SUMMARY KEYWORDS
air, weather, caulk, house, leaks, pull, baseboard, outlets, rain, seal, silicone, roof, wall, abt, cold, gutters, literally, starting, inexpensive, feel
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.
00:17
Hi, this is Andrew Twidwell, owner of ABT plumbing electric heat and air, once again with the show, You Got This!, as a show of DIY dos and don’ts. Zooming in with Rosalie brown down in LA, and I am sitting in my office in lovely Auburn. Enjoying this unusual, scary weather. What you’re just talking off air about how I just was reading in the Nevada County weather guy who’s on Facebook, who if you don’t follow him, definitely follow him because he’s got some of the best information on the weather in our county. And how we haven’t had any rain in 33 days and doesn’t look like we’re gonna have any essentially any rain for the next month. In we’ve got some northern winds and it’s been really warm. So yeah, it’s I love this warm weather. But yeah, it’s getting a little scary.
01:10
I got a Weather Advisory alert. I’m just like, wait, what? Over the weekend a friend of mine from Michigan texted me, and he took a screenshot of his weather app. And it was like 16 degrees, right? And so I sent a screenshot of my weather. And it said like, 56, but feels like 53 which caused him to go into hysterics. Because 53 feels like a sunny day.
01:46
you’re in the Midwest and to hit 50 during the wintertime to average shorts. Yeah, so
01:51
he’s tackling that, you know, he’s chucking at me and he goes, Oh, you really cold and I can’t live chilly. I got a jacket on. Okay, so then I look at the weather today, you know, I’m on my computer, and you get these little alerts. And I’m like, why don’t we have a weather alert? And I click it open. And between now and Sunday, we’re on high weather alert, like expecting to the 90s. And I’m like, okay, like that does that. February? Yeah. I mean, like, that’s, that’s a little bit much. But But I mean, I think I’ll probably be okay. But like, yeah, that into the 90s. And then we’ll get the Santa Ana winds which will cause us to we will certainly be in like lockdown fire danger as well. So that’s kind of a bummer. When you think that you’re in like, you know, okay, we’re in the winter or we
02:39
have to worry about fires this time of year. But oh, maybe we do have to start thinking about this kind of interesting time to be alive. We were just saying that as well. Because yeah,
02:50
grandpa’s favorite saying alive. Yeah,
02:53
everything else. It’s like yeah, what else is going on? Um,
03:01
well, let’s see. You said it’s February. Oh, I think by the time Okay, so this is going to air on Friday. So I guess there’s a big game in my backyard. There’s a big game. Yeah. Are you are you rooting for anybody? Are you paying attention? Now? Our guys
03:14
got kicked out. So you know, the last 13 seconds. So what are you sending to it? Yeah, we all will probably watch because we’ll be in. We’re leaving for Tulum, Mexico on Friday to celebrate her 25th and 26th wedding anniversary and Betty 60th birthday. So yeah, we’ll be we’ll be out and about. Yeah.
03:36
Okay. Well let it because I know that Betty who is a saint in my mind, does not listen to the show. I will say right now. 60. I don’t even believe it. I’m sorry. Not at all. Like you’re no yeah, no.
03:52
Fortunately, she does not listen to the show.
03:53
So right now she looks at me. Like I would just I would never believe you know, she’s just he she looks like a million bucks. Not that six year olds can’t. I think it’s great. You’re finally getting this trip. Because I know that it’s kind of been on the burner. Right? backburner?
04:07
Yeah, I mean, it’s been we’ve been talking about doing a big trip for 25th for a year and a half, right? Didn’t want to travel internationally. So now we’re just biting the bullet and doing it anyway. Yeah, he’s planning on eating outside. And then it doesn’t look like the numbers. The numbers aren’t terrible down there. So they’re about like, they’re up here.
