Time to consider AC purchase/upgrade? What in the heck is a seer :)

It’s summer again and as the mercury rises, it may be time to consider adding or upgrading your air conditioning system. When your HVAC contractor provides you with that bid and asks if you want a 13 seer or a 14 seer condenser, you may do what I do; a blank stare, or you can read an article I found about what the cost savings are in an average summer use. Also, don’t forget to check out the rebates that your local Gas and Electric company may be offering.
Begin by comparing the 14 SEER to the base pricing of the 13 SEER
An average difference between the two may be approximately $722.00. In order to decide if the upgrade is worth it you need to consider how long you plan to live in your current home. Let’s use 5 years because that is the number most quoted when homeowners are asked how many more years they plan to live in their current residence. (the fact that they usually stay longer is irrelevant to us).

That means that the additional (incremental) increase to purchase the 14 seer over the 13 seer is going to cost you $722.00. This is the base number you are trying to determine whether or not will be returned to you from the annual operating cost reduction achieved by the 1 point increase in SEER rating.

Let’s look at the annual cost again to determine the savings achieved by the one point advantage the 14 SEER has over the 13 SEER

13 SEER = $805.00

14 SEER $747.50

16 SEER = $632.50

23 SEER = $448.50

The 14 SEER saves $805.00 – $747.50 = $57.50 over the 13 SEER each year. Multiply this annual savings times your expected years of occupancy and you have a grand total over our 5 year assumption that equals $287.50 (5 X $57.50=$287.50). This falls way short of the total incremental increase in floor pricing of $722.00, therefore based on SEER rating alone this would not be a good investment for only 5 years of ownership.

Be sure to factor in utility rebates and federal tax credits when calculating your return as these reduce your purchase price accordingly. There are federal and local utility enticements in place to make the higher SEER rating options more attractive to homeowners. Using AC 4 Life pricing, these credits will generally smooth out the pricing difference to some degree, but that assumption can’t be made with all pricing you’ll receive elsewhere. (There is another argument that can and will be made for the 14 seer, but for our purpose here, we are strictly confining SEER rating as your selection criteria. I have also ignored the opportunity cost of incremental price increases purposely*)

*Hint – Don’t fall for another common trick whereby the 13 SEER option is prohibitively priced to make the higher SEER ratings seem like an outstanding value. The idea here is to make higher SEER ratings appear to provide lower incremental price increases, thereby unfairly enticing you to consider them. Avoid this shell game entirely by using the average of your 13 SEER estimates to establish your floor pricing, throwing out any pricing from shell game antics.

When you purchase a new air conditioning system for your home, you may be offered a bewildering maze of options, including higher SEER ratings. It is your contractor’s job to provide you with clear, concise information that will allow you make a confident, informed choice about these options without resorting to the “trust me” principle. Call us toll-free at 1-866-862-8922 if you are having trouble getting the answers you need and we will be happy to spend a few minutes with you, even if you are purchasing elsewhere.

* For you financial types out there, actuarial data and time value is ignored here primarily because most of us don’t actually invest our savings, but instead spend it in a discretionary basis on items of depreciating value. As a secondary issue, other ROI comparisons for various consumer products don’t calculate these values either, serving to skew any comparison of products (of dissimilar nature) using unlike values of comparison.

Historic Denver Questions Mayoral Candidates

Excerpt from Historic Denver’s Preservation News:

What ideas do you have to encourage rehabilitation and adaptive use of historic properties?

Carol Boigon
I believe we must begin to set templates for marrying important new values such as universal accessibility, public safety and environmental protection and sustainability with historic preservation. On their face, these important values may seem to have conflicts with each other that are time consuming and costly to resolve in the context of a specific project. The City can take the lead in pushing the dialogue among the communities and experts, developing good strategies to resolve typical conflicts and creating incentives for projects and products that bring those values together. For example, I have proposed an architectural contest based on meeting the goals of historic preservation and universal access in Denver’s public realm from neighborhoods, to business districts to recreation areas. Good models that emerge from the effort would become part of reference library for developers working on actual projects.

Paul Fiorino
First we need to realize that progress is all relative to our past. Encourage land owners to really do due diligence in finding out what may have happened at that place. Develop a process to register the findings so future owners will know. If a building can be retrofitted to be sustainable it has a better chance to survive, however, those that can maintain its existence as pure historic should be given a credit for energy use. Developers have a choice to build around or integrate a design into the historic structure, but demolition should not be a given. The Evans School is one project that has been in process for decades, yet to be finished, leased and open to the public. Can we find the right use and help owners complete projects in a timely matter? This is the question that needs to be answered by a new administration with preservation in mind.

