0:03
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 land. Here are Andrew and Rosalie.
0:18
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 we’re trying out a new program, aren’t we? Rosalie?
0:27
This is new technology, new technology. I’m a little bit nervous.
0:32
Yeah, we’re hoping this works out. So we switched to this company called Riverside as opposed to doing zoom. So we’re going to have video up. So you’ll be able to see our mugs. And if you want to, I mean, yeah. Right now unfortunately, I’m looking at. It’s weird. When you’re recording and looking at yourself. You’re like, Oh, how’s my hair look? Okay? The lighting? Of a 55 year old plumber, whatever. What do you expect?
1:02
For sure? Well, the reason, the reason if anyone cares. The reason that we went to this medium, so to speak is because we’ve been doing this for a long time. And it’s interesting, when we came up with the idea to do this, you got this and both our lives were slightly different. But right, when we had determined we’re going to do this, I was moving cross country. And because of technology, we knew that that wouldn’t be a big deal. And so for for years now we’ve done it, we’ve done the show, while you and I are I think we’ve been in person together and done about six or seven shows maybe eight shows total that
1:46
come up. There was a while there where you’d be over, you’d be back in the West Coast. And we would do Yeah, like six or seven shows, it seems sometimes. Right? And is line them up. But yeah, and we were early adopters of zoom, and we were doing zoom six years ago. So yeah, we were endemic.
2:03
We were and, and what we found is, uh, you know, fingers crossed that this is all recording, we’re supposed to this is our first, this is our first go through,
2:12
I see the little line moving when that’s a good thing,
2:15
I’m hoping. But the reason you know, but zoom does a thing where Andrew and I have known each other long enough, and we’re friends and colleagues and all this and we kind of talk to each other because we get excited or I know what he’s gonna say, or each other sentences. Yeah, I remember a story or whatever. And with Zoom, the sound drops out. And Cancio has been so great. They have just basically taken whatever hunk of junk we handed them, and cleaned it up to the best of their abilities and put it on the air. And so now we’re trying to produce a slightly better quality product. So hopefully, if you’re listening to this, the quality’s a little bit better. And Andrew, like has been all about the video forever. And I’ve been like, why do people want to Okay, all right, kid. So I’m the old lady in the scenario. I’m like those young kids and their technology who wants to watch video their
3:12
videos? Yeah. But a lot of people I mean, tic TOCs, one of the largest and fastest growing platform social media platforms, and Zuckerberg totally given up on tax and it’s all video now. So pushing you towards reels, right. And same thing with Instagram in which they also own so yeah.
3:31
The thing is, that would make sense for us. So here’s my whole that has always been, you’re just gonna sit and watch us talk to each other. This is not, it’s different to me, if you’re doing a video on, you know, one of my favorite topic on the planet essentially is pallets. And up, you know, upcycling pallets. If we were going to do a demonstration using the video on how to do that, I could understand video, but if it’s just us sitting there talking about it, so I was the one that said videos stupid. But here we are. Yeah.
4:05
I won’t prove it. We’ll get some. We’ll get we’ll get an editor in here at some point and kind of like do the switching of the screens and all that stuff. Not so it’s just two screens up front. And yeah.
4:17
Stop for fancy.
4:19
Fancy. But that’s, that’s to be determined. Yeah. Yeah. So we’re trying this new type of technology. I hope you guys hope it sounds good. And we’re just rolling because like, we got plenty information here. So speaking of new technology, how did you come up with this list?
4:36
Oh my gosh. Okay, so I need to stop doing this. Because if Andrew Twidwell could fire me and just use a robot he would. So I have been
4:45
like a fire everybody. People are hard. Let’s just normal people are hard people. And particularly, so
4:58
I don’t know I’m a peach. So
5:00
Whatever. You’re one of my least demanding coworkers.
