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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 helpful hand. Here are Andrew and Rosalie.
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This is Andrew Twidwell, owner of abt plumbing, electric heat and air once again with the show. You got this. It’s a show of DIY do’s and don’ts. And I’m zooming in here with Rosalie Brown. I’m sitting in our lovely Auburn office right now and it’s really chilly. How about how’s it going down there?
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So don’t get mad. It’s chilly. Because it’s 60. Okay, it’s 60. And it’s partly sunny. But that means when I woke up this morning, it was in the 40s. So it does get cold. It’s not the same type of
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cold that you cold. Yeah. This cold right now. It gets a trilogy to the bones. Yeah, that’s in your balance. Even when you have the heat on? Is the heat on when I cold? Even though the thermostat says 70? It doesn’t feel like it’s 70.
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Right. It permeates everything. Yeah, no, Iris. I’m not quite to those. But I think we’ve got you guys might have snow in the forecast maybe
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might be coming this weekend. Yeah, I was looking at talking about this earlier. So yeah, we were doing the light parade on actually not Sunday of Saturday, I think there’s a light parade. And if I
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have that if I just step in the the Festival of Lights Parade in Auburn, downtown Auburn. Now there are two different times across the internet, I have to say that they need a little help with their marketing. I’m it’s not a criticism. It’s just a fact. I’ve seen it written as 5pm. When I’ve seen it, it’s 530. So I would just suggest that anyone that wants to go to this really fun family events had down there early, right
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and done early. Because yeah, cuz the sidewalks fill up. Once it’s dark, they’re pretty full,
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right? Long, right? Higher. So whether it actually started exactly five or 530, I think the goal will be to get down there sooner rather than later. And it’s all about you know, kind of fun stuff and seeing different businesses featured and organizations and just, you know, kind of the old classic kind of kickoff to the Christmas season, right? Because even though technically, we’re beyond Thanksgiving, there so that little window doesn’t quite feel like Christmas until you have like a tree lighting or something. Right. So that’s coming up this weekend. And abt This is our second year, third year, having been strong, we’ve
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been doing on and off for over 10. Okay, we didn’t, you know, COVID kind of put a kibosh on it for a couple years. And there were a few years where we missed it for staffing issues, or whatever. But yeah, we’ve been trying to do it every year. It’s kind of fun. We enjoy it. So last year, we had a little surprise we had I was sitting in the back on a toilet with my pants down around my ankle. So that was kind of fun. People didn’t really see you as you as you’re driving along. You’d hear the snickers as people look in the back of the truck and there was you know, reading the newspaper and stuff and then the year before that we had Dan doing the same thing. So yeah, it’s kind of fun. We’ll do something silly again this
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year that that that photograph just FYI. The second people mentioned the light parade, I still have that photograph burned in my brain. Because I remember not being there but being sent you know, my phone blew up with like photos from like you DD everybody. There was like sending me photos. And they want to post on Facebook. Right? And so I’m looking at that one picture and I’m like, Oh, Sweet baby Jesus. Like I you know, so I still think of that. When I think about Christmas parades. It’s not a parade unless Andrew is got some toilet humor, especially. So Mary toilet humor,
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Bubbles blowing out the
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kids love it. Because so that’d be fun. That’s this weekend, and hopefully it’s not the weather. It’s not tu tu tu tu tu tu calls yeah, there’s
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like a 6% chance of rain. So it’s supposed to be kind of sprinkly. So hopefully it’s just showers. Hopefully it won’t be you know, we won’t be I mean, we had have had years where we’ve had staff in the in the parade and it’s been dumping. And that’s that’s really unpleasant. But sprinkling, rain or shine, they’ll have it. It’s a fun event. We’ll be passively cheering out. We haven’t quite figured out what we’re going to be passing out yet. But oh, well. It gets a couple days away. Yeah, good thing we didn’t think about talking about that at the meeting this morning. We should have something we should pass out by teddy bears Andrew like,
