A different kind of "Great Outdoors"

Since we left behind a number of acquaintances in Southern California who had feverishly invested in upgrades to the "outdoors experience" that extended only a few yards beyond their back door (courtesy of home equity wealth, that just had to be spent and for which there was apparently no better use), this story($) from the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal seemed all too familiar.

Rick Chapman didn't factor in the pigeons.

The retired Las Vegas businessman spent $200,000 on his backyard, reconfiguring the swimming pool and making room for bubbling fountains and a waterfall, a full kitchen with a 14-foot barbecue island, a slate and cement deck and a 37-inch plasma television. It was perfect for hosting outdoor dinner parties.

The local pigeons also appreciated the improvements and began roosting over -- and fouling -- the deck, forcing Mr. Chapman to fight back with a pellet gun and spikes. Other problems developed, including desert dust baking onto the outdoor furniture. Mr. Chapman says taking care of the yard has become pure drudgery -- especially in the 110-degree heat. "It's more work than the indoors," he says.

Outdoor rooms, one of the decade's most visible symbols of excess, have been a bonanza for manufacturers of everything from $3,700 waterproof pool tables to $130 patio umbrellas that emit a cooling mist. About one million households have outdoor kitchens, with such features as built-in grills and cooktops, outdoor stereos and TVs, refrigerators -- even dishwashers, according to StandPoint, a research firm in Atlanta. But some homeowners say they're falling out of love with their expensively furnished backyards, which require hours of upkeep and costly repair. Others are abandoning the rooms altogether.

The backyard misery has been a boon for exterminators and repair shops. Fire ants nest in speakers and televisions. (They're attracted to the hum and vibration.) Squirrels chew on the arms of teak furniture and on speaker wires. When expensive electronics come into contact with water, dust, pollen and heat, burnouts and other problems can occur. Over the past two years, such issues have boosted service requests at Walt's TV & Home Theater in Tempe, Ariz., by 400%.

The Ullriches have covered the hot tub, turned off the fountain. The fire pit? 'Never been used.'
...
Richard Weisman, owner of Advanced Pest Control in Houston, says that outdoor living rooms attract all kinds of pests. Greasy food remnants in stoves and grills, for example, attract rats, which in turn attract snakes. Mr. Weisman gets three or four calls a week from alarmed homeowners who have found sated copperheads and other serpents sunning on their decks and patios. His business for the first six months of this year is up 18% over the year-earlier period. John Van Galder, an Orlando, Fla., exterminator, reports similar complaints, including one in which eight roof rats moved into a client's propane-powered barbecue grill. Business in 2007 is up 25% over last year, he says.

Then there are the issues that inevitably arise when electronics are left out in a downpour or hung out to fry in the sun. Bryan Sunda, owner of Orange County Speaker, a sales-and-repair firm in Garden Grove, Calif., says the outdoor speakers they see for service are usually ruined by rust or completely filled with water from being left out in the rain or near sprinklers. Although some are advertised as waterproof, he says most of them aren't.

Rockustic, a Denver firm, makes outdoor speakers that come hidden in fake casings, including coconuts and rocks, and cost from $500 to $5,000 a pair. They're described on the company's Web site as "100% water and weatherproof" and carry a limited lifetime warranty. But if they're caught in an extended rainstorm or set in a low, wet spot in the yard, they can corrode or be damaged, says Chris Clark, director of sales and marketing. "Mother Nature is extremely hard to combat," he says.

There are other threats to outdoor gadgetry, says Rob Hendley, the chief executive officer of Walt's TV & Home Theater. One client's brand-new plasma TV was ruined when a friend accidentally spilled beer on it. The new Wii golf game that follows the movement of players as they practice their swings is also a threat to televisions placed outside: the controllers tend to fly out of the slippery hands of pool-party guests and smash into the screens. "It happens every week," Mr. Hendley says.

While backyard refrigerators, televisions, and dishwashers have been obvious examples of excess in recent years, to me, replacement driveways for new homes better characterize an era that has now largely come to an end.

Since the beginning of the late, great housing boom it seems that builders and landscapers never could (or would) work together to save the new homeowner a little dough. The homebuilder apparently had a contractual requirement to provide the buyer with a perfectly good, but very plain, concrete driveway which, without exception, they did.

Once the homeowner took possession and the landscaper got to work, in many cases, the plain, gray driveway was promptly removed only to be replaced with a much more elegant design that neatly matched the other improvements but provided no more utility.

Will people look back in a few years and wonder if their money was well spent in ripping out a perfectly good driveway and replacing it with a prettier one that served the same purpose?