SUMMARY KEYWORDS
plumber, pipe, emergency, frozen pipes, people, toilet, fixture, talk, mercury, years, call, house, plumbing, frozen, gas, plunger, literally, clogged toilet, andrew, lead
00:02
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
00:18
Hi, this is Andrew Twidwell, owner of ABT plumbing electric heat and air. Once again with the show You Got This! a show of DIY do’s and don’ts and I’m zooming in with Rosalie Brown who is in LA right now and I’m sitting in our Auburn office looking at the window to very windy day. It’s been kind of windy up here lately. went for a bike ride yesterday and 24 mile an hour winds it was was quite the quite the experience kept wanting to push me over when late afternoon ride on on American River Trail and why surely hold and yeah, it went and the wind wanted to kill me more than once it kept pushing me around. Oh, and I also, I don’t know if anybody else notices like, there are a bunch of dead skunks everywhere. And I was reading about like, they start looking for places to nest this time of month, this time of year. And I saw a skunk on the trail yesterday. Like right next to Lake the tone was like three I rode by him I was like maybe three or four feet away from them because I could only go to the edge. So far, and the end, the lake was on the other side. So we just kind of looked at me and I was like, please don’t spray me. Please don’t spray me. I’m not gonna mess with you.
01:33
Yeah, that would not be a good way to end your day. That would not be a good way to end the day.
01:39
So it’s pretty windy up here. But yeah, it’s been nice. So how are things in LA?
01:44
Oh, good. They’re windy here. But it’s about it’s gonna be hive about 66 today. So we’re kind of in that weird I was in the I was in the elevator with someone earlier. And he was talking about how it was that weird time of year where it’s like, kind of cold. Not like, you know, it’s that weird time where it’s like you want to have sweaters and stuff with you. But you might catch a window of sunshine where it’s like nice, and you don’t need anything but then. So it’s kind of weird. Yeah, it’s kind of weird. But yeah, I mean, everything here is groovy. It’s already February. And I think I read that the crown dog didn’t the groundhog see a shadow today or something? So I think there’s I don’t know. Well, I from what I saw on social media, enough people were screaming at the groundhog and wanting to hurt him. So I think he might have indicated six more weeks of winter. Fun. Yeah. And you know, friends in the east, you know, they have like massive snow happening now. And I know more on the way but yeah, really intense. So I’m not sad that sub zero
02:47
temperatures in the Midwest and yeah, just brutal. Brutal.
02:52
Yeah. Write down that. I’m good. This is not too shabby. I’ll just take my sweater with me everywhere I go and be quite happy. So.
03:02
Yes. And mild here as well. Yeah, yeah. Lovely, lovely. Couple of weeks. We’re in February. We’re gearing
03:10
up for spring, right. And so one of the things that you and I are, well, I do more than you do, but when trying to kind of plan out, you know, stuff to talk about sifted put in the newsletter, like, you know, you know, me, I hit these creative walls. And I’m like, I just don’t know what to talk about anymore. But what I thought was interesting was, what we’re gonna talk about today a little bit is kind of like, if you’re How do you know what constitutes an emergency? You know, what needs to be fixed right now? And what either has a temporary solution maybe? Or what can be put off until you can call a pro and Right, right. It’s easy when something isn’t working, or, you know, you see as funny smell. That’s always my the smell thing always scares me. It’s funny
03:55
smell and funny. Smells are like the worst. We get calls all the time. Like, I smell sewage. And we go out there and like, Nope, that’s not sewage. You walk in the door. It’s like, No, you got dead animals in the basement, or in the space. That happens all the time. Yeah, and you literally walk in and you’re like, oh, okay, nevermind. No,
04:15
it’s not right away. I mean, it’s bad.
04:18
I did this for a while. You know what, you know what? Sewage smells like? Can you know what death smells like? Yeah, that’s
04:23
well see, and, you know, I listened to enough podcasts that I would not have assumed animal I would have been like, get me out of here because there’s a dead body but but that’s just my that’s just my, you know, Slist detective hat. But yeah, that would be Yeah, no, no,
04:38
it’s smells are the worst. And we get them all the time. Because yeah, people smell them and, and it’s kind of like trying to find an electrical problem. It’s that that process of elimination, trying to figure out where that smell is coming from. And, yeah, I mean, we’ve got, fortunately have the tools now, where we can where we can find him. Like if there’s a pipe that’s leaking or something like that. That’s leaking sewer gases, but
05:01
Yeah, it’s crazy. Right?