Michael Hancock
Much of our mixed-use development, as called for in Blueprint Denver, is a return to traditional urban design often found in much of our existing historic properties. I will ensure that historic design guidelines are streamlined, implementable and easy to follow. I will continue to support easements and tax credits available to property owners looking to apply for historic designation. I will educate neighborhoods and the business community on the importance historic preservation plays in economic development.

Doug Linkhart
I think we should make it easier for people to landmark their properties. First, we should do whatever we can to streamline the process, which can sometimes be somewhat burdensome. We should also look into offering tax incentives for such remodeling. In addition, conducting a comprehensive inventory of historic properties would allow us to be proactive in preserving important properties for the future. With such an inventory we could look at how to make the most effective use of older buildings. As Mayor I will encourage preservation as well as sustainability. Environmental sustainability and historic preservation are not at odds with each other and should work together as dual goals. As Mayor, I will facilitate discussions as to how both goals can be achieved.

James Mejia
Many of Denver’s historic properties are desired for both business and residence. To encourage owners to rehabilitate and use historic properties the historic significance must be established. Once the significance is established, the owner should work with the City and organizations like Historic Denver to come up with the best preservation solution. What discourages many owners from using a historic property are the costs of maintenance. I support state incentives and grant programs for upkeep for historic property owners. As Mayor, I will encourage Xcel to provide incentives to property owners to make historic properties more energy efficient. Historic properties add to the character of a neighborhood and I believe owners should be encouraged and incentivized to maintain rather than destroy historic properties.

Chris Romer
The city can help by streamlining the licensing process for redevelopment approvals. We should also monitor the recently approved zoning changes to ensure they support and encourage preservation efforts as well as support the unique character of Denver’s neighborhoods.

Theresa Spahn
Like many of the historic lofts in Downtown Denver, the adaptive use of historic properties helps preserve Denver’s rich heritage while bringing new life and revenue to historic buildings. We need to partner with Historic Denver, the Department of Planning, Colorado Preservation Inc., and the Denver Landmark Preservation Commission to raise awareness about both the state and federal tax credits available to property owners. We must encourage the adaptive use of historic buildings to create a sense of civic pride and rich cultural heritage while creating new opportunities for business and residential use.

Thomas Wolf
With the state of the economy and the lending environment this will clearly need to be demand driven. That said, I think there are plenty of creative minds in our design and development community that have had success with these types of projects and will continue to find opportunities that do not require public financial assistance. In very unique “but for” situations that respond to a greater civic good, I would be willing to consider financial assistance

Pirates Exhibit at Denver Museum of Nature and Science

First, I want to say: Great exhibit!! I’ve seen all the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and I was amazed about two things. First, how accurate those movies are, and second how much I didn’t know about pirates. When ever you see Johnny Depp in a pirate movie swilling grog, I am the first to think: that’s not how it really was, that’s just Hollywood’s version. But it turns out that pirates did drink a lot and they had many more men on a ship then was needed so that they wouldn’t have to work as hard.
Also, in the movies the pirates always seem to run circles around the Navy ships. You’ll find out in this exhibit why that was true.
Seeing these items that were pulled from the ocean floor by real life treasure hunters is amazing. Being able to touch a doubloon that was on a pirate ship is amazing. Getting the story of these pirates told in a compelling and fun way is amazing. I guess you can see that I thought the exhibit was amazing.
There’s another part to the story that is compelling and is completely left out of the Johnny Depp movies, from what I recall, and that is that the ships were transporting slaves back and forth across the ocean and that many of the ships that were taken over by pirates were slave ships. It’s interesting how the exhibit shows that the pirates were much more integrated than the merchant and navy ships of their day.
It really made a somber impact on those I walked through the exhibit with to see the shackles and whips and other accoutrements of slave transport. I saw children with their pirate hats and swords staring wide eyed at these evidences of the atrocities of the time.
It was a lot different than I expected, and it’s an exhibit you’ll feel like a bilge rat if you miss matey.

