Down the Rabbit Hole

We're in plan check now, sort of a bureaucratic purgatory where the city building and safety office reviews your architectural and engineering drawings against a byzantine mosaic of applicable building codes to see what bizarre contortions you will have to go through to achieve a home. Sometimes, the codes are about building safely. Other times, I learned, they are about something altogether different.

My first encounter with Building and Safety (which from now on we'll simply call BS) came shortly after the fire. In the first few moments when I began to allow myself to dream of a real future for the house, I recalled a brilliant plumbing innovation I had learned about 8 years ago while writing for This Old House magazine called Pex. 

Pex is a system of flexible hose that does the same job as the rigid (and now extremely costly) copper pipe most commonly used in Los Angles area homes, but with some significant advantages. Let's review each system briefly, so you can see what insanity drives the LA BS.

 With a copper system, the water comes into the house through a single big pipe which then narrows and branches in a continuous steam throughout the house to reach each sink, shower, ice-maker, and toilet appliance you have. from the main street valve, each length of pipe must be cut and fit, with corners and tee joints, like a giant erector set,

 each length carefully aligned and inserted through holes or notches cut  in precise alignment into the joists, and then each fitting individually fluxed and heated with an acetylene torch before being soldered together. Every time a pipe path turns, it diminishes the overall water pressure through the system, so the whole system must be carefully designed to maximize strait pipe runs. Additionally, careful consideration must must be given to the distance between the hot water heater and each appliance, because to draw hot water when turned on, each appliance must draw all the standing cold 

water from the pipes first. We all know the experience of waiting for the shower to warm up and thinking to ourselves what a waste of water it is. That's because the hot water heater is usually located close to the kitchen, which is the most frequent hot water draw in the house, and further from the showers, which could be anywhere in relation.

Copper replaced galvanized steel as the metal of choice for household piping in the last 25 years or so, as galvanized tends to rust over time, restricting water flow, causing leaks, and contaminating the water supply. Copper does neither, was easier to put together (soldering is faster than fitting threaded joints), and was, in its time, less expensive. In the last few years, however, the price of copper has more than tripled, making it very costly to use (and, in a brilliant stroke of the Law of Unintended Consequences, improving the lifestyle of thousands of homeless people who scavenge and resell scrap copper).

Pex, on the other hand , is a very different beast. To visualize a pex system, think of a hose bib, that spigot you use to water your lawn with a garden hose. Pex pipe is almost exactly like a garden hose, except it doesn't break 

or leak and lasts 25 years or more. to repipe, say a sink, with pex, you run two long lengths of flexible pex hose through the walls from hose bibs near your water main and water heater to the hot and cold spi

gots on the faucet. the hose is totally flexible, like electrical wire, and can twist and turn as many times as you need without effecting flow pressure. Instead of measuring pipe, aligning holes, and soldering all day, you simple drill holes in the joists more or less at the same height, start at one end, and thread the pipe all the way through the house to the appliance just like you thread a tent pole through a tent. Your mother-in-law could do it.

Now imagine a single pipe, a foot long, with, say, eight bibs coming off it. That's called a manifold and in a pex system, you hook up as many of those as you need close to the hot and cold water sources (each sink, for

 example, would need one bib from the hot supply and one from the cold), and run a hose to each appliance. This design is called a "home run" and though at first seems less efficient than an integrated whole house

 design, is in fact much more so. 

First, pex hose is much cheaper than copper, so you can use more of it for the same overall cost. Second, there are no fittings or soldered turns needed, saving all sorts of time and toxic materials. the hose is attached to fittings with a simple crimping tool that takes about 20 seconds per fitting or less.  Third, as I mentioned, you can repipe a typical house in a day. And last, and this is the beauty part, you save a ton of water. Instead of needing to empty the standing cold water out of the entire house every time you turn on a hot spigot, you only have to empty the direct run from the hot water source to the appliance you are using, hoses that are varying diameters depending on the amount of water they need (you would have a bigger hose going to a bathtub, for instance, than to a powder room sink).

