SUMMARY KEYWORDS
fan, house, air, air conditioning, attic, snow, abt, hvac system, home, joists, pull, night, windows, talking, chp officer, season, literally, mountain, couple, turn
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 & 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!, the show of DIY do’s and don’ts. Zooming in here from Grass Valley, and Rosalie Brown, as well, my co host and producer of the show, and she’s zooming in from the lovely LA. And yeah, it’s been, we’re just off air. We’re just talking about the weather we’ve all been experiencing. And, and she’s been seeing all our friends up here in the mountains. And we pre record this just to let you guys know, it’s win state today. And yeah, it’s been quite the ride.
00:55
I think I was actually on the phone with you.
00:59
We were on the phone.
01:01
And I was like, wait, you sound distracted. And all of a sudden you’re like, Well, I’m trying let me try to describe to you what I’m witnessing and like the snow is coming down and cars are peeling out. And I’m like saying what,
01:13
what’s going on? Yeah, so So yesterday, Tuesday, some of you know if you live in the county, we were I was driving to Nevada City and from Grass Valley, and I can’t remember probably around 11 o’clock. And all sudden, I’m going through Brunswick basin. And then there’s a CHP officer in front of like two of the cars in front of me going back and forth on the highway to slow traffic down, I figured out you know, somebody must have dropped something out of the back of their truck or something, they got to clear it off, no big deal, whatever. And so I just I didn’t get off the freeway and it just stayed on the freeway and drove up and then got to the top of the hill at the banner mountain banner, lava cap bridge there. And there’s snow on the ground. And I could look down towards gold flat or cold run and I can see a wall of snow coming down. I mean, it was literally like a wall. There was it was clear where I was it wasn’t raining wasn’t doing anything, but it was completely white, just a half a mile down the road, right. And then as the traffic’s moving kind of slowly, and we’re getting it’s getting the snows getting deeper and deeper. And it was I mean, we’re literally talking from the top of that hill to, to that that first on ramp. It completely changed. It was slushy and maybe a little bit snow at the top of the hill. And ironically, as you’re going downhill, it’s more snow which doesn’t normally happen in Nevada County, right. It’s usually as you go up. And it’s getting the snow is getting deeper and deeper to the point where the road now was then is a sheet of ice and the truck that’s in front of me that has a truck that’s pulling a small cargo trailer starts to Jackknife and slide towards the car in front of him. Because I’m pulling over to the side of the road trying to get into the shoulder because I figure but at least it’s not ice at least it’s just snow that’ll stop because I decided that my two wheel drive trucks moved off banner. And then I finally got off. I mean, it was just nuts. And then you come to see all these cars are split out and CHP officers tow trucks and and then I get off the road and take the backroads around town to get downtown. And as I got off the road, I go by Telestream and the mini place and there’s like almost no snow on the ground. So like there must have like just been the cell that park itself right over Highway 49 right there at the seven hills district. I just dumped snow and hail. It was crazy. It was just that and then it’s gonna be like 80 degrees this weekend. Right? That’s,
03:41
I think that’s what was tripping me out is that um, so I saw the pictures because, um, you know, I follow you Banette and like you said, I still got plenty of friends that have experiences weather, and then I saw like, oh, but you’re gonna go the breakout, your shorts and your swim tops, because it’s going to be like summer weather this weekend. And I was like, you know, that’s something that it kind of reminds me of not to bring up Michigan, but I gotta be honest with you. There’s a whole saying and you know, because you you know, you have ties to St. Paul. And you’ve been back that way many times. And it’s like, you know, there’s a kind of a saying, If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes because it’s gonna change. And they mean usually in the same like, they literally mean five minutes because I’ve been there when you’re on the
04:21
plane. So whether it’s been there or that doesn’t normally happen like that slows things down. Right they’ll say the mountain slow stuff down.
04:29
Yeah, I just can’t believe you’re gonna be like, there you go. Dunk it snow to break out the short. So that’s going to be interesting. You’re gonna have a bunch of people probably out and about this weekend. So I mean, good for you. You guys deserve it? I mean, yeah.