5:03
I know. I know. I appreciate that. So, but I also tried to track you down in ways other people don’t read anyway. No. So I used chat AI. And what happens is, and we talked about before, I’m so sorry, I just want to say this. It’s not that I’m not creative. But my job is very varied. Right? So one minute, I’m working on this thing over here, the next minute, I gotta go do this thing over there. And a lot of the times when it you know, at the end of the day, or whenever deadline, I just the creativity has been used up the bank is empty man. So in those instances, I think that chat AI is kind of cool, because I’ll just throw up a topic and say something, and then it’ll give me a bunch of information. And I didn’t have to research. And I didn’t even
5:58
go go in and edit it. Yeah. I’ve had a lot of fun with it. So yeah, we’re using jet GDP quite a lot these days. So. But anyway, so this is this is, and this is our list. And I think it’s very timely being that. I mean, we’re recording this on Wednesday. So we’re right in the beginning of the storm that’s coming in. And by the time this airs on Friday, who knows how many how much snow we’re gonna have? Are we getting investing? Are we gonna get feet of snow? I don’t know. But I have heard that. Hopefully, it’s a pretty cold storm. So the snow should be pretty dry. So we shouldn’t see too many power outages or trees falling side, a heavy wet one, like some of the other ones we’ve had in the past. But we came up, you came up with this list for if your power goes out due to inclement weather, here are 10 things you can do to stay safe and comfortable. So it is kind of timely, and sorry that we didn’t get this out. We’re getting this out. We’re recording this on Wednesday, just before the storm. And you’ll be hearing this after the storm. But it looks like there’s some storms that are piled up. So and this is kind of evergreen, if you live in the mountains, if you live in the foothills, there’s always this is this is an issue all the time every year and whether it is from from weather related. Heat related even we have power outages during during heat waves. And we have power outages due to PSPs in our area. So we’re all really good. And the wind Yeah, yeah, yeah. And cost that went yesterday. Oh, my goodness, I was pulled my trailer down to Sacramento. To get it. We were we’re going on a trip and I had to get it out of the potential snow. And this time, I thought I was going to get blown off the road. It was so scary. I was going like 4555 miles an hour. And I knew, I mean, I know 55 is the speed limit, where you’re pulling a trailer. But when you’re pulling a trailer, and people are lining up behind you, because the speed limit 65 For them, you feel a little weird, you know, and typically, you know, I’ve got a setup that it’s pretty comfortable going the speed limit, but when you’re doing 55, it seems really slow. But the thing was all over the place. It was hard to keep it in the link. But anyway, so yeah, very windy. So one of the things that the the first thing is, this suggests is stay informed. Keep tracking updates of your local authorities regarding the outage, any safety warnings that may be relevant to your area. So that’s really, really good information. And you know, with pg&e, they do keep their website up pretty up to date, they do a fairly good job. I know I’ve get on site, sign up for the warnings for multiple locations for both our offices and for our home. And they’d let you know, so you know what the problem is. And you want to know if there’s any downed power lines in your area and that sort of thing. Because that can be dangerous. Fortunately, being the fact that we live in the mountains, and some of the other utilities aren’t so great about keeping things going like having backup generators or battery bank banks, we typically lose internet. A lot of times we lose cell reception, because of power outages. It’s really unfortunate. And I really wish that somebody would do something about that. So if you don’t have a landline, like most of us have gotten rid of our landlines, it can be a little difficult to stay informed. So a lot of times, you know, you can drive to a different area. But But if
9:17
if you are able to stay connected to the outside world, to the resources that in my opinion from having lived there that are the best would be Cancio. And also you’ve been at I mean, let’s be
9:29
yes, yeah, the radio is typically on they’ve got generators, so we’ve helped them with that generator, help them with their power before. They’re typically on and Ubermensch. They’re up to date. So they’re really good resources to get information. caveum is another good resource as well. So if you’ve got a radio, a battery powered radio or some sort of backup power via a battery or a generator or something like that, you can actually stay in forums. Stay informed. That’s a good one. Use flashlights or monitors do not use candles if they pose a fire risk. This is really true. Not only do they form a fire risk, I found my wife really likes, since she’s really, her own factories, senses are very strong. And she likes to candles a lot. And oh my gosh, we’re just looking around the house and all the corners have like sit on the ceiling and stuff. So it leaves a lot of sleep. And it’s not really good indoor air quality situation. So really think about when you’re using candles. The other she got
10:40
the soy this Okay, so this like, no, sorry, I just have to say this. I shared this story a long time ago. My brother in law who was a fire chief at one point back and this is in the Midwest. They were actually at a friend’s house and at a party and they went in the bathroom separately, my sister and brother in law or whatever. And they both were like, Hey, do you see that Tracy had the camera, you know? And it was big? No, no, that she had a burning candle to make things smell fresh, of course, you know, in a bathroom and my brother in law was like you better put that out, you know? And oh, yeah, yeah, well, we got a phone call the next day. Guess who’s bathroom caught on fire? Because Boy, those soy bathroom the not bathroom? This soy cancer candles? There they jump those wicks and yeah, dangerous, dangerous. I don’t even have soy candles in my house. Because I’m so concerned about turning my back. You know, I mean, I get it. You don’t want to leave when burning, but if it’s a soy candle, you really can’t even leave the room. Those things are really unsafe.
