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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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Hi this is Andrew Twidwell, from ABT Plumbing, electric, heat and air once again with the show you got this. It’s a show about DIY do’s and don’ts. And I’m zooming in here with Rosalie, who is waving.
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Well, you can see me so I can see you.
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You’ve people out in the radio world cannot see us. But yeah, I’m sitting here in lovely Auburn shop. And it’s funny, chill but Sunny, so I’m kind of stoked and you’re all bundled up. It gets a little cool in LA as well. It’s,
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it’s funny, it’s funny that
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you’re gonna be like 60 degrees today or something like that.
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No, actually, as I sit here, and I look at the little thing on my computer. It’s 71 degrees out. I’m so cold. I am so cool. Walking around. I’ve got a stocking hat on. I don’t even call anymore a beanie. And I’ve got a sweatshirt and a little vest on over that. I feel like I’m I’m in the tundra. I’m in the tundra. It’s freezing.
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It looks like Auburn’s we’re gonna have a high of 59 today same in Grass Valley. But yeah, the low was you know 38 Which is warmer than it’s been I mean, today is Wednesday and it’s been I woken up to some some ice on my windshield last couple days. So yeah,
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you know who’s taken some really cool pictures of the ice stuff is our buddy Andy Andy rate
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every year. The hoarfrost or whatever the frost on the windows, just gorgeous stuff. I use one of the skylights.
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I was looking at it this morning, and I thought that there’s art. So that’s cool stuff.
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He’s got a great eye.
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Oh, his photos are amazing. I mean, don’t get me started on
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Hey, contractor and good photographer.
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Yeah, good all round guy, actually. But speaking of Who’s a good boy, I have an update on the bed situation for the dog. So last week, you and I think it was last week, although no planning together. Time is lost on me at this point. There was a situation where compensation was gathering under the dog’s mattress. And that was last week, freaking out because I was like, that’s gross. And you know, glad that that. So I get off with you. And I go on a hunt for like, okay, what can I find? And I knew what I wanted to get for him. I wanted to get him a raised bed like he had at the shelter. Not that I want to trigger. Not that I want to trigger him. Right. But, you know, there’s also a stink factor. He’s a dog with double coats, right? So like, he just stinks in general. So I wanted to get him the elevated bed and I couldn’t get what I wanted. When I wanted it. So you know me. Alright, what can I do in the meantime, because I I’m not good at waiting. So I went to Home Depot, I looked everywhere. I looked at every possible thing. And I was going to construct something I was going to you know, Jimmy rig it. I was gonna say that I ended up with a temporary solution that has helped a tiny bit. But that’s okay, because the real beds on its way today. I believe it or not, I ordered and you’re gonna laugh at this, like this is so dumb. You know, those? You know, those? Sorry, my phone wasn’t on silent. You know, those little black mats that have holes in them and are usually like industrial like you might see them. They’re there. You see my kitchens, you know? Yeah. And they’re like,
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foam foamy? Yeah, they’re standing
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there kind of rubbery. Right? And they’re meant to. So these are it was just torn up and had holes everywhere, right? And so I thought, Alright, this isn’t going to be the permanent solution. But we’ll get by, I will tell you it has reduced the moisture a lot. Just having a little tiny bit of air. But it’s definitely not yes. But it’s not. But it’s not that. So it’s kind of testing your theory really with the only only spending like 15 bucks, right?
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But you can even use like, Yeah, I’ve seen like hydro. I mean, we were talking about those things and really naming some of them but it’s we use like this. Or I used to use this washable filament kind of filter material for furnaces, and it’s just plastic, right strings of plastic and it like made this matte. That’s exactly all it is. It’s just lifting it off and getting some air in between there so doesn’t have the ability to condense. But I’m sure it’s kind of down quite a bit but you’re still condensed underneath that rubber part,
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right? Yeah, it’s still a little bit so. So it was just kind of a, you know, chapters doesn’t mean yeah it’s just a little temporary situation and you know, my my dog being old is not great with rapid fire change so I was I’ve been trying to tell him every every day like Yes Don’t worry a new pet is coming you know he gives me the same satisfied look no matter what.
