SUMMARY KEYWORDS
water heater,propane, flapper, leaking, toilet tank, pressure relief valve, diy, diy project
00:03
Before you start your next do it yourself project, listen to this. You Got This! is on the air. You Got This! is hosted by ABT plumbing electric heat and air owner, Andrew Twidwell, and Rosalie Brown with a helping hand. Here are Andrew and Rosalie.
00:19
This is Andrew Twidwell, owner of ABT plumbing, electric heat and air once again with the show You Got This!, the show of DIY do’s and don’ts. I’m zooming in with Rosalie Brown. She’s done in lovely LA and I’m up in Grass Valley in our Grass Valley office today. And yeah, it’s cold. We’re always talking about the weather.
00:41
obvious, right? That’s
00:42
what we do. Yeah. It’s kind of springtime, right. And that little, you wrote a little piece for a radio spot that you guys might be hearing soon about the fact that as springtime and in the mountains be one day, you’ve got it’s 90 degrees. And next next Friday, it’s snowing.
01:02
That’s what I was going to ask you about. So you know, I’m still connected to Nevada County stuff on on Facebook and stuff. And so I was kind of chuckling to myself, because the last time we were together, I think that it was like 97 was the high for me. And then within a couple of days it dipped down to 67 was the high side a 30 degree change. And then yesterday we had like, like, what I considered cold winds. My child told me that I don’t know what I’m talking about. It wasn’t cold, but whatever. It’s super, super windy. And I was like, yesterday, but then I was online and I’m like, wait, are they saying you guys might get snow on Friday? Like, what is going on? I didn’t get
01:44
a cold. I know I start winery had a piece on on Facebook, I follow them and and they were running the sprinklers and froze up just froze on all their minds. But they did the sprinkler to hopefully save the fruit. And I mean, and they’re they’re just like half a mile away from my house. And yeah, it was weird. It’s dipping into the 20s. So the other night or this week, so yeah, it’s been kind of kind of crazy. Yeah.
02:11
It’s like you have to have your jacket and your shorts out. Like that’s crazy. Oh, yeah, exactly. I don’t know. So yeah.
02:19
If you don’t like the weather, just wait. It’ll be different.
02:23
That’s funny. There’s a there’s a saying, if you live in Michigan, which you know, I did for a while. There’s a saying in Michigan that essentially like if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes, because we could in one day in Michigan get all four seasons in one day. And
02:41
I’ve experienced it. Yeah, the Midwest is like that. It’s crazy. All of a sudden, you’re like, it’s hot. And then a thunderstorm comes in, and then hail and then it drops the temperature really quick,
02:51
and then comes out. And the humidity chokes you. And it’s a crazy, it’s very crazy. So I have to say that I’ve been in crazy weather. But yeah, the temperature people are out in
03:03
shorts right now. I saw that in St. Paul. They’re out in shorts. And it’s like 55 or something. So speaking of relative, right
03:11
55 It was in the 60s yesterday. And I have like a jacket and a sweatshirt and a scarf and a hat. I had a hat on because I didn’t want my ears to get cold. You know. And meanwhile, you know, my kids walking around like a T shirt and like no big deal. I’m like, You’re crazy. Yeah, but I guess I think we’re older. So whether,
03:29
yeah, because yeah, we I spent the week before last was in San Francisco with my daughter. And she lives down there. And yeah, I mean, if it was 60 She’s in a T shirt and complaining about how hot it is. And meanwhile, my wife and I are like, got our jackets on
03:49
as well as good. I’m not as good at dealing with cold temperatures anymore. Yeah, it’s just, it’s, it’s sucky. Yeah.
03:58
So hey, before we start the show, can I tell you my latest obsession because you know, I’m going to DD kind of made fun of me for it, which I had it coming. Okay. Who could remember many, many months ago, I showed you or you saw one of the pictures I took of a bird kind of hanging out in my, in my neighborhood, and you actually identified it for me. And it was a bird I’ve never heard of and I was like fascinated, right? So um, I’ve been threatening to get bird seed and put it out for a month now. So I have so I have this mated pair that comes and just like you know, they’re it’s fascinating and I can’t help it took like 3540 pictures right and and and so I posted it online. And so Didi, our good friend and colleague says how do you know someone’s over 50 and starts talking about how excited they get with a birds and I was like, put it’s true like that’s my latest fascination is watching these birds. So yesterday, it was Fight Club, because so I have the two mated pair that showed up and I’m you know going for raise with Bernstein. And oh my gosh, and this third bird showed up. Oh no, sir. He was not welcome. So I watched these birds like Fight Club and it out. And I was like, oh, nature is so cruel man nature is really
05:13
mean. Yeah. Birds are rough.
