] Caroline Blazovsky: Have you heard about this? [00:08:00] It's it's like, I guess it's code and it has to sit inside there. And he talked about this bubble and I, and I was kind of I'm like, what is that?
[:[00:08:22] Eric Goranson: You know, well, tank that goes in there, that's probably the size of a little smaller than a five gallon bucket usually. Mm. And you put that in there. So that gives you a place to expand and contract with it. No, he was talking
[:[00:08:41] Eric Goranson: I was like, I think he's probably talking the expansion tank, cuz that's kind of got a, that's got a diaphragm in it, like a well pump does with that system. And what that does is when, you know, when you think about it, when water heats it expands and it's gotta go someplace. So instead of raising the pressure higher in your system, That's what that, [00:09:00] um, expansion tank does.
[:[00:09:08] Caroline Blazovsky: Is that no, but is that in the, he was talking about it in the actual board, in the actual wall. Not like in my well tank. I don't know what he is talking about. I don't either not for a water here.
[:[00:09:22] Eric Goranson: audience, look it up. There's no, there's no bubble or anything in the panel. That's weird. I don't know what he's talking about is
[:[00:09:33] Eric Goranson: I think he's pulling your leg.
[:[00:09:54] Eric Goranson: I got a feeling he was pulling
[:[00:10:00] Eric Goranson: it. I think he was pulling somebody's leg. That's that's not a thing if you know what I mean, but, uh, well, cool. I wanted to talk today a little bit about some of the top tips out there for people.
[:[00:10:42] Eric Goranson: Things that take so long to go. Back to normal with a house and also with,
[:[00:10:59] Caroline Blazovsky: I'm gonna be covered. [00:11:00] Absolutely not. You have to make sure and call up and add a rider. And these riders are not expensive. I mean, you're talking about maybe a total of like 20, $25 added to your policy. That it con increase your coverage by like $15,000. So you should definitely look into it and make sure you put it on
[:[00:11:16] Eric Goranson: Yeah. And make sure, you know, every state is different. So make sure that you understand what your state's rules and regulations are because how they do insurance in one area is completely different when they do it in another state. But the one thing I want you to really think about is on your homeowner's insurance before we get into any of the other stuff.
[:[00:12:03] Eric Goranson: but they haven't even started the rebuild process and they're two months into it. So that tells you that up to that point, they probably have another four to six months before they're back in this house. So you wanna make sure that your insurance company one has gotten that figured out that they do have enough coverage for you to spend.
[:[00:12:50] Eric Goranson: Absolutely. So you really wanna make sure that you've got that guaranteed replacement cost coverage, and that's a keyword. There is that guaranteed [00:13:00] replacement cost coverage, whatever that replacement cost is, they're gonna pay it versus have to do six months of the dance of them going well, it's just because there's no, you're not paying for that.
[:[00:13:13] Caroline Blazovsky: And we've seen it time and time again, too. This has been going on. Oh yeah.
[:[00:13:29] Eric Goranson: Did you know that in, in the us that only about 15% of all homeowners have flood insurance? Yes. And so that's pretty crazy that so many people. Are not insured for flood. I
[:[00:13:53] Eric Goranson: you get.
[:[00:14:19] Eric Goranson: Is correct. And that's something to talk to your agent about, but there is also, uh, you know, most people get their flood insurance through the national flood insurance program, which is N F I P. And you can also get a private market, but usually that's one of the better places to go. But they've got a new pricing system they've done this last year, so it should be a little bit more affordable, but.
[:[00:15:03] Eric Goranson: You have a wind coverage for that. So make sure you've got the right coverage. For the right plan and for your, for your neighborhood and where you're at. Absolutely. Wow. So lots going on for mid well, you were talking about yeah. You were talking about writers. That's another good one is that, um, like we talked about home insurance only covers certain water damage and leaks.
[:[00:15:33] Caroline Blazovsky: of becoming like, it's kind of like car insurance, right? You can get the basic mm-hmm like in our state, you can get the basic minimum, but you know, you're only gonna be covered for major catastrophic issues, but then you can pay more. And get a lot more for your coverage and make sure that if you have a soft tissue injury, you can Sue for that.