05:03
So is that emergency? Right? Yeah. You know, like it is fine. And also, you know, I teach our people that you know that an emergency is whatever the customer or client thinks it is. Because one person’s emergency is completely different than than others. Like, I tell my techs all the time, like, we’re not our clients, we’re not our customers, because of the fact that we’ll live with stuff a lot longer than most average person will, like, you know, fortunately, my wife’s train me to put the toilet lid down, but I’ve trained her to live with having a faucet that drips for a long time, or a whole faucet, that whole sink that doesn’t work in our bathroom. And use use the kitchen for a week or two, because that’s just we just will put up with things a lot longer than most people will. So yeah, yeah, so in emergencies, whatever, whatever the person thinks it is. But hopefully, you know, the show kind of give you some ideas of what some ways, like you were saying that that you can possibly handle it yourself without having to call a technician or maybe wait for a weekday regular workday, where it’s not going to, you know, there’s not going to be any extra charges or anything or any kind of minimum through stuff. So yeah, so, yeah.
06:18
So I’ll get started. Yeah, like, I’ll I’ll ask you to kind of lead us through. Because I’m, you know, I get tired of my own voice, but you’re the plumber in this situation. So
06:33
previous life, hopefully, like, I just had a, we had an onboarding with a with 3d Tech’s come on board on Monday, and I was talking to him about, you know, the fact that we have this huge bench of talent now. And amongst the people that work with us, we’ve pretty much seen everything. Unfortunately, my knowledge dates back to times when we were doing things with lead, and, you know, Mercury and stuff that, you know, this generation has never had to deal with. So, but unfortunately, I know a lot of the older stuff. And since I’ve been in the office for the past 10 years, I don’t know a lot of the newer stuff. So I have to rely on some of our newer techs, or the technicians that are working at have been working in the field more recently, so that you know how to deal with it, but we can get that we can get it done. So yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, it’s still new. I know the old stuff.
07:24
Okay. So, uh, well, the way I look at it, the way I look at it is basically, you come from the era when OSHA was a suggestion, right? And now, OSHA isn’t just a suggestion, bro. That’s like, that’s the way it goes. Like, that’s the guideline. So yeah, back then, like we had child labor in water
07:44
was yeah, you might want to not use lead solder. But yeah. Right now, right. Yeah, thanks. I don’t want to use mercury in a in a gas gauge. Just make sure you don’t spill it. I mean, this is literally what the conversation was with when I heard the conversation with the inspectors in San Francisco because we literally use mercury, pressure gauges to test gas lines up until like the 90s. And the conversation went with our local plumbing, heating and cooling Contractors Association of PHCC. Went to the board and said, Okay, imagine this. I’ve got a Mercury Gage, I spill it on the person’s floor. It’s a stay at home mom who happens to be an attorney who’s just taking some time off to take care of her child who’s responsible. And they’re like, oh, okay, since you put it that way. Yeah, we can’t be responsible for that. So when I stopped using mercury, Mercury gauges, but yeah, we were literally carrying around vials of mercury with us to fill up our gauges. It was fun times.
08:48
Anyway. All right, God, it’s glued, but we lived. We lived
08:53
them. Yeah. I mean, it’s crazy. Old soil lines. Yeah, I know how to pour lead and do the old school caulking and stuff. Anyway, so what is an emergency? So what?
09:04
This one seems like an obvious Okay, so now I feel like I want to jump into it because you got me.
09:08
That’s actually not I mean, surprisingly, it’s not obvious to a lot of people.
