0:02
Before you start your next do it yourself project listen to this. You got this is on the air. You got this as hosted by ABT plumbing electric heat and air owner, Andrew Twidwell and Rosalie Brown, with a helpful hand. 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, the show about DIYÂ do’s and don’ts. Zooming in with Rosalie Brown, I’m in my home office here in Grass Valley and you’re down in LA.
0:32
I could be anywhere though, technically. Right. The odds are it’s going to be Los Angeles, and, I do like it. I know a lot of people are small town and don’t like big towns. I love it here. But you know what, by the time this, this plays, I will have been to Texas and back.
0:59
We’re pre recording because we’re both going on vacation. So we had to get these things together.
1:05
I think your vacation is probably going to be a little bit more awesome.
1:10
But more exotic. Yeah. Okay,
1:13
I never thought and I’d be telling you, my parents wouldn’t believe this either. I’m going to Texas twice in the same year on purpose. You know, Texas isn’t really my thing. The cowboy hats, the cowboy boots, no offense to anyone who’s into that. I have an ex husband who lives in Texas. So like, that’s usually a state I wouldn’t. I’m not going to visit him. He and his wife will be happy to know that. I’ll be in Dallas Fort Worth. I hear the weather’s gonna be great. I don’t even know what to expect. Last time I went to Texas I burned my feet so bad at the beach that I had Sun poisoning. So I’m assuming I’m going to avoid that because Dallas is not near the ocean not in the Gulf. As this is hitting the airwaves, you’re going to be somewhere across the continent. somewhere exciting.
2:25
Yeah, a lot more exotic. We’ve we’re leaving for Italy. We’ll be in Italy right now when you guys are listening to this. Because we’ve left. It’ll be Wednesday when we leave. We’ve been planning this trip first. This is the third year hopefully the third year is a charm. But COVID is has put the kibosh on the two earlier trips both times and it’s a trip to Italy with some western friends, we’ve got four other friends that are coming with us. And we’re meeting up in a little hotel in the hotel Belvedere and Riccione, Italy, that caters towards the Bike People. And they like rent the bikes and they have bike tours. And but it’s like out and back out and back. You always come back to the hotel and our friends did go last year and we decided not to go because COVID was still raging and they were like they were retired and I can’t we get sick, we get sick, whatever. Right? Yes, on the other hand, have to deal with work and stuff. So we didn’t want to potentially put make it hard on on our staff. So we didn’t go but they said it was amazing. So we’ve got the we know what it’s going to be. It’s going to be lovely. Yeah, good food, good people parties. And then then once we do that, and then we’re flying into Rome, going to Riccione going to hang out bologna hanging out in Rome hanging out in Florence. And Sam and my boyfriend. I’ve never been there. We’ve been to a lot of other countries in Europe, in our younger years. And she’s actually second generation Italian so she’ll be able to her grandparents were both from Italy. So on both sides, so it’ll be good for her to you know, see the homeland.
4:12
It’s so, so funny because looking at her and knowing her because I mean, I’ve known you guys a long time. When you look at her that you do not think Italian I’m sorry. Like the first thing you think of is Irish. Irish, for sure.
4:26
She’s a redheaded Italian. Yes. You’re very blonde. Yeah, clearly strawberry blonde, but she has her grandma Kelly. So that was on her father’s side. He his dad who was Italian married a German woman. And then on her mom’s side. Her grandmother was Irish. So Bill, actually Kelly was on the one side. That’s right. That was the Irish one. Yeah. So she’s got some some German, Irish, Italian on from both sides. So yeah, and it was Northern Italy for both sides. So? Yeah. The real almond skin? Oh,
5:06
no, no, no, no. If anyone, if anyone’s ever met that either. Yeah, yeah, no, I think that’s, that’s super cool. Well, we will, I will, I will be in Los Angeles and not necessarily in Grass Valley. But I will tell you this, we will do our best not to burn the place down while Mom and Dad gone. We’ll take good care. We’ll still be making sure people service calls get answered making sure that businesses as usual.
5:36
You ever really Yeah, we have. We have an amazing team. I mean, we just had this training with these trainers a couple of weeks ago now. And their three trainers came out and they you know, they train a bunch of different contractors, a bunch of different people that are in our sphere, right? Home Service realm, and the compliments that I got from them about our team. Amazing. So you know, I do believe that we are we stand alone are not alone. But you know, we’re a very small percentage of our companies out there have a team as good as ours. I mean, they I just have some stellar people.
6:13
You do. Unfortunate. So. So the good news is that if you are a customer or thinking about being an ABC customer, this amazing trip to Italy will not impact your service. It’s just those of us left behind are going to be looking at Andrews social feeds being slightly jealous, that’s all. Yeah.
6:30
And to be honest, like, this amazing team that I have, every time I leave town, they’re like, God, he’s gone. All they do is come in and like, tweak things and try to make the processes better and give them more work.