05:16
Oh, man. So you know, you live in LA. So
05:18
you’ve got and you’re right near the the you’re right near open space. So yeah, I mean, you could put out all kinds of cool stuff. You can put up birdseed you can put up Niger for the fences, you could put up fruit for different other birds. I think even Western tanagers go through your area because they migrate all the way up to here and all of this years. Actually, America.
05:41
That’s actually I think what I have I have a male and a female and one is that Tanager and then one is something else. We don’t really bright and colorful. Yes, yes, yes. And then the little bird that follows that one around is that gray color. Not doesn’t have the but the interesting thing is that, you know, having I think part of my consternation is because I have kind of a jumbo cat. I have a jumbo sized dog. And then there’s these little tiny little patio. I have a coyote in the backyard Coyote Pack. And I have these birds up front. And I just feel like I’m living in the lake. Wilderness Wonderland. It’s just crazy. And everyone’s that. And there’s a big hubbub here about coyotes. There’s a different feel for coyotes down unless I’m just in there where you are. Some of us are rooting for our pack, because we have a pet. Yeah. And then, and then other people are like really upset. And so it’s interesting what they eat cats and dogs. So they do but you know what you could do? You could keep your cats and dogs like in your sight or maybe inside you know what I mean? But anyway, I digress. I moved to
06:46
the we had moved into their space. Yeah, yeah. So there’s where they’re seeing him. It’s downtown San Francisco. So it’s a pandemic. It’s crazy.
06:56
Yeah, it’s very, it’s very odd. So yeah, I mean, I’m actually I lived in the mountains for several years and and didn’t have that much interaction with wildlife. And I moved to Los Angeles and all sudden, it’s for all directions. So I’m just fascinated. And I’m, I’m learning something that makes
07:10
it even more, I think if I find it even more fascinating when you’re in an urban environment, and you’ve got all this wildlife, we did. So that same trip we visited a couple weeks ago with her daughter. Before we left the city, we went and walked in the Salesforce Park above the metro station and Metro bus station, and from our friend Andy Burton, reminding me about it in here you are in the middle of some of the tallest buildings in San Francisco, and you’ve got this green space. And there’s bees and there’s birds. And I just find it fascinating. I love that, that that interplay between urban and rural and urban and jungle kind of thing. It’s kind of fun,
07:51
mental break to you anatomy, like I’m on the computer so much you’re on the computer, we’re on technology more than we want to be. But that’s how we conduct business. Right. And so just to step away for just a little bit and just get a taste of that. So it’s been Yeah, so between the dog and the birds I’ve just been, life has been exciting, what kind of stuff?
08:12
Alright, maybe we should talk about DIY project. All
08:14
right, if you want to. Yeah. Talking about.
08:17
That’s cool. So we got a couple questions Q and A’s from last week that we didn’t finish. So we didn’t really,
08:27
and I just
08:28
thought, you know, can just give some good insight, quick reminder
08:30
to everybody. If you did listen, last week, we never know that the plan here was to find out what, you know, we know a lot of weird stuff, random stuff. That’s helpful. Not helpful, probably. But we were looking at, okay, what are people asking? What do they want to know? And so we found what Google was, was saying were really popular searches. And we thought, okay, well, that’s what we’ll kind of talk about, because if that should extrapolate right across the, across the listening audience, so we didn’t get to cover everything. So I’m going to jump in here with a fairly popular search with like 3000 searches per month. The question is, my water heater is leaking? What should I do? And before you answer, you know, most people are going to think, call the plumber. And that’s not a bad idea, right? Because a pro is not a bad idea. But if you had a little bit of DIY kind of show nice ACWA how would you handle that if you weren’t going to call on a pro?