04:26
So yeah, well, what a nice little change of scenery. Yeah, good for
04:30
ya. It’ll be fun. And then we can saloom and then a week in Mexico City to go visit the son and the daughter is gonna fly down from San Francisco and yeah,
04:42
good food, good sites. I’m excited to kind of I’m kind of excited because I follow you on social media. So I’m excited to see the pictures. You’ve seen great pictures people might not know that about you but one of your many interests is your photography and you just use your your smartphone but man, you Your
05:01
iPhone, man, this new 13 PRO Oh my god. I mean, people are like, Do you have a DSLR? Am I gonna do? It’s literally my iPhone. That’s really, they have gotten, I look at pictures from 10 years old because I pop up on Facebook, right? And the quality was so bad compared to what you have today. I mean, it literally looks like a professional camera
05:21
does. So when you say when you say the quality, so what you’re saying is like, compared to my Android, which is like a new Android like Android cameras. No, they’re like, I know, they’re not a great amount of
05:34
tools, right? Yeah. So it’s not even good. It’s insane. And it’s got three three lenses. So I can do fisheye and stuff, which I yeah,
05:42
I’m looking forward to it. I’m gonna feel like I was there. So I’m excited about your trip because
05:48
I got a little bag, a little baggie, so I can put it in the in the bagging. So we’ll stay dry. And I’m thinking I might even go snorkeling with it. So
05:55
I don’t know. That’d be fun. So seeing here I am. I’m excited about your trip. And I’m not even going to repeat. So my job is to stay away from downtown this weekend because it’s gonna be crazy insane. Yeah, it’s gonna be crazy. So yeah, so my job what am I up to?
06:13
Ways that is stealing from you.
06:17
It’s really not far at all. I’m really kind of right on the cusp of all the good stuff. So it’s not far at all. It will be parking your neighborhood probably. Yeah, I mean, so so the the time that gets tough is when there’s a really cool big event at like Dodger Stadium. That’s kind of when my neighborhood kind of gets a little bit crazy. And my my stretch of freeway, but you know, you live in LA, you figure out how to get around. So I’ll probably do in the grocery store like Friday, not the weekend, I’ll probably be doing the outdoor stuff. So I mean, I can’t complain. It’s you just make the best of where you are. So
06:53
it’s good to be at your 90 degrees and right
06:56
weather warning. I gotta be careful. So yeah, it’s gonna be happening hydrated. Yeah. Well, it’s, it’s interesting, too, because, you know, we just put out the newsletter for our, our folks. And it’s funny, because a lot of the material I gather is kind of based on like, if you have a cold February, right,
07:15
right. Well, that’s the thing like, yeah, it says right here, you know, seal the drafts. February tends to be the coldest month in areas where winter, it’s hard
07:23
to hear. Yeah, it makes me live on
07:27
the New World, the new norm, right. I mean, it will get cold again, we know it will get cold again, always says, and typically March will get some kind of snow event and some kind of cold snap.
07:40
Because we’re kind of in well, in the winter in the mountains. It’s kind of like you get that false hope that’s called false spring, right? Or you start to go Oh, wow, okay, we’re out of this. And it’s like, Nope, no, you’re not. I mean, we’ve had snow in May and June up there. So I mean, like, I’ve been, I’ve had my mind blown a few times. So. Yeah, so
08:00
it’s all doom and gloom. It’s gonna get cold again. So right,
08:03
right, right, right. And you’ll get the snowpack and all that good stuff. So when we put that so when we put these ideas together, they were kind of like, essentially, based on look, some of the things we’re gonna talk about today are going to help you whether it’s cold out, or it’s hot out, because when you talk about like, sealing your, you know, sealing things up, okay, that’s gonna help you regardless of the season, right, it’s going to keep the hot air out the cool air in or vice versa. Right. save on your energy bill. I mean, like really, just to, you know,
08:33
strangely enough, it helps with indoor air quality as well. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, when you’re sealing drafts and things so yeah, I mean,
08:40
let’s just roll right dive in dive in my friend. Yeah. So
08:43
one of the first things is sealing drafts. So you know, like we were saying before, February tends to be the coldest month and it usually is the coldest month here in Nevada County but you have to figure the easiest way to check for leaks is to simply go around your house barefoot and barehanded and feel around, you know, a lot of times you’ll find drafts and baseboards, underneath doors, coming into outlets, all those areas you want and coming around windows you want to kind of go around and just kind of feel if you feel any cold air coming in. You know, ideally when the temperatures like in the 40s or below you can kind of feel that cold air coming in when your house is 68 or 75 whatever you got the thermostat set for and if you’re not really feeling just get your hand are a little damp and then you can really feel that cold air because it’ll it’ll definitely make you feel cold the water will help it make you make you feel cooler. So you want to look for baseboards around the exterior walls so any of the walls that are outside, outside walls, interior walls unit where they typically don’t worry about it in any outlets, strangely enough to will get a lot of air infiltration through outlets