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Oh, man. Okay, well, someone’s gonna be busy when we get off the air taking care of something. It won’t be me. You because I’m a planer. Hey, I blah have your attention. Andrew, did you realize that Did you see my coyote encounter on Facebook,
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I saw the picture. Okay, it was just sitting there, chillin,
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I gotta tell you, that coyote thing a coyote madness is what’s going on here. So, you know, coyotes become my big common if we were to Google or like, do like a little, a little sheet on like the most common phrase that comes out of my mouth last couple months, it’s kind of Otay. And so you know, the the pack that lives behind my place have taken to, I guess, kind of coming into the courtyard and like taking it, like all together, howling and whatever. So this is, so there’s certain times of the evening that my dog just has to hold it and stay inside with me. And there’s times where we’re out and about. So I make a point of not taking him out in the morning too early, because I kind of want to avoid, I want to make sure the coyotes had come back their side of the fence. And so I was walking as you know, the way I stumbled along when I first went out, and I’m walking out there yesterday, and I was like, Oh, looky there, just staring right at us. On the on the hillside. That’s, that’s very close. It’s actually right there where my dog likes to do his, his constitutional Yeah, his morning, as we call him, right? There’s this coyote just sitting there. And I was like, Oh, my God, like, what? Oh, geez. And he was just watching us. And everywhere we walked, he was kind of, you know, his head was following us. But he stayed put. And knowing what I now know about Coyote, I’m always looking, where are the rest of them? Because I’ve probably talked about this on the show before, but they do this, like, divide and conquer thing where they will have one that will distract you, while the others kind of circle around a circle around you. And yeah, I mean, I know that sounds like when you think about all the animals, like I’ve been around big animals before I worked at a zoo. So I’ve had the lion and the elephant and the alligator and all these crazy exchanges that you would never think a normal person would go through. But there’s something about these coyotes that really kind of has me on alert, because it’s like, you know, the one you can scream and you can like, you know, kind of Bath the ground, but in a pack. I mean, really, you’re kind of, maybe that’s not good. So anyway, so I got the dog finished what he was doing, pay no attention to the coyote, this is like, My dog has zero interest in a coyote, which I guess is probably a good thing. Yeah. And so of course, I had to sneak back out with my phone and take pictures. And then if people were coming out, what are you? What are you taking pictures of? So we had a little coyote party, Russia morning, but I’m just seeing them almost every day. And they’re just kind of everywhere. They’re there on the city street. So
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in my district these days, yeah,
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I just find it ironic that I lived in Nevada County for 16 years. And I saw Cody one time, one time, and now I see a Cody at least like two or three times a week. It’s crazy. So
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that’s why there are a lot more food down there. Maybe because they’re able to go after the cats and the little dogs and the and any kind of garbage just left out
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and wrote some things. I like to think that they’re taking care of the rodents, but I’m also grateful that I’m not you know, I’m not encountering them without something between us. At least we so far and
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knock on wood is a big dog. He’s not gonna get attacked. He’s not a little dog. And that was we read an article down of the Bay Area where a little dog was was taken from an owner.
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Yeah, we had fact, those kinds of stories become like, fodder around here. Like he’ll be. You’d be someone that did you hear about and I’m like, it’s gonna be horrible. George, right. Like, yeah, Dixie, Chihuahua. I’m like, I’m so sorry. But please don’t share those horrible stories. So lock up your pets lock up your you know, your little littles. But anyway, so that was my biggest goal, man. Yeah, that was a big excitement.
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That’d be exciting. I’m going to share it just really quick before we can probably saw my little share. We’re down to the bay. And its loss leader, we saw a school of leopard sharks. I’ve never seen a school of leopard sharks before. And I grew up in San Francisco and I would go fishing with my uncle all the time in the bay. And we catch you know, Dungeness crabs perched and other little sand apps and things. But occasionally, you’d catch us a leopard shark, and I’d see you every once awhile you’d see when swimming along but I literally saw like 25 in this one little area and low tide. It was so cool.