09:33
The first thing I mean, they didn’t even talk about this in this description of what to do. The first thing I would do though, is is I’ve been we’ve been called out for a lot of water heater leaks that aren’t water heater leaks. They’re actually the pipes that are attached to the water heater that are leaking. And that can be kind of a DIY thing, depending on how much how much skill you have. So it’s First thing I would do is if I see water on the ground, I’m going to check and make sure that I don’t have any leaks on my connectors that connect the water lines, the hot and cold water to the water heater itself, because the little what we use is we use a flexible connector. And we have to do that because of earthquakes in California. So everything is with these flexible connectors. And the seal that’s made with this flexible connectors is literally a water garden hose washer. It’s a three quarter and our seven eighths garden hose washer. So it’s just a piece of rubber, and we crank down the with a nut onto the nipple and the washer makes the seal that will take you know, it will eventually dissolve because chlorine and stuff, dissolved rubber. So eventually those will fail, they typically last you know, 20 years, they the last typically lasts longer than the water heater itself. But in the event, that’s the first thing I would check. Because that may just be it may just need a new FlexLine which is one of the things that you know, it’s it’s higher level DIY project. But if you’ve got a good sense of tools, and it’s a plumbing, it’s one of the things you can actually probably tackle yourself. So that would be number one. And it can be deceiving. Because a water heater is built with a tank, a steel tank that is then wrapped in either foam or fiberglass to insulate it and then another steel jacket around it. So that jacket that you see isn’t actually the water heater itself, it simply contains the the insulation, so the water will go, it’ll run in between the insulation, so you don’t even see the water working all the way down, you just see water coming out of the bottom of it. And it can literally be coming from the very top at that water heater, flex line connection. So that’d be the first thing I checked. Second thing is I’m going to check the temperature pressure relief valve and make sure that it’s not blowing off. And that is that little thing that’s on the side of a water heater on the top of the water heater. And the purpose of that is it’s literally is a temperature pressure relief valve. It’s there. It’s a safety device. So if the gas control were to fail, and to superheated water to steam, it’s going to release that pressure before the vessel blows up. If you want to see some, if you want to see some fun videos, go on YouTube and just punched in water heater explosions. And Mythbusters did one shot 40 feet in the air. I mean, and I’ve read stories of it, going through shopping malls and landing on cars outside. Yeah, it can really, you know, temperature pressure relief valve is there, it’s a really good thing. I’ve seen some people plug them do not plug it if it’s leaking, it’s there to save your life and property. So check that and see if that’s leaking. If it’s not, then it’s probably the tank water heaters, they don’t last that long. People think you know we install them. And they just kind of forget them because they just they’re remarkably Reliant and they’re just workhorses they rarely break down, they will literally go for eight to 12 years, with basically no maintenance at all. Unless except for maybe flushing out him as well. But typically, you don’t really have to do a lot to him. But what happens is the water heater itself, the vessel inside the tank, eventually will rupture. And once that ruptures, it’s its disposal, we have to put a new water heater in. So if the tank is ruptured, you’re going to if it’s leaking, you’re gonna need a new water heater, what can you do on the process to to alleviate any kind of water damage, turn the water off, find the valve and turn the water off to the water heater itself. turn the gas off to the unit so that you don’t have any potential for for overheating or boiling the water. And then if you’re so inclined, you can hook up a hose to the drain and drain it out.