09:11
Okay, so to me, this one would seem obvious, but Okay, again, let me just say this. My own experience of this event is what made it seem obvious to me, but I do remember if I’m being fair, I’m going in order in this list. So you might recall this. I think I called you or text you this would have been years ago, and this had happened in my house and I I either called or text him was like, Andrew Twidwell Oh, right now, what do I do? And and you’re and you gave me a solution. And I was like, okay, yeah, God, I was so freaked out so I know. frozen pipes so
09:51
what so yeah, so frozen frozen pipes like leading you in here. So frozen pipes. It is one of the things that happens. You know, from this time of year, we started getting into a cold a month. Word tends to be one of the colder months around here. We haven’t experienced anything like that and quite frozen pipes in quite some time. But it does happen every once awhile. And it’s, you know, we’re still in the midst of winter, so it can still happen. So what do you do when your pipes freeze, one of the first things that people do is call a plumber. Yeah, there’s not a lot we can do for frozen pipes. So when the pipes freeze, and you have no water at the tap, the first thing you want to do is go turn the water off at your well or at your meter. And either try to thaw the pipes out, which you know, you may or may not be able to do because the pipes may be under the the frozen pipes may be underneath your house. And they can be difficult to get to. Or they may be in an area that’s really hard to get to, or you may not have that ability. But if you do have the ability, you can warm them up and hopefully get rid of the frozen section. But unfortunately, in a length of pipe, you don’t necessarily know where the plug is where the frozen part is. So it can be anywhere that’s exposed. And you can do that by a couple ways. Like one of the recommendations we have here is using a hot water bottle. What are you know, you can use a hairdryer. You don’t want to use a torch?
11:18
Well, let me just let me Can I ask a question because I’m, I’m in visualizing this. Okay. And visualizing. Wow, that was that was a good word. I’m visualizing
11:27
I know what you’re talking about. Okay.
11:28
So can I just tell you what you told me to do? And then we can go back to your hairdryer thing. So what you said to do, I didn’t have to traipse through any snow or the tundra to like turn anything off. You basically said, it’s likely that your pipes are going to thaw on their own when things you know, warm up a little bit. We weren’t in the middle of a snowstorm by the way. So that was different. It was like if the event had happened overnight, but the day was clear, we had sun. So you said go ahead and turn on your tap in in your bathroom, you know, just slightly. Right. So you get the area. Okay. And that’s what I did. And so I did that. And I want to say like several minutes later I heard though, you know, the rushing of water coming through my bathroom sink? And I was like, yes. Okay, so I was done. And I could make the coffee. That was the crisis was there was no contract unit of coffee. Yeah, to be clear, you know me long enough that that is absolutely true.
12:27
But I just finished my Yeah, my liter of coffee. That’s
12:30
right. That’s why you’re President right now. But here’s the thing, though. So when I think about how much pipe, you know, the broad scale of where pipes are in my house, and under this and under that, when you say user spending to heat them up? Where would I be doing this? Not in my yard? Like? Okay, like, how
12:49
would that make sense? anywhere anywhere pipes are exposed and freeze. That’s the problem. I mean, it can literally be under your crawlspace because there are vents all around your crawlspace to take care of moisture. So it can get cold underneath your house. But it can also be cold in the well, well house. But maybe you left the light on there. And it’s not getting too cold. But it still froze. It’s hard to find it. The suggestion that I had for you with leaving the tap open a little bit. Yeah, if we know it’s going to start to get warm in your home. Yeah, open up a tap and let it let it kind of the air. What will happen is the air Well, what we’ll do is you’re putting some back pressure on that plug of ice, and it’s going to push through there. So just like you know, I’ve been researching dams lately for some reason, I don’t know, like go down these rabbit holes on YouTube. But like the Oroville Dam, right. All it takes is the top layer of a dam to breach and then it just slowly cascades and eventually it will just completely destroy the dam. Same thing happens with with ice plug that will plug it if you can just get a pin hole through that, that’ll start breaking that material up and start it’ll make that whole lot fatter and bigger, a lot faster. Right. The reason they we suggest turning the water off though is if you gotta go or something like that, you don’t want to leave the water on and come home to find that one of the pipes burst. And now all of a sudden you flooded your basement or you flooded a crawlspace or you know if you’ve got a pipe on an exterior of the house that got frozen or on a garage that’s gotten frozen and then now the Senate’s done a bunch of damage so that’s why we suggest turning the water off. If you’re home and you know the water is going to you know the temperature is going to be creeping up past freezing. Trying to tackle that. Keep an eye on stuff walk around your property. You will see a geyser if you’ve got a leak or you will see water coming on the walls. Right you want to catch it fast because sure sure if there if there’s if your pipe is ruptured, just think of it like you know an open half inch line can produce 10 gallons per minute. So imagine dropping a gallon of milk on the floor times 10 Every minute right so um you can talk 100 100 gallons of water in a matter of 10 minutes. So yeah, you want to catch that fast if you’re not around turn the water off for sure and we’re using open and if you are trying to thaw the pipes out the reason we don’t suggest not using open flame just because a you can catch the building on fire. Because God knows that’s happened to pretty much every plumber I know including myself. I’ve caught houses on fire multiple times. always managed to put them out. It’s dangerous. You have to open flame and you’ve got what dryer lint or Oh oil or tar paper or dryer lint and tar paper on fire scared the bejesus out of me.
