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The NEXT Air-Conditioning System?

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So the Goodman HVAC system that was installed after the late great hail storm, on the insurance company’s dime, needs some service. I guess. Turned it on at 7:30 this morning. After it had pounded away for an hour, the thermostat recorded a one-degree rise in temperature (yeah: that’s 1 degree).

It’s been making some annoying outdoor noises, but Goodman runs noisy anyway, so I haven’t paid much attention.

Fortunately, the Goodman has a 10-year warranty on parts & labor, so this misadventure shouldn’t cost me much.

The warranty runs out in 2021, which, when you think about it, ain’t all that much longer. That’s only 5 years from now…

Replacing the type of air-conditioning & heating system needed in Arizona is an expensive proposition. For a house like mine, cost is likely to run $4,000 to $8,000. Or up: SDXB paid $5,500 for a system serving a smaller house than mine.

And in the New Ecologically Correct and Internationally Traded Environment? Not very effective. My Chinese-made heat pump, for example, freezes up when exterior temps drop into the 30s, at which point it blows ice-cold air into the house.

Over the past few years, the way I use my house has changed. A lot.

I used to spend most of the daytime hours in my office, working on a large and powerful desktop computer. Then my back went out. Now I can NOT sit in a desk chair any more than a few minutes without enjoying limp-inducing hip and back pain (and yes, I have tried all sorts of ergonometric chairs). The only way I can work for any length of time (and “work” for me entails hour after hour after interminable hour focused on arcane, mind-numbing copy) is to recline in an overstuffed leather chair with my feet up on an ottoman and a MacBook on my lap.

That chair is in a large room that comprises a family room, dining area, and kitchen. Two doors opening into the backyard accommodate the dogs’ comings and goings. And…that means that instead of moving around the house — from the office to the kitchen to the dog exits and to the dining area and back to the office — I spend most of my time in one centralized area: a single room, really.

At night I go back to the bedroom. And that’s about it: in fact I’m only occupying two rooms of a six-room house (eight, if you count the closet-like bathrooms).

So lately I’ve found myself wondering…why the hell am I air-conditioning and heating this entire building when I’m living in about a third of it??

In the wintertime (because it doesn’t get very cold here), it’s fairly easy to live without central heating. A plug-in space heater will make a work room cozy enough, and an electric blanket or throw set on “low” will get one comfortably through a two-dog night.

As it develops, there are central HVAC systems that can be persuaded to “condition” the air only in a given space within a building. These are dubbed “ductless air-conditioning systems.” Some of them are…yup…pretty Third-World. But that doesn’t seem to matter, since the Funny Farm is now situated in the Third World anyway. Probably much as your home is or soon will be.

One of these is made by Mitsubishi. It’s very expensive. On the other hand, simply replacing one’s existing AC system with a new unit has grown into a ludicrously costly proposition. I’ve actually had one HVAC vendor propose something near 10 grand to replace my system, using its aging ductwork.

The beauty of the Mitsubishi system is that you don’t have to stick ugly portable AC units in your windows. In my house, that would be impractical, because all the windows are sliders. There’s no way you could install a window AC in any of the rooms without (expensively) replacing the windows, too. if you even could: the openings are too wide for double-hung windows.

The un-beauty of the Mitsubishi system is that it’s breathtakingly expensive. Not only do you have to cut holes in exterior walls to install the ductless vents, you also have install a central system that costs as much as or more(!!) than a traditional central air-conditioniong system. It would be pretty damn expensive. Indeed.

On the other hand, if you were only air-conditioning the rooms you use, and if you only use a couple of rooms on any given day, and five or six months out of every twelve you needed little or no air-conditioning either heat or cool, it wouldn’t take long to recoup the installation cost. And the environmental footprint, if anyone cares about that anymore in the Age of NeoHitler Trump, would be far, far smaller.

So…there’s no hurry to make this decision. The Goodman system presumably will run at least until 2021. It may even run longer than that. But into the future: ??? It behooves one to keep an eye on new developments.

Gestalt II: The Update

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Okay, the dust has settled from this morning’s freneticism.

Nothing has been decided about the bathtub drain, although I did determine, by poking around with an orange stick, that the exit hole in that drain is amazingly small. It may be that the drain is slow because it’s just built that way. This is something I will think on.

