SUMMARY KEYWORDS
garage door, sensors, cream soda, diy, literally, hinge, dogs, plumbing, put, thought, day, pretty, sun, fix, problems, whiskey, andrew, beam, snifter, wire
00:03
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 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 about DIY do’s and don’ts. Zooming in here with Rose Lee Brown. And she’s in LA and I still I’m back in St. Paul today. It’s kind of been a whirlwind. I was home for a good week and had a good meeting with all my staff. Some my other business compatriots, and yeah, I’m back to muggy sweaty weather for a little while. So yeah, how are things in I understand it’s pretty warm down in LA as well. So it’s, it seems like it’s just warm everywhere, like reading all the headlines from Europe and the fires going on in France and England and Greece and the Vatican. It’s like, Wow.
01:07
So it’s hot here, right? It’s hot, and it’s hot everywhere. And I fortunately have air conditioning. So I am enjoying that. The dog who’s a multilayered very fluffy animal is enjoying being indoors quite a bit, as well.
01:24
You take them outside and like to go out and do their do their business. And now that they turn around, Listen, come back inside. Yes.
01:33
Yeah, I haven’t bought the doggy booties for the feet, just in case. But he kind of gets a little distracted with how much he hates those. And he starts taking them off. So we so we just kind of like we don’t we don’t really push it in the heat of summer. We’re like, alright, you gotta go. You gotta go. But my dogs big thing is like, I want to go because I get a biscuit at the end of this. So yeah. And my daughter was like, so have you thought this through? And I was like, What do you mean? And she’s like, so if he gets rewarded every time he does a biological function, I mean, this is how she works. Her brain is always, you know, breaking it down. Like, have you thought this through? And I’m always like, No, I don’t think anything through Of course not. So now he wants to go to the bathroom 17 times a day, because there’s a bit so I’m getting outside more than I like, but it is warm out there.
02:26
And it’s good for you. That’s thing we realize to like living in an apartment with the dogs. Yeah, it’s a it’s a pain having to, we’re on the third floor. So it’s kind of a, you know, having to walk down three flights of stairs a lot backup just to take the dogs out. It’s it’s gets gets old at the same time. It’s like, wow, I’m getting into some of the best shape had been in a long time.
02:45
It’s true. It’s true. I was just I was just talking to a friend of mine the other day, and we were kind of laughing about the mileage I put on the treadmill. I’m not gonna mention it because it’s embarrassing. And, and she’s like, it’s not the distance. It’s that you’re doing it. I’m like, I know, this is what you say to old people. When people reach a certain age. When they’re toddlers, or when they reach a certain age, they get rewarded for it literally. Right? So initiating it. So when I hear things for my super fit friends that are like, it’s that you’re doing it that matters. I’m like, shut up. Like, I know what you’re thinking. But yeah, I do get on the treadmill as well, just because I don’t want to be dead, like, you know, I don’t want to die.
03:24
There’s that keeping the heart movement and keeping the body moving. Right.
03:28
I mean, it’s because everything’s not a horror landscape. But I do have a funny little story about being me that I want to share with you guys. Well, you know, as I preface this whole thing, I mean, it’s not just non sequitur. I don’t think things through as you being my friend of over a dozen years longer than that. No, and you’ve seen it professionally. And personally, I just don’t think things through I just I just dive in. I don’t either. Yeah, impulsive. So anywho if you’re familiar with this favorite brand of whiskey that I I have fallen in love with it’s like become a, you know, significant other. And it’s delicious. And so I was looking for mixers to kind of cut it so I’m not, you know, I’m not an alcoholic. I don’t drink it all the time. But when I drink it, I really want to enjoy it. So I found this, found this little suggestion. And it suggested you know, mixing the mixer being cream soda. So I was like well, that might be really good. So of course being myself. I go out and about about 18 times over the weekend never thinking to get the cream soda. Finally yesterday I’m out and about, ah cream soda, pick up the cream soda, bring it home, have to you know, stake my little corner of the fridge Don’t touch this. And so last night, I’m like I’m gonna do a whole cocktail thing. So I get the little cocktail tools that I have. I’ve been very excited to use them. They’re shiny, they’re beautiful. They’re you know, you got the Follow up, you’ve got the mixer thing. And okay, so I can’t just take my snifter and pour my whiskey because I do have a beautiful snifter. I can’t just throw in some ice and just top it off with cream soda. I’ve got to be fancy. Part of my brain is going don’t do this. And part of me is like, what are you talking about? So I basically put the whiskey in the mixer. I put the cream soda in, put the lid on, start doing that whole, like, you know, bartender shake, right? And all of a sudden, as this is happening in my brain, I’m like, soda, soda. Why am I shaking soda? Right? And as the thought hits my consciousness, the top of this thing goes flying off because the pressure, right, so flies off. I get whiskey and cream soda, boom, up on my face up in my hair up on my arms, like
05:59
wearing this. And I was
06:01
like, oh, right, soda, soda soda. So dum dum dum. So after I cleaned it all up, and I tried it a different way. Tried it, it was okay. wasn’t worth the effort I put into it. But
06:19
imagine, especially after the after the explosions.
