February 13, 2011

The price was right for 1951 Levittown homes: $8,500

click on image to enlarge

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

From Wally Linder, class of 1961

We lived in the one with the windows all across the back of the house. Our house at 70 Haymaker faced North--so in the winter you could heat the house with the heat coming through the back windows.

Anonymous said...

The first house lived in was a ranch on Woodpecker Lane. 1951. We moved to a cape and then to a ranch again. So I lived in all kinds of models.
Joan Bartels Signorelli '62

Marilyn Monsrud Frese said...

I was in the model #4 shown hear...with the pointy roof...but a pretty good size kitchen just inside the front door compared to most capes. This ranch also had the stairs that started at a back door not at the front door...and many or all capes had side doors as a second entrance- not the back door that ranches have. And of course the ranches had the fireplace between the kitchen and the living room. That was a wonderful thing to have in the winter. And all the houses had radiant heating in the floors!!! You could always walk around the house barefoot and your feel were always warm. Dogs loved them too. They would always find the warmest spots. Wasn't until the Levitts hit about 40 years old that those radiant heat coils started spouting leaks! And you couldn't tell where the leaks were starting- sometimes they would remover tiles and cement and have to dig around until they found the leak in the buried pipe. For a while many just had them fixed and patched the floors, but them multiple leaks would start up so the changes to baseboard were made to almost all Levitts. And most burners have been moved to garages and the tanks buried in the lawns they had filled with cement and above ground tanks moved to the sides of the houses or into the garages. If your old buried oil tanks sprung a leak, the homeowner was responsible for an 'oil spill inspection' and the removal of all effected soil, which many times would have leaked underground into neighbors soil too. That inspection and cleanup were VERY expensive so people started filling their tanks with cement to prevent that from happening. And this all had to be done and documented by inspectors.

Bill Stanley said...

I TOO LOVED THE RADIANT HEAT AND THE BARE FOOT PART OF IT, AS DID ANYONE YOU WOULD TALK TO ABOUT IT. IT WAS A GREAT WAY TO HEAT THE HOUSE, ALTHOUGH IT TOOK QUITE SOME TIME TO GET UP TO THE HEAT LEVEL YOU SET IT AT.

AS YOU KNOW, I TOO LIVE IN AN EXTENDED LEVITT RANCH THAT I HAD TO CHANGE OVER TO BASEBOARD HEAT BECAUSE OF SEVERAL LEAKS. ONE DAY, MY LATE WIFE, LUCILLE AD I CAME HOME TO FIND WHAT LOOKED LIKE A GIANT SEA TURTLE UNDER OUR KITCHEN FLOOR. THE HOT WATER HAD STRETCHED THE SOLARIAN FLOORING INTO THAT SHAPE. AFTER “DAMMING” THE AREA WITH MANY TOWELS. I CUT THE FLOOR ALONG THE PATTERN LINES AND REMOVED THE CUT SECTION. THEN I USED A HAMMER AND CHISEL TO BUST AWAY THE CEMENT AND GOT LUCKY AS THIS LEAK WAS RIGHT IN THE AREA OF THE LEAK. AS YOU STATED, QUITE OFTEN THE LEAK WOULD “TRAVEL” AND SHOW UP IN AN AREA THAT WAS SOME DISTANCE FROM THE ACTUAL LEAK. BECAUSE OF PREVIOUS LEAKS, I HAD WHAT I CALLED A “PATCH KIT” THAT I MADE UP OF A PIECE OF COPPER TUBING AND TWO IN LINE COPPER SPLICES THAT REPLACED THE PIECE OF TUBING WITH THE HOLE IN IT.

NOW, HERE’S THE KICK IN THE HEAD-I WAS TOLD BY A PLUMBER THAT ALL THE RADIANT HEAT LEAKS OCCURRED WHERE THE COPPER TUBING FOR THE HEAT WAS STAPLED TO WOOD STRIPS THAT HELD THE TUBING IN PLACE WHEN THEY POURED THE CEMENT. THOSE STAPLES WERE METAL AND BECAUSE OF THE DISSIMILAR METALS, ELECTROLYSIS CAUSED THE LEAKS. HE SAID, IF THEY HAD USED COPPER STAPLES WE WOULD NOT HAVE HAD THE PROBLEM.

I MISS MY RADIANT HEAT. BILL

P.S. THE SOLARIAN FLOOR SHRUNK BACK AND WAS PUT BACK IN PLACE ON THE FLOOR-IF I DON’T SHOW YOU WHERE IT WAS CUT, YOU WOULDN’T NOTICE IT.

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