Maggie’s What to know about Arizona
- Thread starter Lapuapalooza
- Start date
Can you elaborate on why you love it?
Thanks for your input Greg. I’d love to find someplace higher in elevation (ie;Prescott), but my wife is really into water and wants a pool. If you search property there are not a lot of homes with pools in the higher elevation. I am concerned about allergies and how they effect my kiddo.
It is better to have lapuapalozza move here then some California cocksucker.
I am in Tonopah, 60 miles west of Phoenix, out with all of the power plants. Hot summers, great winters. We get about a half dozen serious dust storms a year during the monsoon season, with about 100 days per year in excess of 110 degrees. The good news is, I can go shooting out to any distance my bullet will travel, with a 5 minute drive from my house. The city of Buckeye 20 miles closer to phx is the fastest growing city in the country right now, and jobs and industry are starting to move this way. Machining and manufacturing jobs are plentiful in the area, as well as all the office jobs associated with a major city/capital/county seat. Allergies are going to suck around here (I never had them until I moved here in 98) but the mountains are only an hour and a half away, and I can get to Alamo lake in about an hour to take care of my fishing urges.
Don’t cha jus hate guys like that?! I hear Arizona is gonna have you head up the tourism board. Any truth to that? ??
Can anyone tell me why the houses in Arizona are not built with basements? Given the climate I would think it would be a no brainer... What don’t I know?
Moving dirt is expensive and pouring a slab on grade is cheap, the ground doesn’t freeze so it isn’t an issue. I like basements but it’s bless you build your own house you won’t find one.
Yep, No basements. Why the hell not? I don't really know. You would think with the heat a subteranean portion of housing would be easier to cool. The valley floor here in PHX is one rocky son of a bitch with clay and takes a significant amount of effort to excavate. You can see boulders get removed the size of small cars when they dig pools here. Hell, I got pissed just trying to dig post holes by hand for a fence. The dirt/clay was baked hard as hell and was sprinkled with all kinds of rocks.
Some do have basements, but not mine.
The desert ground has the consistency of concrete; lotsa millennia out baking in that warm Arizona sun.
I tried using those plastic lawn sign holders for Corroplast target backers. You know, the ones with the pointy spike end. I used a hand sledge and a huge 24" long screwdriver to make starter holes.
It went poorly.
Most homes are built on slabs. Most homes have the water pipes embedded in the slab.
The acidic ground water corrodes those pipes into Swiss Cheese in about 40 years. Apparently nobody figured that one out in advance.
The replacement pipes are now run in the walls and overhead, and are made of plastic. Hindsight is 20/20.
As I mentioned previously here, the temperature is largely dependent on the altitude. For example, the temp here this morning was in the 30's, and will be in the 80's this afternoon. I live at an altitude where the temperature is much more agreeable than in the cities like Tucson or Phoenix, but my Cardiopulmonary issues make it very difficult to breathe at some of the higher locations.
For instance, we went to Mount Lemmon for an Oktoberfest at about 9000ft ASL. I had to descend within an hour because my PO2 reading went down into the low 80%'s. I can handle Airline Travel because the cabin altitudes are generally set at about 7,000 and I can pretty much handle that OK.
My Cardiopulmonary rehab is currently in progress (three trips to Tucson each week, about 160 miles round trip. The entire series of sessions will involve about 7,000 miles of travel), and I can recognize that my breathing ability is being greatly enhanced. The price is that about three entire days of every week are tied up with therapy.
During my exercise sessions, I'm being monitored, and I have managed to maintain my activity even when the PO2 goes down into the 70's for periods of up to a few minutes. On the difficulty scale, I peg it at about a 15 or 16.
Not fun, it's a willpower thing, but it can be managed with practice. They have since said that's impressive; now keep it above 90. My resting normal is 92.
Greg
The desert ground has the consistency of concrete; lotsa millennia out baking in that warm Arizona sun.
I tried using those plastic lawn sign holders for Corroplast target backers. You know, the ones with the pointy spike end. I used a hand sledge and a huge 24" long screwdriver to make starter holes.
It went poorly.
Most homes are built on slabs. Most homes have the water pipes embedded in the slab.
The acidic ground water corrodes those pipes into Swiss Cheese in about 40 years. Apparently nobody figured that one out in advance.
The replacement pipes are now run in the walls and overhead, and are made of plastic. Hindsight is 20/20.
As I mentioned previously here, the temperature is largely dependent on the altitude. For example, the temp here this morning was in the 30's, and will be in the 80's this afternoon. I live at an altitude where the temperature is much more agreeable than in the cities like Tucson or Phoenix, but my Cardiopulmonary issues make it very difficult to breathe at some of the higher locations.
