Cliff Campbell

Cliff Campbell is a regional owner and member of the National Leadership Team at A Buyer’s Choice Home Inspections (ABCHI) Canada, as well as a Certified Master Inspector (CMI) and the local owner of the Lethbridge, AB ABCHI franchise. Having performed 6,000+ residential and commercial property inspections, Cliff has a passion for raising the bar in what buyers, sellers and their realtors should expect from a professional inspector. He can be reached at: https://abuyerschoice.com/partners

abuyerschoice.com/partners

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At any time of the year, many Canadians are guilty of using their sinks and toilets like garbage cans, resulting in costly damage to their homes due to pipe clogs and backups. Two of the biggest offenders are personal hygiene products (baby wipes, feminine hygiene products, floss) and fats, oils and grease (which we call FOG). But with all the cooking, mess and chaos of the holidays, even more of these “offenders” will go down the drain than usual.

Let’s first focus on personal hygiene products, and wipes in particular. It’s understandable why so many people flush wipes — after all, it often says “flushable” on the packaging. But just because something can be flushed doesn’t mean it should!

The truth is, wipes don’t break down like toilet paper does. Neither do feminine hygiene products, cotton swabs or tissues. Because these items don’t dissolve like toilet paper, they can clump together in your pipes and cause a blockage. And a blockage can lead to backups and even basement flooding.

Flushing dental floss may seem harmless, but it can wind around things like wipes, tampons and human waste to form big clumps. (Hair can behave in the same way, so that’s another flushing no-no.)

“The bottom line is the only things that should be flushed are the 3Ps — that’s pee, poo and (toilet) paper,” says Amy Lane, marketing and communications manager at the Ontario Clean Water Agency, which runs the I Don’t Flush public awareness campaign along with partner Clean Water Foundation. “An eye-opening experiment to do yourself or with kids is to get clear glass jars and put toilet paper in one, wipes in another and so on. See for yourself how things do or don’t break down over time.”

Another major culprit in pipe blockages is FOG. You may have seen news reports about “fatbergs” in recent years. Fatbergs are huge masses of congealed FOG mixed with unflushables like wipes that cause blockages in municipal wastewater systems. Some discovered in British sewers have been as big as a double-decker bus. If you’re letting FOG go down the drain, you could be contributing to a mini-fatberg in your own home – and to a larger one down the line.

Some examples of FOG are meat fats, cooking oil, butter and margarine, dairy products, sauces and gravies, salad dressings and sandwich spreads.

“FOG like gravy and fat from cooked meat should be poured into a heat-safe container or left in the pan to cool and harden before scraping it into the green bin or trash,” says Ms. Lane. “Not sure whether FOG goes in the green bin or trash? Ask your municipality. Also, use paper towels to wipe excess FOG like salad dressing, whipped cream and meat grease from pans and dishes.”

Some cooking oils don’t harden, but they can still stick to pipes and debris. Small amounts can be absorbed in the green bin or garbage. Check with your municipality about how to dispose of larger amounts.

One more thing about FOG: Using hot water and/or detergent to wash it down the drain just pushes a potential clog further down the pipe.

Interested in learning more about how to keep your pipes happy this holiday season? The I Don’t Flush campaign encourages the public to properly dispose of household items rather than putting them down the drain. The campaign is run by the Ontario Clean Water Agency and the Clean Water Foundation with support from the following participating municipalities: Region of Peel, Regional Municipality of York, Niagara Region, City of Barrie, Town of Bradford West Gwillimbury and Town of LaSalle. Visit idontflush.ca for tips and to view our public service announcements.

Catherine Flannery

Catherine Flannery is marketing and community outreach specialist for the Ontario Clean Water Agency.

The post Don’t let clogged pipes ruin your holidays appeared first on REM.

Boiron is known for coming up with a variety of promotions, including a video of his eight-year-old daughter Belle showing a house. He’s also the author of two real estate books.

His most recent offer launched in mid-September, focussing on the Kitec Plumbing recall.

If you sell your condo using The Boiron Group and commit to buying another home with them, Boiron’s company will cover the cost to replace faulty Kitec plumbing. Homeowners must assign their right to submit a claim to, and receive compensation from, the Kitec Settlement. Full details are available on his “Kitec Crusader” website at www.kiteccrusader.ca. There is also a link to the Kitec company’s settlement agreement and forms, for owners who wish to apply for the funds themselves.

Introduced to the market in 1995, Kitec offered an economical and attractive alternative to copper piping. It is made of flexible, plastic-wrapped aluminium. The fittings are made of zinc and copper.

Over time the materials in the plumbing have been reported to degrade. Leaks and burst pipes are reported, especially with water over 77 C. These defects became so far-reaching that Kitec created a $125-million US settlement fund for repairs or reimbursement. The deadline to claim any funds is Jan. 9, 2020 or if the fund runs out sooner.