and why I say it helps to seal those things for indoor air quality. To the air that’s coming through has to go through quite a few bits of material before it actually goes to the house. So hopefully your house is insulated. So you’ve got fiberglass in the walls, it will literally push fiberglass fibers through those cracks into air into the indoor air. Same thing will happen with your outlets. If you thought well that’s when the exterior well it’ll push any of the air that’s in that wall into your house and most houses are negative airspace anyway, because we’re pulling air out with, you know, bathroom fans, fans in our kitchen. So we’re usually a little a little negative, so it’s usually pulling air in from outside. So if it is infiltrating through some of these walls, you’re getting everything that’s in that wall. So fiberglass, cellulose. You know, heaven forbid, rodent droppings, insects, all the nasty stuff that’s back in those walls will creep in. So it’s, it will help with indoor air quality, not just energy efficiency. So some of the ways to fix those things. If you do feel those straps around like the baseboards, or outlets, easiest thing is get some Alex caulk it’s a paint painters caulk. If you’re doing it the baseboard get clear. If you’re doing it like it baseboard between the baseboard and the floor, use a clear if it’s between the baseboard and the wall, you can use a white depending on what the trim color is. Or you could go clear if it’s already been painted. The nice thing about Alex caulk is it’s a it’s really inexpensive. And B, if it’s really it’s latex, it’s water soluble. So as you’re putting it in, what I’ll do is I’ll fill a bucket with water a little painters bucket or a five gallon bucket with water. And then use a wet sponge, use the bucket to clean my sponge, caulk it, use my finger to push it into the crack and then just simply wipe it with a wet sponge. And you can really make a nice clean bead that way. So that’d be what I would do for any kind of exterior wall baseboard outlets, they actually make this little Styrofoam gasket that you can get in any hardware store. And they’re really inexpensive. And all you do is you pull the cover off of your outlet. Just the faceplate you don’t have to pull any of the outlet or anything like that. It’s just one screw typically or two screws depending on if it’s an outlet or switch, and then put this gasket onto the outlet or the switch and screw it back on. That’s it. It takes like five minutes per I mean, five minutes would be generous for any of the switch covers. So there’s some ways to kind of keep the drafts coming in.
12:45
I didn’t know that. So is that. I mean, I guess I’m dating myself here. But is that just always been a thing? Because I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.
12:52
Probably like the last 3040 years. Okay, so
12:55
yeah, basically, it’s always been a table I’ve ever seen. Why would you? I’ve had I’ve had to buy the face plates right but it never it never occurred to me. So when you started I mean because we don’t share video Thank God my face as you were talking about the possible decaying rodents or rodents dropping. I mean, immediately I was like, I need to go get every type of protection there is like I’m gonna go and buy these things. That sounds disgusting. But it wouldn’t even dawn on you because it’s this little like you said it’s like your air quality. You don’t know that all this kind of collecting right and then pushing in? Well, it just never dawned on me that’s really I really am going to have to go buy an air filter like
13:42
the way and the way a house breezes that you that usually pulling air in because we have all these fans pulling air out. Right? So it’s it’s always you know, parametrically a little bit lower pressure. So air is coming in and it goes through. It’s gonna go through whatever’s in its way, right. So if I’ve got an outlet on an exterior wall, it’s probably going through the framing behind the siding because the siding sealed and then through whatever insulation to make its way so you’re gonna get little bits and bobs from whatever’s in your wall. Yeah, it’s not you know, or crawlspace and they’re typically not, you know, sanitary. We’ve got a house like mine that was built in the 30s some of that stuff’s been in there a long time. You know, any kind of mold or anything like that. So yeah, it’s nasty. So you got a couple of reasons to want to seal it up, not just energy. The other thing you want to look for is you know, obviously the the go to ones are the the doors and windows, the seals that are around the doors and windows. So if you’re weather stripping starting to age or the base of the door is starting to see starting to see sunlight through it or you feel the breeze. There’s a lot of really inexpensive solutions like I’ve got a little way my house was built unfortunately that The door is right at the level of the new floor because they put in Virgo. So it’s right up against it. So I could only put in a sweeper, but at least it cuts the air down a little bit. So just a little, it’s literally just like a broom. That’s right screw to the bottom. So it cuts a little bit of air keeps some of the pests out. But if you can put a hard seal like a rubber seal, that’s better. But depending on how your house is built, like my house, I couldn’t do that. And then the weather stripping around the door and windows is really kind of critical. Windows not so much because most of most of the windows have been replaced in Nevada County to vinyl or aluminum double pane. So they’re usually pretty good. We don’t have a lot of old wood casing Windows any longer.
