First of all a decision needs to be made around what type of heater you want to install. The choices are Natural Gas, Propane or Electric. We opted to go with what we visually saw. An old Propane heater with a line off to the corner of the fence line. As expected, the Pool Guy doesn't get involved with the fuel source, only the hardware of the heater and the connection to the pool system.

For the fuel, I had to go to a local Propane vendor since the old heater had all of the connections in place to support a propane tank. Initially that company was all for dropping new tanks in place and being done with the work. They even said that they didn't feel a site survey would be needed if there were tanks previously in that location. That is until my call this morning.

Obviously I had not been dealing with a propane knowledgeable individual. After she put me on hold to check with the technician, she returned to inform me that since there were no existing tanks to replace it had to be treated as a new installation which meant that now I need to get permits from the Township for the installation. Great.....

So off to call the township's building department where the assumption was confirmed. Now I need to get a Plumbing and Fire Permit. On top of that, I have to submit a Zoning permit outlining where the tanks will be installed on the survey that we received when we purchased the home. All totaled, we will have to pay around $140 for the township to let us install tanks that obviously where installed before! I even asked why the previous installation wouldn't justify the new installation. No such luck going down that road.

So now we will have a brand new heater in place, no propane to use it to heat the tank until I can get the permits and what not in place to have the Propane company come out and drop new tanks then fill them. More money.

I understand why some people have work done without permits because it doesn't make much sense to pay money to have someone tell you what to do with your own home. At the same time, having been burned by bad contractors, I also see some protection in obtaining permits. It is really a no win situation. At least when all is said and done, I will have documentation stating that things have been signed off by the township for when we ever decide to sell this place.

Lets just say that it isn't as clear cut as Gasoline where you pay by the gallon and you know what you are getting. Fuel Oil is pretty straight forward as well. You get a liquid at a price per gallon. Thats it.

The trick with propane or LP is that the delivery is in liquid form, but the usage is in a gas form. The magic that converts the liquid into a gas occurs inside of the tank in which it is stored. A good analogy is that of boiling water. Water in the pan, steam (gas) is what escapes.

It is for this reason that any tank or storage device that stores LP can only be filled to 80% capacity, leveraging the 20% space as the gas area which is expelled through pipes into the system that will burn it.

In my case, the recommendation for the amount of LP I would need stored to supply my 400,000 BTU (British Thermal Unit) pool heater would be two 100 Gallon vertical tanks. This is what the propane company quoted me. It is also where I began to get confused.

First, I assumed that if I was getting a 100 Gallon tank then I would only be paying for 80 Gallons of LP, or 80% of the volume in the tank. After seeking out clarification, I discovered that they were referring to them at 100 Gallon tanks, but in reality they were 125 Gallon tanks. What they were quoting was the actual amount that they would fill the tanks with.

With a good understanding of that concept, I then went about looking at the tanks on-line which you can purchase yourself, rent or "borrow" depending on the propane company you deal with. This was when things began to go south again.

If you actually look for Propane Tanks on-line you will find that they are generally listed by Pound, not Gallon. So I was looking at 100 lb. Tanks that had no real representation of how much volume they actually contained in liquid form.

I decided that the whole tank issue was getting a bit complex and decided to simply determine roughly how much money I would expect to spend to heat my pool. At this point, I knew that I had a heater that was rated at 400,000 BTU that would burn 18.5 lbs. of propane in an hour to raise the temperature of my pool size of 20' x 40' (800 sq. ft.) by 1.25 degrees every hour. WHAT?!?!? I was back to pounds again instead of Gallons!

My frustration was due to the fact that I would be charged for propane by the Gallon, not pound! Why is it then that I couldn't get away from all references to propane in pounds? Google had to save me from this madness and quick. I was never that good in math and this was becoming insane.

Here are some of the random LP facts I discovered:

1. One Gallon of LP converted entirely to gas vapor is equal to 270 cubic feet. (Wonderful from liquid, to weight and now this!) Apparently when you are billed for propane it is itemized into cubic feet. That means that whatever your cubic foot number is, you have to divide it by 270 to discover how many gallons you actually utilized and thus are billed for at the market rate per gallon. 2. One Gallon of LP is also equal to 4.22 lbs. EUREKA!!!!! That was the magic number I needed to know!

The next step was to figure out the current ambient temperature of my unheated pool and then determine what my target temperature would be. Currently the pool is at 78F, thanks to my little Froggy thermometer floating in the pool. Ideally, I would like the temperature to be around 83F. With that, I fired up Apple's Numbers program (think Excel) and embarked on my math modeling exercise.