14:04
That’ll at least take any kind of dripping water away. And then yeah, the water heater needs to be replaced. Is that a DIY thing? It’s one of those situations where I see a lot of people install them themselves. But I’ve seen a lot of really dangerous installations. So I’m a little bit hesitant to say that it’s a DIY project because you’re dealing with burning gas, which puts off carbon but potential carbon monoxide. And I’ve seen people do their flue or their chimney incorrectly. And the like they’ll come right off the top of the 90 and then it’ll go downhill and attach to something or they’ll put some flexible pipe in or I’ve even seen a plastic pipe in even though it could melt and I’ve gone into people’s water where at least installations have had occurred, and you get kind of lightheaded because you’re getting carbon monoxide poisoning. So it’s one of those things where it’s like, hey, I will there was about saying it’s a DIY project. If it’s a gas water heater i and then even an electric water heater, you’ve got electricity, and it’s 220. And you have the potential for electrocuting yourself. And or another thing I see all the time is when people if somebody is doing it, that’s never done it before. They’ll make the mistake of turning electricity on before they fill the water heater full of water and they’ll dry fire the elements and they destroy the water heater, and you have to replace all the components inside the water heater. So anyway,
15:31
that’s probably a safer bet. If it turns out that it’s harder. Yeah, you need replaced the safe unless you’ve
15:37
installed a bunch of them before. Sure. I would say it’s one of those things that you should definitely hire somebody. Somebody come in at least look at it. Yeah, no, I think it’s scary. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had water heaters that have made me lightheaded when I walk into a room. And I know I know that feeling because I’ve dealt with mental life. Yeah, you recommended on being a six year old with carbon monoxide. And it’s killing me.
15:59
Yeah. Well, that’s fantastic. Okay, so All right. Well, this is a little bit less dramatic, maybe. But um, so the next one that came up in Google searches is a very popular search. And I get it because I’ve been in this situation before. I have no hot water in my house. What happened?
16:19
Yeah, so the first thing I’m going to first thing I’m going to do is determine whether it is isolated to one fixture. So I’ve had that situation where I’ve been called out, I have no hot water and I go out and it’s their bathroom faucet or their shower. Yeah. And then the rest of the house has has hot water. So first, you want to find out is it an isolated fixture. If it’s an isolated fixture, it could be as simple as some piece of debris get clogged in the flex line. In the ankle stop there were just a shutoff valve, or potentially even inside the valve itself where you just have to replace the whole valve the the faucet or the shower. Seen that multiple times. If it is throughout the house, there are a couple of things you can look at. First off, did you do you have propane?
17:07
Rice, you know, I
17:09
mean, if you if you live up in the mountains or if you live up here in Nevada County or Placer County, you’ve got propane. Are you on a cycle where they come out and automatically fill it? Or are you on a system where you just call them when you need it? I can’t tell you how many times we’ve gone out and I’ve got no heat. I’ve got no hot water and we go out and yeah, they’re out of propane. Really common. The other one is natural gas because I forgot to pay the propane or the natural gas bill, I paid pg&e bill that’s going to go out. If it is a gas water heater. And you do have fuel you do know you have propane, you do know you have natural gas. The next thing to check is see if the pilot lights lit. And that is one of the simple things that you can probably do yourself. If you are on PG and E though if you have natural gas to your house, you can call PGL come up like your pilot for free. So if you’re a little hesitant about doing it, call PG Nila come out some of the the propane companies will do it as well, because they don’t really want you. They don’t want that liability if you’re potentially blowing yourself up.
18:14
I don’t want that either. To be honest, yeah.
18:18
The newer water heaters are pretty safe in terms of that because they are sealed. So we don’t have the issue of flames rolling out like we used to. I mean, I’ve blown myself up a couple of times, and I’ve watched my dad blow himself up.