For instance, we went to Mount Lemmon for an Oktoberfest at about 9000ft ASL. I had to descend within an hour because my PO2 reading went down into the low 80%'s. I can handle Airline Travel because the cabin altitudes are generally set at about 7,000 and I can pretty much handle that OK.
My Cardiopulmonary rehab is currently in progress (three trips to Tucson each week, about 160 miles round trip. The entire series of sessions will involve about 7,000 miles of travel), and I can recognize that my breathing ability is being greatly enhanced. The price is that about three entire days of every week are tied up with therapy.
During my exercise sessions, I'm being monitored, and I have managed to maintain my activity even when the PO2 goes down into the 70's for periods of up to a few minutes. On the difficulty scale, I peg it at about a 15 or 16.
Not fun, it's a willpower thing, but it can be managed with practice. They have since said that's impressive; now keep it above 90. My resting normal is 92.
Greg
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Greg, I have lurked here a long time even before joining up. I have always appreciated your input into this forum and hope your therapy works for you to keep you going here and in life.
I would have never thought about corroded pipes... that area is just a completely different climate from where I’ve spent my entire life. We may very well end up having to build something to get what we are after, seems to be a common thread in our lives. One thing I still can’t figure out is that the ground is soft enough to build an in ground pool, but too hard to build a basement... oh well.
We have a lot of loose ends to tie up before we get out of here, but my wife really seems to want the Phoenix area. She is not really interested in Prescott, she says it’s too cold for a pool.
Thanks again for your insight.
I would have never thought about corroded pipes... that area is just a completely different climate from where I’ve spent my entire life. We may very well end up having to build something to get what we are after, seems to be a common thread in our lives. One thing I still can’t figure out is that the ground is soft enough to build an in ground pool, but too hard to build a basement... oh well.
We have a lot of loose ends to tie up before we get out of here, but my wife really seems to want the Phoenix area. She is not really interested in Prescott, she says it’s too cold for a pool.
Thanks again for your insight.
The corroded pipes are part of an environmental contamination issue.
The Gold and Silver mining that was endemic here in the SW back around the turn of the 20th Century resulted in the uncontrolled dispersal of a lot of acids leftover from the metals refining process.
Much of the mining took place in the Tombstone area.
But what's less known is that when the Tombstone mines flooded, the mining effort shifted to Pearce (where I live). By the time the main mining boom ended in the Mid-20th Century, the greatest volume of Silver and Gold actually came out of the Pearce vicinity.
Commonwealth Mines still maintains a presence here, which many take to mean that there are still considerable deposits here that are not high enough in market value to make its extraction sufficiently profitable. But nobody's saying so officially.
Yesterday, my VA Community Care Cardiologist shared the results of several diagnostic efforts, and says that my heart is actually doing quite well, but the COPD is still a key issue. There's a viral bronchitis doing the rounds in our area that's a probable part of my breathing issues. It keeps recirculating in the population, probably with the local schools as the main Petri Dish. Hard to diagnose; and since it's not bacterial, not very treatable, either. I just have to let it run its course and allow the body to defeat it by developing its own immunity. The nebulizer helps a lot.
All in all, I'm mostly just venting, and the prognosis is that whatever I was fighting all Winter is soon due to fade away on its own. Meanwhile, I just have to thoroughly avoid breathing cold air for long periods, and I'm supposed to receive a discretionary supply of Prednisone for when/if the lungs get extra unruly.
Greg
The Gold and Silver mining that was endemic here in the SW back around the turn of the 20th Century resulted in the uncontrolled dispersal of a lot of acids leftover from the metals refining process.
Much of the mining took place in the Tombstone area.
But what's less known is that when the Tombstone mines flooded, the mining effort shifted to Pearce (where I live). By the time the main mining boom ended in the Mid-20th Century, the greatest volume of Silver and Gold actually came out of the Pearce vicinity.
Commonwealth Mines still maintains a presence here, which many take to mean that there are still considerable deposits here that are not high enough in market value to make its extraction sufficiently profitable. But nobody's saying so officially.
Yesterday, my VA Community Care Cardiologist shared the results of several diagnostic efforts, and says that my heart is actually doing quite well, but the COPD is still a key issue. There's a viral bronchitis doing the rounds in our area that's a probable part of my breathing issues. It keeps recirculating in the population, probably with the local schools as the main Petri Dish. Hard to diagnose; and since it's not bacterial, not very treatable, either. I just have to let it run its course and allow the body to defeat it by developing its own immunity. The nebulizer helps a lot.
All in all, I'm mostly just venting, and the prognosis is that whatever I was fighting all Winter is soon due to fade away on its own. Meanwhile, I just have to thoroughly avoid breathing cold air for long periods, and I'm supposed to receive a discretionary supply of Prednisone for when/if the lungs get extra unruly.
Greg
we don't have basements in las vegas either. The caliche soil is so hard it will break the teeth off a backhoe.
