Please find attached the agenda for tonight’s board meeting, at 7 pm at Mike G’s house, 20703 76th. All Montare homeowners are welcome.

October 2009 meeting agenda

Hello all, please find meeting minutes attached from the last HOA board meeting.

September 2009 meeting minutes

The Annual Halloween Party is in the planning stages. We are looking for volunteers to help plan and organize the event. A planning meeting has been scheduled for Wednesday, September 30th, 7:00pm at the home of Laura 20525 74th.

Irrigation Winterization planning is going on now. Check your e-mail for details. If you have any questions please contact Laura W.

Bob U. provided this information earlier in the summer. My apologies for the delay in posting it but the information is still very valid. We also replaced our furnace over the summer after the fan motor quit and we found that the heat exchangers had cracked.

To Our Neighbors:

Recently we upgraded our heating and air conditioning system (some of our other neighbors have too) and thought we might share the experience with you.

With the recent economic downturn and the Federal economic stimulus package, you can upgrade your home’s heating system, get air conditioning in the bargain, while being more comfortable and saving money every year. We were pleasantly surprised at how affordable this was.

The current trend in HVAC is a hybrid system combining a standard efficiency gas furnace (not the sub-par unit Stafford put in our homes), with a high-efficiency heat pump. The heat pump does the majority of the heating for the house as well as giving you air conditioning for those few days each year when you really wish you had it.

The modern furnaces available today have such nice features as high-efficiency variable speed blowers and multi-stage burners. They run really quietly, unlike the old furnace you have now. Also, your current furnace is now nearly 10 years into its 15 year life span. With the heat pump, the furnace’s burner rarely runs. The heat pump heats your house (except when the temperature gets below about 32° F) much more efficiently than the gas furnace. You could save several hundred dollars a year on heating your home.

Now the good part. Manufacturers are offering substantial rebates ($1000 and more) on qualifying systems and the Federal government will give you a tax credit of 30% of the cost of a qualifying system new system (up to $1500), regardless of your income level. (The tax credit is for 2009 & 2010, to a total of $1500). Also, HVAC dealers have slashed their margins to stimulate demand. The dealers are typically well-equipped to advise you on which systems qualify.

In my research I learned that the quality of the design and installation is at least as important as the equipment itself. Any salesperson should start with a review of your needs and a “heat load” survey of your home. This is key to determining the proper capacity of equipment to match to your home. It takes into account the cubic volume of your home, wall/ceiling insulation, type and number of windows, etc. You might think bigger is better when it comes to heating/cooling, but you’d be wrong. An oversize system will actually make you less comfortable, be noisier than necessary, consume more energy than a proper sized system, and be more expensive to buy.

So that’s what I learned about upgrading the HVAC system on our home. I hope you can use this information to your benefit.

Thanks very much to Bob U. for the following tip.

“Thought we should have a mention on the web site about the fact that our sales tax here is only 7.7%. Most of the contractors I’ve used recently aren’t aware of that and are billing at somewhere between 9.2 and 9.7%. With some projects we’re talking real money here in the difference. Montare folks should check their invoices for home services to be sure they aren’t over-paying.”

Here’s a link to the state’s website which confirms this:

Sales Tax Rate Lookup

Hello all, please find attached the agenda for tonight’s meeting at 7 pm at Mike G’s house, 20703 76th.

September 2009 Board Meeting Agenda

Hello all, this is a neat sort of thing. NASA has a website on which you can look up when you are able to view the Space Station flying over from your location.

Human Space Flight Sightings

The Space Station appears as a bright, steady dot, brighter than any star or airplane, and moves steadily and swiftly across the sky in accordance with the direction information given on the NASA website. It’s pretty neat to see, if only to ponder that there are a bunch of people up there. It’s also interesting to consider that the Space Station orbits at an altitude of about 220 miles away – it’s further from us than Portland is!

There’s a great viewing opportunity tonight at 7:35 pm – 4 minutes, crossing most of the sky from WNW to ESE, nearly right overhead.

Hello all, please find attached minutes for the August board meeting.

The next meeting will occur on Wednesday September 23 at 7 pm at Mike G’s house, 20703 76th. As always homeowners are always welcome!

August 2009 Meeting Minutes

Hello all, please find attached the agenda for tonight’s meeting at Mike G’s house, 20708 76th Ave SE, at 7:15 pm. All Montare homeowners are welcome. If you do attend please walk around back of the house because it is being painted.

August 2009 HOA Board meeting agenda