The dogs have settled down, apparently having yapped themselves into a stupor. As Catseye pointed out at this morning’s post, there’s nothing like a barking dog to spike your blood pressure. Indeed, that was the reason Cassie’s previous humans cited for dumping her at the dog pound. Ruby, however, is not a barker; she usually will not rise to the barking bait even when Cassie is baying. There actually has to be something going on to cause Ruby to bark.

The going-on, as noted, was the joy of young children playing on the street, it being a school holiday. Arf!

The kids have now gone even further on to bigger and better things, probably televised, and so the hounds are napping.

Out at the pool, which has been shut off for the past several days pending arrival of a repairman, the following Discoveries were discovered:

• The pressure gauge is not, after all, busted. With a little fiddling, I fixed it.

• Harvey the Hayward Pool cleaner stopped dead in the water NOT because the pressure gauge was broken or because much of anything else was wrong with the pump and filter, but because he had ingested a pecan, kindly dropped into the pool by a passing bird.

Those birds do that all the time. My challenge is to train the critters to deposit the pecans, preferably un-nibbled, right outside the back door, thankyouverymuch.

So with great pleasure I called off the pool repairman.

Planning to dump a bag and a half of pool shock into the drink, I tested the pool water first. Good thing: Acid level was normal; chlorine level was so high it turned the yellow test color to orange. Ooohkay…that explains why no algae has been growing in those much-neglected precincts. It also excused me from having to shock the pool, lhudly sing huzzah.

It further excused me from the planned trudge to Home Depot. Main thing I needed to buy there was chlorine tabs, at an elevated (not to say “extortionate”) price. Clearly, with chlorine levels high in the toxic range, there’s no need to add more…

The effing Venza (the more I drive that car, the less I like it) has again developed an infuriating rattle, somewhere in the vicinity of the dashboard. This, it develops, is a known issue with the Venza…and with several other other late-model Toyotas.

When I say I will never buy another Toyota as long as I live, I am not kidding. If I could figure out how to trade this thing in on something else without bankrupting myself, I would do it. Today.

The last time (which is to say the first time) I noticed this, I made an appointment with Chuck the WonderMechanic, who thought he could fix it. But before I could get the car to him, the rattling stopped. And…interestingly…here’s how it happened to stop:

I’d driven out to lovely Sun City at SDXB’s dinner invitation. When I got into the car to drive home after dark, it suddenly started rattling — and I mean make you CRAZY rattling.

The weather was much like it is right now: crisp and rainy.

A couple of days later — before the appointment at Chuck’s — I rattled on down to a Costco. Left the car parked in the lot for half an hour or 45 minutes. Then moved on to a Target, where the vehicle sat in that store’s lot for another 45 minutes, give or take.

In the Target lot, it was parked facing the sun. As today, the sky was patchy: sun and clouds. That meant the sun had at least some opportunity to shine directly on the black plastic dashboard.

Ohhhkayyy…now I come out of the Target, climb into the car, drive away…and realize it’s stopped rattling!

Huh. I surmise that the sun has heated the black plastic enough to cause it to expand, and in doing so has tightened the joints between the several plastic parts that comprise the contraption’s dashboard.

I do not take it to Chuck.

This was several weeks ago.

It was fine until yesterday. But weirdly, the weather conditions are almost identical: it’s been raining, it’s been cold.

So, when I rattled on home, I parked it on the driveway facing into the sun, and left it there for an hour. Figured if it worked before, maybe it’ll work again.

Well. It might have sort of worked: after letting it sit for an hour, I took it out again. The rattle seemed less egregious. But…it still rattles.

Okay…if a little solar heat is good, a lot must be better, eh? Left it parked in the driveway again. Whenever I feel like getting up, I’ll drive it around the block again.

It looks like little can be done about this. When you get on the Web, you see a lot of crazy schemes indulged by do-it-yourself aficionados. Some worked, some didn’t. But none of them are things I care to bother with.

This would explain why the vehicle was turned in after two years, wouldn’t it?

Friend came by with her books in hand. We’re going to donate them to the church’s fund-raising book sale, with stickers on the inside front cover directing readers to where they can find more of Friend’s work.

These are children’s books, and they’re really pretty cool. She is a grade-school teacher and a special-ed expert. The books are precisely targeted to specific grades. As part of her marketing campaign, she has gotten herself invited to classrooms to work with the books and the kids…and as she was describing the things she and the teachers were doing with them, I realized she had a kind of de-facto lower-grade textbook-like tool. I suggested she write teachers’ guides describing the various insightful and innovative ways she had for working with them. She liked the idea.

