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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 heating air owner, Andrew Twidwell and Rosalie brown with a helpful hand. Here are Andrew and Rosalie.
Hi, this is Andrew Twidwell, owner of ABT plumbing, electric heat and air. Here once again with the show you got this. It’s a show about DIY do’s and don’ts. I’m zooming in here with Rosalie Brown.
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Hi, Rosalie. We were just talking off air, before we started recording and we decided to kind of talk about this because… it is kind of it is kind of a DIY kind of thing. And it’s one of these things that happens in different people’s homes. But it doesn’t happen a lot in our community because they’re in Nevada County in Placer County, because it’s so dry. But anyway, let’s…
That was kind of a terrible lead in, so I need to hit the pause button for a minute because I’m not even sure… I could be out of body because we’re doing this so much earlier than usual. Like by two hours. Did you actually say this is Andrew Twidwell with ABT, plumbing, electric, heat and air bringing you the show you got this a show about DIY do’s and don’ts Did you say it?
I did, it just rolls off the tongue now. Because it’s it’s one of those things. It’s just like ingrained now. It’s like when you drive to the grocery store in the evening, and you end up at your at your office. It’s like, oh, wait a second.
1:44
Well, that is that’s ever happened to me before. That would be awkward for me because where my office is, is the same place I live. Its the same place.
1:52
Because I remember to get to the grocery store like oh, right, right.
1:57
But no, there’s there’s a thing for that, right? There’s a part of the brain that records all that stuff. So you don’t have to think about a kind of like breathing and heart and all that stuff. Yeah, I gotta get mine tuned up. To be honest. Yeah.
2:09
Again, is, is when I’ve gone in for two minutes Lately, they’ve all been positive. So maybe that’s good. Maybe I’ll do a neurological examination as well. We are on the downhill, downhill side of our life at this point, right? Coast and very, very fast. Um, okay, so for Okay, so what happened is for anyone interested because I know my life is fascinating.
2:31
It’s fun for me too. But um, I have this big dog named Theo and not to be confused with Andrews Theo, which is his son’s also big dog. He’s big,
2:43
much bigger than I am. That’s probably a bit smarter than my Theo. But when he was here, I was like, Oh my gosh, he just takes up so much space. I feel that way all the time. Big personality. Big body eats a lot. It’s okay, so so far, we’re on the same track. We’re on the same track. My Thea Hall ever sleeps on a posturepedic doggo bed in my room. And through a series of events the dog has gone from basically he had a real big fancy posturepedic because you know, he’s big and he’s getting older. And then I bought a second you know, fairly nice, but not as nice bed. So he had a double decker. You know, his joints are old, whatever. So a couple weeks ago, so he’s the kind of dog that does he’s a husky. So he leaves for everywhere. So a couple of weeks ago, I was moving the bed to you know, fluff it up form and clean up around it and all that good stuff. And I noticed there’s all this wet on the on underneath his bed and I was freaked out like what that so posturepedic Bed number one had to go immediately to the garbage bin because you know, the smell of that and like mildew and moisture and mold. Yeah. So I was like, what and got okay, what’s going on here? So I really was thinking I need an exorcism because I couldn’t figure this out. And you know, the stock has been with me for since 2013 I guess. And I’ve never had this problem I’ve lived at this address for a couple years now. Never had this problem. Um, I did move his bed. I did move his bed near a window was so doesn’t even dawn on me. Don’t think about any of this. I can’t figure out why the floor is wet. My life is weird. Whatever, draft the floor, get rid of the now soiled you know, gross wet dog bed.