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Yeah, whatever had Cox over sideways a little bit yeah,
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why we’re still talking. You’re asleep. So his new better I
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don’t want want want want want want want want exactly
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food walk so anyways a new bed is on the way so thanks for giving me that idea the understanding behind the conversation because I know it’s a basic concept but I tell you, I’d never had it happen before and I was like this place is possessed like I’m gonna get an extra Yeah, so that was a really great frankly. Awesome. Okay, so any updates from you? I know people just start are clamoring to hear about our dog updates. But those are interesting that people updates.
5:59
Our dogs are alive and oh, we do have Laura’s dog in the shop today and in the office because we have an open dog open door policy here. So yesterday was Teresa’s two dogs and her little French bulldogs and her little one was biting my ankles and trying to rip my jeans. He’s in that thin. But Laura’s got her dog 200 pounds, that I literally weighs 200 pounds. He’s a Great Dane mix. And he ginormous he comes up, like to my hip and I’m not particularly tall. I’m only five, eight, but like he’s hip height. You know, he’s a good fourth, four feet. And just just a sweet dog, but 200 pounds.
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Good thing. It’s like,
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how do you deal with it? She’s like, well, you know, I did actually she’s like she she literally called the fire department just to check if something were ever to happen to him if she could call them to help her, put him in the vehicle. If he is incapacitated, and they said yes, they would help her. Oh, wow, she’s not gonna harass me can’t move them. I mean, he’s talking to parents.
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Right? Wow. Yeah, that’s incredible. I’ve never done I mean, wow, yeah, that’s
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actually that’s a good thing for people. Yeah, I’ll show that. So that’s, if you have a water, if you have a flood, call the fire department of if it’s after hours, because they will actually show up pretty quick and turn the water off for you. They won’t clean up, but they’ll get the water off for you.
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That’s, that’s brilliant. That’s brilliant. Um, well, you know, I do, I do have a little PSA that I just wanted to throw out there. Before we jump into the show. I was not aware of this, and you’re guilty of this. And so you’ve already you’ve already ruined everything. So as you do
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my job and life is ruined people writing things. I’ve been doing it doing it since I was born. Right? My young parents that weren’t expecting to have a child at the time they did. Yeah, happy
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surprise. Even happy surprise me well. So I just was reading yesterday. And I thought it was interesting that because the weather we have days of like the you know, sun and we have this and that and we’re coming into spring, you know, you might be like, hey, that pile in the yard up there doesn’t look so hot. Maybe I’ll jump out there and take care of that today. And what they’re saying. And when I referenced this, I do not know who they are. But I think it’s science. But there’s an encouragement. Don’t jump in your spring. You know, don’t spring into your garden clean up too soon. Wait until the temperatures are consistently above 50 degrees, which hopefully is coming soon. Because they’re saying many of the butterflies and bees and pollinators are currently what they say wintering in the dead leaves and hollowed out stems of last year’s plants. So yeah, if you wait a little bit longer, so we’re in the 50s pretty consistently, then they will have kind of gotten out in and moved into their next life cycle and whatever. So little reminder that you can take a break from the the yarn cleanup for another if
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nothing else, it just gives you a reason to wait for another month or two. Yeah, excuse to not have to get out there and work on the yard. We eat and we are very fun right now. Anyway, I mean, when it’s, you know, 48 degrees and you’re raking it’s cold.
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I’m bundled up and it’s 70 today, so if I could wait until it’s about 76 degrees to go out in the yard.
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So I just wanted I was working out in the yard yesterday and it was Yeah, I was bundled up with gloves and jacket. Yeah, I mean it was in the forest. The sun’s already you know, the, the sun doesn’t really even get over the treetops, right? So it’s always cold.