06:22
So and I’m trying to picture yes
06:24
screwball. And
06:28
it was not as bad.
06:30
It’s very, very sweet. Yeah, it’s groove already is kind of sweet as it is.
06:34
It was a little bit you know, like, Okay, I probably wouldn’t do this all the time. Once in a while, get the right ratio, but never, never use it in your shop. Okay. But so no one can see us thank God. But so the reason I have my hair up in this thing configuration is because I still have cream soda apparently stuck in my hair. So I didn’t get to it all last night. So this morning, I was like, Oh my God. That’s gotta be the cream. Oh my god. So PSA DIY. do and don’t DIY. Do you play around with your favorite mixing beverage experiment
07:13
with adult beverages and fancy cocktails?
07:18
Okay, the don’ts. Don’t put things that are called soda. In a carbonated. Yeah, there we go. So that’s my DIY. Don’t for the week.
07:29
That’s a good one. Duly noted.
07:31
I just because I know you favor this whiskey as well, from time to time.
07:35
Oh, my God. Yeah, I definitely I you know, I am of the era of when all else fails. refer to the manual, the manual refer to the literature that you got with the product. So yeah,
07:50
yeah, it’s not bad. It’s not bad. So Anywho. So that’s my DIY nightmare of the week. But you, you have a much more relevant to this. I’ve got I’ve had.
08:01
So we were talking about what to do for the show today. And we were like, well, we’ve been talking a lot about plumbing. And you came up with a couple of good ideas. But I’m like, you know, I’ve got I’ve got garage doors, just I’ve been dealing with garage doors. So we have a four unit apartment building, we’ve got four garage doors in this apartment building. And I’ve dealt with a garage doors my whole life being in the industry, because I mean, I remember putting a ladder on my dad’s truck when we’re working in an apartment building in San Francisco, and not putting it on the ladder rack properly, just kind of leaning it in on the rack. So sticking up. And being that my father was kind of It wasn’t always really with it was a really nice guy. But sometimes, you know, we had his head in the clouds a lot,
08:47
a little bit like me. So you had an error me as well. Yeah. So
08:51
he, it’s like getting dark. And he drives out of the work inside the garage to this point. And he drives out of the garage and the ladder goes through the garage door. So we had the state fix the garage door. So that was one of my first experiments with automatic garage doors, and I was probably about eight or nine then. But now as an adult, I’m getting a little better at it. But I had an interesting one that came up this week, we’ve got a tenant for one of the garage doors for two tenants is kind of possessed, and it will not close sometimes. And it only seems to happen when the sun is rising or when the sun is setting. So I went through this whole big diagnostic thing trying to figure it out and like my guide, it’s got to be the sensor. So there’s this, you know, if you have a garage door, you know that little that little light beam that goes on the bottom of the garage door that will make it so the garage door won’t shut so then squash a small child or a pet or something like that, because they’re pretty heavy or an adult because it can kill a small pattern small child But it probably won’t kill an adult, but it’ll hurt. So there’s this, this light beam that goes across. And if it’s, you know, something walks across it or something in the garage door opens automatically, or if there’s something that’s impeding it, it won’t even, it’ll just go quickly. And so that’s what it was doing, like, only when the sun was setting or when the sun is rising. Okay,
10:22
so before you go any further, I just want to say, this is one of the things I love about working with you on things is that we often go to different places. So one of the places I went to when you mentioned this to me off air, I was like, and you didn’t go into the ghost thing you didn’t go into like, you didn’t I mean, I would have been like cargo. It
10:42
is the original garage door that was made for carriage right back in the day when this building was built in 1800. So I mean, I’m sure this place is haunted, but I don’t go there.