4:33
Okay, last night. Okay, this two weeks have gone by and don’t get me wrong. I have cleaned up and I’ve swept it hasn’t you know, it’s not like I just left it for two weeks like I’m on it. But last night. I go over there sweeping. Pick it up what? And underneath his dog bed moist and wet again. So I am horrified and I’m starting to smell things and I’m like, no. So I take this dog bed into the bathroom and I’m you
5:00
isn’t yet
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to dry to try not to dry off the bottom of it. And I am drying off my my little fake wood floor. And I’m like, I can’t figure this out. There’s no water leaking in. It’s not like it’s leaking in from the back of the, you know, like the patio what’s going on. So anyway, I was like a loss for words because it got its morning. Still a little damp. So of course this morning, what am I doing? I’m in the bathroom drinking coffee blow drying the dog’s bed. So I had said to you, hey, you know, a lot of really weird stuff. So let me throw this at you.
5:37
And if you tell me I need an X, I got a lot about a lot in specific things. Yeah. So I say to you, Hey, what’s up with a condensation underneath my dog’s bed. And by the way, again, when the dog was not in front of a window, this had this was not this was not a factor. This did not happen. Well, it’s also been incredibly wet. So humidity has been up, right? It’s been raining like crazy. And there’s still a lot of water in the ground. And it’s still pretty humid out. I mean, granted right now we’re in a, we got this
6:08
low pressure build up. So we’re pulling in air from the north, and it’s kind of humidities gone down a little bit. But it’s it’s still, you know, cold and yeah. Got some major temperature differences between the floor and the air. So you explained to me that Oh, yeah. Okay. I know exactly. That is which is always a relief to me, because I always go to these things like supernatural, paranormal, or I have to call a priest to move what do we rarely if ever, that’s the case. But I have found I have found you’re correct there. That’s usually what’s going on. But you had said that because of the condensation so the dog is warm, right? And there’s moisture in the air. So between him being warm, and the moisture in the air. I’m he’s he’s basically it’s like his bed is kind of chuffing out the moisture underneath it right.
7:03
So now it’s your discussion with you. I know since my dog is in love with that spot, and the way that my room is arranged, there’s no going back. That’s the spot for the dog bed. Yes, the dog bed is not tiny. Okay? That is the room is built, like 80 pounds, 90 pounds harder, depending on the month, and the fur alone. So the room is built around his sanctuary. So he cannot be so now my options are you were saying that they make something that is like an
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Yeah, I mean, ironically, you brought this up and it’s like, I’m kind of a nerd about like, I caught down this path of like camper vans and we RV we have a trailer and
7:46
I like watching YouTube and I kind of go down these weird paths, right? I just like learning stuff. But anyway, so they make products that help with just this and I’ve seen videos where people have this huge issues and because you don’t really necessarily have it with like a rock spring or something because you’re raised up but when you have a foam mattress that’s on a piece of plywood or on the floor or someplace where you’re there’s no air in between
8:15
you’re gonna get condensation and that’s why a lot of beds have like slats like you get the IKEA business flat right so that the mattress can breathe.
8:23
But if you don’t have that like a dog bed sitting on the ground, or you know a foam mattress that your futon sitting on the ground, like you know we all had in our 20s
8:35
you can have condensate buildup, so there are ways to around that they make these products like you know it’s just looking up online there’s hyper flow, moisture protection hyper vent airflow, moisture barrier, den dry mattress underlay. So it is it’s a thing. And so you can solve this so that is kind of a DIY thing. And then you are talking about well maybe I should just get a raised bed. Anyway for him. You’re kind of looking at that and that is total solution. And he’s a big dog. He’s a husky and you probably get taught so good in the summertime. And when he was at the the one thing I recall is I feel like it was that same as friends. I found that maybe, but um, the animal shelter. I do recall like those dogs were kind of all on raised beds. They’re not very tight. You know, it’s only a couple inches off the ground. But I remember seeing him like that. Oh, maybe it’s time for me to deal with that. So, the good news is no exorcism.
9:32
New brand new issue, but it’s troubling nonetheless. So it’s that humidity and we’re dealing with it right now because it’s things are human. So it’s my life. I am now on the hunt to make the dog’s life easier naturally, so I’ll probably have more on his bed than I did on mine is probably right. Well that’s generally his how it goes right? Yeah, no, we just took our aging 17 year old terrier
10:00
to the vet, and yeah, it was 700 bucks just to make him more comfortable, right? This because he’s, you know, he shakes a lot and he’s getting old but his joints aren’t working and
10:11
he’s got a kidney issue now. So he’s got to pee, like, twice an hour. Like an old man. Like an old man. Yeah. Yeah, I can I can kind of relate so
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so.