15:44
Yeah, my confidence level on you right now is shrinking. So let’s let’s go
15:48
over my earlier years. In my 20s I mean, I’m a little I’m a little more cautious. Now these days. This is when he’s
15:55
Yeah, this is why Andrew Twidwell is not in a truck anymore. Okay. Noted. Andrew Twidwell will not be a plumber we’re sending to your home do not worry. Okay, so what are we back
16:06
to the frozen pipe? Hopefully? Yeah, you didn’t burst the pipe,
16:10
right. But then if we did, that’s what I’m trying to get us to? Do. You burst the pipe, what happens versus the pipe, if you might call a plumber or fic try to fix it yourself. And that, of course, makes sense. Like burst, burst the pipe, you’re automatically going to immediately go to the shut off. Right? And then we’re going to get on the horn with the plumber. It’s an emergency. Yeah, we got to get you out there. Okay.
16:30
And do you know that your pipe burst, more than likely other peoples have as well, because we have every like, it seems like every five years or so,
16:41
major events just
16:42
getting the less and less, it’s happening less and less with climate change. But we’ll get a freezing event. And our guys are working from sunup to nine to 10 o’clock at night, just doing triage, just go in and stop leaders, you know, doing the bare minimum just to get people so they get water on. And we can’t keep up. And there’s, you know, there’s not enough plumbers in our county to be able to keep up with that type of call. Because it’s, you know, so many people. So hopefully you Pipestone first write anything and fix it yourself. Try fixing yourself. And if it doesn’t work, you know, give us a call. It is a DIY DIY show. It is.
17:20
So here’s a here’s a good safety tip. I think we all know this. But again, no assumptions made here. So if you smell gas in your house, I want to get you outside and get a plumber on the line. Right?
17:36
Yeah, so gas leaks. So actually, there’s a couple of things. A plumber may not be able to get out to you very quickly, sometimes, depending on how how busy people are. And unfortunately, these days right now, everybody’s swamped, and everybody’s understaffed. I mean, I I’ve got one technician, it’s out on COVID. Right now, we had five out a couple of weeks ago. So it’s a tough time right now to try to get to people’s homes. So if you’re on pg&e, if you have natural gas, call them first. Not only not only will they come out and take care of it, they’ll get the gas off and make sure it’s safe. They’re really, typically pretty fast when it comes to a gas leak because they’re partially responsible. And they’re free. So you have to pay a service call, they’ll at least get you safe. And then the plumber comes in and fixes whatever leak it is. Sometimes they will fix a minor thing. But mostly they won’t touch any plumbing. So right touch it. But right. Occasionally, you’ll get a technician that might tighten up a gas flux or something like that, and call it good. But yeah, call your call your gas provider. Most propane providers don’t have the staff to be able to come out but it doesn’t hurt to try calling them either. If they’re available, they can send somebody out. But yeah, we’ll come out and take care of it. But gas leaks definitely get out of the house, because that happens. Right? Yes, I mean, that’s a dangerous thing. So yeah. And then we’ll come out and and fix the leak and test the system and make sure you don’t have any air leaks. And that PGE will come back out and turn the gas on or propane company will give you Okay, first turn
19:15
it back. Right give the final thumbs up to get everything back to normal. But that’s definitely that’s normally you know, something you don’t play with. Right or Right, right. Take care of it. Don’t take any chances. Okay, so last week, like we talked about this, and I’m ready to talk about some other things. But we talked about I’m so over this topic, but I guess we have time just for this one last I know. So if you have a clogged toilet is that emergency? To be honest with you, if you are living in a house with more than one person, it’s going to depend on who you ask that question. Exactly. But what you have in the house, right for the most part that’s in the house, right? Probably not an emergency. If it’s one toilet and you got five people now it’s yeah, it’s an emergency. Yeah, I’ve Yeah, I’ve been in the unfortunate situation where traveling as years ago, as pregnant traveling, I forget where we were, I think we’re in Seattle or something. family trip. And I don’t remember I’m not saying who did it because I don’t remember it doesn’t even matter. But we’re all in one hotel room. And there’s events and had to call in the hotel maintenance. But no, what do you do that hotel and I’m pregnant woman so I mean it was. But yeah, that’s no fun to cause just horrible.
