Big Chunks of Money

I got a contract for the installation of the solar hot water system this morning. After an early morning visit to the plumber's, the choice seemed pretty clear to me. First he'd quoted the wrong system. Then he dragged his feet getting me the information on what I'd wanted until, finally, today I presented myself once again for information. When he produced the quote the number was considerably higher than I'd expected. It may have been considerably higher than he expected. The problem is that I know more about these systems than he does. The benefit of having our plumbers install the solar hot water system was supposed to be a break on the installation since they'd never done one before. While he dragged his feet, I called a guy who's done many of these installations (I'd spoken to him way back when the house was still being designed.) His systems are custom while the plumber's system is a package he's buying from a distributor and simply installing. The difference was a couple thousand dollars in the custom/experienced guy's favor. So I decided to quit dillydallying and sign on with the guy who knows what's he's doing. There's $14,700. I also called the low bid on the drywall. At $6,700 well worth it. The giant slider, once it's fixed, comes to $4,100. After we pay for all these things, we'll be ready to eat into our home equity line of credit. At that point the house will have all its doors and windows, all the walls will be ready to paint, and it will have a top notch solar hot water system that's also capable of heating the slab. What's left is buying the kitchen from Ikea, appliances, the stuff of one bathroom, and a woodstove. Just a roughly educated guess on cost is somewhere between $17 and $20 thousand. The rest can be finished in the not too distant future. With a lot of this stuff we're racking up the energy tax credits. At 30% of the cost we're looking at about $5000 in tax credits. We'll have to take the credits over more than one year; we usually pay little, if any, federal taxes. I may have to make more money just to take advantage of the tax credits!