“I heard about Kitec from clients and Realtors a few times in recent years,” says Boiron. “Then in early 2017 it really started snowballing. I heard about it as often as a dozen times a month. People who bought condos would complain that they had Kitec plumbing, and now the condo board said it had to be replaced as a preventative measure.”

He says, “When you buy a condo as opposed to a house, one reason is that a condo is supposed to be relatively maintenance free. You might have to deal with roofing every 15 to 25 years. But otherwise, you would expect your monthly condo fee to cover anything else. Suddenly condo owners were being asked to come up with thousands of dollars in a short amount of time.”

For condo owners to pay an extra $5,000 to $10,000 to their condo board within 30 to 60 days was a real hardship. Because the pipes affected were coming into units in apartments and condos, most condo boards were not legally responsible for the repairs. However, many boards wanted their homeowners to install replacements throughout entire buildings as a preventative move before a pipe leaked, rather than handling damage control after.

“One woman called me and she was saying that she might have to sell her condo because she didn’t know how she could afford to pay that much at once. It was unbelievable, the stories of people so frustrated and afraid,” says Boiron.

You can identify Kitec plumbing by its bright colours – orange or red for hot water lines, blue for cold water. It has also been manufactured in yellow, grey, white and black. When looking for Kitec plumbing you may find it near hot water tanks and under sinks. Kitec is also a component of in-floor heating. Buildings affected include condos, apartments, detached houses and commercial properties.

Yvonne Dick

Yvonne Dick is a contributing writer for REM with two decades of experience in journalism.

www.remonline.com

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If the water heater is owned, it can save the buyer a significant amount of money because they don’t have to pay monthly rental fees. Even if the purchased unit is not fully paid off at the time of closing and the monthly payments are transferred to the buyer, owning can still be significantly more cost-effective than renting. Let’s take look at the math.

In Ontario, for example, renting a water heater from one of the big utility-like companies will set you back between $16 to $40 a month, depending on the type and size of the tank. Typically, a water heater will last about 15 to 20 years, if properly looked after.

Now, imagine you have the choice to pay $30 a month to the utility-like company to rent your water heater for a standard 15-year term, or $30 a month to buy your water heater from a company that will spread the purchase price over several years. At the end of year 12, things could look very different, depending on which option you chose.

If you bought your water heater, you would have made your final payment by now and own the unit outright.  But if you are renting your water heater, not only will you continue to pay a monthly fee after year 12 for three years or more, but you may also find your initial rental fee of $30 per month has skyrocketed to over $50 a month. That’s because utility-like companies in most contracts are permitted to increase their rates by up to 3.8 per cent a year. That amounts to a whopping 70-per-cent fee hike during the life of a standard rental contract.

Here’s a link to a calculator that can help your clients find out how much they could save by owning vs. renting their water heater.

In addition to the financial benefits of owning vs. renting, there are several other considerations, so it’s important that homeowners take renting a water heater seriously to avoid nasty surprises down the road. It starts as a 15-year commitment, so they should read the fine print carefully. For example, it’s prudent to understand what the financial penalties are for removing the water heater prior to the contract ending, as these can be pretty stiff.

What happens if the water heater owner moves home before the contract expires? This is a big one, as many rental agreements try to force the buyer to assume the existing contract – whether they want to or not. This can be an issue if the buyer plans to rip the unit out in a renovation as soon as they move in.

To avoid a delay or even a deal-breaker in a home sale, it is worth finding out in advance of an offer if the buyer is happy with a rented water heater and all that goes with it, because getting rid of it after they move in may not be easy or affordable. One solution buyers may resort to is leveraging the financial penalties they would incur for breaking the rental contract to negotiate the home purchase price. Another might be to transfer the contract from the existing home to the seller’s new address, contract permitting. The key is to know the contract’s stipulations, rather than find out the hard way.

When thinking of owning vs. renting, whether it be a water heater or any heating and cooling equipment, the rental route may seemingly be preferred because there’s a sense that it provides peace of mind.  We’re more protected if we rent should something go wrong, aren’t we? Not necessarily. So, buyers should get all the facts before blindly accepting a rented water heater as part of the deal when they purchase a home.

Purchasing a water heater from a reputable HVAC dealer can provide more security than renting from a utility and it certainly provides better value. Look for a retailer that actively promotes regular maintenance to catch small technical and safety issues before they become a problem, as well as 24-hour service for emergencies and ideally, locally based support that can arrive quickly.

When you fully understand the contractual implications of renting a water heater and the cost-benefits of ownership, you can provide added insight and value to your clients – and what client wouldn’t appreciate a simple way to avoid leaking money every month when they don’t have to?

Rick Little

Rick Little is director of marketing at ClimateCare. Send Rick an email or phone 905-319-9828.

