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This is a better house? - Review by Guest | Land Company

Land Company

This is a better house? 3/1/2015

During the winter 2013-2014, seven Insight homes in our community had issues with frozen water lines into their Rinnai tankless hot water system. Why? Because the geniuses at Insight directed Schagrin Gas, the installer, to place the Rinnai on the interior garage wall but mere inches away from an exterior garage wall which in many cases were not insulated. Result: when we experienced a cold spell, the water lines going into and out of the Rinnai froze, rendering the homeowner without hot water until the line was heated and the ice cleared. One model of Insight's, the Frank, the Rinnai was actually mounted on an exterior garage wall which was not insulated. One would reasonably think that a builder claiming to build better houses would go back to the drawing board and re-position the Rinnai further inward to alleviate the freezing. During the recent cold spell during this winter,2014-2015, at least 5 homeowners in our community again experienced the frozen Rinnai lines and Insight sent an e-mail entitled "Dear Homeower, Our building experts want you to kno (sic), shut it" detailing steps to prevent frozen water lines. The e-mail concludes that there is only a "0.1667%" chance of frozen lines happening. Someone at Insight needs to check their facts. During the summer 2014, a disgruntled Insght customer who could not get Insight to fix numerous problems incurred during the construction of his home, went to the extraordinary effort of creating a website detailing his issues with Insight. The site was called "itsjustabadhouse." Insight took the individual to Chancery Court in New Castle County (not Sussex County) seeking to shut the website down. The defendent who was only looking to get the problems with his house fixed took the site down voluntarily when Insight finally agreed to do the right thing. Buyer beware. more
Owner response
Owner response 7/23/2015
Hello - I would like to add clarification to this topic. Approximately 80% of all Insight Homes' customers come from areas where basements are very common. Since Insight's communities are close to the beach (areas with higher water tables), basements are not super common within our homes. In turn, hot water heater systems are placed in the garage area. Our average customer is >60 years old and from regions that are 2-4 hours away. They are not used to living without a basement. Those who are used to this situation know to take precautions on record breaking cold evenings in order to avoid broken pipes. This involves things like keeping your faucet on at a slow drip. Since we know most of our customers would be surprised with this, we choose to use the more expensive Manabloc/PEX plumbing delivery system. This way if a pipe does become frozen, it WILL NOT break. None of our customers have ever experienced a broken pipe. In order to remind our customers of how this system works and what they can do if their pipes become frozen, an email was sent. The 0.1167% referenced in the email was a way of explaining how unlikely the event is. It it was based on the amount of time you may have to spend manually defrosting the one water line that can be affected. While we could have explained the % better, we stand behind our choice of systems as any builder will tell you it is the class leading methodology.