New Appliances

I upgraded the following appliances: AC/heat, water heater, stove. I got new energy efficient (14 SEER v. my old ~5 SEER, 40 gallon gas v. 52 gallon electric 33 year old water heater) gas appliances. The work all got completed and inspected on my birthday. That was a good present. The city's giving me $2,000 in incentive money along with hooking up a 5 year, 5% interest energy loan. My home warranty company gave me $925 for the air handler which brings my out of pocket costs to $5,600...leading to a $160/month payment. I think I'll save around $80/month on my utility bill, but we'll see what the actual figure is. The crappy thing is that I have to pay an extra $9/month just to be hooked up to the gas...they don't put that part in the brochures.

Anyway, not much to say about the water heater. We never ran out of hot water before and we certainly won't now. It is cool that you can take a panel off the unit and peer at the flame inside through a window. The AC is way better than my old one. You can hear the difference in volume at the return. The stove is sweet. It doesn't boil water instantly like everyone said it would. However, I've managed to make it this far without burning anything although I'm sure that will happen some time. I've made some tasty dishes on it. The oven preheats really fast and you can really tweak the temperature on the stove top.

I think these new appliances will increase the resale value of my house, but who knows by how much. Looking back, I should have got gas when I moved in. Dang. Oh well, I didn't have the money back then (but wait, there was a loan program...!). I would have bought a gas dryer too and saved even more. The guy doing work here tried to talk me into a gas dryer but I already have a matching washer/dryer set and they work well so I didn't see the need to replace the dryer. It would be easy to hook one up in the future.

Come visit if you want to cook on my sweet new stove. I found out that there's a piece for it that you can put over 2 burners and it becomes a griddle! Too bad it's $100. I might try to find one on sale.