I've never put anything on YouTube before so I am not sure how it all works.

I changed some settings. Can you view the video now?

No rush. I'm busy "driving" to Vermilion on Google Earth.

Still shows as private and requires a sign in. I don't do much Google; they're too nosy.

By the way, have you seen the Historic District?

https://www.cityofvermilion.com/historic-district

quote:

Can you view the video now?

Nope, it still shows up as unavailable. The setting you want is "unlisted" -- that just means the video doesn't come up in searches and can only be seen if someone gives you the link.

quote:

Originally posted by wtg:
By the way, have you seen the Historic District?

https://www.cityofvermilion.com/historic-district

Yes. It's small but very nice and the shopkeepers are very friendly.

The place I want to try there is the "Old Prague Restaurant. Any place that has an outdoor beer garden and serves 4 kinds of Paprikash has to be good.

Vermilion the city is actually in two counties, Erie and Lorain.

The Dean Road house is in Lorain County and Henrietta Township.

Here's the Zoning Book for Henrietta Township. It outlines the township's land use goals and objectives. Hard to see from the hand drawn map where the house is located, but I'm guessing if you pop between Google Maps and the Zoning Book you can figure it out.

https://nebula.wsimg.com/4d05f...tion=0&alloworigin=1


When you look at the map near the beginning of the document, you'll notice that Dean Road appears to be at the edge of the township. I think it may be the dividing line between Henrietta Township (where your house is) and some other township on the other side of the road (where the farmland is).

edit: Looks like across Dean Road is Florence Township, which is in Erie County.

Here's the satellite view, with that big open area that Lisa was talking about a few pages ago. If you click in various areas, it will pop up what township you're in.

https://www.google.com/maps/pl...515639!4d-82.3444897


Here is the Florence Township zoning map:

https://www.florencetwp.com/do...zoning-map/file.html

Looks like everything on the east side of Florence along Dean Road (which abuts Henrietta) is zoned Residential/Agricultural.

Fascinating. This long distance house hunting is fascinating.

Wow - you’re really getting in to it!

Meanwhile, I’ve been reading the minutes of the Vermilion city council meetings. This is retail politics at its absolute best.

There are two things dominating the agenda. The first is the annual fish fry, which has been cancelled. Hizzoner the Mayor does not want Vermilion to go down in history as the little town that Made so many people sick. OTOH the event is usually a big money maker and the local merchants are hurting. That same discussion is going on all over the world.

The second issue is more interesting. There is a tradition in town where the fire department tests the siren at the firehouse every day at exactly 6 PM, and they’ve been doing that for decades. No one thought much about it until recently, when it came to light that Vermilion was a “sundown” town back in the day, and the siren was an an announcement to POC that it was time to leave town.

The arguments are compelling. The siren doesn’t mean what it used to so what’s the harm? OTOH does the village need a daily reminder of its racist past? They’re working it through. I like that.

I’ve often thought my retirement should include work as a gadfly. The kind of guy who goes to city council meetings and ask questions. This may be my big chance.

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:
Wow - you’re really getting in to it!

I wanted follow up on Lisa's earlier observations about the land across the road and how it's zoned. One thing led to another and I was down the internet rabbit hole.

Old Prague looks like a winner. But when you live on one of the Great Lakes, ya want to figure out where the best perch fry is. Whitefish and walleye are big, too.

I'm jealous.

edit: BTW, what did your daughter think of the area? Did she see the house?

Took the google map drive down Dean Rd.

Some pluses - there is no way that is going to be a very busy road. No double yellow. That hellacious downhill curve leading to the one lane bridge. That is a quiet country lane if I've ever seen one. I'm honestly surprised you are on public water there - that does look mighty remote! I definitely suggest double-checking on internet and cable availability after seeing the street.

Some downsides -
I'm guessing that will be a popular road for bikes. Nothing to fret about until you are behind a big group of them with no way to pass because the road is so narrow and all you are trying to do is get home. Bikes on the country roads around here are the bane of my existence. :-)

The curve down to the bridge will probably be the site of many accidents. You seem to be one of the closest houses to there. Be prepared to offer assistance once or twice when you hear someone smash (I speak from experience as someone who lives on a road with a similar curve.)

You will probably be dead last on the street plowing priority list, which means that even if you use your swanky tractor to clear your driveway you aren't going anywhere til the town/state gets around to your road, which as I mentioned, will probably be dead last unless you happen to live next door to the mayor or something. (Speaking of which, the house right up the hill from you does have a ritzy looking gated entry -- maybe you DO live next door to the mayor!)