18:31
Well, partially. Partially. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
18:35
Yeah. Well, I mean, I was engulfed by a ball of flames. Okay, my scary lashes and eyebrows. Got little sins. Yeah, some of the things you learn early on in the trade. And it’s kind of a rite of passage where you don’t do that again. But you can’t Yeah, you could literally blow yourself up with some of the older water heaters. We don’t see very many of them. But anyway, so lighting the water heater, there’s usually a sticker on the outside of the water heater telling you how to light the pilot. So you can go through that and light the pilot, if it isn’t the pilot, and sometimes it’s hard and uneasy overall, it just it’s hard to see the pilot because we just have like a little sight glass and it’s literally like a half inch diameter. So you have to get down really low and kind of look around and try to find the right angle. And it’s probably the first time you’ve ever looked for it so you don’t know even roughly where it is. So you really got to look around and see if you can see a flame in there. If you’ve got a flame in there, and you still have no hot water, it probably going to be a gas control and it’s going to be need to be rebuilt and replaced. And if it’s a water heater that’s over six or eight years, probably going to recommend us replacing it. Because you know it’s kind of like putting a new engine in a car that’s got half a million miles on it. It’s just not worth putting the money in it when you know everything else is falling apart. Because water heaters literally are designed to last eight to 12 years they have of design obsolescence within them. There’s a anode rod that goes into the water heater, because you have dissimilar metals and you have a lot of water. So you have electrolysis, like you do on a boat. So you have, like on a boat, you have these little zinc or magnesium bits and pieces that go into the propeller and the shaft and the rudder and stuff like that. To protect it from electrolysis, the same thing happens in a water heater, that anode rods designed to last about five years. So once that’s gone, it starts to attack the tank, and that’s the tank eventually ruptures. So in any event, I wouldn’t replace the gas I typically don’t I typically don’t suggest replacing major components on water heater, if it’s over six or seven years old, just put a new water heater, it’s cheaper. If it’s an electric water heater, that’s a whole other thing. Right is so one of the first things that I learned from diagnosing electrical things is Do I have power is is literally switched on. A lot of times and electric water heater, the circuit breaker go out. And so it might just be a matter of going and turn a circuit breaker back on. And then all of a sudden you got hot water again, well not all of a sudden because it takes a little while for the water to heat up. But check and see if the breakers off. And electric water heater there’s also what’s called an electric cut off switch or electric safety cut off switch. And it will switch off if there if it senses high water temperature. But it also will just switch off sometimes because it’s tired and old. And sometimes this is a matter of pushing a little red button and you get electricity back into your water heater. So those are some of the easier ones for for electrical. If it’s some major components that are out on an electrical water heater, and again, if it’s old again, probably just good looking at putting a new one in. So hopefully that kind of describes those sorts of things. Because you don’t want to leave time for this last one because it’s a good one.
22:07
Okay, well you’re the keeper the clock there. So we got
22:10
we got like three more minutes. Okay, here we go. And this is the most searched.
22:16
Search Search. So this kind of cracks me up. What is my toilet? Keep running?
22:21
Yeah, and it was searched 9300 times in one month. That’s like average almost, almost 9500 times a month. No your toilets not possessed.
22:33
Wow. Okay. You’re saying it’s not paranormal? Okay. All right, paranormal.
22:39
It’s not a ghost. Much is going on my daughter and Auntie I know it’s a light switch. So typically, most toilets have what’s called a, what we call a flapper and or it’s a flush valve. And all it is is a piece of rubber and that literally, if at the bottom of the tank, and uses the pressure of that water to stay city seated on to the flush valve and keeping the water inside that tank. It’s rubber. And again, we were talking about chlorine and rubber about water heaters. chlorine and chloramines tend to dissolve rubber. I mean, they’ve they’ve gotten better over the years with the compounds they use, but it will still destroy them. So what you want to do first thing you want to do is if it’s a well, how do you determine whether it’s the flapper, we’ve talked about this in previous shows, it’s pretty simple. You pull off you late in the evening, when you know you’re not going to use the bathroom for a while, or hopefully it’s a second bath, and you can kind of do this, you put a little food coloring into the tank, lift the tank below food coloring, do not flush the toilet, let it sit for two or 368 hours. And if you come back and you find color in the bowl, you know you’ve got a leak between the tank and the ball, which is that flapper, replace the flapper. So relatively easy. If it’s something a little bit, if it’s not the flapper, it could be the fill valve. And with that could be anything from high water pressure to a few other things. And hopefully that solves it because we’ve run out of time. So
24:20
Well, I still like the paranormal idea, but I know that’s not what we’re here for. So that’s a different show. Okay, so let’s say that you had any of these issues or more, and you wanted to get in touch with abt plumbing, electric heat and air. Here’s the phone number guys. 530-230-9092. You can also find ATT on the web at easy as abc.com We have a really cool Facebook page. Go ahead and give us a like and see all of our humorous little jabs there. And listen this weekend. I hope that you don’t get snow because of the easter bunnies come in. So hopefully you have a wonderful Easter weekend. Lots of people probably celebrating and doing some cool stuff. So hope you have good weather for that. Thanks for listening. We’ll catch you guys next week.
24:59
Bye Hey thanks Andrew thanks Rosalie now let’s get that project started you got this we’ll be back next Friday morning at nine o’clock on Cancio Newstalk 830