04:43
That’s awful. Yeah, this time of year. It’s crazy. So yeah, so it was this interesting. Kind of fun because it was also we were talking off air about different products and services that we sell and also trying to figure out what we’re going to talk about on the show today. That’s one thing we want to spill Crazy my bed just coming up still coming off COVID You’re in my bed dealing with a bunch of stuff yourself. We’re both kind of Just Dance is crazy right now so
05:10
so I’m actually taking a I’m taking Assistant Producer title this this time because I did not come prepared with topics and
05:18
it’s nuts. I mean things are just been nuts this last couple of weeks and yeah, it has been
05:23
but the cool thing is we’re we are working on with so much going on and also abt you know shows brought to you by EBT having plumbing, electrical heat and air right. So we always have things that to think about talking about promote. And so what we kind of honed in on in the month of May was we were kind of talking a lot about electrical safety, things like that. But we also are looking at since we’re Believe it or not with a snow, it’s hard to say this, but we’re in that shoulder season, right. So really, the other topic that we thought was really important to talk about too, is the benefit of the whole house fan. Because a lot of folks, I think in the older homes, especially, you know, I know my older house when I lived in Nevada City man did not have great insulation and did not have great air circulation. So I would have loved to have had a whole house fan, if not on also full age pack system would have been great, but a whole house fan would have been just as great.
06:21
Yeah, I mean, it’s a whole house fan does not necessarily take the place of AC, like I have a last fan that I still use my air conditioning, but I like to be comfortable. But one of the things one of the nice things is about where we live is it tends to cool off at night. You know, it doesn’t get freezing at night, but it cools off enough to where it’s comfortable. So all house fan, what it does is it brings in that outside cooler air in the evening, and keeps the house cool throughout the night. So you’re not having to run the air conditioning. And I’ve had friends that actually we’ve put them in for and they’ve got regular work lives, where they’re not working, they’re not working in their home office, or at least this is pre pandemic, not working at the home office. And they would turn their fan on at night, run it all day, close the house, or excuse me, run it all night, turn it off, close the house up, leave for work, and they’d come home, and the House would still be comfortable. And then they turn the whole house fan back on and it would the outside air would be a little cooler than the inside air because, you know, the solar radiation would heat the house up a little bit. But because the facts that they kept the house close, they didn’t need to turn their AC on. So they could go most of summer without actually having to turn the air conditioning on just because of the fact that the cool that house down and eating enough that they’d be comfortable. So it’s because of where we live because it cools off at night
07:48
here. Yeah, I mean, and that to me would have been would have been worth it because it was the you know, you know harder to sleep at night when it’s like just staying, you
07:57
didn’t have it and it’s even a Bear Mountain, I put one up at Gander Mountain when our house up there and we didn’t have air conditioning, and you have those two or three weeks where it’s just miserable up there. And being able to turn that AC being able to turn on the whole house fan to cool off the house at night, and then lock shutting everything up. And then going through the day with a little stiflingly in there. But it would it would be okay. If it wasn’t as
08:22
bad as more manageable for sure. And so one thing I wanted to kind of check in with you about so I heard that, um, and you know, a lot of the homes in our area are well, Nevada County or Nevada and Placer County or older homes, right? So did the whole house fan from like years ago that we would install What does kind of like noisy so so things have improved a
08:47
lot, right? The family put in on our house and Banner mountain it was this is, you know, shoot 15 years ago or whatever, 10 years ago, I didn’t have access to the whole house fans that we have today. And I put in one of the older school ones with the little louvers that open up when you turn the fan on, and you’ve got this big blade, and this big fan that’s like sits right on top of the joists. And you can literally see that the fin the fan twirling right there, those things are noisy. I mean, it sounds like a helicopter when you turn it on. So that’d be one of those things where we wouldn’t turn it on. We wouldn’t leave it on all night. We would turn it on for maybe an hour and just deal with the noise and then turn it off the fans that we’re installing these days. The fan is