20:26
It actually happened to me at the outside in when we first came up here. 21 years ago, we were looking looking at houses and the toilet clog. And I think parents are named. Yeah, remember her name is Aaron. Yeah. She was still managing it. I mean, we’re talking 20 years ago. And she passes me a plunger. I thought it was hilarious. Yeah, like,
20:47
well, right. That kind of makes sense. Right. That is
20:52
the better County I like this.
20:55
I think I was moved here and be a plumber. Yeah,
20:57
it was cool. If you do have a clogged toilet, well, first thing news. Yeah, try try punching it. Yeah. And remember that when you have a good quality plunger with a kit, remember they call him now but anyway, by a good plunger. And a plunger works as much on the push as it does the pole. So really push and pull back camps. Not a bad idea if you’re not comfortable with it to get. Closet agar is what we call them. It’s a snake that’s specifically for toilets. So if you have continual problems with the toilet, it’s probably not a bad idea to buy one of those things. You know, it’s cheaper than a service call.
21:33
Or like we talked about last week, as we talked about last week, if it’s a chronic CLOGGER there’s something that happens to you all the time. But put a different toilet so you’ve got the flow correct. You’ve got the everything set up. The engineering, engineering is the issue here. It’s not it might not be you might not be your stomach. It could just be that you have a really bad.
21:55
You could have a blinky toilet. I was gonna say it but I didn’t say it. PG show. Anyway, yeah. So toilets, it really depends, like we said, how many toilets you have and how many people in the house? Right? We actually have time for this last one because we got like two more minutes. So a leaky fixture leaky faucet. That’s one of those things that nine times out of 10 can just wait. I think unless it unless it’s ripping, you know, unless it’s, you know, the the fixtures completely trashed, and you can’t turn it off. And it’s full bore, then yeah, and you’re running hot water especially. Yeah, call us out. But if you do have a fixture, if you if you have a faucet or a toilet, or foster twit that are running, you should have emergency shutoff valves underneath the fixture. Hopefully they turn the water off and don’t leak. In Nevada County, we’ve got some fixtures that were installed some emergency shutoff valves that were installed during the 80s that weren’t the best to begin with. And 20 will shoot 40 years later, now, almost 50 years later, geez, they really don’t work. So we give it a shot. We’re saying we’re saying, worse comes to worse, you gotta go shut the water up to the house, and then it’s an emergency, we’ll come out and take care of you.
23:14
And if you do end up needing an emergency fix or a professional fix for your plumbing, your H vac or your electrical, you could call abt and let’s let’s Let’s pitch this really quickly to you could be given me the cough sign I don’t know because I can’t see you. But so we have some career opportunities open available right now. Weird, like we would love to talk to someone who’s interested in becoming an H fac apprentice. We also would love to hire an H VEC service tech, we’ve got opening for an electrician and also a plumber. So if you are interested in any of the above would like to make a switch from the career you’re in now. You want to get into the trades or your company that you’re in now via or you’re in the trades already. You can send your send an email, you don’t have to send a resume, send an email to hiring at easy as abc.com and we’ll get back to you and talk to you real quick and get you get things moving along. But if you want to call us up for service, you would call abt at 530-230-9092. And that number again is 530-230-9092.
24:20
Great, and we’ll catch you guys next week. Thanks for listening.
24:23
Bye. 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