Your Heights Home

 

Welcome once again to our monthly column on topics relevant to home ownership in our neighborhood. It is hoped that this column will generate topics from you specific to home ownership and home investing. My name is Holly Durfee and I will attempt to answer your inquiries in a question and answer format.

 

Dear Holly – My teenage children like taking really, really long showers. How can I keep steam and moisture from damaging our bathroom walls? Tommy D.

 

Dear Tommy D. – A ceiling fan which should be located close to the shower and vent to the outside is a great start. Then you have to get the kids to turn it on. The vent should not just vent into your attic.  It must move air all the way to the outside of the house or you will create another mold opportunity in the attic. When you shop for the vent/fan, the products are all described as handling so many cubic feet per minute or CFM’s. To determine the volume of air you need to move, multiply the length x width x height of the room. Divide the result by 60 and then multiply that result by 8. You want a fan that will handle at least that amount of CFM’s to evacuate the moist air as quickly as possible. You may have to compromise between the physical size of the unit and its capacity. The larger units are hard to install in some existing openings and even first time installs can have space constraints. The sooner the room humidity is lowered the quicker the wet walls will dry. If you can squeegee the shower walls, you will add weeks to the time in between cleanings & dry the walls that much faster.  After a shower, leave the glass doors/shower curtain open or at least cracked 6-8 inches on both sides to help air circulate and further dry out the walls and grout.

 

Dear Holly – I am unable to attend the DOT meetings about the noise wall that is going to be constructed between I-95 and our neighborhood. I live in the block closest to I-95, will this reduce the traffic noise inside & outside my home? Darlene D.

 

Dear Darlene D. – Construction to widen I-95, north of PGA, to 10 lanes is scheduled to begin in the summer of 2008. Approximately 10,000 feet of sound wall will run along the west side of our neighborhood. It is hoped that the sound wall will reduce the loudness of the traffic by 5 to 10 decibels. That is comparable to a reduction in the sound from that of a tractor trailer to that of a car. The protected zone that will be affected is called the “shadow zone” and in our case the shadow the wall will provide is 300-400 feet into our neighborhood. It will definitely affect the block closest to I-95 and improve the quality of life for you. The rest of us will no longer be able to see the traffic and our perception of the sound may be less as we have no visible reminder. However according to engineers, most of the eastern part of the neighborhood will detect little change in the faint murmur we hear now.

 

Reminder: Water restrictions in our neighborhood have been increased to only 2 days a week on which we can water. Odd numbered addresses can water only on Wednesday & Saturday. Even numbered addresses water on Thursdays & Sundays. Sprinklers may run from 4 to 8 a.m. and hand watering is allowed from 4 to 8 a.m. and from 5 to 7pm on your allowed days. Since you are only getting 2 days, make sure you are getting about an inch per week. 15 minutes per zone probably won’t cut it unless you have a lot of overlap or large sprinkler heads.

 

Market Update: We had 8 closings in the past month and have 10 homes currently under contract! This is better than your average neighborhood. We still have over 50 properties for sale but the number has been going down. If we can continue to stay ahead of inventory, prices should stabilize by late this year.

Holly M. Durfee is a real estate salesperson at RE/MAX Jupiter-Tequesta. She is a Director on the Board of the Jupiter-Tequesta-Hobe Sound Association of Realtors, Inc. and has earned her CRS (Council of Residential Specialists) and GRI (Graduate Realtor Institute) designations. She has been a resident of North Palm Beach Heights since 2001. You can contact her at: hollymdurfee@aol.com