And the electric lines run on poles through the trees - I noticed them going up the hill from the bridge. This is not unexpected -- very few places out here have underground electric wires -- but any time there's a bad windstorm (or ice, ice is the worst!), you can expect trees to come down on those power lines and you will lose power. If that house doesn't already have an automatic backup generator, I'd look into getting one. Again - when they fix the power lines, they go from most populous to least populous -- you'll be last on the priority list for that too, and speaking as someone who spent 8 days without power after Hurricane Sandy, being last sucks. Probably not as horrible in this house because you'll have the woodstove for heat and you have public water (we have a well -- no power=no water!) but still not something you want to experience especially as you age. Without gas at the house, the automatic generator is trickier - you need a huge propane tank and somewhere to hide it. We don't have gas and didn't want a giant propane tank, so after the whole Sandy thing we ended up getting a portable dual-fuel generator that we run on the small grill propane tanks. It doesn't kick over automatically - we have to wheel it out from the garage and hook it up into the hookup an electrician made for us (good thing you know an electrician!!!). The portable thing is more of a pain than an automatic backup but also like 1/5 the price and doesn't require yearly maintenance, and for the number of times we use it, it's fine. (But boy, when we've needed it, we've NEEDED it!)

OOOO I also just noticed the gates at the top of the hill - probably still in your front yard. That's some thinking right there - if the hill is treacherous from snow or the bridge is flooded, the township (or whoever, maybe you!) can close those gates and keep people from getting themselves in trouble. We don't have those......during quite a few storms when our hill/creek was impassible, the neighbors on our street have put out our own cones, sawhorses, and flares etc. to try to block the road at the top of the hill but idiots just drive around them and then find themselves either stuck in a snowbank or floodwaters. Gates like that are a genius idea! I wonder who actually makes the call to close them.

I missed those gates.

I'm guessing it's because of flooding. Realtor.com had that link that shows where flooding occurs in the area, and that curvy part of the Vermilion river is a not unexpected area for flooding to happen.




Certainly no reason the gates couldn't be used for snow.

quote:

Originally posted by Lisa:
Without gas at the house, the automatic generator is trickier - you need a huge propane tank and somewhere to hide it. We don't have gas and didn't want a giant propane tank, so after the whole Sandy thing we ended up getting a portable dual-fuel generator that we run on the small grill propane tanks. It doesn't kick over automatically - we have to wheel it out from the garage and hook it up into the hookup an electrician made for us (good thing you know an electrician!!!). The portable thing is more of a pain than an automatic backup but also like 1/5 the price and doesn't require yearly maintenance, and for the number of times we use it, it's fine. (But boy, when we've needed it, we've NEEDED it!)

Likewise here. We do have natural gas but for cost reasons ended up going with a portable generator and had a transfer switch installed so we didn't have to have a ton of extension cords to deal with. Just the one big hulker that goes from the generator into the transfer switch.

We can switch 6 circuits over to the generator and keep the important stuff like refrigerators, sump pump, and furnace running. Not enough oomph to run the A/C in summer, but we don't care about that.

Our generator is older, so it's just gasoline powered. Dual fuel is a nice option. Costco has them on sale all the time.

If you aren't going to be spending winters there, Steve, you'll have to develop a game plan for who keeps an eye on the house when you're away. Since you have family in the area, that will be easier, but thinking through how you get alerted about power outages and what you do if they happen is pretty important. So will having your driveway plowed even if you aren't there. In Door County we were told that the fire department will watch your house burn down if the driveway isn't clear and if they think they could get stuck getting in to deal with the fire. And insurance companies may give a hard time paying out on claim damage if something happens and the house isn't being routinely monitored.

But these days that's pretty easy to do, and cheaply, with options like SimpliSafe or other home monitoring devices and services.

I looked up the average snowfall for the area, and as I recall it wasn't too bad. Record for a three day snow was in the 15 - 20 inch range. Definitely not Buffalo-level snowfall.

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/snow...owfall-extremes/OH/3

This rural living thing is starting to sound complicated. So far we've learned:

The combined electric bill is about $280 winter and summer. Higher than I expected. No gas bill. The house is served by cable and has good cell reception.

The leach field was cleaned out this year (roots) but no info on how often that has to be done. The current owners have the heatpump serviced once a year for about $100. Everyone I talked to said that geothermal is the hot ticket in that climate and they systems are very reliable.

