16619 Rose Bay Tr, Cypress, TX 77429
WOW!!! Large Home, Lot and Large Lot of Garage Space! Owner occupied Hardwood floors on first floor except for master and laundry(tile). Window Shutters, Sun...

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16619 Rose Bay Tr, Cypress, TX 77429 - Video

An early morning New Years Day fire at a city home displaced five people and caused at least $20,000 damage, a city fire official said.

City fire crews were called to 226 E. Lehman St. at 5:37 a.m. Wednesday for a fire in the walls of the home.

City Fire Commissioner Duane Trautman said the fire was caused by old wiring tied into new wiring. The fire started on the second floor and spread into the attic, he said.

He estimated damage between $20,000 and $25,000. The fire commissioner said the fire caused extensive damage to the floor joists and flooring in the attic and framing on the second floor.

"There's a lot of work to be done (to repair it)," he said.

Two adults and three children lived in the rental property, Trautman said.

The cause of the fire was ruled accidental, the fire commissioner said.

Trautman said the property owner is expected to face charges because there were no smoke detectors inside the home.

The names of the property owners and the occupants of the home were not available Wednesday.

"Someone happened to be awake (and noticed the fire). They're lucky to be alive," Trautman said.

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POLICE, FIRE LOG for Jan. 2: Lebanon fire displaces five

Shopping for homeowner insurance has become much more complicated over the past several years. There was a time when auto insurance was a much tougher market than homeowner insurance. That led to a rise in the marketplace of monoline auto insurance companies like Geico and Progressive. They found a market niche and are now two of the top five companies in premium volume in property and casualty insurance. Now companies will more readily write the auto exposure by itself but will not write homeowners coverage without supporting business such as autos. Most companies offer a discount from 10 percent to 20 percent on each policy to write them in a package. What has changed and what should you do to get the best coverage at the lowest cost?

Weather is the biggest culprit affecting higher costs of insuring your home. This could be due to fire damage with the use of space heaters in cold weather, wind blowing trees onto houses, lightning striking houses or hail damaging roofs. This does not take into account catastrophic losses from hurricanes, earthquakes or tornadoes. The primary coverage affected by these perils is coverage A on your policy, which is the value of the dwelling. That value is based on the replacement cost of your home not the market cost or what you can sell it for. In most cases today the replacement cost exceeds the market cost.

Most companies use a software program that takes into account location, quality of construction, age and square footage to determine the value the company will insure a home for.

Once the value of the dwelling is established, the amount of insurance for other structures such as detached garages or storage sheds, personal property and loss of use are a percentage of the dwelling amount. Medical payments coverage, personal liability and deductible amount are written for the amount the customer wants. Many carriers also include fungi and mold coverage at specific limits. Be careful not to over insure on any coverage. What you are insuring against is a major loss that you cannot cover out of pocket and would set you back financially.

So how do you get the best rate for the best coverage? First, know the coverage that adequately protects your risk. What amount of liability coverage is needed to protect your assets? What amount of medical payments coverage is adequate? Do you need replacement cost on contents instead of actual cash value (depreciated cost)? Other optional coverage may also be needed. Then contact an agent or company and market both your auto and homeowner policies. Make sure you get the rates for different deductibles on your homeowner quote. Most companies will start at $1,000 deductible, but price $2,000 or $2,500 deductibles.

Most companies use your credit score to determine the tier of premium they put you in. The higher the credit score, the lower the tier and lower the rate. Independent studies have shown a direct correlation between credit history and loss proclivity. Companies also base their rate on past claims experience. Insure your home for a major loss, and save money by paying any small claims if there are any. Install deadbolt locks and smoke detectors and test the smoke detectors every six months. If you can afford it, install a centrally monitored security system. The discount on your homeowner premium could offset over half of the annual monitoring cost.

Rather than be placid about the cost of homeowner insurance, be proactive. Reduce the hazards around your home such as updating wiring and reducing clutter. Understand how much coverage you need and shop for the product that meets your needs at the best price. Remember the package discount. It is offered in the marketplace so take advantage of it and save money.

