SUMMARY KEYWORDS
plumbing, licensed plumber, diy, tub, cover, line, garage door, property, entertaining, overflow, prv, hire, pressure, sensors, caffeinated, ignite, water, truck, easy, licensed
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 heating air owner Andrew Twidwell and Rosalie brown with a helpful land 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. It’s a show of DIY do’s and don’ts. And I’m zooming in with Rosalie Brown and we’re here to talk about DIY do’s and don’ts. And we got lots of stuff going on what’s going on with you lately? We need to talk about what we’re going to talk about for banter. But oh, I did talk about a little bit. You have because we kind of talked about it. We talked about garage doors last week. And the saga continued. But first I have to week
00:44
I have to hit pause because…are you super caffeinated right now? You look normal. But you’re like three stories ahead. Slow down, brother.
01:00
I did go for a nice five mile hike this morning. So, a little.
01:04
You got your cell phone? Yeah, yes. Yeah. And then I was
01:07
we got lost. So I was late to my first meeting this morning by like, 15 minutes. Yeah, that’s the call and and yeah, that was really good. Fortunately, their employees so yeah, I can’t get too mad at me.
01:20
What game would it work?
01:22
I can’t, they can’t fire me for I gotta be fired a long time ago. If I didn’t know the business. Let’s be honest.
01:31
I got lost somewhere. And I mean, that doesn’t even sound like an adult thing to say. But I know that you were but we took
01:38
this hike along the Mississippi River and we took these trails that we hadn’t tried before. And we’re coming back. We’re like, oh, this doesn’t look right. But as we’re going in the right direction, and then we ended up like hitting a dead end and having to backtrack by like, a quarter mile or over half a mile. So then we only gave herself the 15 minutes buffer. So yeah, we lost that. 15 minutes. I mean, a little bit.
02:02
Look, if this had happened 15 years ago, perhaps like would you have been able to hustle back in time. But you know, we talked about this we’re older now we live life is moving at a different speed and you just roll into it, man, just roll into it. Don’t Don’t exert extra if you don’t have to. That’s my thing is like, half it when you can’t, you know, do what you can’t write and do what you gotta do. Don’t overdo it. Do the
02:26
best you can. And yeah, and yeah, I messed up. So yeah, I apologize. And before. So anyway, I will slow down my conversation. So everybody can understand what I’m saying. And I’m not just blah, blah, blah.
02:38
Ghost involved, though. See, I voted for a paranormal for guys. Yeah. And with you’re just totally
02:46
possible. I mean, it’s the house was built. We were talking to the neighbor trying to figure out when this house was built, and their house was built in 1892. And this house was not on the property when that house was built. So it was built after that. But it was built just at the turn of the century, just like 19 two or 19, three, something like that. So yeah, it is old. So I’m sure there’s I’m sure it’s haunted. So people died in here. Oh, I
03:15
know. I mean, don’t get me started. We could have a whole show on like paranormal in the Midwest. I’ve got some great experiences. But since I don’t have my whiskey flask candy this week. Let’s see. So you determined that it was not a ghost that was stopping the
03:33
it was what are we figured out? Well, we figured out that was probably the light sensors, the the beam that shoots across. So it’s the safety switch so that if a child or a dog walks through the door doesn’t shut on them. So we determine that was the issue. So I got new. I ordered new safety switches. And then of course, I was going to put them out on a Saturday got the package? And was it safety switches or sensors? No, it was just brakes for a Honda Civic or something. So I had to send those back. reorder them. Fortunately, it was faster this time. So I got it in in a matter of like 40 hours. So then I go to install them. And in my infinite wisdom and like like we were just talking about earlier about me being jacked up and ready to go to caffeinated up. I went guns blazing and I went and cut the wire to the sensor before turning it off. And it was such a rookie move. I know that whenever you’re working on electrical stuff, you need to turn the power off. So I cut the wire. So Mike, and I did that. And I’m like, I cut both of them at the same time. And I thought well, it’s probably just it’s probably just a switch that’s probably just, you know, positive going through and running through the switch. So I should be good. It’s like everything’s set up and it doesn’t work and I’m like, Darn it so that I double check the power and I didn’t have any power and I got some Yeah, when all else fails with instructions, right, so I read the instructions, and now it’s positive negative, they go to this thing that are powered. And so I shorted something out. And then I went through the whole rigmarole of trying to figure out if there was a fuse on this device on this garage door. And for the low voltage, or a transformer, and I couldn’t find anything on the schematics that could find anything anywhere. And I searched for hours, something like this 15 minute project, all of a sudden, I’m into it for like two hours now. And then finally, like, Okay, I blew something. And the only thing that’s left is I gotta replace the motherboard. Well, the motherboards like 60 bucks. So I start like, alright, this thing’s 10 years old, how much is a whole new unit? So I found a whole new unit, one of the box stores for 159 bucks. I’m like, Alright, brand new, I don’t have to deal with anything else comes with new sensors comes with everything. So I got a brand new garage door opener, installed that new sensors put a new button on I did the whole thing. So yeah, through the diagnostic, I probably should have done that in the beginning and probably should have just said, you know, I’m just gonna get a whole new unit. Now I know better. You know, if it’s 1015 years old, it’s probably just replaced it. So do as I say, don’t do as I do. You know, if you’re doing this up, I would have been easier. I just wanted to point out that a guy really took it took me less time to install that thing than it was for me to figure out what was wrong with it.