Another fucking robocaller jangled as I sat down to eat lunch, drink, and write this.

Checked into Ooma again. It still looks dauntingly technophobia-inducing. To hang onto your phone number (which I really need to do, since it IS my business number), you have to ask Ooma to switch it over. It takes three to four weeks, they say, to make the shift — though you get to use your number, you apparently also get to pay Cox for the privilege (as well as paying Ooma) and during that time, obviously, you wouldn’t be able to engage NoMoRobo.

It doesn’t exactly defeat the purpose…but it sure as hell makes it more difficult to achieve the purpose.

So I remain undecided about whether I want to subject myself to the hassle of changing carriers.

Most of our paying work is under control just now. Returned one article to the client this morning. The Kid is working on a second. So from my perspective, nothing remains to be done. We’ve read over 300 pages of the 475 pages the project is said to comprise, and now we have a lull. I should be able to goof off.

Which, you could say, is what I’m doing now.

 

 

 

 

Gestalt Morning…

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Good GOD is this EVER going to stop??? It’s one of those mornings when a thousand little tasks come crashing down on you at once, and you can’t get one thing done before the next thrusts itself into your face. I’ve been binged at, bonged at, banged at, tweeted at, rung at, buzzed at, thumped at, yakked at, and barked at nonstop since the first goddamn robocall struck at 7:00 a.m.

Meanwhile, weirdly enough, I do have some things I need to do, but I can’t get at them for all the pesterments.

The dogs have not stopped  yapping since they rolled out of the sack this morning. I think it’s because the kids are all out of school, it being MLK Day, and they’re having a gay old time playing outdoors on this beautiful cool day. Cassie and Ruby would love to be out there chasing around with them, but about the best they can do is race around barking at the front door, barking at the back gate, barking at the side gate, barking at the east wall, barking at the west wall, barking at the south wall, barking…barking…barking…BARKING.

Everything I pick up to do gets interrupted by something else that has to be done right this minute.

The handyman was slated to come by at 9 a.m. to see if there was anything he can do about the plugged bathtub drain, a task the plumber shows no interest in doing. Handyman guessed that it was a BIG job, one that could entail pulling out the plastic tub surround. (These things were installed in the houses at the frame-out stage…to get one of them out through a bathroom door entails sawing them apart in the bathroom and taking them out in pieces. How you get a new one in escapes me…my guess is, you don’t.) After showing up an hour late with his brother in tow, he thought about it and then went off to think about it some more, saying he’ll be back tomorrow.

The pool guy is supposed to come by between 3 and 5. But before then, I need to get Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner over to Leslie’s to see if he’s jammed…because it dawned on me that the reason Harvey has stopped moving may not be the pump or the filter but Harvey himself. A fix at Leslie’s would be one hell of a lot cheaper than a fix and a filter cleaning trip by an expensive repairdude in a gas-guzzling service truck.

But the question is, WHEN can I get out of here?

An acquaintance was supposed to come by, also (conveniently while a repairman is underfoot) at 9 a.m. to drop off some books to donate to the church’s book sale. She called about 10:30 to say she’d be here in 45 minutes or so. Since she’s coming in from Sun City West, which is halfway to Los Angeles, that actually will be more like an hour, unless she’s in the habit of flying low.

So that puts the eefus on getting done with the SLEW of errands that need to be run between now and 3:00 p.m. In addition to the trip to Leslie’s, I need to make a Costco run and a Home Depot run. The Costco run can be (and probably should be) put off until tomorrow, but H.D., not so much.

Sat down to catch up with bidness and with the personal email. Every thirty seconds the damn dogs launched into another barkfest! Read half a sentence…bark bark bark bark bark bark BARK BARK BARK…try to figure out what the interlocuter wanted…bark bark bark bark bark bark YAP YAP YAP…go back and read it again and try to figure out what’s needed and bark YAP YAP bark bark BARKITY YAP bark…try to frame a response…type type BUZZZZZZZ dryer goes off…haul out blankets, move another load of laundry out of the washer into the dryer, put blanket back on bed YAP YAP YAP BARK BARK BARK BARK bark bark…start over with email, try to think through what to say…type BARK BARK briinnnggggggggg goddamn TELEPHONE…wait till the system hangs up the robocaller’s system…type type YAP YAP YAP BARK BARK BARK…ohhhhh crap! Give UP!