Dave Pushman is the former regional vice president of Geico in Macon and is now an independent insurance agent with Tidwell and Hilburn Insurance. He can be reached at davep@th-ins.com.

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The Insurance Corner: Shopping for homeowner insurance more complex

An early morning New Years Day fire at a city home displaced five people and caused at least $20,000 damage, a city fire official said.

City fire crews were called out to 226 E. Lehman St. at 5:37 a.m. Wednesday for a fire in the walls.

City Fire Commissioner Duane Trautman said the fire was caused by old wiring tied into new wiring. The fire started on the second floor and spread into the attic, he said.

He estimated damage at between $20,000 and $25,000. The fire commissioner said the fire caused extensive damage to the floor joists and flooring in the attic and framing on the second floor.

"There's a lot of work to be done (to repair it)," he said.

Two adults and three children lived in the rental property, Trautman said.

The cause of the fire was ruled accidental, the fire commissioner said.

Trautman said the property owner is expected to face charges because there were no smoke detectors inside the home.

The names of the property owners and the occupants of the home were not available Wednesday.

"Someone body happened to be awake (and noticed the fire). They're lucky to be alive," Trautman said.

Original post:
Fire displaces five in Lebanon

Broadway and Fraser, Vancouver (Dec 31/13)

(Jesse Johnston, News1130 Photo)

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) Crews are still dealing with a stubborn fire that has gutted a Vancouver home and sent four people to the hospital.

The fire broke out early this morning at Broadway and Fraser Street.

One woman is unaccounted for, but its not yet clear if she was home at the time. Fire Chief John McKearney says she lives in the attic of the building and crews are looking into whether she could have been staying somewhere else overnight. Were absolutely hopeful nobody is there.

Paul lives in the basement suite at the home; he says he was woken up early this morning by screaming neighbours who were yelling at him to get out of his home. I went to open the door [and saw] a big fire. It was spread everywhere. So, we basically just went out the door. I felt kind of half-asleep and realized its everything weve got there.

He says the building is old and hes been concerned about the wiring for some time now, but theres still no word as to what caused the fire. But McKearney says appears the fire started in a carport area behind the home.

A couple of people who live in the house had to crawl onto the roof of a neighbouring house, until crews could come rescue them.

A firefighter has a dislocated shoulder, while the conditions of the other three people taken to hospital are unknown.

Broadway remains closed at Fraser Street.

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Four people taken to hospital after fire at Vancouver home

Fire brings pot grow in home to light

A fire blamed on faulty wiring led to the discovery of a home marijuana growing operation and an arrest. Modesto Regional Fire Authority firefighters responded to a home in the 1300 block of Markham Avenue shortly before 10 p.m. Friday, said Battalion Chief Cecil Ridge. Firefighters put out a small fire that damaged the ceiling of a downstairs bedroom, he said. The fire was blamed on makeshift electrical connections in the room and bedrooms above, which had extensive rigging to power lights and fans for growing marijuana, Ridge said. The Turlock Irrigation District was called in to cut off power to the smoking wires. Narcotics officers arrested Elda Valenzuela, 53, on a felony charge of cultivation of marijuana after finding about 100 plants growing, according to Modesto Police Department records.

NO INJURIES IN PLANE CRASH IN MERCED

No one was injured when the landing gear failed on an incoming plane to the Merced Regional Airport, according to authorities.

It was a minor accident, said Battalion Chief Shawn Henry of the city of Merced Fire Department. The plane sustained damage to its underside, he said. Fire crews were called to the airport about 6:20 p.m., and the airport closed, according to the departments Facebook page. Initial reports indicated the pilot had been injured. No other information was available.

St. Stanislaus marks 100th anniversary

St. Stanislaus Catholic Church marked a century of worship and community history with a service in the original church on J Street in Modesto. Page B2

CDC: Valley fever hit state hard this year

Californias Central Valley has been hit heavily by coccidioidomycosis, or Valley fever, in the past year, The Sacramento Bee reported. The disease is caused by Coccidioides fungus or cocci found in the soil of warm, dry regions with low annual rainfall, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Digging, agricultural production and high winds pick up the fungal spores from the soil and carry them to where humans can inhale them and become ill. Valley fever cannot be transmitted person to person.