06:25
I just want to come back to like, you literally own a company at plumbing, electric heat and air and you legitimately cut the cord without turning.
06:36
It was low voltage on the matter. rookie move. Yeah, yeah. The first time I’ve done it, I wish I could say it was the first time I’ve ever done that. But now I’ve got I’ve got players that have like Ark, you know, that have holes in them, because I’ve done that before or if shorted them out. But I’m hot wires and you know, 110 But yeah, so it’s yeah, I learned a valuable lesson. Once again.
07:01
Your DIY journey actually is very entertaining to me. Because it’s like, you know, better, but you do what you want to do anyway. So
07:11
I that’s almost like, there’s almost a bad thing when you know, just enough to be dangerous. And sometimes I know just enough to be dangerous. And I’ll go in without reading the instructions. And which will remind you to turn the power off. And then yeah, I go and I blow something up. Yeah, so directions
07:31
are the, the printed sheets that come in something just so you know. So I know sometimes it gets used as like cat litter or like birdcage line or whatever, but when all else fails, refer to Yeah, they’re playing usually come in
07:46
get better though I did, I did, I installed the new garage door opener. And just this is just the motor right? I didn’t install the track or anything like that I just, I replaced like for like, and this new one. Like, has like a programming scenario that you have to go through. And of course I didn’t read that. So I’m like, trying to get it to work and it’s not working. I just connect the chain I reconnected with the door down thinking that’s the problem and then I read the instructions is like all you gotta do is push this button down and it automatically learns when it switches to shut off and then you push it up and automatically learns when it’s listed shut off and like myself, I had another half an hour right there. There
08:28
was an easy button. There literally was an easy button and you didn’t take it that’s it also explains why sometimes when I text you I don’t hear back for a long time. Now I can assume that you’ve gone down a rabbit hole of DIY and gone the the long distance, the shortcut.
08:44
Gosh, sometimes it’s cheaper just to hire somebody and to be honest, if I was to really factor in how much my time is worth. Yeah, it would probably have been cheaper just to hire somebody.
08:55
But But you know what’s cool? Now you have a tenant who’s like, they don’t know necessarily all the backstory unless you share it or unless they want to share
09:04
why cuz I’m an open book. Yeah, I mean, literally telling however many people are 12 listeners about right now.
09:11
You are at DIY.
09:13
And I’m like I’m sorry, I messed up. You know, that’s literally cut the wires such total rookie moves. Oh, whatever. She has a whole suite her while she’s
09:21
probably really happy because of the end result is her garage door is not working properly. Right.
09:26
Yeah. And it’ll be fine. I mean, it’s, everything’s brand new. So it’ll, it’ll be good for another 15 years. That’s a pretty sad component.
09:33
And result is what we’re after here and results after so that’s awesome.
09:38
matters more than more than anything else. But yeah, anyway, so that was that was that was my journey with this garage door and that was one gret one of 123 for openers I gotta deal with. Okay, so maybe we should talk about our the river or the reason why we’re here DIY do’s and don’ts. So you can’t we were trying to figure out what to do about the show. Yeah,
09:59
yeah, well ironi let’s do a q&a. Yeah. So the irony is that I’m going to be asking the guy who just said that he basically cut something that had live power to it. Okay.