11:49
Yeah, so be really cautious. If you’re going to use candles as a backup light, I would just not do it. And then with flashlights and lanterns these days, I mean you can get I know we have we bought a lantern crushes a while ago. But it LED lantern. I think we got it maybe six or seven years ago, we haven’t put new batteries in it. This LEDs batteries and press led uses so little power, that it’s not like the old incandescent bulbs that you know, you’d have to refresh the batteries after like 10 hours of use or whatever. These LED lanterns. You can use them for a long time. And if you if you are a DIY person, you probably have some battery bank packs for some of your tools. And most of the manufacturers make lanterns now not just flashlights, so you can have an ambient light utilizing one of those batteries, and that’ll last days. So you know, stay away from candles, use flashlights and lanterns is a really good way. I know for us I’ve got I ended up buying. We don’t have a generator house other than a small portable but I ended up buying a 2000 watt battery pack. Just a lithium ion battery pack, please in the RV and we use it for tailgating and stuff. And nothing is amazing. So I’ll use the generator to Jim to charge the battery charges in a couple hours. And then just run everything off of that and I can use my 110 out my 110 lights and lamps all the portables, the extension cords. And that thing is just a battery bank so I can bring it inside as producing the exhaust and plug things into it. That thing is amazing. Speaking of appliances and such, when the power is off, turn your appliances off, unplug them is even better. I can’t tell you how many times we get calls after a power outage or particularly after lightning where appliances have failed. And it’s kind of crazy. But anyway, most. Most appliances these days have some kind of CPUs have some kind of computer board on them. Those things are really sensitive to voltage spikes. A lot of them have fuses on them to protect the board, but they’re a sacrificial fuse. So once the fuse blows, the board’s wiped, and you got to replace the board on the appliance. And we’re talking like refrigerators, TVs, toasters, blenders, all these things these days how coffee makers have these little boards on the toaster in the oven or the toaster in the coffeemaker, you’re talking under 100 bucks, but I’ve seen refrigerators 1500 or 2000 or refrigerators getting blown and having to replace the board on those can be you know, 500 to $1,000. So, unplug the things if you’ve got the best thing to do is put them on a power strip and unplug the power strip and least on the power strip you’ve got you’ve got some surge protection. Ideally, you have a whole house surge protector installed and that’s something that we do and we’re going to Well inside the main box, so if there is a surge that comes in from the pg&e from a lightning storm, or from just when they turn the power back on, sometimes you just get a big jolt of electricity, it will shut the system off and reset itself. So that’s something to think about. You’re sneezing.
15:23
I was gonna ask you, though. Yeah, terrifying, because we’re on camera now. Yeah, I was gonna ask you, is that a common thing because I don’t, I don’t having a whole house
15:36
surge protector, it’s less common than it should be. It’s not code. It’s not required. But it’s one of those things that we get asked about. And we try, we try to promote it as much as we can. It’s one of those little known things, but they can save quite a bit of money. Like I know. A few years back, we had a Lightning Surge down like now near perimeter road. And one of our customers lost their water treatment system that we installed the refrigerator and they just moved in. So they made a really nice like, 3000, side by side. 3000 are side by side refrigerator. They’re 65 inch TV fried. And a couple other components inside their house, just fried. Just gone. You know, and some of these things like TVs, you know, what a 65 inch TV now cost you 500 bucks or 800 bucks, is it worth taking into get it fixed, because I’ll probably cost you two to $300, possibly more, or just by anyone, you know, it’s it’s one of those bad things these days. But in any event, search, you know, unplug your appliances. And you got sirens going by. So of course that’s going to happen. But at least we’ll have an airplane flying over every day. Classic thing on YouTube, right? What airplane goes over your head.
16:56
It’s funny, because I always think that these are, you know, kind of the cheap, whatever. And it picks up everything in the background. Like I’m really pleased right now that my D O G is chillin, because if he were to get excited, he’d be on the air right now.
17:13
Oh, yeah. With a siren. So that’s good. So here’s another one, keep your refrigerator and fridge closed. Freezer, Refrigerator Freezer closed, as long as possible. Even unplugging or even doing that though, you’re going to you know, if it’s if it’s like half a day or a day, you’re going to notice a considerable drop in temperature or rise in temperature inside that the refrigerator. If you can stay out of it completely, that’s your best bet, don’t even open it. Because I’ve had to explain to me like, the cold kind of stacks up in there in a refrigerator, like sand, like cold temperature kind of like stacks up and when you open the door, the sand kind of pours out, and then you close it and it starts to fill it again, because cold sinks. So it’s kind of has that density and it kind of flows out. That’s why you know, your chest kind of freezer, when you open it, the cold doesn’t come out when was the top door was a little more efficient than the the easily accessible refrigerators we have. So if you open it, all that cold dust kind of drops out, and that doesn’t have the chance to to regenerate that cold. So if you can, if it’s if it’s this time of year, and you don’t have too many problems, if a safe place to put it where you’re not gonna have too many critters get at it, put your stuff outside or put it in the garage, you have much better chance of keeping it cold than inside the refrigerator. The other thing is, again, if you get a generator or battery, I run my refrigerator and our 2000 Watt battery and nothing will run it run that refrigerator pretty much all day. Or it’ll run that refrigerator for days on end with 2000 Watts, because most refrigerators are fairly efficient these days. But if you can keep it close, keep it close as long as you possibly can. Because it what it doesn’t want to wait. So fill that fill it back up with coldness or sand if you will. keeping warm this is always a problem in when living in the mountains and when power goes out. I know you always had a real problem when you were living up on banner. Because you didn’t have a woodstove. Did you have a fireplace?
