CHICAGO | General Discussions

[woodrow]

Why is this off topic conversation still going on?????

[moorhosj]

Originally Posted by Skyguy_7

I didn’t ignore anything. My entire post was “something that refutes” the YoY data. Real world experience. Discount it if you wish.

The BLS data is made up of real world experiences, so many real world experiences that they are able to get a sampling of the entire economy. To try and put your anecdotes on the same level is disingenuous at best.

Bring data and sources not anecdotes and stories. I have tried to cite every claim I've made in this discussion, those who disagree have not provided counter evidence just personal stories.

[LouisVanDerWright]

^ I literally just filled out a BLS survey last night asking about my employees and company reveune. The Feds start sending you mean letters if you don't respond to their survey, so I finally went through the brain damage of setting up an account on census.gov to answer their damn questions.

Originally Posted by Baronvonellis

I'd like to get into an investment such as you describe. How did you know that the first $135k two flat just outside of Logan Square would be profitable, after spending money to renovate it?
When you say you spent 30 hours a week renovating it, how did you learn how to renovate an apartment building to proper code? Were you physically doing electrical work, plumbing work, installing windows, and chopping lumber? Or did you hire laborers?

The first building I got was a frame 2 flat with illegal attic apartment. The outside (roof, windows, garage) was all brand new, but the inside hadn't been renovated since 1956. I moved into it and lived in the construction site while literally rehabbing it with my own hands. I did electric, drywall, tile, painting, plumbing, etc all by myself. I'd get home at 430, Chow down on some leftovers, and start working usually until 1 or 2 AM. I didn't have the money to pay the whole mortgage myself for very long so I had to move my ass along so I could start getting rent. I still live in that illegal apartment, but I've since duplexed it with the apartment below making it much more livabile, but I lived in an illegal studio attic apartment from 1956 for 7 years before I got a decent place myself.

Then I used the income from this property to get another 3 flat a few blocks away which I completely gutted. Took me the whole summer of 2012 to do, at this point I had a roommate who was unable to find a job living with me and he earned his keep by essentially being an indentured servent until he found a job. He was a friend of mine from college and put in a good 3 months of hard labor before he landed a job in his field of choice.

A lot of the early work I did was safe, but not necessarily to code. I now know code well and have learned it through experience and lots and lots of YouTube. The biggest bit of help I had was that my Dad was unemployed for about 5 years starting in 2008 and put many long weekends and a couple of full weeks helping me out. He worked as a carpenter for two years before deciding to go to college so he taught me a lot about rough carpentry, but all the finish work, plumbing, electric, etc was just me learning how to do things the hard way. I even installed an entire mini-split AC system by myself.

Originally Posted by woodrow

Why is this off topic conversation still going on?????

Because this is the random off topic thread for Chicago??

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

The first building I got was a frame 2 flat with illegal attic apartment. The outside (roof, windows, garage) was all brand new, but the inside hadn't been renovated since 1956. I moved into it and lived in the construction site while literally rehabbing it with my own hands. I did electric, drywall, tile, painting, plumbing, etc all by myself. I'd get home at 430, Chow down on some leftovers, and start working usually until 1 or 2 AM. I didn't have the money to pay the whole mortgage myself for very long so I had to move my ass along so I could start getting rent. I still live in that illegal apartment, but I've since duplexed it with the apartment below making it much more livabile, but I lived in an illegal studio attic apartment from 1956 for 7 years before I got a decent place myself.

Then I used the income from this property to get another 3 flat a few blocks away which I completely gutted. Took me the whole summer of 2012 to do, at this point I had a roommate who was unable to find a job living with me and he earned his keep by essentially being an indentured servent until he found a job. He was a friend of mine from college and put in a good 3 months of hard labor before he landed a job in his field of choice.

A lot of the early work I did was safe, but not necessarily to code. I now know code well and have learned it through experience and lots and lots of YouTube. The biggest bit of help I had was that my Dad was unemployed for about 5 years starting in 2008 and put many long weekends and a couple of full weeks helping me out. He worked as a carpenter for two years before deciding to go to college so he taught me a lot about rough carpentry, but all the finish work, plumbing, electric, etc was just me learning how to do things the hard way. I even installed an entire mini-split AC system by myself.

^ I'll give LVDW credit that he can actually do construction work with his own hands (unlike me, I've done some serious rehabs yet never lifted a finger--my hands are still soft and sexy as ever), but c'mon, you can't tell me what you did was legal. You just got away with it because you never got caught.