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I did see that. And I was thinking to myself, like, wow, wouldn’t that be something like I wonder what they were kind of curious what they were. Yeah,
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I don’t know what they were doing. If they’re, you know, like had a congregation that mate or what because it’s you don’t normally see sharp they’re kind of they’re not they’re not schooling animals are.
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Right, right. Right. Solitary. So they come together for they’ve come together to feed so you have to wonder what was going on there. Yeah. But now that we talked about really gross, like, you know, animal
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stuff, because it’s fun. Yeah, no, it’s better this year. So we’re past Thanksgiving now. I’m sorry for the rerun last week, guys, but we were excited to kind of chill and not do a show the day before.
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Let’s be honest, let’s be honest, you needed that day off more than I did. So I was like, Yes, of course, I’ll contact Cancio and ask them to run rerun. I’m sure that they were they were not too sad either. While
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we may not even had a show on Friday, I don’t know the day after Thanksgiving.
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Yeah, I know. Right? So we survived that. We’re gearing up for holidays. I don’t know about you. But I did the day after Thanksgiving, I did go and put all the stuff up. It’s kind of a chore, right? Because no matter how big or small your house is, you’ve got that stuff tucked away somewhere, like 11 months of the year. And then, you know, if you live like I do, you have to put because I have sentimental stuff, you have to put away. Like, right, so like, I have to like, box up some stuff to make room for that holiday display. So I kind of dread it every year a little bit. But once
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it’s a chore, once it’s up, I’m happy, right? We’ve gotten to the point like, so we buy, we’ve had a thing with our kids for ever, where we went on a trip together, we buy a Christmas ornament. Yep. So that when you hang it on the tree got those refreshes as memories of that trip right with the family. And so we’ve got the we’ve got, you know, over the course of my kids are 26 and 24. Now, so we’ve got a bunch and we even like as adults, we’ve done the same thing with them when we’ve gone on trips with them. And so we’ve actually got to the point where we store our Christmas ornaments at our daughter’s house, because we’re worried about them burning up here. In Nevada County during this during the summertime, we’ll just take the stuff that we don’t. We’re concerned about what take them down to her place in San Francisco and leave them in our storage space. But yeah, so you have to speaking of getting things together, it’s a little bit more of a chore for us to get things together. But
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I guess so. Yeah. So are you guys sir? Do you guys have it up and out?
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We got it together. Okay, well, that’s where we’re still debating on whether or not we’re going to put up the fake tree or get it under the tree. So we’re we haven’t gotten that far yet. Well, to
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be fair, just so everyone knows. Today is the day we’re recording. It’s November 30. So technically, it’s not even December. Yeah. So, you know, not everyone puts their stuff up so early. But when you do put stuff up that brings that begs a bunch of questions, right, safety wise. And I kind of feel like this, this show makes me happy because it reminds me of my grandpa, because my grandfather was you know, first off collector of just cool stuff. But then you know how to very precise system for storage and like how to keep it safe keep rats and rodents out of said stuff. So then when my grandpa brought everything out for the season to decorate the house with my grandma, they checked off, you know, they check to make sure that no rodents had gotten in their boxes. No one had chewed on their wires no and things like that. Right. And that makes me think about like holiday prep right before you go plug in old faulty stuff, or you overload circuits. Like let’s talk a little bit today about how to kind of avoid some electrical pitfalls if we can. And this is topical. Okay.
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That time of year, we’re getting people stuff out. That’s right.