10:11
But fortunately, I already went through this this questionnaire and highlighted the ones that are pretty sure I know the answer. And at least at least I can pick up the second sound like I know, I’m sorry, like, I’m
10:20
gonna tell you, you do. I mean, one of the things I appreciate about you is you always have a way of spinning something. So it’s at least entertaining if the actual accuracy is missing a little bit. You’re forgiven, because it’s entertaining. So, yes. So as the producer and co host of said show, I, here’s I’m going to ask you some questions. And it’s not quite a game show, but I know you’re.
10:44
So this is there’s no prizes involved with
10:46
no, none of that. We just get to keep hanging out together. Okay. So what here’s my question, and I’m gonna say it I’m praying, I say this correctly. What’s an I can’t do it?
10:56
You did it before. I know. Just Just go just roll with it. Whatever comes out, what’s an execution? Discussion? What is it? What is it so discussion? So that is a little flange or the flange G that goes behind the valve, or behind the P trap that covers It’s a beauty cabinet, it basically covers the hole that was made for the pipe to come through the wall. So there’s that little chrome disc that covers I mean, plumbing, that’s where we use it. There’s other discussions write in other trades and other kinds of fields, but for plumbing discussion is it basically covers the hole that we made to put the pipe through the drywall, or plaster whatever the wall is, so it makes it look pretty. Yeah. All right. It’s just a beauty thing.
11:46
Okay, well, we do like aesthetics here at you got that.
11:49
It’s finished trim. It’s on. You see that, right? It’s on the outside of the walls are very important. I’ve seen many people not use them and it looks you know, it shows it shows you’re doing
11:58
I’ve lived in houses that showed everything. So it’s a it’s a nice step to actually cover up your dirty laundry. Okay, well, here’s something that should be easy, and it is a bit cumbersome. It is a bit like a commercial. But here we are. The show is sponsored by ABC plumbing electric Kate Nair. So why should I hire a licensed plumber? What’s the difference between a licensed plumber and the guy with the cool side? Truck? Yeah,
12:23
on his truck. Yeah, handyman. So one of the things that a licensed plumber brings, obviously is training, I mean, you have to go through a certain amount of education to be able to come become a licensed plumber. The second thing, one of the more, which I think is more important than the mean, granted, we should know what we’re doing right. So at least when you’re calling a plumbing company, licensed plumber, you know that they know what they’re doing. That’s kind of a given. But the other things that come with licensed plumber is you have to be bonded bare minimum, you have to be bonded. So if anything happens on the property, there’s a $14,000 bond, so they’ll take care of it. Unfortunately, $14,000 isn’t really what I think is 14, five, now something like that, if I remember correctly, it’s been a while since I’ve had to get the bond doesn’t cover much, right? I mean, a gallon of water can do $14,000, right damage, if you leave it there long enough. Yeah. And then if you got a plumbing leak, you can be pushing out a gallons per minute. So hopefully, the licensed plumber that you hire has liability insurance, like we carry a $2 million liability insurance. So if if something occurs, it’s covered for up to I think it’s a million dollars per incident. So, you know, we’re pretty well covered if something happens, you know. So those are the main things is insurance. But also if you’re licensed contractor, licensed plumber, you have to have workers comp. So if you have employees that are working for you, they have to have workers comp, so if they get hurt on the on the job site, workers comp takes care of them. If you don’t have workers comp, and somebody gets hurt on on your property, they can go after your homeowners insurance. So if Joe Blow comes in and breaks his leg and is out of work for six months, he needs to pay his bills. So he’s going to go after try to get the money no matter what he can, and he may actually go after your homeowners insurance or may sue you to get compensated for his injury on your property. So and to be honest, there’s nothing you can really do about it except pay that there’s it’s standing law right now, if somebody gets hurt on your property, it’s your responsibility unless they’ve got some other unless they’re licensed contractor that has workers comp, so that’s a big one. So it really protects you. Plus, you know, if you hire a legitimate licensed contractor that’s been around for a while, like we have over 20 years now. You know, they’re gonna be either tomorrow or next year to backup any kind of warranties and you know, so if something happens, they’re going to take care of you. Whereas the check in the truck, you know, he may be spread so thin that he may not be able to take care of it. take care of you. And if he’s not licensed, you really don’t have a lot of recourse to go after him except for litigation, which a lot of times is more expensive than the potential rewards you can get. And let’s be honest, if he’s a truck and a truck and doesn’t have a license, he probably doesn’t have any assets to get for you to go after anyway. So go for it. So um, you’re gonna, you’re gonna get us beat up pickup truck. That’s the extent and maybe it’s tools, you know, so you can maybe get five grand. And you could done hundreds of 1000s of dollars of damage to your property.
