One day while visiting with the neighbors they told us about a program funded by SoCal Edison and SoCal Gas that helped home owners get more energy efficient. One of their close family friends was heavily involved and signed them up and they in turn got us signed up after we watched them get a brand new fridge for FREE. Pretty much how it works is the assessors come in, check out how terrible all your stuff is and figure out if there is anything they can do to make your home a little bit less of an eco disaster. I’m all for free stuff and taking advantage of programs that these monopolistic energy companies offer, so we contacted the Energy Management Assistance Program and had them come by to evaluate.
Our neighborhood is so bad we automatically qualified. How depressing is that? Very depressing. Pretty much all of Hemet is qualified.
After our evaluation and walk-through they sent contractors to come and fix the trouble spots. The first thing the contractors did was fix our busted up bedroom window. It was nice to have someone else figure out all the issues and then just fix it. For absolutely FREE.
They put in new weatherstripping but their “repairs” unfortunately made our doors go all wonky and not work right at all. We will actually be replacing the doors, hopefully soon, so I guess we just live with the awkwardness of the terrible repair. They also put little insulation gaskets in all our electrical sockets…I think. There were a few I know they missed.
Another weird thing they did was test our HVAC ducting for any leaks or problem spots. This weird pipe thing does something?
They taped all the vents closed to figure out air pressure or something. We passed. No leaks.
Then they tested out our stove to see if it was killing us, and guess what! It totally was. On a scale of 1-10 : 1 being everything is cool and 10 being run the hell out of the house, we had a hardcore off the charts 10 reading of stove deathtrap.
Do you guys recall that our oven hasn’t worked in three years? I know! Three loooonggg years of people coming out and trying to repair it, of us calling restorers and getting bids to fix it, of us trying to find a 40″ wide professional stove that we could somehow afford. THREE YEARS of only stove top cooking.
The contractors were required to call this awesome guy from the SoCal Gas Company to come and do a service and safety check after we failed so miserably. Did you know that if you are a customer of SoCal Gas that you can call and have someone come and check out the safety of your oven and get it tuned up for free? Well, actually you pay a 17 cent service fee every month for this service, but if you have an old stove – DO THIS. Call them to come out and do a safety check. You already are paying for it and guess what…
Our oven? NOW WORKS. PERFECTLY.
This guy, after three years of paying stupid horrible people to come tell us that they didn’t know how to fix our oven and we just needed a new one, came and fixed it completely in an hour. Not just the oven, but serviced the whole thing so that now all our burners work great and the stove is no longer is killing us. We score a safe and clear 1 on the appliance killing you chart.
It is like an oven miracle. We are now basking in all our baking glory and paralyzed by the vast possibilities.
The other thing they ended up doing was blowing insulation into our attic. That was pretty incredible, since it was on the list of things we needed to do but just never wanted to do. Attic insulation just isn’t a very sexy repair, but it is very useful.
Overall, I kind of both hated and loved the experience. It makes me resolute to keep doing any finish work or things that require attention to detail since I’m pissed that the doors don’t work and that they used a mixture of clear and white caulk to fix our windows. I’m psyched that the oven isn’t killing us and that the house is so much more insulated than before.
Unfortunately, we didn’t qualify for any new appliances – I had my fingers crossed for a new washer and dryer – but we do have a fully functional oven. Maybe that makes everything worth it.
Now to get to baking. Who wants cookies?