Leaving your house for 2 hours and the real estate agent doesn’t show up…

I’m amazed at how on a daily basis, agents set 2 hour showing windows, and then blatantly and without any thought for the homeowner, show up an hour after the 2 hour window, or don’t show up at all.
How is it that a real estate agent doesn’t know if they’re showing your house at 3pm or 6:30pm??? Really?
I show houses once or twice a week and use 60-90 minute appointment windows so to minimize the inconvenience to the seller. Some times if I’m running late, I’ll show up right at the end of my window, but if I’m later than that, I call to let the office know.
I can’t understand why this simple process of setting showing appointments is so daunting for so many Realtors. I guess if they don’t know the area well enough and can’t set a route before hand to know what house their showing 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. then they are blindly setting times without any idea of what house they are going to first, but in this day of mapquest, GPS, etc. I think it’s pure laziness not to plan your route and set your times accordingly.
Anyone else frustrated by this?

Incredible View of Denver Skyline and Rocky Mountains

Buy now and get an incredible deal on this distressed listing. Gorgeous home with main floor master, huge deck for entertaining, walk out basement to beautiful stamped concrete patio, backing to the Highlands Ranch Golf Course. Perfect executive home with easy access to C470 to get to and from DIA. $539,900

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Warehouse / Office Space / Industrial For Sale

Whatever you want to do in a commercial building, you can do with these! Zoning allows for yard storage, parking semi trucks, plus building with office and warehouse space. These 2 properties have it all, and in an incredible central location.

8101 Steele St $775,000
Denver, CO
and
8215 Steele St $649,000
Denver, CO
Ask about lease and owner carry terms!

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Top 5 Reasons Why Home Sellers Need to Position Themselves for 1st Place

Top 5 Reasons Why Home Sellers Need to Position Themselves for 1st Place.

Layman’s View of 12 Denver Mayoral Candidates

I attended the Mayoral Candidate Forum at the Denver Botanic Gardens this evening and it was very well attended by, I would estimate, over 500 people. The event was sponsored by The Park People and moderated by 9News Political Reporter Adam Schrager. Adam did a great job, it’s too bad Denver is losing him to Wisconsin, but I digress.

There were 12 candidates up on the stage each answering the same question and giving those in attendance a feeling for their qualifications and plans for Denver should they be elected. I formed an opinion that 6 of the candidates are in the running, and the other 6 may have a real challenge being elected. This is a layman’s view as someone who is not connected to the political machine in any way whatsoever, so take this review with a grain of salt. Also, I do not mean to hurt the feelings of the 6 candidates that I don’t believe have a snowball’s chance in this election. They seemed like very nice, sincere, individuals, who are working for the best interest of our great city.

The candidates that impressed me as the most qualified and “electable” are as follows:
1. Doug Linkhart
2. James Meija
3. Michael Hancock
4. Carol Boigon
5. Chris Romer
6. Theresa Spahn

I’ve met Doug Linkhart and I like that he’s also a supporter of Bank on Denver, another passion of mine. Bank on Denver attempts to bring lower income people into the banking system to save them from using high cost check cashing stores. He comes across as a thoughtful, high energy, competent candidate who is experienced in operations of the city. His comments at the forum were concise and well thought out.

James Meija was thoughtful and well spoken and talked about his work in creating Confluence Park while he was the head of Denver Parks and Rec between 1999-2003. He expressed an interest in pursuing complimentary partnerships between parks and surrounding businesses.

Michael Hancock had great energy and came across with a sincere passion for the people of Denver. He discussed his accomplishments in creating a new park and rec center in Montbello and his interest in partnering with businesses in a complimentary way to help fund parks and recreation centers.

Carol Boigon comes across as a sincere lifelong advocate of Denver and the parks. She has worked on the drainage problems in Bible Park, the Denver Tree Canopy, and was an opponent to the “Movies in the park” but does believe in making complimentary business partnerships with the parks, such as the the company, Wheel Fun handling the paddle boat rentals at City Park.

Having the last name Romer and being the son of Roy Romer gives Chris Romer plenty of name recognition. Not that Chris hasn’t accomplished a lot in his own right. He’s been an advocate to Denver schools and comes across as a straight shooter who isn’t afraid to voice his opinions. He is interested in intelligent business partnerships to help fund the parks.

Theresa Spahn showed impressive business acumen by pointing out in the discussion how strong parks help to build tourism and people choosing Denver to work and live. She came across as a well spoken creative thinker. She discussed support for some pay for admission events to help supplement the parks and recs budget. She believes in using lessons learned in other successful cities, such as Seattle, to benefit Denver.