actually in the acoustical duct work that is remote from the plenum that’s on the ceiling or the box that’s on the ceiling where the air comes in. And that it’s ducted up into the joists Bay up inside the attic and then hung by straps. So it’s not a it’s not the fan isn’t literally touching the structure of the house and reverberating on the house. Because one of the things with those old fans, is it sitting right on the joists, and you got these big blades spinning really fast and really loud. And it just like would shake would shake the house, but you could hear it through the, the framing, and then also the air. So yeah, they were really noisy, the new ones are so much quieter. I’ve got one in my house right now are housed in Grass Valley. And during the summertime, during the late spring, summer and early fall, we’ll run it pretty much every night. And will this turn around though it has a has a timer on it, you know, one hour, two hours, three hours, four hours, eight hours, depending on how cool it is outside, I’ll set it like if it’s, if it’s going to be a warmer evening, I’ll just leave it on all night, I’ll leave it off for eight hours. If it’s going to be cooler, and I know it’s going to get too cold like, you know, coming up here. And the next few weeks, that will probably start warming up enough it’ll start turning it on will just turn off, set it for like an hour or two. And then we’ll turn off when we’re sleeping in the house won’t get too cold. This things are it’s amazing. You don’t even hear it. It’s so quiet. I was we’re kind of talking off air too. But yeah, the nice thing is, well, let’s go back a little bit what is a whole house fan, a house fan is a fan that literally pulls the air from outside into your home, and then exhaust it through this fan. So it you open some windows in some key areas. And then to pull the pull air in from the outside and let it escape through into the attic and through the vents. So that’s what a little house fan does. And it is when it’s on high Lux jeans, the air. I can’t remember what it is roughly but it’s like I think it’s four to five times every hour to exchange all the air inside your house. And it might even be greater than that. Don’t quote me on that, because I’m just going off my memory and I’m still a little foggy from COVID. So but it’s literally pulling all the air from your house and putting it to the outside outdoors and pulling it fresh air. And one of the benefits I’ve found no matter what time of year is when I’m cooking, sometimes it’s usually me when I’m cooking, I’ll burn things. And especially during the winter months when everything’s closed up. And the rangehood can’t keep up with the amount of smoke that I’ve just created. Because I’ve done a real good job of cooking. And you know, the smoke alarms going off and dinner’s ready, right? I’ll throw the whole house fan on and evacuate all the smoke within minutes. It’ll take it all outside. So you can drive exactly
12:36
what so chunk of meat that’s on the
12:42
pizza, but that’s okay. So it sounds like it really improves the indoor air quality. Right? I mean, pretty quickly.
12:49
Yeah. So I mean, it pull air in and out from outside. So they’re great. You know, speaking of indoor air quality, you know, you can’t use it when it’s fires. So that’s one of the bummers that we have up here now because the fire season so much longer and smoke so bad. But when it’s not, when it’s not smoky, yeah, it’ll pull in the outside air, so you don’t get the stale air, it’ll pull some of the whatever you got inside of the house outside. Yeah, totally, it can totally help with the indoor air quality. It just, it’s just so much more comfortable. And the savings. It’s one of the things too, it’s kind of it’s one of the, from what I’ve read, it’s one of the best ways to save on energy for cooling your house, bar none. Way better than upgrading a couple of Sears in your air conditioning system, way better than a lot even better than some installations and windows and things like that. It does a really good job that payback is really fast, because they’re not ridiculously expensive. They’re not ridiculously expensive to install. So the payback is within a couple years. You know, unlike you know, like we’ll put a tankless water heater and you’re probably talking about five or six years before you’re going to realize a payback on it or a new system. You’re probably talking about our new HVAC system, you’re probably talking about 10 or 15 years payback time on this, we’ll pay it back in a couple of years easy sometimes, depending on how often how religious you are about using it, you can possibly even pay it off within one season. And I know some friends that pay, you know, five or 600 bucks a month during the cooling season. And if you can just keep that down by 20 30%. Now you’re talking you know, 100 bucks a month, couple 100 bucks a month. So it can be it can be a substantial savings. So because it
14:37
costs you so much less to run that versus your H PAC system.
