Hey! Who wants to live and build in San Jose CA?
aprilneverends
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
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aprilneverends
6 years agoRelated Discussions
Who sells lots of Fruit Trees, San Jose area or Watsonville?
Comments (7)Almaden Valley Nursery on Almaden Expressway has LOTS of fruit trees. However, they're pretty much all potted and cost $30 and up. Summerwinds has a smaller selection, but they have mostly bare-root trees (except, of course, for the citrus), which are generally 1/4 - 1/3 the price of a potted tree. Yamagami's in Cupertino also has lots of fruit trees, although I don't know whether they're bare-root or potted. Another option is mail order. If you want bare-root, and don't find what you want at a local nursery, you can order from Peaceful Valley (www.groworganic.com). They sell Dave Wilson bare-root stock for a good price ($7.99 for a blueberry bush vs. $12.99 at Summerwinds), and the shipping's pretty reasonable if you order more than a few items. Raintree Nursery and Bay Laurel Nursery are other options for buying online. Cheers, Kim Campbell, CA...See MoreBuying a Home in CA - San Francisco/East Bay
Comments (19)I moved here from Chicago (and have also lived in LA) and you really, really should rent first. Housing prices are not going to zoom up anytime soon. The banks have a large shadow inventory and CA is one of the three worst states for foreclosures. It is very time-consuming to buy a foreclosure. Figure it will take 4x longer than to buy normally. Homes in foreclosure are often in bad shape; quality of construction in CA is often very low. Labor costs are high and skillful workers harder to find than they should be. Do not assume you can remodel a not-so-perfect house into what you want. The NIMBY-ism here is hideous and in all the major cities it is extraordinarily difficult and expensive to enlarge a home's footprint. You are legally constrained from covering more than 40% of your lot anyway, I believe, and with our small lots that's not a big footprint. Permits are expensive to obtain and if you make structural changes, it will be required that you bring everything up to current building code. Since every year brings in stricter earthquake building codes, this can add so much to the cost that remodeling projects become impossible. For example, our neighbor wanted to turn their downstairs into a legal in-law: adding a second bathroom, building a single-story, one-room addition. They had $75K in cash as their budget (we live in the Oakland foothills, nice older area, starter homes). It took them over $12K and almost two years to go through the permit process. Eventually they were told they had to apply for a waiver because they were taking 2' from the single-car garage which was already minimum size allowed, so they had to have the architect re-draw the plans and resubmit them. Permit cost, BTW, is 10% of the cost estimate in our city. The City of Oakland does the engineering study for all projects. As we live on a hill (great east-facing hillside views), they were told to stabilize their lot, it would be necessary to sink 40 piers, each 37' deep to bedrock, filled with steel rebar and concrete. 25 of the piers would be for the single-room addition (which was only going to be about 17x25') and the remaining 15 would be placed all along the north side of the existing house. The cost for the pier work alone? $65,000. Needless to say, they did something else with their remaining $63K. You might be surprised what you pay for utilities here. PG&E is one of the most expensive utilities in the country, and most older homes aren't insulated well. Our home is insulated with double-pane windows, we live in a warmer microclimate than Berkeley, I keep my home fairly cool, yet we pay on average $170/mo for gas (furnace/dryer/stove) and electricity. No one can place any dependency on PG&E absorbing all the costs for their unmapped leaking gas mains (a neighborhood in San Bruno saw its gas main blow up and 8 people died); we ratepayers will almost certainly see our rates rise yet again. Water isn't that expensive, but earthquake-proofing our EBMUD water reservoirs is. Our bi-monthly water bill for a large garden (1/6 acre) and 3 people runs $45 for water and $100 for earthquake work. We do have earthquake insurance. There is a fault that runs right through Alameda County and it's overdue for another major quake. Homeowners insurance is fairly low - less than $1K, and umbrella liability is around $200/yr. Earthquake insurance with a $100K deductible costs us almost $4000/yr. However, we have no mortgage so we are carrying all the risk on our home. It made sense for us to purchase risk mitigation. To be afraid of all of Oakland is ridiculous. There are some very good neighborhoods here, just as there are some bad neighborhoods in Berkeley. If I were buying for the first time, I'd look in El Cerrito on the east side of San Pablo Ave. Good, stable neighborhoods, nice weather, easier city traffic, great services/shops. I like Alameda, but access is limited to the bridges, and traffic is easily snarled at commute times. Traffic is the huge issue in the Bay Area. If you are still working, you need to really see how the traffic patterns work, not just when things go right but when things go wrong. Public transit is pathetic compared to Chicago, NY and Boston. Cars are a necessity in the East Bay; you can get around without one but it will take forever and making transfers between systems is a pain. Don't ignore the sales tax. The first time you pay sales tax on a new car, you will definitely feel the pain! Food is a conundrum: you can spend less and get higher quality, but on average Bay Area residents eat out more often than anyone else except New Yorkers, over 4x/week. I don't mean to sound discouraging. We love living here but there is no denying CA is an extremely expensive state. State income taxes are high and services are dwindling. You will find politics very different here than back East....See MoreAnyone live in Orange County, CA?
Comments (24)There is a train station in Irvine that will take you to Union station in LA without having to change trains. After that though, you're kind of on your own though there are some interesting sights within walking distance of Union Station. Catalina Island is another local attraction. You get there by boat or small commuter plane. It's about 22 miles off the coast and you can leave from Newport Beach area. The main attraction there is the town of Avalon, the Wriggly (chewing gum) mansion (though I don't know if they still do tours), the landmark Casino building, and the easy going atmosphere of Catalina. It's fun. I hiked the interior many years ago with my best friend. We got lost because a herd of buffalo blocked our way to the camp we were supposed to spend the night at. Because we never checked into the camp , a search party was formed and the whole island was on alert looking for us. They found us wandering around on a small dirt road at the top of a mountain a little after midnight. The whole campsite was up when the ranger drove us there and everyone cheered and fixed us dinner. Pretty embarrassing moment in my life. LOL Jodi-...See MoreFinding 5-1-1 mix supplies in San francisco/ Daly City, Ca
Comments (25)I think soaking is personal preference, it's to get the bark saturated since it's naturally hydrophobic. Some people soak it for a couple hours, some overnight, some not at all. I usually soak it for a couple hours. When I'm making gritty mix I just pour it through a strainer to drain it, but for 5-1-1 I find it's easier to mix all the ingredients when the bark is dry, so I just wet it down and let it soak together, then drain from the pot. I doubt it makes much difference, I just try to keep the mess to a minimum! You can tell when it needs to be watered by sticking a wooden chopstick into the mix, let it sit for a few, then pull it out and see if it's wet. As soon as it comes out dry it's time to water again. Ideally, you would flush the soil with each watering, which means watering just enough to wet the soil, waiting 10 min or so, and then watering through again until you've seen at least ~10% of the water (more is ok) exiting the drainage hole. That will prevent excess salts from building up in the soil over time. As long as the drainage holes are in the bottom of the pot, you're good, you don't need one right in the center. If they are on the sides of the pot such that there will be soil in the pot below the level of the holes, I'd drill another one in the bottom. You don't need super thrive. Once you've planted, water with just plain water initially, then as soon as you see new growth on the plant, start using the foliage pro. i just saw you were going to plant today so maybe I'm too late with this response, but I bet you did just fine!...See Moreaprilneverends
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6 years agoLars/J. Robert Scott
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