Cheaper, faster, more reliable, more efficient, and more earth-friendly. Seems like a no-brainer, eh?

Well, it certainly seems so to most of the world, which has been using Pex in everything from residential construction to office skyscrapers for 20 years without any complaints (there are some urban myths about mice liking to eat the hose, but none have been substantiated, and if a leak does occur, it is simpler to repair than copper, too). In seismic zone, like LA, flexible pipe dramatically decreases earthquake damage by virtually eliminate temblor-caused leaks common to rigid pipe, and in fact, there are thousands of buildings in Los angeles that are piped just this way. 

But no longer, a fact I discovered when i called the Plumbing desk at BS back in February.  As i recall, the conversation went something like this:

ME: Hi, is Pex pipe approved for use in Los Angeles?

Plumbing Desk Supervisor: Nope.

ME: Really? why? It's been in use around the world for 20 years, is cheaper, more efficient, more earth friendly, and more earthquake proof. Why wouldn't LA approve it?

PDS: Good question.

ME: Is there an answer?

PDS: Well, they used to approve it, but no longer. In fact, there are thousands of building in LA that have it with no problems.

ME: Then why not now?

PDS: they changed the rules.

ME (getting a little frustrated by his obvious reticence): Why??

PDS: Honestly?

ME: YES, HONESTLY.

PDS: Politics.

ME: huh?

PDS: The plumbers union and the metal companies make a lot of campaign contributions. There's no other reason you shouldn't be able to use it. In fact, you should go ahead and do so. I did. My son and I laid out the whole thing on my front lawn and repiped the house in a day.

ME (incredulous): Are you, the head guy on the plumbing desk at BS, telling me to go ahead and use an non-permitable and unapproved plumbing system in my home? (I might not have been this obvious, but you get the idea)

PDS: Yup.

ME: And you're telling me that you did this on your own house, without a permit?

PDS: Yup. Who's gonna know?

ME: Wow. Wow. I'm recovering from a fire. Won't they have to inspect the plumbing before we drywall?

PDS: Oh. In that case, you're shit out of luck.

I may have simplified this conversation, but not by much. The guy in charge of plumbing permits, a nice guy really,  basically told be to ignore building codes and permit requirements and do the sensible thing, just like he did, unless, of course, you think you'll get caught. And these are the guys who now sit in judgement of our architectural plans and are the last barrier to having sweaty men crawling on our property.

Something tells me that the permit process will soon give new meaning to the term roto-router, with me on the prison-shower end of things.

Insurance travails pt1

There are too many things we do not know about how to live a life in USA 2008. More than any one person should have to know. In fits of political pique, I often attribute this to Ronald Reagan, who first deregulated virtually everything in our lives and in so doing set loose the mad dogs of hypercaptialism. On a practical--nonpolitical--level, this means that rather than deal with one phone company every month, I deal with four, plus my internet provider, plus my satellite TV company plus plus plus plus, well, you get the picture. Life, the monthly maintenance of which used to involved writing about five checks to pay my various obligations, now requires several hours of bookkeeping (the only word in the English language with a triple double letter, btw) and even more phone calling, the latter activity aimed at correcting the various ways various service suppliers try to fuck you up each month, either through gross errors or deliberate malice.

Which brings us to the topic of the day: Insurance companies.

In what I can only attribute to an unquenchable need to reinforce every stereotype and cliché of the industry, our homeowners insurance company, Allstate, has decided to drop us from their rolls.

Just to get the pathos out of the way early and get to the meat of the matter (corporate criminal behavior), let me paint the human picture for you. We live in a slightly shabby rental home, with rented furniture, rented dishes, rented candles, rented brooms, etc. (see This Rented American Life) while we await the rebuilding of our almost totally destroyed home. 80% of our personal possessions have been totally destroyed, the remainder being precious (artwork and photos) but not practical (can't eat off a painting). Elicia and I both work full time, high value jobs in addition to the ongoing reconstruction of our lives. 