10:51
You know, that’s what it was. Plus, it’s a little hard to prove. I mean, I know there’s shows that do it, but I kid you not prove it. Right, you have a negative. Okay, so I’m going with the paranormal, you’re going with the practical gotta get this fixed. Because analytical.
11:05
Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s the kind of guy I am, you know, I believe in science. And I believe that I’m a mechanic, and I believe in how to fix things. So and I know it’s mechanical thing, right? So automatically, I go down to the sensor. So I’m like, trying to shade it, because I finally happened when we were home. And the sun was setting and it went close. And it wouldn’t be a big deal, except we’ve got, you know, our nice bikes in there. And a couple other things. So she’s worried about leaving the garage door open, and should be as, as we appreciate, I mean, we’ve got it all locked up. But still it is the city. So the light beings have like trying to shade it from the sun to see if that’ll make it work. And then ironically, this thing works when, during the middle of the day when the sun’s on on it. So I’m thinking alright, so something’s going on. So I did a little deep dive. And it turns out that the sensors are probably going bad. Apparently, they have a shelf life of you know, 10 or 15 years, like most things, so I ordered some new sensors, and that should take care of it. But I thought that was a that kind of got me into the thought of maybe we should talk about garage doors. Because yeah, possessed garage door only happens when the sun setting or the sun’s coming up, you know,
12:16
think about how, you know I was kind of joking with you about your your tenant, right? Like, dude, I gotta go to work like, like, I cannot get a vehicle out and your boss is going right?
12:28
She couldn’t get out. She just was she didn’t want to leave it because the door was open. And she didn’t know the hole. Okay, so this is a good thing for everybody to know, if you do have a garage door, there is a there should be a lever, a little red lever on a red cord that you can pull and manually disengage it from the mechanism so that you can shut the door. She didn’t know about that she’s you know, 30 something. And she’s got well, she’s got some very doting parents that she’s really involved with. Her dad comes and fixes a lot of stuff for which we’d love because we don’t hear a lot from her because he gets bad points. And she goes, and he gets the car. And he likes to fix things for her. So we don’t have to deal with a lot of this stuff in her apartment. But so she learned how to disengage it and how to reengage it. So that’s a good thing that, you know, if you do have a problem with the grocer, and you do you do need to close it, you can just pull in that red handle, it’ll disengage from mechanism, and you can shut the door. It’s not going to be locked, but at least it’s shut.