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News & Notes

Bose SoundLink Mini.

In terms of technology, hotel rooms are still firmly locked in the 20th century. An in-room DVD player is a big deal at most hotels. Wi-fi? Only if you're happy to be ripped off, and then it's mostly marginal. Music? Forget that - if it's not on the television, it doesn't exist.

So if music helps you survive travel, it's all up to you, and unless you like listening to the horrible speaker in your phone, or wear headphones, you'll need a portable speaker. There may be plenty available across a wide range of prices, but not all of them travel well and lots of them sound little better than your phone.

First, you need something small and light enough to throw into your bag. It also needs to be robust enough to take the knocks. It needs sufficient volume to avoid washing out the detail by the time the sound has crossed from the room's only available power point to the room's only couch when the battery is charging.

Samsung DAF61.

Most of all, it needs to sound good, and this is where the laws of physics are against you. The smaller and more compact a speaker, the more it favours high-range sounds. If you want heaps of bass - well, it comes out best with large speakers, and these make serious inroads into your suitcase. So, you have to compromise, but advances in technology mean you don't have to compromise as much as you once did.

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The Samsung here has a passive radiator, essentially a cone with no driver behind it, operated by changes of air pressure within the speaker cabinet as the smaller drivers do their work. It enhances bass performance but, again, the bigger the better.

Bose has a tricky way of getting long (and therefore low) soundwaves out of very small enclosures.

Beats Pill.

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Home away from home

Last Friday, Ethel Wright, 66, and her four grandchildren stepped into their new home in Kyle. It was a year in the making, but this Christmas, they will finally wake up in a home that doesnt leak every time it rains, that doesnt have holes in the floor, that has all its windows, and heating and air conditioning, and electrical wiring that works.

This is awesome, said 9-year-old Petey Crawford, as he and his siblings ran through the new three-bedroom mobile home picking out their rooms. We have a good home to live in.

Wright was part of last years Statesman Season for Caring program, which features 12 families each year and helps hundreds of others through local nonprofit agencies. Wright was nominated by Community Action Inc., which has spent the year trying to turn reader donations into a new mobile home.

Community Actions Jon Engel went to multiple mobile home dealers until finally Clayton Homes agreed to sell Wright a new home, worth $42,000, for the $30,000 Community Action Inc. had allocated from last years Season for Caring funds. Clayton Homes also removed the existing home. Matt Chambers, who is a home contractor and who teaches GED classes for Community Action, became the foreman to organize moving the new home onto the property and removing the old one. Pack-Rat gave storage units for Wright to store her things while the new home was being set up. Pullen Electric and Air Pro Heating and Air Conditioning donated their services. Students from Chambers GED class also helped.

Engel called it a Christmas miracle as he watched the family check out their new home. Without Season for Caring, this would not have been possible.

I appreciated what they did for me and my family, Wright said. Now we got a good place to stay, and we wont be cold anymore.

Without heat and with leaky windows, the family had placed tarps over the windows and put blankets in the doorways to keep in what little warmth they had from space heaters. Wright worried about the safety of the space heaters for Petey, 11-year-old JaRai, and 3-year-old twins Michael and Makhia, but she didnt have another solution.

It was really, really dangerous, Wright said.

Community Action still has work to do on the new home, including finding people to put on the skirting and build front and back porches and permanent steps into and out of the house. Scraps from the old house need to be cleaned up from the yard, and, sadly, Wright will have to replant her beautiful front garden.

I just want to thank all the nice people, Petey said.

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Season for Caring: After a year’s wait, a new home for Ethel Wright

Manhattan, KS - infoZine - Finding a balance between being comfortable and conserving energy is key, he said. Some main areas of concentration for winterizing the home include checking the furnace, insulation, and the windows, doors and outlets for leaks to the outdoors. But, having a working programmable thermostat might be the first item on the agenda.