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I do I remember being really grateful for when I lived on banner mountain, having the what do they call that the canopy, having that kind of canopy of trees kind of shade the house and I remember loving that when It was so hot out, because honestly, it was a game changer, right? Yeah. But
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you have air conditioning. So yeah, hardly anybody has air conditioning up on banner.
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Oh my goodness. But I will say, though, that when it was cold, it was cold, you know, because no sunlight we’d get in there. So that was a challenge. That’s a big challenge. But anyway,
10:27
so you want to talk about that the cleaning stuff or you want me to go into to?
10:31
Well, listen, since I’m kind of honing in on, you know, I’m ticking over the mic for a minute. Yeah, I think you should run it. I just wanted to, this won’t be a very long segment. But um, and full disclosure. I am a really poor environmentalist. Okay, I really don’t do all the things I could do to improve the planet. So this is not preaching from either one of us. No, but But it came across
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a drive a full size truck. So
11:01
your cover footprint is is bigger than mine, for sure. But I just always get kind of excited about when you find there are things you might already have in your house that you could use, you could repurpose them to use for cleaning. And especially if you have pets and things right, I do I do think about chemicals. And we’re like if you’re in the kitchen, right? Like what you clean your kitchen with is a big deal. Because you might think that, you know, you didn’t leave any residue of the cleaner behind. Maybe you did, you know, so I’m always thinking, Oh, those are some so I found these, these won’t take a long time to go through. But I found about six things six or seven things here that you could use instead of the over the counter stuff that you buy. Okay. Um, so one of the first things that here is an all purpose cleaner. And this is got baking soda. Okay, let me say this. All of the details on this, I will put on our web page on our Facebook page. So I’m not going to go into the making and the because if you’re listening to this, you really want to be jotting down one people. One tablespoon, like I’m not giving recipes. Okay, right. So this all purpose cleaner has got a little bit of baking soda, a little bit of Dawn dish soap, a little bit of white vinegar. Okay, you add a little tiny bit of warm water you shake it up. You mix it, you squirt it out of a squirt bottle. This has got zero harmful chemicals. This is an all purpose cleaner. No harmful chemicals. I remember pretty good. Yeah, I use vinegar a lot for Okay, vinegars are great. Now, here’s something I don’t know what this is because I don’t traditionally dust in my house or dust with spray. But dusting spray. I’m assuming is like supposed to replace like the plan. Yeah. Okay. I’m so sorry that your phone? People People don’t realize I’m actually recording a podcast or radio show. Okay. Sorry. Dusting spray. So, so a little bit of olive oil, some lemon juice, white vinegar, warm water, stir it, shake it. Boom.
13:09
Olive oil. That’s kind of interesting. So oil. Well was a great, a great oil they use for a lot of different things. I use it for different things. And yeah,
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so I love that because most most people have those things. Right. Okay, this one to me is interesting. So Toilet Bowl Cleaner. All right, baking soda, borax, which to me, I don’t know if that’s commonly found. I don’t know where I would find borax. But you can find it
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at the heart of the grocery store. Okay, okay. It’s just a mineral.
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Yeah, okay. Okay, so you got baking soda, borax, white vinegar, you put those all in the bowl, right? And then again, what’s your the amounts, okay, put this directly in the bowl, you mix gently the bowl brush, let it sit about 30 minutes and then scrub it and you’re gonna have pristine white, brand new, renewable. Now, for those of you that have granite, right, you might have you probably actually have a cleaner that you might buy for this or maybe your you know, granite guy said, Hey, only use this product. But here’s something I thought was cool. A little bit of rubbing alcohol, some Don just soap and some more water, put it in a squirt bottle then good to go. Yeah. And that seems like that’d be cheaper than that the stuff you probably want to buy, right?
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Yeah. And you know, the actual stone is porous. So you want to be careful what you put on there because it will soak in granted tends to be a little tougher, you know, but if you get into like a career tomorrow or something like that, you can stay in prayer marble really easily. So you really got to be careful what you put on it and what you use for cleaners.
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be horrible if you spend all that money, right and then you use the money.