Pick up the litter and sort of clean the house before people show up here and see how I really live.  briinngggggggg goddamn TELEPHONE “Yes, I’m here, come on over whenever you can” BARK BARK BARK yap yap GROWWWWLLLLLLL bark bark BARK Swiffer up the dog hair off 1860 square feet of tile, something that should be done every single day but that in reality gets done about every second or third day. Throw ten days’ worth of microfiber dog-hair-swiffering rags into the wash… Ruminate on how pissed it makes me that some asshole robocalled me at 7 in the morning on a national holiday.

You know, I really need to dump Cox and get Ooma, a VoIP service that lets you use NoMoRobo. The latter is supposedly the most effective nuisance call blocker around.

But I hesitate. I can see that attaching Ooma is going to involve a) a learning curve and b) DIY technodiddling. The chance of my screwing it up is high. You have to wrest your phone number away from Cox, meaning that if I screw it up (as I will), un-screwing will present a major-major hassle.

It could be worth it, though.

Cox is charging a little over $14 a month for the phone plus another $13 a month for alleged “taxes.” Ooma calculates a total of $4.08 for taxes & fees in my zip code. Switching would mean a HUGE savings.

On the other hand, there are trade-offs.

First, obviously, you would not even have ONE phone in the house that operates when the power is off. Right now one of the eight extensions in fact is directly connected to the landline. And it does run when the power is turned off. Not well…well enough to call 911.

Second, you’d be dependent on an Internet connection. Cox’s Internet is not what you’d call “reliable.” And…lo! Here’s someone at the door…

BARK BARK BARK BARK YAP YAP YAP BARK BARK…bye…

 

 

Emptying Out the Nest

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nest thermostatSometimes I feel like I’m swimming backwards: searching for retrograde items to replace commonplace tools that were once so functional  you barely noticed they were there but that have been replaced with computerized junk so complicated you can’t even begin to figure out how to make it work — or even if it does work. Current case in point: the Nest.

My son kindly bought me one of these formerly extremely kewl thermostats as a birthday present. And at the time it was awesomely kewl, the product of a band of ambitious young Turks. You could tell it what time you wanted to jack up or down the house’s temperature; or you could tell it to watch for you and to turn off when you’re not around. So, say, you could set it for 80 degrees on a 110-degree day, and it would keep the temperature around there while you were in the house, but if you went out for a few hours, it would shut itself off until you came back, saving you large amounts of money.

Then Google bought Nest.

Yeah.

thermostat honeywellWell, even if you didn’t mind the presumption that here’s another way for Google to spy on you, the problem is that Google decided to break the Nest. A year or so ago Google force-fed programming into the thing (you have no choice in the matter: the software downloads automatically and unbidden), and that program is just simply incomprehensible. You can NOT figure out how to make it work.

Lately I’ve been waking up every morning at 2:00 a.m. sharp, in a fit of discomfort: thinking I’m having hot flashes!

Hot flashes? At 71? Really?

Through the wee-hours stupor, I realize the heater’s running. In a daze, I climb out of bed, stumble down the hall, and turn the damn thermostat back off. And I wonder: is this a senile error? Did I not turn it off last night? I’m SURE I turned it off. The house was colder than a bigawd when the dogs and I huddled together in the bed at 10 p.m. How can it be back on?

Well, of course, “back on” unbidden is the Nest’s nature. And there seems to be no way to tell it off, OFF, goddammit STAY OFF! The Nest will turn itself back on when it deems proper: at about 65 degrees. Thank you very much for arrogating my decisions unto Thyself, dear Google.

Peeved after I see this month’s power bill — about $30 more than it should be, even though it’s effin’ freezing in here when I’m not having the 2 a.m. “hot flash” — I google “nonprogrammable thermostat.”

What should come up but a simulacrum of the good old Honeywell round thermostat!

Unfortunately it’s not the real good old thermostat, because it’s not a mercury thermostat. That was the reason they took real thermostats — the ones that used to…you know, function? — off the market. We might hurt ourselves with that mercury. And God knows we’re all too stupid to figure out how to recycle it properly.

