Satisfied, But.....Is There An Energy Efficient Tradeoff?

OK, OK, I haven't been updating as much because the novelty has worn off reporting something new everyday when the house was being built. I actually look at other houses being built in the neighborhood and say "I remember being at that stage, and how eager those other buyers must be."

Anyway,  I know I'm only about 10 days in the house, but I must ask:  Is it hotter in everyone else's bedrooms/second floor and rather nice on the main level and basement? It really feels like there is a significant difference upstairs vs. downstairs. I suppose this is a tradeoff to be energy efficient, but we will see when we get our first bill. Anything less than $100 would be a god send! Personally, I read on another blog that perhaps the dampers in the attic need to be adjusted to control airflow. That was in a Sienna model. Not sure if it applies to the Florence. I have a coworker who owns a Venice and he also experiences warmer temps upstairs. Could it be because there are not enough vents? Could it be because maybe 2 units are needed to cool these bigger houses? I'm no HVAC guru, but I do know the whole house is not the same temperature. I think I might close a couple vents down stairs and hopefully the airflow will go upstairs.

In other news, the unpacking still continues. I must admit, I have slowed down considerably moving boxes from the garage to the basement storage. We pretty much are about 80% done. Nothing in the boxes is time critical or needed at the moment. We are pretty happy living in the new house. There is lots of water pressure for showers which is nice, but the trade off is hot water doesn't last very long. The double bowl vanity is also nice. I like having my own sink to shave in and we actually have room so both of  us can brush our teeth at the same time.

The past couple days, usually in the morning we have been getting visitors from a flock of 3 Turkeys, who like to rummage through our grass seed and rake our straw. I was wondering why the straw was piled up in certain spots. If it weren't for the HOA, we might have been having some open faced Turkey sandwiches....maybe one day :)


Oh, and one more thing. What is with all the spiders, especially in the basement unfinished storage? I swear I have killed some big ones already. I assume it is just because we built during summer and, well, that's when bugs are prevalent and they made our basement their home. I'm going to need to buy some Raid or something soon I think. 

We Closed On Time...Moving Has Us Busy Busy Busy

I'm at work, and what better time to catch up on my blog? Well, we closed on the 29th of July on time!! Everything went well. It was quick and painless. I was probably finished in about 45 minutes or less. The only hiccup was they forgot to give me my settlement check that they owed me and I forgot to ask for it in my excitement lol..... I had to go back for it. I must say, even though NVR was a pain in the beginning with their intrusive nature with regards to my finances, my LO and Loan Processor (Patti and Jaime) were actually pretty awesome. Other than minor things here and there, I'm pretty happy about how our PM's Brett and Sam got everything done as scheduled.

 It has been a very busy week for us, so I don't really have too much to update, but I will post pics once we are settled and have gotten rid of most of our boxes and have things in their proper places. We spent the first 2 days moving primarily boxes and boxes of stuff in our cars. 15 trips in my car and Jen's van to be exact. Our moving strategy was to off load all our boxes in the garage and start unpacking the kitchen first, followed by bedroom stuff, clothes and moving anything to unfinished storage last (which we still need to do most of). I guess in short, we wanted to keep the house clutter free of boxes as much as possible so that there would be plenty of space when we moved the furniture on the 3rd day with the UHaul truck. It took 2 trips to move all our furniture. On Friday we had our family room couch - n -love seat and  a dining room set delivered, since we will use the front living room as our dining room. Comcast Cable (internet) was hooked up the day after closing so we at least had Netflix to watch at night and DirecTV came and installed service the day after we finished moving. Once we finish unpacking, I guess we will start marking stuff with blue tape for Ryan Homes to fix on our 30 day inspection.

And about those two utility companies...DirecTV lied to us and said we could get NFL Sunday Ticket free since we are upgrading to the Genie. Then I get a bill for it and  we call them. They claim that it is the NFL Sunday Ticket Max for a year that we get free and we could cancel next year. I don't need Max. All I want to do is watch my Dallas Cowboys!! Beware when you talk with them because they will mislead you!

Heads Up---If you are building in a new development, you may want to contact your local cable/internet provider and make sure that they have run cable on your street. They didn't have any run on our street since it is pretty new As soon as you have an address, I would let them know your projected move in date so that they can hook it up. Ours had to be ran from a box with the cable above ground. It will probably be a few weeks before they "bury" it. Also found out that Ryan Homes typically keeps the water and electric for about 3 days after settlement, so water on their dime as much as you can to get your yard going. Normally I don't like a lot of rain, but now is the time to do a rain dance so that our grass will take off and turn from straw to green lush.