15:43
I was I lived in a house up on Nevada, on Nevada, Van around in Nevada City that we couldn’t use all of this that you’re talking about. So, you know, bless the landlord, he was an amazing person. But man, that place was like, you know, the air just was not Oh, man. And yeah,
16:03
if your rent house is something you could do, right? Right. Not like you’re painting or making any altered alterations to the property. It’s
16:13
not really expensive, either. It’s just gonna be for your own comfort, you know, really for your own comfort, I would say do it to Hawkins
16:19
like, three bucks or something, you know, and if you use a caulking gun, those tools are really inexpensive for what you get. So yeah. Anyway, a couple of tips with that. You’re You’re good. I mean, you’re literally probably into it for 15 bucks. Right, right. Right, right. And you’ll definitely
16:39
improvement anyway,
16:40
it’ll definitely definitely improvement if you’ve got some good drafts going 15 bucks in an hour’s worth of your time, you’ll pay that back probably within a month, an energy savings. So depending on how drafty your house is, if your house isn’t very drafty, this feels like you’re probably take a little while it probably took a couple years to pay $15 off. But it’s also good for indoor air quality. So
17:02
they have life man quality of life, right and make
17:05
things better. Yeah. So another thing to do this time midwinter is inspect the roofs and gutters. So I do this periodically. My roof is getting old and probably needs to be replaced here in the next five years or so. So some of the some of the shingles have been falling off, I have to go back and put them on. So go around and look at your roof, make sure you don’t have any shingles that are that are falling off, you don’t want to wait till you have a leak to solve that problem. If you notice some of your fascia board or some of the roofing material, or particularly that the shingles that are on the ridge, if they’re starting to look a little thin, you might want to address that, you know, and there’s different ways to address it. I won’t go into huge detail but look at it and figure it out in the pull up with YouTube to figure that stuff out. But you want to kind of go around the property and see if you’ve got a any of those things happening because ironic. Well, ironically, water does a lot of damage very slowly, and it can really do a lot of expensive damage when you get dry rot and stuff underneath the roof. So yeah, yeah, we got to do the framing and stuff can be really expensive. But when I looked
18:11
at the ocean, yeah, it’s so damp all the time. And I mean, I’m not complaining like as good problem to have. But the facia, and all that stuff was all like, falling off. Because it had just been worn so thin, so thin, so thin. And we have leaks in weird places like we had, we had leaks coming up under the floor. It was crazy. Because as you know, like water finds the easiest path in
18:36
the least resistance. Oh, man. It’s just working its way down.
