ServiceMagic Provides Pre-Screened Home Improvement Contractors

Part of protecting your assets includes having a job done right when you have a home improvement project--a quality job done for a fair price.

The ideal situation is when you can be referred to a contractor by someone whom you know personally and whose opinion you trust. When you don't have this luxury, you can use ServiceMagic.com to locate pre-screened home improvement contractors for the job.

We used Service Magic to find an electrician to install an electrical outlet outside our house that we needed for a sprinkler system (he had to drill through an external concrete block wall in our yard to do it), and also to find a contractor to put our manual sprinkler system valves underground and automate the entire system.

How ServiceMagic Works: You simply determine the category of job you need done, provide relevant details, and ServiceMagic will match you to several contractors that match your need. Once you get a list of the contractors that have been matched to your job, you can go to the ServiceMagic.com website and review the ratings they've been given by other people that have contracted them to do jobs.

The contractors will typically call and/or email you, get any additional information they need, and then provide you with a quote for the job. If you decide to hire a contractor, after they complete the job you get to rate the contractor on the ServiceMagic website.

We've used ServiceMagic twice in the past couple of years and are very satisfied with the results. In both cases the contractors were prompt, courteous, and did a quality job. The next time you need a home improvement project done that you don't want to tackle yourself, consider ServiceMagic.com!

Tax Credit for Energy Saving Home Improvements

The tax credit for energy saving home improvements is set to expire in December 2007. Thanks to the Energy Policy Act of 2005 you can get a tax credit of up to $500 by making energy saving improvements to your home, but you only have a couple weeks left to make the improvements.

Here is a list of improvements that qualify:

Insulation that reduces loss of heat or A/C
New exterior windows (capped at $200)
“Highly efficient” central A/C, heat pump, or water heater (capped at $300)
“Highly efficient” furnace or boiler (capped at $150)
Solar-powered hot-water systems: you get a credit for 20% of the cost (capped at $2,000)

For reference, you can check out the U.S. Department of Energy article on what The Energy Policy Act of 2005 means to you.

If you need a new hot water heater, you can install a Heat Pump Hot Water Heater and reduce operating costs by 25%-45%. It will cost about $375-$400 above the installed cost of a conventional 50-gallon electric water heater , but there's potential for 1-year simple payback. Subtract the $300 tax credit from the price and the cost is almost the same as a conventional model.

If you're looking to replace your heating and A/C unit you can install a Geothermal Heat Pump and reduce operating costs 30%-60% annually. There's a $300 federal tax credit through 2007, and the cost is approximately $7500 for a 3 ton unit vs. $4,000 for a typical heat pump or central AC system, so you'll recoup the costs in 2-10 years.