[:[00:16:05] Caroline Blazovsky: But when you really dig deeper into it, there's a lot of other options you have that you can add on to that policy in, in the form
[:[00:16:24] Eric Goranson: Um, make sure that you gone after it and did the best thing you could to stop that leak. Um, many times a leak that's been going on for months and months, isn't gonna be coverage because you missed it as a maintenance item and you didn't take care of it. So it's one thing to have a pipe break, but if you've had a refrigerator leaking for, you know, six to eight months and you just finally caught it many times, that's not covered and that's coming out of your are a plethora
[:[00:16:52] Caroline Blazovsky: My mind's fried . Oh,
[:[00:17:17] Eric Goranson: It can be that stupid. Or how about
[:[00:17:37] Eric Goranson: I'd tell the FedEx guy not to walk on my retaining wall. Use the walkway. Think you're safe there, but any Yahoo can see you for anything. So that's the thing you gotta be careful with. I mean, somebody can bump into you in a parking lot and all of a sudden there's a hundred thousand dollars deal. The other thing is too, is that, um, think about the, take an inventory, what you got in your house.[00:18:00]
[:[00:18:19] Caroline Blazovsky: And who does, I mean, I don't make a list of all of it. And we should like, especially the most expensive items and the things that are really just
[:[00:18:33] Eric Goranson: You know, it'll get saved up in the cloud anyway, but you've got it. So you can go through your house and just kinda look open up cupboards. See what you got, you know, walk out in the shed, the garage crawlspace attic, just.
[:[00:18:51] Eric Goranson: with video is, is you've got this whole area and it's also something that could stand up in cos it's got a timestamp on it.
[:[00:19:14] Eric Goranson: And you've got it from almost all angles. Cuz you can literally walk in the room slowly, spin around, go to the next one, open up anything as you go through, pop, open the closets and you can do a pretty quick inventory without having to take a bunch of pictures. And you've got it all in one context. Yeah.
[:[00:19:47] Eric Goranson: That's a good one to dive into. So. Cool. So what's next on your house, Caroline?
[:[00:20:01] Eric Goranson: and you got that weird New Jersey. I leave that contract. You got those weird New Jersey tort law stuff out there too, which is weird.
[:[00:20:29] Caroline Blazovsky: You get chronic migraines, but you didn't lose an appendage. You, someone didn't die, you didn't have massive. Um, surgeries. So, you know, it's, you gotta look at your pals.
[:[00:20:45] Eric Goranson: You can Sue somebody with that, but still, uh, it's not like Florida. I, I don't know. You go to Florida and I go on vacation down there. Like I was a couple weeks ago. Every single news commercial is. Smith Smith and Smith injury [00:21:00] law firm. I got them $400,000 from the accident on the freeway. And it's all it is, is lawyers commercials through every news and TV show.
[:[00:21:15] Caroline Blazovsky: Yep. I'm a, like, I'm a big believer in insurance, especially when it comes to your house and protection. So, you know, everybody has their own viewpoint, but I'm one of the people that will advocate for you to get as much insurance as you can, especially if, you know, if you don't have a lot in savings and your budget, you know, it's gonna be limited what you can do.
[:[00:21:33] Eric Goranson: And it's just good to do and then make sure every year or two that you're, uh, you know, that's, that's I, where having that personal insurance agent can help you. Because they might remind you that, Hey, they know in your area that your house could be very underinsured. So it's something to think.
[:[00:21:49] Caroline Blazovsky: how many people have checked their policy? I mean, I haven't checked my policy in, I mean, since before COVID yeah. And the, and the prices of lumber have gone
[:[00:22:05] Eric Goranson: So it's up again, down again. Um, you know, I was just looking for my buddy west to pulling some materials for him. And, um, the plywood that he looked at last month is $6 a sheet less today than it was 40 days ago. You know, I couldn't get CDX
[:[00:22:25] Eric Goranson: Where are we going to all the lumber yards or just lumber yards home center, usually have it, but did you check there?
[:[00:22:34] Caroline Blazovsky: well, no, I didn't. I, I usually go to lumberyard. I like to support local you. I do
[:[00:22:44] Caroline Blazovsky: but I was shocked that they didn't have CDX and, uh, I couldn't get clam shell either. They only had pre primed, which I don't like.
[:[00:22:54] Eric Goranson: I think part of that is, is why you see inventory low is because with lumber prices falling, the [00:23:00] lumber yards are trying to keep as small to inventory as. So, what they do is they buy just enough to get through next week because they know the next unit is gonna be cheaper, right?
[:[00:23:28] Eric Goranson: Yeah. It makes sense. You start to see those trends. And so when the prices are like right now, and they've been going down for 45 days, those lumber yards are like, ah, still has more to go. Still has more to go. We're gonna be, we're gonna dial it back and buy less. Well, we're not gonna inventory a lot. So they, they try to stay on top of that because they can be more competitive if they had bought a real carload of lumber and they're stuck with it where they paid you.
[:[00:24:04] Caroline Blazovsky: I still haven't found them by the way, if anybody has vinyl siding, which I, I, I typically don't like it, but on my, under my under hangs or out of my can leaves, I have the house came with it.
[:[00:24:18] Eric Goranson: Oh, yeah, you're in, you're in this, but these companies
[:[00:24:28] Eric Goranson: Exactly. It's so fun. Gotta do the whole outside now. Chase it around the building. All right, let's wrap it up.
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