15:29
So hopefully, you’ll get his hound dog as well. But yeah, okay. Yeah. So let’s talk for just a second about don’t go too deep into this, because it will bore people to death. I find I find it fascinating. But, um, talk to me a little bit about plumbing. I hear plumbing code, I’m using air quotes. Yeah, plumbing code all about. So I get
15:49
a lot of people are like, yeah, and whatever. Plumbing Code, I forget about codes, they’re just, they’re just a pillar, right? The gesture. gestion will plumbing codes are written to protect both property and person. That is the basis for plumbing code. So one of the main things for plumbers is we protect the health and safety of the nation, we make sure that you have clean drinking water, we make sure that there’s not a cross contamination between the sewer pipe and the drinking water pipe, we make sure that the gas lines are installed correctly so that we don’t blow up the house, those sort of things. It’s to protect property and and person. So that’s the basis of it. And if you you know, traveled much, you can go to other countries where they don’t have said codes, and you can’t drink the water. So and part of reason is because they don’t have plumbing codes, and they have a lot of cross contamination between the dirty water and got it. Okay, let’s put a password plumbing codes are for protect, to protect personal property.
16:47
Okay, like that like that. Okay, so here’s a trick question, but I bet you know it. What’s the appropriate height for a gas water heater? Is there such a thing, and what is it
16:58
so the appropriate height for gas water heater, it can be on the ground, as long as it’s not in a garage. If it’s in a garage, we have potential for gas to leak out of the gas tank and roll out onto the floor, you don’t want that standing pilot to ignite the gas and blow up your house. So the code is that pilot light or that burner needs to be 18 inches above the ground. So theoretically, to give you enough buffer between the ground and any vapor that may be rising, so it won’t ignite it. And typically, so what that means for installation is it’s really 14 inches from the bottom of the water heater because there’s about four inches from the bottom of the water heater to where the ignition point is. So but even on electric water heater, we got to put them on stance as well because there’s a switch in there that has a potential for arcing. And it can ignite the gas. So we put them as well. And we just put them on a gas water heater stand they it’s a little higher than needs to be but it’s still it’s above 18 inches. I’m not sure but that’s the goal. That’s the reason why we put them up. Okay, yeah, it’s to protect it from and I’ve seen stuff like I literally worked on a house where a furnace ignited a truck. classic Chevy truck that had a rag in the the gas line, and it was parked right next to the ignition point. And it lit the apartment building on fire.
18:19
My god, no, I mean, look, I mean, they have these standards. There’s always a reason, right? It’s there’s always tragedy. And property. Yeah, yeah, perfect. Okay. So let’s say that I have a leak somewhere in the plumbing, and it’s, it’s in my shower bath, but I can’t like how do I locate that? Or what’s that about? Or give me some advice.
18:40
So I’ve used I wanted to answer this one because it’s interesting to me, because we get this call a time by tub is leaking. Can you figure out what the problem is? Ironically, like, I want to, I want to say 90%, but it’s probably close to like 75% of the time, it’s not actually a plumbing issue. It’s a tile issue. It’s where the tub and tile connect. And that little caulk line gets, you know, eventually it breaks open and water will leak get underneath and go over the rise of the little lip inside the on the toilet on the tub and leak in the wall. So I usually tell people if I get that call to if you if it is a DIY thing, if you are capable of doing clean up that hole caulk line, you know, take a knife and really clean it up and re caulk the hole that between the tub and the tile and that native xenotime will take care of that problem. Okay, that’s a good fix, right? And a good way to determine that is I’ll go in you know literally like put our hand with the shower and spray the walls to see if it if the the wall leaks, because we’ll first run water in the drain and if that doesn’t work, then we’ll spray it on the walls and then if I don’t have a personal shower, so yeah, that’s that’s something and, and surprisingly it’s a high it’s higher than more likely than not. But is that that clock
19:58
line? Well, that seems like an easy Fix, right? Yeah,
20:01
it’s a DIY project. So if you do that first before you call a plumber out, just in case, I mean, there’s a good chance that it’s that and it may just solve the problem. Problem
20:09
solved right there. Okay,
20:10
I see it all the time, all the time. Okay, so here,
20:13
my toilet is running due to high water pressure, what do I do
20:18
to your toilet is running because I water pressure, if it is indeed, because of high water pressure,
20:22
let’s say I know that for a fact, I don’t. So let’s say I did.