The post Buying a water heater can save homeowners money appeared first on REM.

Many of us still choose conventional, gas-fired hot water tanks, because they’re cheapest – or are they? Over its lifespan, the initial price of your hot water heater can represent as little as 12 per cent of its overall cost. The other 88 per cent is energy.

For that 88 per cent, we wanted to get the biggest bang for our buck. So, we asked Ken McCullough of Think Mechanical in Edmonton to walk us through three high-efficiency choices: conventional-style high-efficiency power-vented tank, on-demand tankless and hybrid heat pump.

“The more people you have in your home, the more hot water you’re going to use,” McCullough says. “It’s important to know that you have the highest efficiency that you can possibly have. Otherwise, you’re just throwing money out of the window.”

Super-efficient water heater nirvana

These days, hot water heaters all come with an “energy factor” rating, or EF. A tank with an EF of 1.00 would be perfectly efficient, with all the energy being converted to hot water. This factor is often expressed as a percentage. A standard tank has an efficiency rating of about 60 to 65 per cent, meaning 35 to 40 per cent of the energy goes up the flue, or radiates out as the water sits in the tank.

You’ll also want to look at your new system’s recovery rate – the rate at which it can heat the fresh water flowing into the tank. The higher the rate, the less likely you are to run out of hot water during heavy use. Here we present three great choices for dramatically increasing the efficiency of your water heater.

High-efficiency power-vented water heater

If you’re reluctant around new technology, you might consider a high-efficiency power-vented tank. It looks like an old-school water heater, complete with a 50-gallon tank, but it’s side-vented (like a high-efficiency furnace) to decrease heat loss. This helps boost its efficiency to 90 per cent – or, about 30 per cent more efficient than a traditional tank. Meanwhile, its very high recovery rate, 80 per cent in one hour, will help keep the hot water flowing. You can get a 79-per-cent efficient model for $2,700, but the highest efficiency model we looked at clocked in at over $4,800 installed.

Tankless on-demand water heater

We were particularly interested in an on-demand tankless hot water heater. As the name suggests, this heater kicks in only when you turn on the hot water tap, heating the water as you use it rather than storing it in a tank. It heats the water quickly enough to provide an endless supply, assuming you’re not using a lot of hot water all at once (say, washing clothes and running the dishwasher while you shower). “You’re going to turn on your tap and you’ll get hot water,” McCullough says.

With an efficiency rating of 95-97 per cent, this is the highest efficiency available in a natural-gas water heater. At 95-per-cent efficient and priced at $3,700 installed, our choice is more expensive than a conventional water heater, but the long-term savings more than balance that out. And, because there’s no tank, the system frees up a lot of space in your furnace room.

Heat pump water heater

McCullough also showed us the state of the art in efficient water heating: a hybrid heat-pump hot water tank. It looks like a conventional tank, but with a cap on top containing a heat pump. The heat pump draws heat from the air in the (normally very warm) mechanical room – like a refrigerator in reverse – and transfers that heat to the water. This allows the heater to achieve an efficiency rating of 330 per cent, meaning the heat energy transferred to the water is more than triple the amount of electricity consumed.

Because the heat pump water heater is entirely electric, it is perfect for net-zero homes with no gas hookup (you also save $60/month on gas-line administration and delivery charges). Some early adopters are choosing these in conventional homes as well. McCullough quotes $4,400 for this option, making it slightly cheaper than the high-efficiency power-vented tank. The one downside is its relatively slow recovery rate of just 80 liters (21 gallons) per hour.

A good contractor can help you balance your needs, your budget and your environmental goals, helping you make the right choice. He or she will also bring pride of work to the installation itself. Shop around and read product reviews and remember: spend more up front and save more over the life of the water heater.

In the end, we went with a Rinnai tankless water heater in our own home. We consider ourselves early adopters and we loved the idea of endless supply of hot water. A current Energy Efficiency Alberta rebate definitely helped put us over the top.

So far, we’re thrilled with our choice, although the quirks of the system created a few start-up challenges. For example, our daughter’s first shower started out hot, but quickly switched to freezing cold. The culprit seemed to be our low-flow shower head; it turns out on-demand heaters require a certain minimum flow rate to remain on.

We solved the situation with a single quick adjustment (we turned down the temperature setting from 60 C to 49 degrees C on the water heater, thereby increasing the proportion of hot water needed for a comfortable shower). This has an added benefit of saving more energy – and, we’ve already had two showers going at the same time!

It does take a few seconds longer for the hot water to arrive. But, once it comes, it keeps coming for as long as you need it.

That said, please don’t tell our daughter she can now shower for hours.

David Dodge and Scott Rollans

This is part of The Smart Home series, which was created by GreenEnergyFutures.ca for the Alberta Emerald Foundation with financial support from the Alberta Real Estate Foundation.

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