On Thu, 06 May 2010 18:39:21 -0400, aemeijers wrote:

keith wrote:
On May 5, 10:29 pm, aemeijers wrote:
Joe Carthy wrote:
Steve Barker wrote in
:
On 5/5/2010 6:09 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 05 May 2010 04:55:08 -0400,
wrote:
On Mon, 03 May 2010 22:52:06 -0500, "
wrote:
We have one of those. It's heavier going down the driveway than
up. ;-)
But he lives at the bottom of his driveway.
Though I've certainly seen it, I'd never buy a house lower than
street level. Hauling garbage cans would be the least of my worries.
I've seen dozens that lay like that. And many of them right in town.
yuck, I'd never buy one.
Depends on how the lot was graded, and how much further downhill the lot
went past the house. Rainwater running into garage and basement can be
an expensive PITA. But if the house is in a bowl, the whole damn thing
can flood. If at all possible, you want the house to be the highest
point on the lot. But as I have learned from sad experience, having a
driveway that rises around 8 feet over a 60-foot run, can also be a
problem if you live in snow country. After losing one transmission, I
now have resigned myself to plowing before trying to get up the drive,
if I can't see the pavement through the snow. I suppose that is one of
the reasons this place sat empty for six months before I bought it at a
discount.

When I lived in Vermont (classifies as "snow country" ;-), our
driveway was like that. No big problem at all. It sure beats a
driveway sloped the opposite direction. At least I could get home
(before removing the snow) without worrying about losing the garage
door. Snow melts, too.

How in the world did you lose a transmission?

My driveway slopes up from street to house. Driveway is asphalt.

Same. Makes the garage door harder to hit. ;-)

Until I
realized FWD transmissions (esp mopar minvans) were not as solidly built
as RWD transmissions back in the old days, if there was only a couple
inches of snow, I would sometimes drive uphill through the snow. Made it
through about 1.5 winters before tranny told me that was a bad thing to
do.

I had a couple of minivans, though they were standards. I also had a couple
of intrepids, no issues with snow. The trannies were junk (on all Chrysler
crap), but I still don't understand how a little snow got to them.

At that point, the value of the van with a good tranny was the same
as the cost to rebuild the tranny.

Yep, my '93 TSi got scrapped because of the tranny, too. The '96 Intrepid got
sold at auction before it got that far (we chickened out).

I have a snowblower and a good leaf
blower now, so I seldom have to hand shovel very much. But I do have to
get up half an hour early on snowy days to clear drive, even for only a
couple inches, because if I drive out over it (which presumably does no
harm), I have 2 stripes of ice to contend with at the end of the day.

Yeah, I had a snow blower, too. If I got any ice on the driveway it tended to
last all Winter. I did usually have to shovel out the end of the driveway,
though. That stuff would be either as hard as a rock, or slush. Either would
plug up the snow blower.

The best-remembered lessons are the expensive ones, etc. I'm sure an AWD
or 4wd baby SUV would have no trouble with this driveway, nor would an
old-style RWD with actual snow tires in rear (not 'all season') and a
few sandbags in trunk.

I still don't know what was so tough on the tranny. Spinning wheels is
counterproductive.