I have 1 piece of advice: if you plan to do what LVDW does, make sure the building you purchase doesn't have a bunch of outstanding violations. If it does, the city and the courts will be on your ass like a dog in heat, and you'll never be able to accomplish anything. Do some research before buying and make sure that a property has no active violations, or if it does have them they should be very minor and easy to remedy (no ownership sign posted, a broken window, etc) easy to fix and not requiring that inspectors have to come in and walk through your entire property.

Once you establish that, whack away and do whatever you are capable of doing. Doing your own construction (if you're good at it) is the best way to save money, IMO. That was never an option for me.

[Tom In Chicago]

Originally Posted by Skyguy_7

^Any Mods wanna mod that outburst?

Which one??? This thread seems to be the appropriate place for things that would be considered off-topic rants in any of the other Chicago threads. . .

. . .

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ I'll give LVDW credit that he can actually do construction work with his own hands (unlike me, I've done some serious rehabs yet never lifted a finger--my hands are still soft and sexy as ever), but c'mon, you can't tell me what you did was legal. You just got away with it because you never got caught.

I have 1 piece of advice: if you plan to do what LVDW does, make sure the building you purchase doesn't have a bunch of outstanding violations. If it does, the city and the courts will be on your ass like a dog in heat, and you'll never be able to accomplish anything. Do some research before buying and make sure that a property has no active violations, or if it does have them they should be very minor and easy to remedy (no ownership sign posted, a broken window, etc) easy to fix and not requiring that inspectors have to come in and walk through your entire property.

Once you establish that, whack away and do whatever you are capable of doing. Doing your own construction (if you're good at it) is the best way to save money, IMO. That was never an option for me.

Yeah of course my earliest experiments in renovations were relatively minor (started off just gutting the bathrooms and kitchens and doing bare minimum repairs to electric and plumbing), I quickly moved on to more and more legit renovations as my knowledge and finances improved. The thing is the city will never mess with an owner occupant unless they are doing something blatantly and obviously unsafe. If you are just running an extra breaker to your attic they will never bother you, they get quite pissy if you rip apart the entire interior of a building all at once. That's why my first building was a gradual upgrading of spaces as I lived there, they aren't going to come shaft me for ripping all the tile out of an old bathroom and adding a GFCI outlet while the walls are open. My second project I used repair and replace permits on and my third project I hired a GC and used full new construction permits and haven't varied from that since.

Unfortunately this is how I know exactly how out of whack Chicago's building code is. Used to be no PVC, no BX, no vinyl wiring, etc. First few wiring projects I used some BX or vinyl, then I learned how to bend conduit and have used that since. I still do improvement projects on my first building/home probably once a quarter. I leveled all the floors and stairs in my entire enclosed porch a few years ago and just got around to upgrading that plywood to solid oak with a solid oak Bannister this spring. I'm going to add oak trim and AC to the porch once the weather cools down this fall. No matter how much bigger my business gets, I'll never be able to resist the sheer pleasure of seeing something from nothing with my own hands.

[bnk]

In all my years I have never heard of a varmint biting through PVC pipes or BX electrical. The other options are clearly more expensive the only reason I think they still use Cast Iron drain and vent pipes and metal electrical conduit piping in Cook County is because they could be more resistant in fires. That and it pays a better Union wage to install. Or a combination of both. Most Collarland counties do not prohibit PVC or BX. Dry vent PVC pipes under extreme fire can be highly flammable. BX not really that much at all. Conduit will protect the plastic covered copper wires a bit longer in a small fire but in a large one they are both toast. Whereas Cast Iron pipes will be salvageable to be cheap metal scrap post a catastrophic fire.

The point when PVC can be ignited in the hottest fire is black and toxic no doubt, like burning a roll of carpet rapped around old worn out tires type of burn.

Btw I’m not talking about pvc water lines but the 4-3 inch drains and pluming vents.

Anyone interested in the toxins like dioxan and chlorine released from burning pvc polyvinyl chloride
can google it rather easily.


All incoming water supply’s are copper. Old hundreds of year old lead pipes from the street can be lead pipes but risk to lead contamination is not a real issue. They form a lead oxide inside the main that prevents leaching in a mater that could be harmful. We are not talking about flint like water issues here in Chicago

We have one of the best water delivery systems in the world.

[left of center]

Cast iron eventually rusts away and needs to be replaced, while flex conduit is a lot easier to do oneself than solid conduit. Its essentially job security for union plumbers and union electricians.