13:24
Well, like so anybody that lives in Nevada County, and has been prone to the weather and power power outages or just I mean, so when I lived on Nevada in about a city, the power outages during storms. Yeah. So I would literally be excited because my car was protected indoors, right? But then I’m like, Oh, but I can’t go get groceries. Yeah. So. So I learned really quickly how to disengage. I mean, that was one of the first things I taught myself. No one told me but I was like, What’s this red lever? You know, and I kind of decided that it was probably a safety function. So I figured it out. But But I get it if you’re not if that’s not your jam, but that does seem like a really good thing to know. And most people in Nevada County probably know this, because they’ve had most
14:09
people probably know it, period. But yeah, this individual did not. So I had kind of teacher on that one. But so yeah, talking about the garage doors and talking about the sensor. So the sensor is, again, it’s one of those things that is very temperamental, because you literally sends a beam of light across through open space and as a little receiver on the other end, and if it’s broken, it’s not going to work or if that beam is misaligned. So we had our garage door in Nevada City I had problems so that and of course you know being that I’m you know, cheap and didn’t want to try to do duct tape and gum fix it and I do that constantly that thing because every time one of the kids or one of the dogs or one of us with kind of bumped it, it went close or went open. So I would just kind of adjust it and make it work. But it should be mounted solidly. So that doesn’t happen. So if you do have one of those situations where the doors are closing or or opening, check the beam and make sure that it’s that it’s actually on, most of the sensors have a yellow and green light. And I can’t remember which one is which. But I think the sender has a green and the receiver has a yellow, but I got a 5050 chance of getting that right. So if the lights are both on, you know that the system is actually functioning like it should. So it’s not too hard to align those things up. So do check those. And that that’s a big one. The other thing too is it the since they’re down low, so that, you know they sense a kid or a dog or something like that, they tend to get pretty dirty. So you know from splash may if you leave the garage door open, like a lot of people do. And some weather and some rain and mud gets splashed on them that will impede them. So make sure you clean the lenses you want to I would probably clean them every couple months. If you leave the garage door open spiderwebs get in front of them. Same thing. bugs get on. Yeah, so
16:13
literally the Nevada City house that you’re familiar with, because you know, we have a common friend that was connected to it. So my everything would be going great for a while. And then oh my gosh, like for no apparent reason that it would start to go down. And that would stop itself and go back up. And it wouldn’t even be down for the sensor. It would be like, Oh, no, you know, like, and so I would be like what the hell and I would look and I would see that the beam seemed like, you know, you could see the light that seemed like it was great. My thing was so sensitive that if it got even, this is the funny thing, Andrew and I’m not making this up. If you’ve got too many spider webs, but not in front of not impeded by the light, that part was always fine. If you’ve got too many spider webs just even on the unit. Like it literally was like so I had to keep a stick from the yard. And I would go and you know, because I’m not touching those things. So I would literally have to sit there at least a couple of times every summer a couple times every winter and literally, like just get all the webs off. And it wasn’t even the light. It was the stuff in the back. So I don’t know if it was just like, so sensitive. I would love to think that but this this thing probably had not been replaced since the home was built. Yeah.
17:25
It’s one of those things that you know, you set it and forget it kind of thing. And, and you kind of you’re probably right there, they were probably on their way out. And for some reason something some weird thing happened. So yeah. And so if they are old, and you do have these issues like this one we’re having right now, I heard a new sensors
17:44
and mostly cost. I don’t I’m curious. 25 bucks. Yeah.
17:48
Yeah, it’s not like, on this order again. So like, a DIY is great DIY. Everything’s like 25 bucks to have this thing set. And, you know, to get a garage door guy out, you know, I mean, this day and age with insurance and vehicles and fuel and stuff, it’s gonna cost you 250 300 bucks to come have somebody come out and do this so. And that’s, you might be able to get a handyman out for cheaper, but probably not these days, because then you may have to wait a long time. So it’s one of those things you can take care of yourself. And, you know, unfortunately, I use Amazon just because they’re the ones that have them, you’ve got to get the OEM product. So can be a little difficult to find sometimes in the in the hardware store.
18:27
So have you actually done the repair yet?
18:29
No, I’m waiting to get Sanjay supposed to be? Yeah, like everything else, right? These days, right? The supply chain, everything’s slow right now. So Saturday, hopefully will come and take care of it. But those things, they can be very finicky. So, but you don’t want to remove them, because it’s a really good thing to have, because they can really save a life. So I know, I’ve heard people just getting tired of clipping them and getting rid of the sensors entirely. But yeah, I wouldn’t do that. So there’s a good reason for him.