User reviews are middling. At Home Depot, the Honeywell racks up a 4 out 5 possible stars, with 14% hating it. At Amazon, though, a full 20% bash it with one-star reviews.  Since on average you can expect to see 9% negative, this comes under the heading of bad reviews. By and large the main complaint (except for the guy who got an empty box in the mail) is inaccuracy, but as I recall the old real Honeywell mercury thermostat left something to be desired in that department…it’s pretty easy to adapt to, though. Only 59% of Amazon reviewers love it up with 5 stars; most of those folk seem to be the nostalgic type, pining for gear that has escaped digitization.

On the other hand…i prob’ly fall into that category… 😀

So, what we have here, so far, are four tools so laden with electronic frou-frou that they barely operate:

• A shiny double oven, about $2,500 worth, whose highest and best use is to store pots and pans.

• A thermostat that thinks it knows your mind better than you do, and will not brook any argument.

• A car whose steering wheel is so packed with buttons to operate doo-dads that you have to take your hands off the wheel to honk the horn. Makes sense, eh? No one would ever think of honking a horn when some emergency was under way… A car bearing 28 computers, which working in concert will track your every move, operate your telephone, tell you which way to turn (not always correctly), and god only knows what else. But it’ll cost you $1,000 to fix a door that quits operating.

• A clothes washer that will not wash, but that will explode. 😀

Hilariously, a few days ago Samsung sent me an urgent message with instructions about what can and cannot be washed in the washer — your comforter, for example, topmost among the NOTs… And with a new dial stick-on emphasizing that you cannot wash sheets in any cycle other than the “bedding” cycle. Which is just as well, one figures, since that’s the only cycle that releases enough water to launder so much as a pair of nylon panties…

Well, now we have a very fine wash machine, a throwback to the 1970s, whose agitator actually sloshes the laundry around in a whole tubful of water.

The dishwasher, a Bosch, has started to make ominous growling noises. I suppose that will be the next to go, soon to be replaced by yet another over-engineered device that doesn’t work. Kitchen appliances, including the Bosch models, are now engineered to crap out in 7 years. The other day SDXB reflected that he’s been in Sun City for 13 years now. He moved out there shortly after I moved into this house, in the wake of a dispute with a nefarious neighbor. So…that dishwasher is well into its dotage.

Just like its human…which also growls a lot.

What to Do, Financially, to Weather the Coming Disaster?

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Our country — and by extension, your finances and mine — is in deep trouble. We are about to inaugurate as President a man whose mental stability is questionable; who announces his petulance in wee-hours tweets; who gropes women and brags about it; who exploits hatred and fear to gain power; who is at odds with the country’s intelligence agencies; who denigrates the disabled, the female, and the brown-skinned; and who “owes one” to the corrupt, thuggish leader of a nation that has been our enemy since shortly after the end of World War II. He is backed by a phalanx of extremists who want to reverse not just the ACA but the entire New Deal, which has been in place for almost 80 years.

The New Deal, we might point out, came into being in response to the Great Depression. Part of its purpose was to prevent a repeat performance of the Depression.

I believe that, in the near future, we are going to see a recession that will make the Bush Recession look like a cakewalk. The reason is that the dominant economic thinking among the doctrinaire right wing riding Mr. Trump’s coat-tails is simply wrong. It was proven wrong by the Great Recession, as it was proven wrong in earlier recessions.

Since 1948, this country has seen 11 recessions. Seven of them — 63.6% — were presided over by Republicans (Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush the Elder, Bush the Younger). Some of the economic downturns were precipitated by factors over which we had little control, such as rises in oil prices. Others correspond with rises in interest rates by the Federal Reserve or with monetary tightening in pursuit of a balanced national budget. Most egregious, from a political point of view, was the Great Recession, which was brought about by deregulation of financial institutions (a mainstay of voodoo economics). The Great Depression of 1929-33 was largely aggravated by “extensive new tariffs and other factors [that] contributed to an extremely deep depression.”

The pendulum swings. As we all know, things go one way for awhile, and then they turn around and go back in the other direction. For the past few years, we’ve seen a roaring economy. We can expect that it, like any hot economic period, will cool down. But I think the pendulum is going to swing, all right: waaayyyy in the opposite direction.