10:24
So we have he’s on a special diet now. And it’s like five hours a can you gotta get soft food and we’ve been to dry food
10:31
forever. So yeah, totally to get get you do what you got to do for your dogs. My new hobby. So I’ll be out of pocket for a couple days while i deal with this issue. Andrew, don’t
10:42
you got this? Yeah, I’m gonna, I can’t even tell you how to make it. We can even do a DIY you can just do it. All out of PVC and some some webbing great. I was actually kind of excited when you said something about I hate the word palette. And you know me. I got very excited about the idea of a palette. I was like, uh, who ideal palette upsell upsell. So you could totally do that with a palette, you just gotta find like a four by four palette, right? And then get some sticky rubber feet. So it doesn’t scratch the floor. Yeah, I just put those on all the corners and maybe one in the center, and you’re good to go. To find the race bed. And I thought I was thinking so I might be on a pallet hunt later.
11:24
just hose it off, let it dry out and make sure there’s no critters on it. Oh, right. I forgot about that. Yeah. Yeah, cuz sometimes you bring it into your house. So you want to make sure there’s no black widows or anything on it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that’ll be next week story. Rosalie spent $1,000 at the ER after getting a venomous bite. Perfect. Perfect. Oh my gosh. All right. There was a DIY thing, right? Speaking of safety, and keeping yourself you know, safe from whether it’s Black Widow venom, or, you know, dying of smoke inhalation. We thought since it’s still going to be wintery temperatures. Cold. It’s really cold right now. I know. And it’s cold all through the West. So yeah, I mean, school. In LA, it’s golden. We’re flying out to Salt Lake tomorrow for a tour of a company that I’m pretty impressed with. And yeah, I think it’s gonna be 12 or something like that. So So yeah, so I got a text this morning from a friend in Detroit. And she showed me her, you know, her thermostat, or, you know, whatever in her car. And I was like, I’m going to tell you other than I was gonna complain because it was 43. Here. She was showing me it’s eight. And then when you factor in the windshield, it’s negative eight. And I was like, yeah, don’t don’t miss it. Don’t miss it at all. Don’t miss it.
12:43
Actually, now looking at the weather. It’s gonna be 32 degrees tomorrow. So that’s the high 60s low. So you’re, you’re looking out. You’re you’re going at the right time, sir. Yes. So.
12:55
So in. So in places like Nevada County and Placer County and mountain towns, I have found mountainy areas. Pretty common. I never had one when I lived in the Bay Area, I don’t think but um, you have woodstoves was there getting rid of wood stoves in most areas, particularly metropolitan areas, you’re not allowed to install wood stove anymore. And there’s only certain times of the year where you can use said stove. Like I know, Reno was really had a lot of them.
13:24
I’m my family’s from Reno and we’d go over there all the time. And during the wintertime, right, you get that inversion that happens in that bowl in the desert. I lived in Reno, I recall. Yeah. And the smoke just like it’s thick, right. So they’ve outlawed them in Reno as well. And I know they’ve outlawed them and in the Bay Area, because it isn’t, you know, it could be pretty, you know, a lot of people die from, you know, bad air. But in any event, we have them in Nevada County because we’re rural, and we’re widespread and it’s not as big of an issue.
13:55
And flash parlor, Placer County as well. What’s it’s such a heat source, though, too. I mean, what are you great heat source and I, when pg&e decides that they’ve got an outage, you know, and you’re, I’m like, yes, you’re like Monday? Yeah, yeah, big outage into that accounting, and no weather. So it was weird. But yeah, so I don’t want the internet was in and out all day Saturday. But in any event, yeah. So we can’t have woodstoves and I had woodstove tuber home. So then our last or this place, we’ve got a gas stove because I just got lazy and I got tired of moving, splitting and moving wood. I started like, one of the things you lay awake thinking about like the amount of energy that goes into producing the firewood, cutting the tree down splitting the tree.