The biggest question is how remote it is and the size of the yard. Kim's video shows more of the yard and there is a lot more landscaping that it shows in the pictures. I'm not going to want to keep all that up and suspect a service will be very expensive. I suppose I could let some of it go back to nature.

I'm not keen on an early storm snowing us in and relying on a generator that isn't even in place yet. I think the kids would keep an eye on the place for us but it's about 30 minutes from where they are and they have a lot to do as it is.

So we're vacillating. It's a beautiful house but may have too many drawbacks for us.

We may have cross-posted. Have you checked with Kim about how bad the snow gets? Total snowfall for Cleveland didn't look much worse than Chicago, and we rely on the generator in the winter maybe once every five years. Significant ice storms are not a usual occurrence; more than a quarter inch is when it gets dicey.

I'd also try to get a better idea of who plows the streets, etc. Up in Door County, it might take a day for the county to plow our road, which was a dead end street full of vacation homes; there was only one year round resident living there out of maybe 30 homes.

It's perfectly livable, but there's a bit of a learning curve. If you have city water, and internet and cell service are good, you're already a long way to comfy living. But it's definitely different than living in the city and being able to go next door to chat with your neighbor....

edit: A lot of these issues relate to having a home that you may be away from for long periods. If you think you're going to be snow birds, you'd still have at least some of the same things to worry about whether you are in a remote area, an in-town house, or a condo. Like an extended power outage with the possibility of pipes freezing. And/or food in the refrigerator going south.

We never had trouble with getting prompt restoration of electric service, despite the fact that we were almost an hour away from where they dispatched the repair crews.

We used to stay at our friend's home before we built our house. We got up there late one Sunday evening and the power was out at her house. We had no idea what the name of the utility was, much less how to contact them. Pre-internet, doncha know. We finally figured out who to call.

We notified Wisconsin Public Service about the outage. We sat back for a long, cold wait. We were floored when we heard the truck maybe 45 minutes later, and power restored less than an hour after that.

That same level of service was repeated over the 30 years we owned a home there. I think the longest power outage that we had was maybe two days. Our friend who was the only full time resident told us about it.

Down here I live 5 minutes from where Com Ed dispatches crews, and we routinely wait 6 or more hours for them to even get here to start looking for the problem.

If you decide to continue looking into this house, you might want to pop by and chat with the neighbors....

As far as the septic, maybe Lisa and markj (I think?) can weigh in on what its life span is, and how much periodic maintenance runs. We had a holding tank and I don't know nuttin' about leach fields.

I don't mean to scare you. In the 18 years we've lived here, we have lost power for more than a couple hours only maybe 6 or 7 times. Three were pretty extended outages - one was when a utility pole fell over on our street. Once was Sandy, once was a huge ice storm, once was the tornado-prom (112 mile an hour straight line winds that took out thousands of trees). The other times I'd say the power was back on in less than 24 hours. It's not a super common occurrence by any means - just be prepared for it to happen eventually. And like I said, with the woodstove and public water, you will be in ok shape even without a generator. But if you can put in a transfer switch and buy a $500 generator from Costco, even better.

It's a beautiful house. Yes, landscaping is a pain. But you will be a retired and need something to do! Plus like you said, whatever is too much to keep up, you just change. We pretty much neglect our landscaping. Right now there are weeds everywhere mocking me....but the beauty of it is that in 2 months they'll all be dead whether I pull them or not, LOL! I just have to wait them out. So you only have to do as much as you feel like doing! The beauty of rural living is that there's no HOA or nosey neighbor to complain when your mulch needs redone or your beds are weedy, LOL.

We have a septic field since we moved here and have never had to have it cleaned out. My parents had one for 40+ years and never had to clean it out. My guess is the roots are because there are trees too close to or on top of the field (which is a big no no!). Cut those trees down (hey, the start of your firewood production!) and you shouldn't have to clean out the field ever again. You will probably have to pump the tank once in a while - our township mandates it every 3 years and it costs like $200 -- way cheaper than a sewer bill! And on septic you need to be careful what you flush - no feminine hygeine products, wipes, or paper towels! And no grease or huge amounts of food down the garbage disposal! But that's about it for the septic learning curve unless you have a more complicated system with pumps etc. We have a pump as part of our system and had to replace it once, to the tune of $1000. But that's once in 18+ years of living here. Again, all in all, cheaper than what we used to pay for sewer.

Don't be scared of rural living - coming from LA it will be an adjustment for sure, but it's beautiful and peaceful and would be an amazing adventure for your grandkids. There is nothing like waking up to turkeys, deer, and a family of foxes in your yard. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.