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Yeah, like as as a plumber. For Carrera. We can’t even use like plumbers pipe because it’s got linseed oil, and it will literally turn the marble brown around the faucet or wherever you put it. So yeah,
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that will be shots that
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I’ve seen in some older, older, you know, turn of the century kind of marble where you can see the discoloration just because somebody used the wrong body.
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That would really be a bummer after all that money. Yeah, and Glass Cleaner. I’ve actually used this before, but it gets a little bit goofy here to me the cornstarch part. But so for glass cleaner, no. Rubbing alcohol, white vinegar, little bit of cornstarch and some warm water. Yeah. Yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah. And so let’s check it up. And using a squirt bottle I’ve used I’ve used vinegar, coffee filters and a little bit of lemon to get windows that are especially outside windows that have a lot of like weather hitting them. That really works well. I hadn’t heard of rubbing alcohol with cornstarch. So that was kind of interesting. This one might be my favorite. We’re almost done. This is probably my favorite tub cleanser, half of a cup grapefruit and a quarter cup kosher salt. You place the salt directly on the grapefruit half and you scrub the tub. Now, that’s kind of crazy. Yeah, that makes me concerned. Because I think about the texture of your tub. It can withstand that right? Oh, yeah. Okay. Just non
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abrasive. Right. So yeah, I mean, you just salts going to dissolve inside the grapefruit and grapefruit got it citrus, so it’s acidic. So there, it’s going to cut cuts. I’m gonna try this. I’m gonna cut the grease. Yeah, I’m totally gonna try this because I just think it’s cool. Cut water spots and things like that, too. It’ll take care of a lot of this stuff.
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I totally want to try it. I’m actually going to Trader Joe’s later on this evening. Get a great fruit. Yeah. Okay, so and then the last one I have for you here is grout cleaner. And we all know how grout just gets so gross and kind of don’t even notice it after a while, which is a scary part. So Greg was
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supposed to be brown, or was it white? Doesn’t it constantly gray, gray that we use gray ground
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right ago? Yeah, that’s what freaks me out is I get like blind to these things. So. So you can use baking soda, some vinegar, and you mix it in a small open container. And then they’re saying use a toothbrush, apply it like paste, right? Allow it to sit for about five minutes, and then you just rinse it off. Yeah, that seems kind of easy. Easy peasy. Yeah. Right. So great. I’m gonna go ahead and show these on our Facebook page. Because I think that they’re just why not. And I’m also going to try the grapefruit and return back my. My results.
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That’d be good. Yeah, let us know how that works out. The Great Britain assault. Yep. Yeah,
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I’m kind of excited about that. I don’t know why.
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Maybe because we’re all really good to those just was we’ll share the recipes so you guys can see it on Facebook. Yeah, some good stuff. And then we we had a little bit more time when we didn’t really finish our list last year or last year last week on talking about woodstoves. And some of the things I think we left it off with storing the firewood. Someplace where you’re not going to cut it’s not gonna catch on fire. And then where I used to keep the firewood or the third deck below or bedroom place.
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You always yelling yourself. I love it.
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Well, you know, we learn these lessons sometimes. Right? And it’s better to learn the lesson from somebody else than to actually do it or do it yourself. So we’re gonna move on to never leave the fire unattended. I don’t know about that one. I don’t know woodstove. I leave leave. We just ours was burning 24/7 So we’d go Yeah, I mean, that was what we eat at our house with so we would we would fill this out fill the stove in the morning and fill the stove in the evening and it would just burn all day.
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With nobody home.
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Nobody home. That was our that was our budget. You know, I made sure the entire area around it was was good. And there was a new stove. We haven’t cracked or anything like that worked fine. So I don’t know. But I Yeah, but then I’m old school. So yeah, whatever. Never leave fire intended.
19:09
I’m picturing camping and going. You walked away with a fire.