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But this another reason is topical is that we have a special right now ABTS a special and we’re going to talk about this in the middle of the show that way in case you are one of the few people who stays in for the middle. I’m just flip the channel. We currently have three December 16. at Abt, if you call abt you can get electrical safety inspection. It’s $99. And this is a complete steal. I gotta be honest. But you can get that book generally
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over like 200 bucks. 250, right. 25 Something like so go ahead. It’s a big deal book that now
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because now’s the time of year where you’re really dealing with electricity. And again, it’s only nine $9 through December 16. So you got to book it by then. Right? And there’s always a phone number at the end of the show. But just in case you’re gonna skip 530-230-9092
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Okay, take advantage of it because it is this this time of year where we go, you know, we’re plugging things in, we’re using more electricity because that’s gets dark really early. So we thought we’d kind of leave you know, we wrote our producer of this stuff, came up with a nice little list for holiday electrical hazards that you know, so we thought we kind of can lead in with that because yeah, we also have this inspection to make sure that you know that everything is safe and can be plugged into because one of the things that we do see often and this isn’t on the list, but I’m just gonna blurt it out is in Nevada County. A lot of homes were built during the 70s 60s and 70s and into the 80s. There’s massive construction going on up here, and a lot of a certain type of panel what went in, and they’re known as zinsco panels. They’ve been recalled for 2030 years and major lawsuits against them, and we still see them around all the money’s gone. By the way, sorry, guys, if you’ve got one, you’re not gonna get any money from the company any longer. But one of the problems with them is the connection between the breaker and the bus bar has a tendency to arc and cause fires. And we’ve actually seen it, we’ve actually had one estimate. Late last year, we went out to a house and the customer had us come out to give her investment to replace the panel because their neighbor’s house burned down because of SIDS. It’s a panel that was here in Auburn,
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so scary. I was hoping you’re gonna bring up since go, because when I was looking at this list this morning, in preparation to, you know, to my right radio voice, I was like, oh, yeah, electrical panel failures. Wow, that’s so scary. And you don’t I mean, that’s, that’s something to be concerned about year round, but
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it is and you’re going to be loading it more with more power. So you have the better, you have a bigger chance of an arc. So you know, at least have come in and take a look and see what your panel looks like. And we’ll take a heat gun. And even if you do have a zinsco panel, you don’t want to replace it at least we can go through and make sure they’re performing the way they’re supposed to. Because we’ll actually sit, we can actually find heat, these things get hot. And that because the arcing actually forms heat. So yeah, it’s bad. In any event, this grip panels are bad. Holiday electrical hazards. So number one using the wrong type of lights. So what is the right type of lights? I would say if you’ve got the old incandescent lightbulbs, get rid of them. Just get rid of them.
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That makes me sad. That makes me sad. Are you talking about the retro style the cool looking ones that are like from my childhood and beyond? Yeah,
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yeah. Right. They do have some LED ones that look they’ve got like those Edison light bulbs, they look like old school that are led. They have like, the LEDs look like a filament inside the bulb. And they’re pretty inexpensive. So you can get retro looking bulbs that are led that you want to go away from from the old incandescent, well incandescent uses. LED uses a 10th the power, okay, that incandescent bulb and puts out the same amount of light. Why? Because that 90% of electricity that using an incandescent bulb gets used as heat. It’s just heating the area up. Remember the Easy Bake ovens? What was it heat source, and then get us a light bulb? That’s how you cook the brownies was an incandescent light bulb.
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Right after wait. For one second, I promise I won’t take us on track, but it’s electrical. So it’s, it’s on topic. So as a kid, I had a cousin that was that had one but we were never allowed to have one.
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She was probably spoiled, right? We never had one either. She doesn’t have one
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as well. My cousin lives this my cousin and
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my dad was a contractor. They had all the cool toys. All the food in the pantry.
