QUESTION: When is the best time of year to prune native desert trees like mesquites, palo verdes and ironwoods?
ANSWER: Winter is not a good time for pruning those trees. Hold off until spring when budding starts to begin. Now, however, is a good time to do light pruning of olive trees and deciduous trees that lose their leaves in winter like elms, ashes, pecans and pistaches.
Q: I’m a renter, but I’m interested in buying my own home. Recently, I have been looking at houses for sale owned by people who originally bought them as investments only. They made some improvements in the houses but quickly put them back on the market. I wanted to make offers on three of them. In each case, I hired a home inspector to look at the houses and problems were found, so the sales fell through. In all, I spent about $1,000 on inspections. Is there any recourse for recovering that money? Shouldn’t there be red flags on houses like these?
A: There’s no way to get reimbursed for those expenses. But you were smart to check out these homes carefully before finalizing sales. Make a list of some of the problems that the inspectors found. That list could help your real estate agent pre-screen houses before showing them to you. You might also tell the agent that you want to buy a house that actually had been lived in — not purchased as an investment. As you continue the process, you will probably be able to spot problems very quickly yourself before you decide to hire an inspector again.
Q: We are renting an older house where the owners had previously installed green indoor-outdoor carpeting inside the entrance way in a 10-foot by 20-foot area. It’s very old and ugly and had begun to smell as well. So we’ve been removing the carpet. But we can’t get rid of the gooey adhesive residue left behind underneath the carpeting. We tried gel paint remover, but it didn’t work.
A: There are other adhesive removers you can use to try to soften the old glue so you can scrape it off the floor more easily.
The one I like best is soybean-based Bean-e-Doo mastic remover. But even after applying a product like that, it will still take some scraping and hard work to remove all that goo that’s on the floor.
Q: There is a shut-off valve outside my house on the water pipeline, but when I use it, I turn off both the irrigation line and the water line for the house at the same time. I don’t want to turn off the irrigation when I go on trips; I just want to turn off the water to the house so there will be no leaks while I’m away. What can I do about this issue?
A: You need to hire a plumber who can move the shut-off valve behind the vacuum blocker going into the house. It should be fairly easy to do.
Q: We are in the market for a new water heater and wondered what you think about heat pump water heaters. How do they work?
A: Heat pump water heaters use electricity to move heat from one place to another instead of heating up water directly. A stand-alone heat pump water heater pulls heat from the surrounding air and dumps it into a tank to heat water.
Sometimes homeowners install this type of device in a furnace area or near a washer and dryer. That’s because this type of water heater must be installed in a spot that remains in the 40- to 90-degree heat range year-round. Heat pump water heaters can be very efficient and greatly reduce the cost of hot water. But I think I’d prefer to install a solar water heater that would produce free hot water.