For Elicia, that means managing a personal possessions claim involving 120 pages of totally lost items, 15 items per page, handwritten in almost indecipherable penmanship by the team hired to excavate our lives after the fire. Each item requires that she correctly identify it (name, make, model number), ascertain its original purchase price, age, quantity, and replacement cost, and then back that info up with receipts if we have them, going back 7 years. Her process is further complicated by Allstate's insistence that all submissions be handwritten on the same messed up pieces of paper they handed us and their refusal to provide us or allow us to use any electronic means of communication, like a database.

For me, that means managing the complete reconstruction of the house, in addition to the ongoing wrangling with Allstate to get them to pay a reasonable amount of money to accomplish this.

Both, full time jobs, in addition to our full time jobs.

Now, as if we were not burdened enough, Allstate is trying to dump us.

So, other than the obvious lack of compassion, what is wrong with this picture?  Here's what you don't know about your homeowners insurance.

Insurance companies have what they call "underwriting guidelines," basically, the circumstances under which they consider you an insurable risk. They have the right to dump you if you exceed these guidelines, as long as they do so uniformly and without discrimination, ie, everyone gets treated the same. Though these guidelines are registered with the state insurance commission, however, Allstate (and probably your company too) does nothing to make this information readily available to its customers. 

Why is this a problem? Their lack of transparency allows them to profit at their customer's expense by selling products you cannot use.

Here's how it worked in our case. We paid top dollar for Allstate's lowest deductible policy, covering the replacement cost for all losses to our home and personal property above $500. Allstate's unpublished underwriting guidelines, however, allow them to dump anyone with two claims against their policy within a five year period. Last year, believing that I had paid for insurance that would cover me for relatively small losses, I filed a $3000 claim to replace my golf clubs, which were stolen from my car during the summer (the car was stolen and recovered, sans clubs, which were in the trunk). Allstate was very cooperative in handling the claim, and happily applied my $500 deductible before paying me about $2000 toward the cost of the replacement clubs.

Then the house burned up.

Now, a mere two weeks before we begin reconstruction, Allstate has sent us a letter telling us that they are dumping us from their insurance rolls, leaving us uninsured during reconstruction and at the new house, which, by the way, they are paying for. They have decided, and incredible as it sounds, that having filed 2 claims within 5 years (for a stolen car and a destroyed house, neither of which we were within a mile of), that we are a higher risk for filing another claim this year.

So after 10 years of dutifully paying premiums, adios dude.

Now I am out in the wooly world of insurance shopping with claims on my record.  Not fun. No, not fun.

Spring 2

I learned yesterday that our long-time "mow, blow, and go" gardener, Tiburcio Alamillo, is still coming by the house to care for the front yard on Saturday mornings. 

What a beautiful gesture. Trudging over the blackened patch of ash, glass, and plaster that used to be the beautiful fescue grass lawn he had recently installed, he trims and prunes, waters and weeds our two small bits of garden with the same care and attention he gave every week we lived there. 

I wonder what he thinks, as he cares for the roses, pentas, and Brazilian skyflower now appreciated only by the butterflies and passersby. Gardens, after all, are artificial constructs of nature, careful arrangements of the wild into the tame. Though philosophers  have argued the esthetics of gardening at least since the late 17th century, no matter where you fall on the arranged vs. wild-seeming axis, it is indisputable that, like tanks at the Aquarium, no garden exists in nature. In our case, it is merely a floral decoration before a now indecorously charred wooden box.

Perhaps, though, as one acculturated to the careful tending of the land, he knows instinctively that what lives demands attention, and that our future is built on the patient ministrations of today. 

Clip and shear. Fertilize and hydrate. Process over product. Structure follows strategy. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single snip.

Fire! (works)

Did I mention that one of the few things that survived the fire were the fireworks we bought in New Mexico?