14:47
Moving the wood into a space where it can dry, letting it dry, moving it to a space where it’s closer to the to the fireplace and then putting it into the fireplace. There’s a lot of calories being burned before we actually get it into the into the wood stove but
15:00
That’s a whole other thing. That’s what I appreciate about you. You know, everything with you is a mathematical equation. It really is. And so
15:09
that’s I get it, though I get it, you’re like that. But it is there’s something about wood heat that is just magical. I mean, I love the feel of wood heat. And like you say, in Nevada County, you, you really do need that an alternate source of heat, if you don’t have a full house generator or something that can run your furnace or run your heaters. So wood or a gas stove is a really nice thing to have in Nevada County, for sure.
15:39
Yeah, and if you have your you know, if you have a woodstove, there are some things that you should be doing, which is we’re just going to touch on them today, a few things. We have about 12 things here, and we’re gonna get through them all. But
15:50
it’s pretty important to maintain like, I know, it seems like it just kind of sits there, right. But there’s a few things you can we talk about where you found where you got this list, because I think you get so excited about these things. I’m so excited about this. You know why you’re excited about the early adopter. I know why you’re excited about this, because in your mind, your mathematical equation, you’re thinking pretty soon, I won’t even need Rosalie, they’ll just be
16:12
anybody. It’ll be a robot generated voice that just talks back to me as I record this. So he’s trying to only have a business with no customers and no employees.
16:24
Trying too hard trying to replace me with with artificial intelligence chats. That’s his favorite thing now. So I was in PT chat chat. GPT is kind of if you haven’t played with it, it’s it’s pretty freakin amazing. So you just you punched in? What was your What was your query for? Give me 12 things that you can do to ensure the safe operation of your woodstove in the in the winter. And in my defense, okay, I just want to say this. I’m a little dry lately, my creativity. I’m a little I got, I got some headaches. So I was like, Okay, I don’t have time, Andrew, change the recording date on me, I don’t have time to go do something clever. So I’m gonna go to the source. And I’m gonna let a machine generate this information. I don’t think these are the most compelling things, but they’re probably very good stuff. I mean, obviously, he had to go in and edit it a little bit and reformat some stuff to a degree. But anyway, I thought it’s cool. I’m totally going down this path of trying to figure out how to implement and get rid of everyone. You know, I know exactly what do you say next? Oh, guys, but everybody, it’s in the company. But yeah, I mean, plumbers, electricians and HVAC technicians. That’s gonna be the last thing to go to AI. So we’re talking decades for this. So the 13 list already logged on. Next week, you’ll my voice will be replaced by something else. Just. It’s been fun. You guys. Thanks for listening. Okay.
17:51
So we got so let’s start with the first one. So the first ones are obvious, but a lot of people don’t realize it is have the stove and chimney professionally inspected and cleaned annually. We’ve talked about this, because like, I know, when I first moved to Nevada County, were poor. And you know, I was working for somebody else. And I stay at home mom and like, salary been cut in half from what I was used to in the Bay Area. And this is 2022 years ago. Now. In any event, it was Yeah, so we I do my own, I tweet my own chimney, right. And
18:25
I’m a trades guy, I know what I’m doing. But I’d have to climb up on the roof and sweep the chimney.
18:32
Subsequently, we moved to another house, and the building with the roof was a lot steeper, and I wasn’t going to do that one. So we started hiring somebody. And I have to say it was so worth the 150 or 200 bucks, whatever we were spending, I don’t know what they are currently, because I don’t have woodstove any longer. But it was so worth having a professional come out and do it. I started you know, again, what the mathematical part of me is like acquainting like what would happen if I fall off the roof?
