This is what it looks like where I live.

 

Jeez Bob, you don't have anyplace to put the snow! I bet you're having a barrel of laughs digging out of that crap.

Mike

 

Looks like you guys up there might need an inexpensive fix to get through all that white stuff. An AWD drive kit!

http://kalecoauto.com/index.php?main...srp5glbmvi1u70

also check out there other useful stuff!!!!!!

 

LOL... "Please make certain that the wheel remains perfectly straight once this is installed" That's great!

My AWD "kit" is that X-Type you see snow covered in all those pictures. It's been decent through winter, but at 115k it's starting to give me issues. Looks like I'm going to have to do at least a wheel speed sensor if not more to it.

Take care,

George

 

That's exactly the problem and this was only 16 inches or so. More on the way ...

I need a snow melting machine.

 

Been there buddy. Last year I had to spend an entire weekend and another full day trimming all of the pines in my yard (have about 30 around the house). Many of them with branches laying over the power lines to my house (!). The electric company was so buried with bigger issues they wouldn't even come take a look. I spent a whole day with a Poulan gas pole saw (get one if you don't have one already), and a variety of hacksaws, bow saws, and even carpentry saws/sawzalls nervously cutting the branches back while standing on a 15 foot ladder in 2 1/2 feet of snow.

Once that fun was over, the next 2 days were spent on top of a 30ft ladder with a hammer and chisel taking ice dams out of the gutters. A few areas the dams buckled the shingles bad enough that melting snow got inside the house. Epic spousal freak-out ensued.

A tip - steal your wife's panty hose (permission may be requested but you might get a strange look) and fill them with straight calcium chloride pellets. Tie the ends and lay the sack of pellets on the ice dams in the gutters - near the downspouts.

The only saving grace of the whole debacle was the pure enjoyment of taking the Jeep and Rover bounding through some logging roads, and even hitting a few parking lots in my since departed X type.

Hang in there guys....(not literally although i'm sure it's crossed your mind by now - lol)

 

Saw the thread title and couldn't help but think of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqJDuZIcQ34

Now back to your regularly scheduled thread

 

Fortunately, all of the utilities in my development are underground, so I don't have to deal with power lines etc. I have a regular chainsaw and a hand pole saw. Once I get all the broken limbs out of this tree, and a couple more out of others, we'll see if there's enough tree left to leave it standing. Sad too, they are like 40-50ft high.

I have a natural fence of pines across the back edge of my property. One of the ones right in the middle fell last year with the snow. (The one I mentioned before). So now there's a gap in it.

This lot is fairly wooded, I have a couple big birch trees, and some oaks, plus about 20 pines. I had a beautiful tree on my front lawn when I bought the house, but it took a direct lightning strike - sent the bark crashing through my across the street neighbor's front window, peeled every last bit of it off, and the trunk looked like the tree had burst from the inside out, split every 3-4". You had to see it to believe it. As far as my gutters, luckily I haven't had them ice up solid like that... YET. Good call on the pantyhose, but it would probably be even weirder asking a girlfriend for some eh?

Oh and Bob, since when do the words "only 16 inches" and snow in NJ go together... I don't have your or the city's dilemma of where to put the snow, but our public works dept has us as last on the list, because we are off a main road, and no one drives into this development unless they live here or are visiting. It leads to nowhere but back out to the main road you came in off of.

According to the township website (which includes real time GPS tracking of plows btw), we are scheduled to be plowed between 4am and 6am. Some rogue neighbor or something plowed one lane down the one side of the street, but I'm going to wake up to a wall of snow left behind by the real plows.

Great!!

Take care,

Goerge

 

We only get one plow down the middle of the road and then the fighting begins.
I pay $22K in property taxes a year this is what I get!

I've just spent 45 minutes arguing with my neighbor (he's not a homeowner here) who thinks he can dump his snow onto my property so that he can get both of his cars out. That then leaves me with almost no place to stack mine. Then he hires a plow to push his snow into the parking spots of other tenants crushing the landscaping in the process and reducing their parking area by 1/3.

We have extraordinary conditions with this storm so it's unrealistic for everyone to be able to clear their driveways completely. But some aholes just say f*ck everyone else I'm getting mine. I'm leaving my Jag snowed in Igloo style until things get better but a lot more storms are on the way.

Most people are pretty reasonable about this situation but there always seems to be a handful that makes things miserable.

 

Bob that's insane. I sit here seething at my 17k tax bill for my 3100sq ft home on 1.2 acres. You should seriously consider moving south a bit...
You could rent something similar to that townhouse for a bit more than you're paying in taxes per year.