14:41
Exactly. Exactly. And there are times you know where you if you’re religious about it, you can actually use it in lieu of your aircon air conditioning depending on the time of year. One of the other benefits is we live in a ranch style house single storey and And my wife doesn’t like us leaving the windows open at night, that kind of, you know, makes her a little nervous, which is totally understandable. One of the nice things about the whole house thing is I don’t need to leave the windows all the way open, like I would if I didn’t have the whole house fan. I’ll leave the windows open about two inches in the rooms that we’re using. And then I put up a piece of pipe and unlock the windows so they can’t open anymore. And so she feels safe. And with Ohio’s whole house fan, I’ve got enough air coming in through those windows, that will actually cool the house without having to have every window in the house open, wide open, where somebody can easily climb in.
15:44
Okay, so I’m with Benny, because you know I listen to to crime. So
15:49
Betty those students she loves. Right. So yeah,
15:51
that’s why that’s why she says the windows will not be open all the way started. But also, you know, forget the crazy murderer, you also have to worry about bears. I mean, like, you know, if bears want to get in, like, you don’t want to you don’t invite them. So I’m, I’m with her on that. But I do think that, um, yeah, I mean, I just I would have loved to have had a whole house fan. And these, um, price wise, no, we can’t really talk price, because that depends on so many different things. But this is not a huge, I would I wouldn’t say this is a huge expense, right? I mean, like, it’s
16:19
no, I mean, you’re talking, you know, it’s a couple grand, I mean, you’re not talking ridiculous, you’re not talking Yeah, like a whole new HVAC system can cost you upwards towards eight to $15,000 these days. And just to let you know, it’s not getting any cheaper, we’re seeing increases. So far this year on our material, we’ve seen increases on equipment over 30% on equipment. It’s I mean, it’s nuts, 30% on equipment, that doesn’t even get don’t even get me started on on the copper line sets, and, and wire and everything else, we’ve seen a couple of 100% on those. So things are not getting cheaper. So if you’re thinking about doing anything, do it now. And that was something else I was going to say, you know, in the shoulder season, we tend to be a little bit more economical with our pricing because things are a little bit slower. And I’m not the only contractor that’ll say that. For HVAC department, it gets, you know, when it’s nice and temporary outside, we don’t we’re not doing a lot, you can get a better deal. And, you know, especially now we I just got a email from my distributor, our prices are going up another 6% next month. So every month, I’m getting something from a distributor saying the prices are going up once again. Do it now don’t wait. The other nice thing about doing it now is our guys can actually be up in your attic. And it’s not the temperature of the sun. We can do it during regular work hours not have to do it before eight o’clock in the morning. Because it gets hot knows
17:47
about it. That’s that’s probably not safe for
17:49
150 degrees. 180 degrees easy in an attic. So it’s you know, you definitely wanted to do these type of things during the shoulder seasons if you can. And if you are on the fence about doing something like a new HVAC system, or in whole house fan, now’s the time to do it. Yeah, it’s just I mean, things are not getting cheaper. And labor is not getting cheaper either. Having to pay our guy it’s costing me more and more to attract talent right now. So yeah, things are not getting cheaper. It’s not easy
18:17
right now, let’s just say that.
18:19
It’s an interesting time.
18:20
I’m paying a lot for gas. I’m paying a lot at the grocery store. And as you know, I’m paying ridiculous amounts of money to insure a house. So yeah, I mean, yeah, you’re
18:29
sure it’s on your property. It’s safe or Detroit What 235% 238% increase
18:35
that’s an interesting conversation I’m going to be having with someone.
18:43
Yeah, I mean, that’s a lot right. So so but that’s just to say like everything right now just feel so tough. And so if there’s a you know, what we’re trying to do as a as a small business, abt, local business is we’re trying to find like, Where can we say what can we help promote? Like, what? Okay, obviously, we’re here to make money. But we want to try to get the word out when we know we’ve got a window.