19:13
Not like a fireplace where it’s open where the embers could potentially come through. It’s a contained wood stove where the fire is within the container behind the door glass doors the whole bit. But this is a good one use a wood stove thermometer to monitor the temperature of wood stove that’s a really good one. You can get this pretty inexpensive, so you know and they’ll have a red zone so like you don’t want to get your your wood stove up too high because you can have chimney fires. It can crack the stove can have all kinds of problems if the firebox gets too hot. And yeah, they can get red hot, you can get the firebox red hot so it’s a good idea to have a thermometer on there so you can monitor it right. This is obvious one keep the stove and surrounding area clear, flammable materials. I say that and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone into people’s homes where they’ll have their firewood stacked right up close to the wood stove. Or I’ve also seen paints and other things right next to water heaters. Yeah. Anyway, this whole thing keeps stuff that’s flammable away from fire, install fire proof hearth pad or the stove. If you’ve got a wood stove installed, hopefully that’s already happened, it’s not like something you’re going to get to do after the fact. Because it’s, it’s a pain to have to remove it. And sure the stove is properly installed properly meets all local building codes. Hopefully the people that installed it knew what they were doing. Have a working fire extinguisher nearby, that’s always a good idea. Regardless if you’ve got a wood stove or not have a fire extinguisher in your house, and train everybody in the house how to use it. I wish I could have said that I did that when my kids were in the house. But I didn’t keep a fire fires happen, right, you want to make sure you can deal with it. regularly inspect the stove and shimmy for any damage is a sign of where. So you can just do a visual inspection on the fire, on your on your woodstove and on the flue if you’ve got some major discoloration, if you’ve got what looks like cracks occurring, if you see like a hairline crack on or something like that, have a professional come out and take a look at and see if it is something that could potentially pose a hazard when you’re burning anything whether it’s wood, gas, natural gas, alcohol, whatever you’re burning, you always have the potential for carbon monoxide. So an a particularly that a wood stove, it produces quite a bit of carbon monoxide because it’s not a thermal. It’s not a thermal burn. That’s that yellowing is incomplete combustion. So it is producing carbon monoxide, and other types of carbon. If you have cracks and things, if it’s not vented properly, it can take you out. So you want to make sure that thing is inspected. And make sure it’s in good working order. So do a thorough visual inspection. And again, I’m going to remind everybody, you can do your own chimney sweep. But I really, really, you know, if you do have a wood stove, it’s a great idea to have somebody come in on a yearly basis to weep the chimney. And they will also do a thorough inspection of your of the fireplace itself. And this is their job they see three to five woodstoves a day they know what to look for. You’re looking at that once wood stove on a daily basis, and you do a yearly inspection on it. All you know is that one system, they know all sorts of things and what to look for, they’re going to make sure that thing is working the way it’s supposed to and not going to be caught not have a potential hazard. And this is I’m not trying to sell anything, we don’t do this stuff. But I just know from my own experience, once I started hiring somebody to come in and do the chimney stuff, I just felt so much better about doing things like leaving the fire burning all day and all night and not worrying about it. Because I knew that it was safe. Right? That and yeah, what’s your, what’s your hospital deductible? I always quantify with that. If I fall off a roof, you know, it’s gonna cost me a couple of grand before I’m even done just because I go to the doctor. So it’s worth a couple 100 bucks. That’s true, right? Hey, you got to figure these things into the equation, right? There’s always a risk reward, right? No matter what you do, right? And if the risk is greater than the reward, I’m gonna I’m gonna go with something else. Okay, so with that, so we left you with some cleaners. But we’ll leave those on the Facebook page. And we will also we probably already put this on Facebook and our website for the woodstove, our list of things to look for that and how to deal with wood stoves. If you need any plumbing, electrical heating and air service, you can reach us at 530-230-9092 The number again 530-230-9092 You can find us on the web at easiest abt plumbing, or easiest abt plumbing.com Or you can find us at No, I did it again, easy as abt comm or you can find us at Abt plumbing.com. Either of those will get us the same spot minus on Facebook and thanks for listening. We’ll catch you guys next week. Bye.
24:24
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