[bnk]

Cast Iron should have a shelf life of 75 to 100 years. Unless its a very old property they should not have to be replaced before than.



https://www.houselogic.com/organize-...eir-lifespans/


PVC on the other hand has no life span as far as we know it. Right now they are classified as " Indefinitely" which could mean over a thousand years.

Who knows really how long PVC can last, for now we at least know it is a very long time. Not Geologicly long but for several centuries at the least.

[left of center]

I've seen cast iron waste pipes less than 50 years old rust away to the point they need to be replaced. PVC is a much smarter solution, but don't expect the code to change on that anytime soon.

[LouisVanDerWright]

The greatest irony of lead water lines in Chicago is that, due to our glacial pace of building code reform, they were required to be lead up until 86 almost a full decade after lead paint was banned by the federal government. I just looked at a building that had a really nice 2.5" line put in in 1983 that was solid lead.

Originally Posted by left of center

I've seen cast iron waste pipes less than 50 years old rust away to the point they need to be replaced. PVC is a much smarter solution, but don't expect the code to change on that anytime soon.

The biggest benefit of PVC is that, when installed correctly, it is basically a frictionless surface inside meaning that it doesn't catch debris and hair and back up. They still require you use cast iron below grade even if its a smaller (less than 3 floors) residential building and you are allowed to use PVC above grade. This is literally the most moronic thing because below grade is where most sewer backups happen and you have to tear everything out to get at it. Why not allow watertight infinite life plastic below grade too?

[Baronvonellis]

My grandparents house in Florida had cast iron pipes and after only 20 years they were all leaky and had to be replaced with PVC.

Wow, LouisVanDerWright you sound like a real hard worker like my uncle, he's also very successful and never stops working. Glad you've found success, you deserve it! I know most people don't have a drive like that, to work so hard.
I helped a company install AC units in Florida one summer, and just trying to help them install a system was pretty complex. That's amazing you figured that out on your own wow!

I think I'd have to hire a contractor to do the work. How do you figure out if you buy a building it will be profitable? Would we be able to talk offline about it sometime?

[left of center]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

The biggest benefit of PVC is that, when installed correctly, it is basically a frictionless surface inside meaning that it doesn't catch debris and hair and back up. They still require you use cast iron below grade even if its a smaller (less than 3 floors) residential building and you are allowed to use PVC above grade. This is literally the most moronic thing because below grade is where most sewer backups happen and you have to tear everything out to get at it. Why not allow watertight infinite life plastic below grade too?

This is my experience as well. At a commercial property my parents own, we've had to replace cast irons pipes leading out to two catch basins in the rear lot near the alley. They were both as old as the building (roughly 45 years) and we had to dig through concrete foundation and asphalt in order to replace them. And of course the city demanded they be replaced with cast iron again. Complete idiocy...

[west-town-brad]

covering those tracks, while costly, would really be amazing. come on mr. griffin let's open that wallet baby.

[Notyrview]

Yeah was just thinking that. Cover them and the towers will come. Hope this happens in the next 25 years.

[10023]

Originally Posted by west-town-brad

covering those tracks, while costly, would really be amazing. come on mr. griffin let's open that wallet baby.

It’s not up to Ken Griffin, but yes it’s high time for that. It’s a huge amount of wasted land.

The city might have missed its chance to have someone else pay for it though. They should have been offering big density bonuses to the developers of all of these plots overlooking the southern half of the in exchange for contributions to a fund to pay for covering the tracks.

[Mr Downtown]

When they can already build to the limits of federal airspace under the current zoning, what sort of density bonus could be offered?

[WhatTheHeck5205]

Personally I hope they never cover those tracks. Chicago was historically (and still is currently) the largest railroad hub in North America, and one of my favorite things about Chicago is how much of the city’s massive industrial and railroad infrastructure is out on display, either deliberately or by a happy accident. Those tracks have run through Grant Park since there was a Grant Park. Sure you could try to cover them up and make the park look a little bit nicer, but the result just wouldn’t be Chicago.

[Notyrview]

Originally Posted by WhatTheHeck5205

Personally I hope they never cover those tracks. Chicago was historically (and still is currently) the largest railroad hub in North America, and one of my favorite things about Chicago is how much of the city’s massive industrial and railroad infrastructure is out on display, either deliberately or by a happy accident. Those tracks have run through Grant Park since there was a Grant Park. Sure you could try to cover them up and make the park look a little bit nicer, but the result just wouldn’t be Chicago.

Lol right and we should also bring back the slaughterhouses bc it’s just not chicago without them

[nomarandlee]

To each his own, however, I would get over such bygone romanticism real quick in this case.