19:05
And what we’ve been the best benefit our clients right now. And whole house fans are one of the things it’s a quick payback. And I love having one my wife loves having it. And she didn’t think she would she’s kind of like, why are you doing that? And I tried to explain it to her and she’s like, whatever. I’ll trust you. Yeah, and then it really affects her because it’s you don’t really see it. It’s a little great that’s in the attic. Or excuse me in the hallway. This is like another return error for your for your HVAC system. It’s not, you know, atrocious, that doesn’t look bad. But once we got it in, she’s like, I don’t know how we live without it. It’s just it just makes life so much more comfortable. Right? And also, you know, like, I like having air conditioning. I don’t like using air conditioning. I like I moved to the mountains to live in the mountains and to live outdoors. And I don’t like being awkward. Given a house and everything locked up, I like having fresh air coming in. So it’s really nice to be able to sleep with a window open and having to having the fan going, when you can, you know, when it’s up when there’s not huge amounts of forest fires.
20:14
I mean, that’s the other thing, right? So let’s say that somebody had their interest piqued on this whole house fan idea. Can I drop the phone number and have them give us a call? Would that be
20:25
a little bit more time? So any other questions on on the whole house fan? Well,
20:31
I do have some questions about the whole house found Andrew. And I would like to know, again, just if I have, ah, if I have an air conditioning unit already, and I feel really good about that. I’m all excited. You still again, just to drive this home, there is still a benefit, because I will be using that. That system less most likely, if I go ahead and invest in this whole house, man, because I can see people saying, well, I have a, you know, I have air conditioning. I don’t need this. But it’s not that’s where you’re going beautiful add on, right?
21:03
Yeah, that’s where you’re going. That’s where you got to realize the savings. I mean, if you don’t have air conditioning, but you put one of these things, it’s more comfort, because you’re gonna be running, you know, it’s, it’s equipment, I think, I think it’s like 100 watts or something like that. It’s almost nothing. It’s like a light bulb, right? Leaving a light bulb on at night that uses very, very, very little electricity. But you will see a little increase in your bill, right, a buck or two a month or something. But compare that to a compressor that’s working. That’s where you really see them with the savings. So it’s not necessarily in lieu of air conditioning, it works really well with it
21:38
with it conjunction right. And so And okay, so then that brings up for me really quickly. So is there a lot of maintenance associated with that is that one more thing that I have to
21:49
nothing, it’s literally a fan electric fan. If you can picture that to an electric fan that’s hooked up to a piece of ductwork that has a plenum that has insulated doors that close when there’s no air pressure against them. Really simple. And it’s a light switch that turns it on and off. It’s a little controller, but essentially just the light switch. And electric fan. So it’s really, really basic. No maintenance, no required. Yeah.
22:18
Like a plug, plug it and leave it. That’s awesome. I love that. Yeah.
22:21
Solutions. Yeah, perfect.
22:22
Yeah. Well, I do not actually I’m sorry, trying to have any more questions about
22:28
oh, those are good questions. Because yeah, how do they work? Yeah. So. So if you’re thinking about it, yeah, definitely give us a call. We’re about to give you a quote on it. And we’re actually won’t be talking about that. That’s, that’s later on in the season. Thinking that there is another option now that’s later on the next next month, but if you do have any questions about it, or one, so we can take a look and see if it’s something that’s that we can, that’s something that we can install for you. Oh, that is one thing. It’s not something you can necessarily put in on a modular home, because we don’t need an attic space. So if you don’t have an attic space, it’s not really going to necessarily sure modular modular homes don’t usually have attic spaces. But if you do want to have us come and take a look, give us a call at
23:19
55023093330 9092.
23:26
Or you can find us on the web at easiest AB t.com. That’s easy as abc.com Like us on Facebook. We’ve got a lot of fun stuff on there. We’ve had some really good informational stuff. We’ve had some great comments on lately on some home repair and maintenance and that one about the smells on on outlets and stuff like picked a bunch of interest on people like I never thought about that. But that was green.
23:50
Never Knew I never knew. Be careful if your wall stink, it can be a wiring issue you want to get out right away.
23:58
So give us a call and thanks for listening and we’ll catch you guys next week. Thanks.
24:03
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 KNC Oh, Newstalk 830