It would be good to position your investments in a balanced portfolio to include variable rate bonds and variable rate preferred stocks that pay decent income and aren’t as sensitive as stocks are in a downturn. In addition, some financial planners make it a policy to sell certain exposure to the market should it turn down below a certain level. This doesn’t protect from losses should the market sell-off, but should help cushion further losses in a market meltdown. Now is the time for you to speak with a financial planner about steps to take in managing your savings.

Additionally, you should be prepared for a period of unemployment. During the Great Recession, 10% of Americans were put out of work, a rate beat only by the Reagan recession (10.8%), the Great Depression (24.9%) and the subsequent 1937/38 recession (19%). That means having at least six months’ worth of living expenses in cash savings and possibly taking on a side gig now, not later, so that you’ll have something to fall back on should you lose your main livelihood.

Remember that many of us were never able to get jobs comparable to the ones we had before the Bush recession — large numbers of Americans are still unemployed or underemployed. After you become discouraged enough to give up seeking full-time work, you no longer register in the government’s unemployment figures, and so most of us in that category are simply not counted.

In addition to building cash savings, pay down debt and avoid racking up new debt, especially on credit cards.

Now more than ever is the time to live not just within your means but below your means. Good luck to you, folks. We’re all gonna need it.

 

5 Tips for Making your Rental Property More Profitable

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Looking to turn a higher profit from your rental this year? There are many ways to do this, if you implement your plans strategically and you are willing to invest. Below are five tips for making your rental profitable.

  1. Invest in Curb Appeal. The amenities within and outside of your property are an immediate turn on or turn off for potential renters. It’s simple—you just can’t raise rent unless the property appears worth it. For example, your building’s walls may need a fresh coat of paint. You could lose money and turn off candidates if they see that your walls are bright pink. Remember: what looks good to you does not look good to everyone. Always be safe with neutral colors because it allows the tenant to imagine their space without distraction. You want them to easily picture how they want to arrange their furniture and belongings. What’s more, potential renters will recognize if you are cheap. Do yourself a favor and invest in where it counts, whether it be the walls, flooring, kitchen and bathroom amenities, or cleanliness.
  2. Minimize Turnover Time. There are many ways to your properties occupied. The easiest way is to extend the length of your lease. Turning your property into a one-year lease instead of month-to-month will decrease the time and money it takes to advertise and show the property. Another way to do this, is to match the price of your area. If you do not have any features to offer that make your building unique and incredibly tempting—such as a prime location, or state-of-the-art kitchen—it will not be easy to draw in higher-paying tenants. Rental properties are always in demand it they come at the right price. Feel like you’ve gone too long without a single viable potential tenant? It may be time to lower your prices. Most landlords lower their rent to just below the market price in situations like these, and this could be the tactic to get your vacancy filled.
  3. Raise Rent. Contrary to the option above, there may be ways you can also raise the rent. In order to do this, you have to be strategic. One tactic is to raise the rent as the lease ends. If your current tenants are loyal and want to stay, they will pay slightly more. They may consider that the time it takes to look for a new rental is not worth it, or they may realize that moving may be too expensive. Over time, for instance, the fees of the Home Owner’s Association may force your hand to raise rent. You can also time the replacement or updating of certain features around the end of the lease. Doing so will encourage your tenants to stay, and persuade them to stay in their subtly renovated rental.
  4. Enforce Leasing Policies. This is especially true of late fees. This is important for two reasons: first, your tenants need to respect you as a landlord in order to keep your property protected; and second, you need to make sure you maintain your revenue stream so you do not find yourself in big financial trouble. One way to prevent this is to charge a late fee. Your tenants need to know that they are your landlord, not your friend. Be sure the tenants understand that they will be charged a fee if they do not pay on time. After all, they signed a contract that said they were financially able and responsible enough to pay, and they are bound to that contract. They need to know that this is a business, and they have a job to follow through on. The best way to prevent issues is to check if a tenant has ever been evicted. Past instances will be indicative of the behavior you can expect in the future.
  5. Offer services. If you own a single unit rental with a garden, offer a gardener at a higher rental price. Not only does it keep your rental looking nice, but it will appeal to tenants who want to live in a nice home. Or, if you own a multi-unit property, install washers and dryers—either stackable or coin-operated—and they will pay for themselves. Many tenants do not want to spend all of their time at a laundromat on a Saturday, so having washers and dryers on the premises or in the unit will be considered a luxury especially if these services are rare in the area.