19:00
So maybe you’re gonna cover this but and maybe you don’t know till you get the product and it’s whatever. But so let’s say that it’s me and you just take that for what it’s worth. And I order the sensors do I just literally go down to where they’re located in my garage and I literally just pop the old one out, pop the new one in and they set themselves or is there something more? No, you
19:20
got to you know, you got to wire them together. So there’s but they come with the wire connectors. I actually you know, I went on YouTube and kind of found a guy that actually did this just because that’s the way I usually diagnose things these days. Trying to figure it out, kind of burrow it down and then get to a point where I think it’s this and then go on to YouTube. And it’s pretty easy. It’s cut cut, it’s low voltage wiring, so you cut the wire and they come with a little connectors. The wire with a blue strip, attaches to the wire with a blue strip, the wire that doesn’t have a blue strip attached to the wire that doesn’t have a blue strip, wire and are only wired up those together. Actually, the connector has some some dielectric grease in it, which is a little bit better. And then the mounting has a wing that. So you can undo them pretty easily. You don’t need tools or anything like that. And then you have to align them. But it’s pretty easy because they light up when they’re aligned. So, you know, you kind of have an idea. So you kind of shoot in the right directions. And you’re gonna have you know, it’s not that sensitive. So yeah, it’s something that most it’s a DIY thing. It’s not terribly difficult. And it’s not on YouTube, but you can actually see it be done. It’s really easy. Okay, and replacing sensors
20:36
on pressure. Doesn’t sound like a very long process. No, should probably
20:39
take me 15 minutes. It took me longer to just trying to figure out what the product is. Yeah, and messing around with trying to put covers on and try to put cardboard on it and getting Betty out there and trying to block the sun. And
20:53
those are the moments though, that you know, you just can’t get you can’t get that time back. I mean, that’s time with your loved one that things together. Yes. Yeah. You could call it that. Yeah. Somebody that was there was someone’s written that down on a list things I’ve done for you. Yeah, that list exists.
21:15
Good. So we talked a lot about the sensors. That’s pretty much the main thing that’s going to go wrong with your with your system. You know, the other things that can go wrong. Or if you got a noisy garage door, check, make sure everything’s aligned properly, make sure all the hinges are are aligned and the bolts are tight. If you got a lot of squeaks, if you got middle rollers, they make you know, what is this stuff called it’s a garage door pro lube. Um, you can literally get this garage door Pro Loop that has a synthetic product, it doesn’t have petroleum minutes. So if they have if there’s any nylon parts, and there’s like, dissolve them, and it’s not going to attract as much grease and stuff works pretty good. And you can use it, like I’ve got cancelled and I use it all over the place. It’s kind of like a silicone grease, or silicone lubricant. So you can leave all you want to take care of and what are they say spray. They’re saying you check it every like three to four months, replacing hinges. Pretty simple. And they’re pretty inexpensive to get those on the hardware store. They’re pretty universal. If you got to get over if you got a hinge that’s cracking, just put a new one on that will take you all of you know with with the cordless drill, take you all the 15 minutes once you got the parts in hand. Although one of the things that I noticed I had one that the hinges would were would bro broke or not would it broke. So I got a new hinge and the new hinge sheared. And then it turned out that my door was buckling. And it would when it closed, it would kind of go it would kind of snap back. And it turned out that they had not put a extra spacer but an extra support beam on this thing, if you will, it’s like a metal thing. And actually had a garage door guy come out and tell me that and he put this beam on it and never had a problem again. And so if you do have a garage door, it should have one at the top one at the bottom, or at least and hopefully one in the middle too. So those are some kind of simple things. And well, that’s our show. Just to get our timer like wow, we only got a minute. So that’s the hopefully this you find the things useful. Because yeah, I mean, garage doors can be so convenient. But man, when they don’t work, they can be such a pain in the butt. And it’s one of those things that you know, they work for so long with without problems. And then when they do start to have problems, trying to figure it out can take you a while. But you know, try it, give it a shot. See if you can fix it yourself before you have to call a garage door guy out because you know, nothing’s cheap these days. If you need any Oh, one last thing, I forgot to mention this, if if you have any problems with like a broken spring or torsion bar, don’t mess with those. Those will literally take your arm off your eye out. I mean, they can really hurt you. So for anything like a broken spring, or broken torsion bar, call a professional that is definitely sometime you want to call a professional. Do not do that. Yeah, we got to wrap this up. Do you have a plumbing, electrical heating or air problems you can call us at 530-230-9092 The number again 530-230-9092. You can find us on the web at easiest att.com. And with that, we’ll catch you guys next week. Thanks for listening. Bye.
24:31
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