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Oh no. My cousin had everything my cousin was was blessed. Let’s put it that way. So he hits a lottery not not not all those guys are lucky. But anyway, so I wanted one of those things so bad. Okay, so my my kids grew up not really knowing what they were not really wanting them except guess what, then one day I found I could get one. So I tried to plant it in my daughter’s head that she really wanted one, right? Because I wanted to have one I wanted to have the experience. So I basically tried to brainwashed Hayden that she wanted one. And then I magically got it for for Christmas. And you know, once it’s all it takes us at once and you’re like, oh my god, like, how was this a thing like magic? It was the magic was in not having one and thinking that you needed one. Right? And my daughter was like a kid and she goes, Mom, we couldn’t have just made like normal brownies like in the oven. And I was like well of course we could that’s I’m an grownup I can’t do that better. I was like, I don’t know what the so anyway, Easy Bake Oven. Yes, I get I get the reference, I get the reference. So that’s
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what so that’s why you want to use LED light bulbs. So they use less energy. They don’t get hot, right? He does things like causes fires and stuff and you got them on a brittle tree. So yeah, you know, during the end of the season, there’s a potential for light in your tree on fire or so use the proper lights while we’re running out of time.
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Oh god we didn’t get very far today. Sorry.
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No, sorry. I don’t know what using counterfeit or unsafe products would be what’s it referring to?
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I don’t Oh, okay. So like yeah, don’t don’t necessarily get your electrical stuff at like no offense with the dollar store that stuff Oh, yeah. Usually been rejected for some reason, or yeah, that kind of stuff. Don’t Don’t Don’t
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buy your lights at the dollar store. No, don’t buy any electrical things of the dollar thing. Right? Right. There’s a lot of good things at the dollar store electrical appliances, and electrical lights are not using damages extension cords. Yeah, if you see any damage shooting
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any frame, right. And the other thing
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is using too small of an extension cord LED lights don’t use a lot of power, but they still use power, right, you shouldn’t be plugging them into little white lamp cord, you know, get a good heavy duty extension cord and get one that’s got manufactured ends that haven’t been jury rigged and duct taped on. Especially because it’s probably gonna be sitting outside, if you’re doing the outside, once you’re going to make sure you get good heavy duty extension cords, don’t over load your outlets, your outlets are only producing 15 to 20 amps. If you can use more than one outlet from two different circuits, you’re much better off. So if you can find the circuits and you can do that by putting in different areas, you know, and if you can test your breakers, I don’t know it’s a big deal. But see if you can, if you can find two different circuits, that’d be good. So you don’t overload your outlets. leaving the lights on all the time. They make really inexpensive timers that you can buy, you know, 20 bucks, 50 bucks, some of the heavy duty ones I think are under 50 bucks. Those things are great. So you can have the lights come on when when it’s dark when you really want them so you don’t have to leave them on all the time. I love automation, it drives my wife crazy, but I have light switches all through our house for multiple reasons. Using older damaged decorations, that’s kind of a given you know, don’t use old damaged stuff. We have to I have to do that with will go through our guys tool sometimes and say you can’t use it on on this construction site because you know, courts will get duct taped together because you kind of chop them up and whatever. Using old extension cords using old damaged decorations, yep, using out of date lighting technology. So out of date would be incandescent bulbs, LEDs just go to the LEDs and they’re really inexpensive, easy to get your hands on easy to get somebody just bought a bunch for the light parade, I think I don’t even think we spent over 100 bucks. And that’s going to be doing you know, an entire vehicle and then connecting to many cords. So if you’re using a power strip, you don’t want to be attaching string after string after string after string of lights onto these things because you can’t overload them. Fortunately, LEDs use a lot less electricity, so you have less likely chance of that getting too hot and burning up. But you still want to be cognizant of the fact. So if you can separate if you can split them up on different cords. It’s a good idea. And with that, hopefully this helps us be aware it’s Christmas with electrical stuff. But in the meantime, also do give us a call at 53023090925302309092 for our Christmas while it’s not really Christmas, but for our winter electrical safety inspection for 99 bucks come up, make sure everything is electrical and you can ask them about what’s safe to hooked up and you can talk to them about lighting and stuff. My electricians are really sharp on this kind of stuff. They’re way smarter than I am. And anyway on that, like us on Facebook. If you have any plumbing, electrical heating or air problems, give us a call. And we’ll catch you guys next week. Thanks for listening. Bye.
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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
Transcribed by https://otter.ai