18:39
Yeah, real stinking clean away. Stinky stuff, too. So yeah,
18:45
I’ve seen some really bad attic spaces that have had been leaking for some time. And actually the house that we bought that we’re living in right now we had to deal with a bunch of stuff that was we bought it kind of as is it was kind of a wreck. But yeah, it had the roof leaks for a long time. And there was damage everywhere throughout the house into the framing and stuff just because of roof leaks. So definitely take a look. And then your gutters as well. You want to make sure because it will rain again, we know it’s going to rain. Again. It’s not like we’re you know, we do go through the summer months where we don’t see any rain. But we will see some more rain this this year and possibly even some more snow. So go around and check your gutters, make sure they’re clean. Make sure you don’t have any blockages, make sure, especially in this weather when it’s 70 degrees, what a great time to be working outside, right. You don’t have to put gloves on well, you can put gloves on because it’s kind of nasty, but you know, you don’t have to get all bundled up to do this type of work. So go out there and take a look around the perimeter also, you know, I know we’re taking off and um, I was looking at our gutter in our driveway just for runoff and it’s getting kind of full of twigs and pine cones. I’m gonna go below that before I leave just to make sure that that flows. If If and when it rains again, well when it rains again, but if it rains while we’re gone, I want to make sure it’s running. Good Um, take a look around the whole property because it will rain again, you want to make sure that water goes where you want it to go doesn’t backup and potentially flood spots or leaks in roofs and things like that. And we got time for this last one too. So, when a furnace runs in a house, it tends to dry the air out if you’re using forced air furnace or forced air heat using hydronic, it doesn’t tend to dry it out as much. The reason being is a forced air furnace. It’s basically fire in a metal box that heats the air and it gets really hot that box gets really hot. So it will suck the humidity right out of the Beretta the the air and it will dry stuff. So what happens typically during the wintertime is things start to contract the wood in your house will start to pull back. Even, you know, your tiling from your tub, it will literally start to pull back. So you want to go and check all those grout lines all those caulk caulking lines because it will pull up far enough apart that if the caulking is old, you have the potential for it to just break that seal so particularly around your tub, I see it all the time this time of year. You want to go ahead and go and apply another coat. Finish it up. I say apply another coat. If it was a latex caulk, if you silicone silicone resists itself. It’s also silicone works really well as a lubricant. So putting new silicone on old silicone caulking doesn’t work, you gotta rip it out. total nightmare is a time consuming thing. So I always advise people to do is use latex caulk caulking because it you can put, you can keep layering it on top of it for countless times and it’s a lot easier to pull out than the silicone silicone is a better product will last longer. But when you have to service it, it’s a huge ordeal. So I just I use silicone caulk everywhere or not silicone. I stay away from silicone caulking except when I’m dealing with stuff outside. Just because that reason entire inside of the house, tubs and stuff, just use a paintable Alex Cox hematol caulk something like that, that you can actually work on? Oh my gosh, I decided to walk by and look, if you look like a bear from this angle.
22:24
Does he just walked behind? You’re like, Oh, wow. There’s a bear loose in the house. Yeah, no, he,
22:29
he does kind of tend to scare some folk when we’re out and about. What’s the big guy? He does, he’s, he’s waiting for me to get off this because he’s like, we got places to go. So he’s got a patient.
22:45
So that’s that’s basically it for things to do during this warmer weather and getting ready for some colder weather and potentially some other rain and snow that’s going to come up. So we’ll come up while
22:57
you have this little while you have this little window, go ahead and do things. And then when the weather regulates back to what we’re used to this time of year, we will kind of be ahead of the head of the game. And then you know, we’ve always got ideas on there. Let’s be honest, there is no shortage. If you have a house or live in a house. It’s things to stop, right.
23:18
Forgot to mention to like, you know, if you haven’t done a walk around since that last big snowstorm, I mean, I have friends that had trees go through their roof, branches go into the roof, branches hit the roof, you if a branch did hit your roof or a tree did kind of land on your roof. Go up there, inspect it, even when it’s once you get the tree up, you want to make sure that that thing is not going to leak because when it does rain again, it’s going it has that potential and it can be really nasty and really expensive. So anyway, on that fine note, how can you reach us?
23:49
Well, I’ll tell you what, if you wanted to reach abt for plumbing, electrical heat or air, you could call us at 530-230-9092 by 302309092. We are hiring. So you can also send your shiny resume to hiring at easy as abc.com You can find us on the web is abt.com. I know spoiler alert, you’ll find us on Facebook as well. And is there anything else you wanted to plug?
24:17
I think that’s it for now. And oh and actually we’ll have guests for the next two weeks because I will be gone. So look forward to so I’m in charge and new voices.
24:28
Yeah, you don’t know what’s gonna happen. I don’t even know what’s gonna happen. It’s gonna be fun time.
24:33
Yeah. Thanks for listening. We’ll catch you guys next week. Or well, somebody will. Alright, bye.
24:39
Thanks, Andrew. Thanks, Rose Lee. 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