The thermostat setting determines how much you will spend for heating and cooling costs, Snead said. He recommends that people consider setting it down when they dont need it, perhaps when they are sleeping or gone during the day.

Each house is unique, but generally every degree you drop on your thermostat might save as much as 3 percent on your heating and cooling costs, he said.

Furnace checks

The more you use the furnace, the more important it is to check it, certainly at least every three months if not more often, just to make sure that the filters are clean, he said. If you have not had your furnace serviced in two or three years, it would be worth having a service technician do a standard evaluation to make sure everything is still lubricated, operating properly, venting properly and you are getting the most out of the fuel that is being consumed by the furnace to provide comfort in your home.

If people have any combustion appliances, like a furnace, in their home, Snead said they should have a carbon monoxide detector. Carbon monoxide is an odorless, tasteless and colorless gas that can cause flu-like symptoms or even death.

Windows, doors and outlets Leaks to the exterior of the home are one of the largest drains on energy costs. Snead said it depends on how many windows the home has, the orientation of those windows, how old they are, how many layers of glass they have and how tight they are.

Even if you have leaky, old windows, you can always add an interior layer of plastica shrink-fit film, Snead said. Just choose the proper-sized kit for your window. It can be temporarily installed. Its a good way to maintain the clarity of view of the window, but air tightening by literally sealing the whole window at the surface of the trim.

Another option for people is using temporary caulks, Snead said. If the window is not going to be used at all this winter, the temporary caulks dont bond permanently to the surface but will seal around the window.

If the windows are loose-fitting or decaying because of mold, mildew or moisture, Snead said it is worth having them replaced.

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Making the Home More Cost-effective and Energy-efficient This Winter

Diasporian News of Monday, 23 December 2013

Source: The Guardian

Seven-year-old Enoch wants to be a good student, but circumstances have not been on his side. At his home in Suhum, a ramshackle town in the dewy hills of Ghana's green and mountainous eastern region, straggly wires protrude from the empty shell where electrical sockets should be. The landlord decided halfway through building their two-bedroom home that he did not want to pay to complete the wiring and so Enoch, his parents and his elder sister have no lights at home.

Enoch sleeps on a grubby mattress on the floor by the front door. He has no desk, so he does his homework sitting on a faded armchair, crammed in beside his mother's basket of bread, hot chocolate sachets and oats items she prepares and sells by the roadside.

"It would be better if we had lights at home," says Enoch, who wears worn plimsoll hi-tops, his yellow school shirt emblazoned with his primary school's logo, which bears the words: "Knowledge is power." It's a motto Enoch's parents understand, even though neither of them can read or write and they don't own a single book.

Enoch, however, has 140 books, which he can read even in the dark on a Kindle e-reader he was given at school. Described by his teachers as particularly bright, Enoch likes the Ghanaian stories in the local Tiwi language as well as in English but his favourite book is the dictionary. He scrolls expertly through the neatly cased Kindle, searching for the alphabet to read aloud. Around him other children in stream C at Suhum primary, one of three government schools in the same, gently sloping compound, are sitting in the shade during their morning break, eating bread and oranges and playing ampe, a traditional Ghanaian game of clapping and jumping.

"I like reading this because it teaches me new words and numbers," Enoch says. "I want to be a pilot when I grow up and fly planes."

Suhum primary school is a beneficiary of a project run by the charity Worldreader, whose iRead 2 programme is distributing Kindles to children in nine African countries. The parents make huge sacrifices to send their children to school but, if it wasn't for the project, they would still struggle to master literacy. More than 12,000 students and their families have so far benefited from the more than 2,000 titles available on the Kindles, in English and local languages.

The need for outside intervention at Suhum is clear. Despite being a model school, with good attendance rates and disciplined children and staff, the school has been beset by a lack of funding and chronic shortages of essential materials. "The government has not been providing us with enough books; it is a very serious problem," said Patrick Kyere-Koranteng, 30, an English teacher at the school. "The children are many, and sharing the few books we have was difficult. That affected their academic performance. And without textbooks it is very difficult to do a good job as a teacher."

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The Guardian and Observer Christmas appeal 2013: Worldreader