19:20
We have. So there’s a fireplace but I mean, I have a fireplace is don’t heat that great. I have a fireplace where I live now. It’s completely fundamental. It’s a it’s a decoration choice. It’s not generating any heat, right? So I just didn’t want the house filling up with smoke and I didn’t want to have to deal with that. So I never reused Yeah. Because without a blower, which if your power goes out, you don’t have a blower. Yeah, really just heating the chimney.
19:47
Yeah, and it doesn’t you know, fireplaces do produce a little bit of heat but it’s not like a wood stove that you have a whole box it’s radiating heat. Fortunately, most homes in Nevada County and even Placer County where you run into these issues where we know power is going to go out at some point this year, where you have some kind of backup heat. You want to be really cautious about the types of heater that you use. You know, when you start getting into kerosene heaters and propane heaters that are burning gas and that are invented. You have the potential to kill yourself. It’s it’s scary, you know, you can see headlines see headlines all the time about this. Every year somebody dies through carbon monoxide poisoning. So even like the little buddies and things like that, that have oxygen sensors, you want to make sure you’ve got some fresh air coming in to make sure that there’s enough oxygen to breathe even when they don’t potentially produce carbon monoxide because it’s a really efficient unit. You still gotta run you can run into this problem so really be cautious about the types of heaters that you use. And I’ve seen a lot of stuff on the internet lately about you know, the cheap T light heaters where you use a tea candles and clay pot and use it to heat and you know they’re promoting it for homeless people. Yeah, if you’re in a cardboard box, you don’t have to worry about ventilation you don’t have to worry about carbon carbon monoxide because it’s you know, you got plenty of air going through or if you’re in a tent, you still have that potential but most of the time we have pretty good airflow but when you’re inside I’ve been reading a lot of people have have gotten lightheaded and potentially I haven’t heard of anybody dying but they do produce carbon monoxide anytime you have something that connects contacts the flame you’re gonna have carbon dioxide because you have complete combustion and drops off carbon monoxide. So you see them a lot on the internet like cheap way of heating your home and it’s like think
21:47
that those are like clickbait those in my mind those are like clickbait to get you to click through and I ignore those mostly Yeah,
21:56
I I love that kind of stuff like survival stuff and
22:01
you can live off grid I think you would I really do. Yeah, but I
22:05
do like I do like hanging out seeing people I don’t necessarily like hanging out with them. I do like to see people so but any of it really be cautious about anything that’s burning inside your home. Good rule whether because it has a potential for producing carbon dioxide. Even that wood stove, you want to make sure you the carbon monoxide detectors are working. And if the power’s out, not a bad idea to have a backup battery operated monoxide detector, not just the ones that plug into the wall because you’re going to be burning something so have you had these things in mind because it is not if in Nevada County the power is gonna go up. It’s when and it’s not like a yearly thing. It’s multiple times throughout the year. So as we all know, keep warm. Make sure you have warm clothes and blankets and
22:53
drive this best home Andrew we’re almost done.
22:56
Oh yeah, we are. Avoid opening doors and windows, opening doors and windows. Unless you’re using like a big little buddy or a big buddy and indoor kerosene lanterns or security things you want to have a window cracked. But normally speaking to stay warm, keep the windows closed doors close. Using a portable generator. If you have a generator, follow the manufacturer’s instructions stay safe and use it outdoors people do not put it in your garage and close the garage door. They produce carbon monoxide, you have a running engine it will kill you. And on that note, stay safe people hope we didn’t have too many power outages and hope we don’t have any outages coming forward to the next week. If you need any help with your plumbing, electrical, heating and air, you can reach us at 530-230-9092 That number again 530-230-9092 You can find us on the web at easiest abc.com or ABC plumbing.com and like us on Facebook, Instagram, and we will have YouTube up so search keep an eye out on social media because well but our we’ll be posting these things on YouTube and then we’ll be also sharing them on our website. Thanks for listening and catch you guys next week.
24:05
Bye. 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