18:59
A, I’d probably be okay. But even if I just go to the doctor, you know, what’s my deductible, my deck deductible is, you know, five grand or something like that on my health care. So, alright, so then I could potentially be out to five grand, and potentially be out of work for gosh knows how long. So you start figuring those things, it’s really worth having a professional come out and actually clean your chimney. And instead of getting up there and doing it, I know, we had a friend who was cleaning his gutters and fell and he was he almost killed him. And he was out for a good six months he couldn’t work. So in any event, have a professional come in and expect and clean and that’s the key word there to inspect. This is something they do four or 510 times a day depending on the technician and their routes. They really know what to look for. You do this on an annually base annual basis. You’re not really going to know what the little nuances of how woodstove works like a professional would and
20:00
and they are just so much better than us. So highly, highly, highly recommend having somebody come out and do that for you.
20:06
Second one is only used dry season firewood to minimize creosote buildup. Why do you want to minimize creosote buildup mostly people that have wood stoves, you know about this, but some of you people that may have just moved up or starting to use it, experience, so does that build up that happens inside the flu chamber and can catch fire like I experienced with that first year, you get a
20:33
chimney fire. And it’s pretty scary when you get a chimney fire. I mean, we had the fire department out and the whole bit, it was a steep learning curve, steep learning curve for us. But you want to make sure you minimize the amount of creosote buildup and that’s why you sweep the chimney at least annually. And that’s why you use dry seasoned wood. If you use a wet wood, it’s not going to burn as hot, and more carbon is going to drop out of the flame and coat the inside of the furnace, or the flue. The other thing is using harder woods like a Madrona or oak is going to, you know, it’s a much denser wood. So it’s not going to be as hot of a flame, but it’s going to burn a lot longer. So yeah, use good wood.
21:19
This is one that
21:23
I really failed for a long time, where we stored our firewood, storing firewood away from the stove to reduce our risk. Yes, but also when you want you don’t want to have the wood leaning against the wood stove, obviously, right? I mean, that’s pretty obvious. But the other thing is, where do you store the wood, that’s before we even bring it inside, like we stored it underneath our deck outside our master bedroom. And in retrospect, you know, we’d have three or four chords underneath there
21:52
with wind blowing through it, where it was nice and dry. And if there was a fire that was if there was a forest fire that happened it would have blown the embers right in there and caught on fire. So I’ve since realized, you know, you definitely want to have your firewood stored not only away from your fireplace, but ideally away from your residence away from your, from your home. Because once that stuff catches fire, you know it can go on for days, right? So definitely be mindful of where you store your firewood. Don’t store it next to the fireplace. Don’t store it next year home, if at all possible. I know it’s difficult for some people to do that.
22:31
But have the big you know, have your cords stored somewhere else. Bring in small batches and store it somewhere away from the fireplace but close enough that you can get it in you know ideally like this outside of the door something.
22:45
Never use flammable liquids to start a fire. Yeah, we were just we were talking about that at our safety meeting the other day we were talking about fire. And one of our technicians had a friend that had this great idea of
23:00
using gasoline to start the burn pile, poured two gallons of fuel gasoline onto it. But he forgot his match. So we went inside and they’re all hanging around working on this work on this buddy’s property. He comes out and lights it but that was about 15 minutes later, 20 minutes later, the vapors had migrated out of the pile. And now listen when he lit it it was like a bomb he said they had the fire department they the police that all emergency services there it was really scary to not use flammable liquids to certifier
23:36
and you know what that’s we didn’t we got through 1234 That’s our show, or our banter was a little long today. But hey, we help that with condensation and mattresses. Condensation is a big deal right now this time of year, you know, with it being raining and stuff is a big deal. But anyway, if you need any help with plumbing, electrical heating are not fireplaces, not condensation, you can call us at 553023090925302309092. You can find us on the web at easiest abt plumbing, or excuse me, easiest ap t.com Or you can find us at Abt plumbing.com. You can also like us on Facebook, where we share all this information, and it’s kind of fun. And with that, that’s our show. We’ll catch you next week. Thanks. 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 KNCO News Talk 830
Transcribed by https://otter.ai