All of that just to get to this:

So as you can see, the best case scenario is if the summer is hot, warms the ambient water temperature so that I don't have to run the heater much. Besides, LP is as expensive as any other fuel source these days. Ouch!

I have been giving my transition back to the U.S. much thought recently. After living in Japan for 16 years, I often joke that I have suffered from reverse culture shock. Having left the comforts of small town rural America at 17 years old, I found myself in some of the most interesting and hard driving locations around the world. Not once did I regret leaving home and embracing the globe as my home.

As I got older and settled down with marriage followed by children, little things began to nag at me. I was living in Tokyo a massive metropolis of concrete, steel and of course cell phones. I had a good job, a nice apartment but something was missing. I realized that what I wanted for my new born daughter was not to bring her into a world surrounded by millions of people like schools of fish going on all directions.

The term Quality of Life had become my battle cry. I would say that as a D.I.N.K. couple Tokyo was a pretty awesome place to live. With children, memories of my own childhood began to dominate my wishes for my own children growing up. The decision was made to move back to the U.S..

Unfortunately, we jumped from the frying pan right into the fire relocating to New York City. Initially things were much better. Language was no longer an issue and you could actually drive 45 minutes and see actual trees and forests. Unlike Tokyo where a 2 hour trip gets you to the fringes of Tokyo by car and getting back can take upwards of 5 hours on the weekend.

Quality of life had improved, but something was still missing. We were in an apartment again. I wanted a house with a Yard. That meant another move. This time to New Jersey, West Orange to be exact. We found a nice house with a large yard. We had arrived. For the next 2 years, this house became our home. Sure there were nagging little issues like the commute into New York for work every day.

Personally, I was content. I had a nice home that I could relax in on the weekends and forget about life in the city. What was pointed out to me was that there was no real sense of community in West Orange. There was no real "Main Street" as the real Main Street was shared with Orange just off of Newark which is to say quite urban.

This was odd because to the north slightly was Montclair, NJ and to the south was South Orange. Two communities that were very "Village centric." West Orange was just spread out. At the same time, my Son was born. With two children now, the desire began to grow around raising them in a nice community. A year later, the decision was made to go smaller still and sell our home in West Orange and move to Ridgewood, NJ.

I believe we have now arrived. Ridgewood is a quaint township in Northern New Jersey. It has a wonderful town center with several shopping streets, Diners, Coffee Shops and many community parks. The YMCA is huge and has a plethora of activities for adults and children alike. Anything you need is within a 5 to 10 minute drive or better yet, you can walk.

So as you can see, over the last 3 years, my world has become progressively smaller. The true value is that my families quality of life has improved as the world around us has gotten smaller. The trick is going to be staying in contact with the rest of the world as our focus narrows.

They say the grass is always greener on the other side of the tracks and I am sure others out there in rural areas would die to live in Tokyo or New York. What I can tell you, is that it gets old. Sometimes, you need to be in a place that caters to your state of mental health, family and general escape from the grind. For now, I am going to enjoy my own personal Mayberry.

If you are a home owner, and you are thinking of doing renovations or installing anything that taps into the existing plumbing, electrical of your home, you may want to head down to your local township or city office to determine whether or not they require you to obtain a permit for the work to be performed.

For the obvious work, like having a kitchen completely gutted and rebuilt from scratch you would obviously need a permit for the Electrical, one for the Plumbing and one for the Building.  This is something your contractor is will usually arrange for you prior to the work beginning.  It also costs money to open a permit.

Local governments have a set of "codes," which are standards for various types of work and how they are to be implemented to ensure a certain level of safety and standards for your protection and investment.  To enforce these codes, inspectors are dispatched to manage the jobs at various stages as sort of a checks & balance between the homeowner and the contractors.

What is often overlooked is that most contractors are only responsible for opening the permits.  It is not, in their best interest to also be responsible for closing these permits out.  Closing the permits out involve the local inspector returning to assess the quality and integrity of the work performed.

If you do not stay on top of this, when you are ready to sell your home, you can be hit with several permits that are still open which will need to be closed out prior to the sale of your home.  This involves coordinating with your local governmental offices to schedule the final inspections for work that in some cases may not have even been performed by you, but by previous owners of the home.  Either way, you are responsible, at that point, for whatever the inspector may or may not find.

It is all a complete nightmare unless you are aware of these practices.  Before you purchase a home, ensure that no permits are still open by the seller.