As far as your D-Bag neighbor, it all depends on if you're averse to conflict or not. Personally I'd get my brother, his plow, and all my friends over, and pack his driveway full of snow as tall as his garage. And play the tough guy if he tried to object. That should teach him.

I had an ahole neighbor who was a retired building inspector who wanted to bust my ***** about everything I did to my house. I poured a concrete patio and he threatened to call the town while it was being poured because it was 28 feet long (legal limit is 20) but I have 231ft from my house to the property line so who cares right. He comes over onto my property talking all kinds of crap, until he realized that the guys pouring the concrete were a bunch of cops in my town that had a concrete business on the side. The one cop basically said to him in no uncertain terms, call and complain, and I'll make it so you can't back out of your driveway without getting a ticket. He shut up and walked away and hasn't bothered with me since.

Gotta love neighbors sometimes.

Take care,

George

 

I decided to do the nice thing instead. Oh I thought about all of your ideas well before you posted them but I've had ahole neighbors before and it just never seems like that approach will lead anywhere good. I'm pragmatic. So tonight when his new 2WD 5 series bimmer couldn't get back into the driveway I went over and sanded his driveway. He immediately apologized. Oh I know he's still an ahole (and wrong) but I'd just prefer that it wasn't open hostility between us.

Pragmatism.

Who knows ... maybe world peace will break out?

 

[quote=Staatsof;298178]We only get one plow down the middle of the road and then the fighting begins.
I pay $22K in property taxes a year this is what I get!
quote]


22K property taxes will get you a $2,000,000 house here in Calif.

 

[QUOTE=Jayt2;298281]I don't know what Bob's place is worth, but It's no where near that.
My house is worth about 680k now and I pay 17.5k in taxes... I suspect his tax rate might be a bit higher than mine.

Heh... I have friend who owns a contracting company... Built himself an 18k sq ft house in Hopewell, NJ. Cost him 1.2m Tax assessor comes along, he's expecting a 1.5-1.75m assessment. Bangs him at 4.5m. Now taxes in NJ are generally about 2.2% of assessed value. So his new property tax bill - 108k a year.
Plus in NJ they have this stupid coalition for affordable housing tax, where every time you build a new house, you have to pay 1% of assessed value as a "coah" tax which is supposedly used to subside low income housing. So it cost him 45k just to get his certificate of occupancy.

Jersey pays the highest percent of their income to taxes, property taxes, state income tax, sales taxes etc. It's nuts living here.


Take care,

George

 

NJ property taxes are insane. We pay $7k/yr for a house on only .16 acres...meanwhile, only 20 minutes away in DE, a $500k property is probably barely $2000/yr in taxes. I hate this state

 

I'm seriously considering PA, but not too far west.

Real Estate is worth 2/3 the price of NJ.

Property taxes are less than 1/2 of NJ.

Car insurance is half of NJ.

And it's a red state as far as guns and most other things are concerned...

Now if I didn't work in New Brunswick and could somehow find my way to one of our PA sites

You're right this state is nuts!

Take care,

George

 

I'd just like to point out...particularly for Rick's benefit....that I've never lived in Jersey and have always prided myself on being a good and helpful neighbor...thus any resemblance between the aforementioned Jersey neighbors and my handle is purely fictional!

Had to reach back almost a year to Feb 12, but this is the biggest one we've had since I got to TX. Y'all be careful in that stuff...snow-shovels start heart attacks, so they say - make sure you take it easy.

 

Bob,

Get one of these. A personal flamethrower. Just the ticket for melting snow. Just make sure you don't catch the Jag on fire.

 

You can make one of them pretty easily out of a propane tank, an lpg regulator, a grill ignitor some plumbing fixtures teflon tape and some pipe...

I wouldn't strap the tank to my back unless you didn't mind being an accidental suicide bomber though!

Take care,
George

 

Flamethrowers? LOL, you guys!

I'd no idea property taxes worked that way anywhere in the USA. Ouch.

Over here, properties are valued (in a funny manner but that will do as a label). Valuations are split into (not many) bands but there's a top band for values over a fairly low threshold. You then pay a flat figure (not a % of income or of the property's actual value) based on the band, and not a huge amount (the howls of anguish say otherwise but hey). So you could have a 100-bed place and pay the same as someone with a 10-bed. (Not if it's a business property, then the whole thing is assessed differently.)

We often believe we pay more taxes than you do but then we're overlooking property taxes. (I should stay off healthcare, where ours is allegedly poor according to some of your remarkably ignorant or biased politicians.)

 

To hell with melting the snow, that will definitely work with the neighbor!

They're very illegal. I saw one in operation last year at the WWI air show in Reading Pa. Awesome!