Thaw Frozen Water Pipes, Prevent Winter Plumbing Freezes

My husband and I lived for ten years of our marriage in a mobile home. A common winter maintenance problems in trailers is frozen water pipes. Here are tips to prevent plumbing freezes. If pipes do freeze, here are tips to thaw them. My husband has donned Carhart coverall many times, armed with heat lamp and hair dryer to trudge through three foots drifts and thaw frozen pipes. It's a horrendous job. Pipes take forever to thaw. It wastes gobs of resources and it's expensive. Frozen plumbing can pose fire hazards, too. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure! How to Prevent Plumbing and Pipes from Freezing in Winter 

Fire Safety, Emergency Preparedness Concerns for Families

Last year, a family of seven kids perished in a home fire in Pennsylvania. Without faulting the Clouse family and with deepest sympathy, it's important to ask: could this tragedy possibly have been prevented? What can we as parents take away from this terrible tragedy? The need for family emergency preparedness. And the holiday season is a time to be particularly aware of fire dangers: candles in Halloween pumpkins, decorative candles, holiday lights, flammable Christmas trees. More decorations mean more things to catch fire. I almost sent our mobile home up in smoke (and us with it) leaving a Christmas candle burning. Thankfully, we had a smoke alarm and charged fire extinguisher and my husband is a quick thinker. So check those fire extinguishers and smoke alarms. Here are more resources for parents to prepare their children for emergencies and prevent home fires. read more

Surprise costs, hidden problems remodeling our 100-year-old home

My husband and I bought our Grand Haven, Michigan, home in 2000. We hoped to save money buying a 100-year-old fixer-upper for just $52,000. Newer homes that needed less work were selling for about two to three times what we paid for ours. We've had to make do with a lot of inconveniences that would cost us far more than we saved in purchase price to properly fix. Even fixing our home on a shoestring has cost us nearly as much as we saved -- around $49,000. Here are some of our costlier old-home-buying surprises.  read more