If you own the home, make sure you stay on top of the permit process with your contractors for any work performed on your home. More importantly, never take the word of a contractor that a permit is not needed.  It is best if you do the leg work and inquire on your own.  If you don't it can cause you serious problems down the line.

We were hit by the Chimney Maintenance Scam.

Having lived in Japan for over 16 years, I became complacent in the fact that everyone you deal with in most business situations is an honest individual and when they say they are doing work, especially on your home, they are true to their word.

Not so in the New Jersey, New York area.

We are selling our home. Around the time we were preparing the home for the inevitable home inspection from the buyer, we received a call from a chimney cleaning service to come clear out our flue. I thought this was a good idea to have done prior to the inspection.

When the guys showed up, they headed straight for the basement to check out the connections and the base of the chimney, then they headed for the roof. With one guy sitting on the chimney they explained that the inside liner of the chimney had broken and was blocking a portion of the flue. The flue to the Gas Water Heater. They said that as a result there was a possibility that the exhause from the gas was not venting properly and could be seeping carbon monoxide into the home, or would in the future causing health issues.

A bit panicked because we didn't want this to become an issue on the inspection for selling, I agreed to have the broken terra cotta lining removed and a new stainless steel liner installed. Given the price, the Mrs. obviously had issues with doing this at a time when we were in the middle of buying/selling and didn't want to expend the cash. In the end, given the "Gas" issue, and the fact that I understood and agreed with the assessment, she reluctantly agreed to have the work done. The work was scheduled for a later date and that was that.

The buyer's home inspection came next. The chimney was flagged as being improperly vented. Of course I called the company who did the work for us and insisted that the re mediate this. They said they would have the guys come back to me who did the work. Shortly after I got the call from one of the guys who did the work, I explained the inspector's comments and he said that there was nothing wrong with the Furnace venting and to have the buyer call them about it.

I informed the buyer of this conversation and they in-turn requested the option to have the chimney inspected again. And they did.

They brought in a chimney guy who commenced to ripping the chimney apart and pointing out the fact that whatever this company did, it wasn't done or wasn't done right. On top of that the cost to do the work was almost 4x that of the original work done. Now is when I begin to stress just a bit.

I countered with having the chimney re-inspected by another company and when I called, they conversation went like this:

New Chimney Co.: "What was the name of the company?"

Me: "Union Maintenance."

New Chimney Co.: "Did they get a permit?"

Me: "Not that I am aware of. Didn't know they needed one."

New Chimney Co.: "You were scammed."

At this point I locked up and couldn't talk..... I finally said I would call them back. Of course now the hindsight begins to develop and I go on line and start researching. Damn...... First I call my lawyer to understand what we need to first and foremost fix the inspection issue. The decision was to contact the reputable, certified, chimney company to come in for a 2nd quote on ONLY the Furnace venting issue. They are due to inspect/quote on the issue this next Tuesday.

So here I sick, reading more and more about these scams. The pit in my stomach is getting deeper and deeper. Pissed with no recourse as I continually call the company that did the work and am getting either a fax tone or some new company called B&K Masonry and Chimney's voice mail. Deep in my heart I know they will never call me back after leaving the messages for them to do so. Talk about feeling like a complete idiot.

My skin is turning into a shell since moving back to the U.S.. I should know better than to go into these things with trust that I am working with a professional, but old habits die hard and as such, needed to share this story with the masses in hopes that you will not run across the same issues I have. I am not sure what it is going to cost us to now get this sorted, I only know that I have been sucked into throwing money into the wind. I look back and find myself screaming at my memory... "SAY NO!" "ASK THIS QUESTION!" When in reality, what I am really saying is "TRUSTING DUMB ASS!"

This was getting oh so messy and with that little fiasco the budget was already blown. So having reached a point of knowing extra money would have to be spent, literally over breakfast one morning the decision was made to completely take over my son's room which is next to ours and make that the new Master Bathroom. The old space would then become a simple walk in closet. UREKA! After all, what does a 9 month old need with his own Shower/Toilet/Sink? The plumbing was in his room, why not take it over. A true parental decision in action. He was out and in with his sister and we were in.

With that decision the course had been shifted and the serious deconstruction work began. There have not really been any more major issues with the Job and now that the bulk of it is done, we officially begin moving back in today. Here are some of the snapshots of the latest project to turn 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms into an amazing Master Bedroom Suite.

These are the revised Floor Plan Drawings indicating the new Bathroom design. Only one minor change which was the flip of the Tub and the Sinks.