20:26
So plumbing. Our plumbing system inside our house is designed to work between 40 and 80 psi, the municipality or the water department in our areas, and the bad county Irrigation District is required to get water to the house. Nothing in there says it has to be at a working pressure, it can be too high or can be too low. That’s up to the homeowner to mitigate. So if it’s too low, we put a pressure vessel in there and a pressure tank and we pump up the water pressure doesn’t happen very often. But it does. Primarily we’re dealing with high water pressure. So in excess of 80 psi. So we want to bring that pressure down we own typically we want our water pressure to be about 6065 psi. So put a prv in a new prv and replace the fill valve and it should fall. So the PRV would be a pressure release valve pressure reducing valve.
21:14
Okay, well, I’ve close Okay, so prv sounds so snazzy. Okay, sure reducing
21:18
valve and that is one of the things that it has actually has a rubber diaphragm in there that opens to allow water in and once the water pressure on the other side is equal to what it’s set. It shuts the water off from the city. And so that rubber diaphragm will actually wear out because of chlorine. So eventually it does it is a it’s a serviceable item that lasts 1015, sometimes 20 years, but they were out. Okay. Okay.
21:47
Um, alright,
21:48
so it looks like we got time for at least one more,
21:51
maybe two more? Yeah. Okay, so I’m gonna go with how do I get a snake down a tub drain, because those snakes seem like they’re not gonna work with that.
22:00
In a tub drain. If you’re looking at the bottom of the drain of the tub, you have a 90 degree bend right at the bottom of that shoot. And then it goes over to what’s called the waste and overflow with that little cap that’s on the top inside of the tub. And where if we overflow the tub of water goes down, then that’s a tea, and then it’s got to go 90 degree bend down from there. And then it’s got to go through the P trap. So you’ve got 180 degrees it right within like six inches of each other, and then 180 plus another 90. So what we do is we pull the overflow cap off for the overflow cover, there’s usually two or one to two screws on that thing. You unscrew the overflow, you remove that. And then you rub Ryan, your hub snake or your nice actually we use a snake specifically for a tub because there’s such tight radius turns in there, you have to use a very flexible cable like a quarter inch that can actually work its way through that drain line. And now if once we’ve done that we’ve eliminated 180 degrees of bends. So now all we got to do is deal with getting to the P trap, and then the CMT, which is another 90 degree. So there is you know, the cables don’t like you know, they want to stay straight, and they don’t want to go through all these different angles. So if we if we can eliminate as many of the bends as possible, the easier it is going to be to clear out the drain. So pull the the waist or the overflow cover, or run it right down that center. That’s our show.
23:24
Okay, that’s who do we call so
23:27
hopefully this hopefully some of this stuff help hopefully was entertaining. That tub one’s a good one. Because if you do it really I’ve seen a lot of people struggle with it. And we come in and we’re like, how did you do that?
23:38
Magic?
23:39
We’ve done it 100 times. So yeah, it’s kind of like the garage door probably could have figured it would have been done in half an hour as opposed to digress hours. Where can you call if you want to get a licensed plumber to come and help fix your plumbing problems or electrical problems or heating and air problems, you can call us at 530-230-9092 the number 1-530-230-9092 You can find us on the web at easiest abt.com or abt plumbing.com and find us on Facebook and like our page and we got a lot of good stuff on there. A lot of this stuff gets gets rehashed on there, and it’s entertaining. So with that, I’ll catch you guys next week and thanks for listening.
24:19
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 TNC on Newstalk 830