The other 6 candidates that attended the forum were very eclectic and interesting individuals. I’ll give you a quick rundown of what I remember about them.
Danny Lopez seems to have quite a following and talks a lot about being the anti establishment blue collar working man’s candidate. He brought this up during almost every answer he gave this morning. He seems to be a very sincere man with some great ideas that may have a little chip on his shoulder as he talks about not having a college degree and not having a political mind, but he said he will grow a political mind if elected.
Paul Fiorino seems like an interesting guy, he stood up to answer the first question and said that he should get rid of his gum, and something about black gum on the sidewalks. I didn’t get what he was talking about and he kind of lost me after that.
Dwight Henson looked kind of like grizzly Adams in his beard and baseball cap. Not too much to say, but came across as a sincere nice guy.
Ken Simpson works at Denver 311 and came across as an intelligent person, but didn’t look like he could smile comfortably, which probably isn’t a good thing for a politician.
Thomas Wolf said that he would be different because he wasn’t going to accept campaign funds. He had some great ideas but read many of his answers from his notes. Some people can read in a way that you kind of forget they’re reading. Mr. Wolf isn’t one of them, he stumbled through the answers that he read. The answers that he didn’t read sounded great.
Eric Zinn had the most enthusiasm of all of the candidates. He was good at getting his message across. He wants the people of Denver to lose one million pounds in the first 180 days of his term as mayor. He wants to build our minds, our bodies, and our spirits.

It was great to see the standing room only crowd of Denver residents taking part in the political process. Anyone have any other ideas about the candidates? As I said, I’m no expert and I’d love to have an open discussion here about the candidates. So speak up Denver!

Bank on Denver

Do you know someone that doesn’t have a bank account? Did you know that a person that lives without a bank account will spend $40,000, from the age of 18-55, on money orders, check cashing fees, etc? And they are the people who can least afford it.

Bank on Denver is a new program rolling out in the Denver metro area.

www.bankondenver.org to find out more.

David Croslin’s ideas for getting people back to work!

A plan to use social networks plus government to restart the economy, create jobs

• ‘The problem is our current funding models don’t work’
David Croslin

Former Hewlett-Packard Chief Technologist David Croslin has a modest proposal: a new way to end the Great Recession and create millions of new jobs through startups. In part, he would turn to social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and the like – to create worldwide links to help U.S. entrepreneurs.

“The problem is that we need to create jobs to replace all the ones that have been lost,” says Mr. Croslin. “The ‘normal’ model that we follow in this country wit the Small Business Administration, etc., is really oriented toward 1960s and 70s mom-and-pop shops, pizza parlors, things like that, where you’re not really creating anything new.”

He says his plan would create millions of jobs and put the U.S. back into dominating global markets and owning the technologies of the future.

“We have millions of very well educated, very talented people that’ve been laid off that can provide the foundations for the United States becoming much more competitive than we’ve allowed ourselves to become over the last 20-30 years,” Mr. Croslin says.

“In order to do that, we need to let these people, these entrepreneurs, actually create, actually hire people and actually bring new products to market,” he says. “The problem is our current funding models don’t work.”

(David Croslin explains his ideas – including how social networks could be a key components — in today’s commercial-free CVBT Audio Interview via Skype. Please left-click on the link below to listen now or right-click to download the MP3 audio file for later listening.)

Mr. Croslin says the nation’s economy needs a completely new model of providing the money and the advisors and partners to startups if the millions of high-quality jobs needed for a full economic recovery are to be created.

His “Startup Kick-Start” plan eliminates the current impediments to the creation of new businesses and jobs while minimizing the risks normally inherent in startup companies.

The plan proposes a program be established and funded by federal, state and local governments providing funding for up to 10,000 new startup companies each year.

Currently, he says, venture capitalists and banks won’t invest or lend small sums that such startups need.

“Most startups need less than $500K per year, some as little as $50,000 in total, in order to fully develop their technologies and take their products to market,” he says. “Experienced industry advisors managing the seed capital and targeting specific market innovations are critical to success. Local partnering and on-shoring are musts. The U.S. innovation engine needs a 3-5 year kick-start for success.”

Mr. Croslin is president of Innovate the Future, a Colorado Springs, Colo.-based consultancy specializing in innovation. He served as chief technologist at Hewlett-Packard and chief product architect at Verizon Business.