6:47
Because they never do that with my staff ever.
6:52
Over graphics for the electric car graphic. I’m like, Yeah, I should change it here. Put something there. Yeah.
6:59
All right, Andrew, you know, doesn’t help
7:01
that that’s that is my background, right. I’m in my home office. I’m sitting around like all my pins and drawing.
7:11
I can tell when you’ve gotten creative space because I get a lot more emails from you. When your creative headspace when you’re not in a creative headspace. You’re like, Yeah, I’ll get back to you next week.
7:20
So I Yeah, that looks good enough, whatever. Let’s roll with that. But look,
7:24
we all we all we all serve our purpose on the team. And so it’s exciting. You’re gonna get to go on this trip after three years. That’s that’s good news for just that means probably the economy, maybe travel like things might be kind of, you know, hidden in good places. will will will this that’s my
7:40
so yeah, yeah, it’s definitely good for us. I’ve got a friend that has a mortgage company and bank. Not so good for him. It’s been pretty abysmal for him. I mean, he’s, he’s in panic mode. Right now. They’re their mortgage brokers and mortgage companies are going under quickly. So it’s a little scary. But yeah, for a home service. Yeah, no one. Everybody wants to have lights at work and bathrooms, toilets that flush. And that, I mean, that function.
8:10
Yeah. Seems like a good thing to have. So I’m so thinking about a lot. Yeah. So
8:17
along those lines
8:20
for you. So what I love about when I get, we get these brainstorm sessions every once in a while, and Andrew will come up with something and I’ll always go with it even if I don’t want to. But this time, the deal was all come up with two shows. And Andrew Twidwell You’re responsible because this is not as easy as it looks not as easy as it looks right. And so, I felt really empowered when I was like, Andrew, you know what, you can’t put two shows. So the funny thing about the two shows, he comes up with 30 like super bummer topics. gas lines could kill you. And then this one
8:58
70% of all gas lines leak in our country.
9:04
So maybe this was your genius idea that after you got put in charge of shows when they became Debbie downers maybe Rosa is not going to ask me to come up with shows anymore.
9:15
It worked with me for dishes early on in my life, you know, if you just do things bad enough, somebody else to take over. So.
9:22
So this week, we have another Andrew Twidwell topic. Yeah. And but it’s one that you know, well. So
9:30
when I know well, and it’s one that we’ve talked about a lot, but you know, some people may not have heard the shows and and I may not have thought of certain things to say during those shows during this topic. So yeah, we’re we’re hitting the, the top 10 kind of DIY home plumbing projects that you can do that, you know, hopefully you’ve got enough knowledge that you can actually do this, but if you don’t you get yourself into a sticky bind. We can come and help you help dig out your your hole and So number one on this list, right? Cuz there’s how many lists on the internet, right? Everybody wants a list. But I personally like lists, I live by lists. Number one, and this was replacing a toilet in the first line on this, I kind of liked, if you are capable of moving a toilet around, you are capable of replacing it. I liked the head. I liked the headline, the headline on that, but it’s like, I would, I would say, there’s a couple of caveats with that statement. Right.
10:33
I just I just want to say really quickly that it’s headlines like those that cause problems, because I visited my then brother in law, when they owned a place out in Grass Valley, like close to paradise. And he also read an article that said, you can replace a toilet really easily. So I visited in January, and said toilet wasn’t in place. And when I visited in February said toilet still wasn’t. Because there was a problem with a wax seal. And this and that. And I was just like, You do realize you could have literally called the professional and like, done, but no, I mean, once he got into it, it was like in a
11:15
matter of hours that he spent on it was making his return on investment for those hours is like $1 an
11:21
hour that he was not going to surrender, he was not going to. So finally, I think six months later when I visited that the guest bathroom was functioning. But I’ll tell you what, just because the headline says you can do something, it’s okay, that’s my sorry, that’s so I’m
11:36
gonna kind of deviate from some of the things on this on this list, because I’m gonna tell you what to look for, in times when you probably should do this. So the first one is going to be is if you have a supply line. So that little pipe that comes out of the wall and then goes up to the toilet. If there’s no net on that supply line to the valve, if it’s just soldered in, don’t touch it. Because as soon as you touch that thing, it’s going to break apart. It’s we’ve stopped using those about 2030 years ago, they’re pervasive in Nevada and placer. County, and they get really thin, and they literally just fall apart. And they also use a cone washer. So if you do see this, I say don’t touch it, because you’re gonna have to replace both the annual stuff from the wall that comes out of the house out of the wall. So you have to turn the water off and replace the annual stuff, which is, again, it’s a DIY thing. But if you don’t have a flare nut, a flare remover, a compression that remover, you’re not gonna be the tool, you’re not gonna be able to get it off of there. If you if it’s iron pipe coming out of the wall, that can be problematic, because when you unscrew it, a lot of times, they would use galvanized pipe coming out of the wall, just a little nipple between. And if it’s 3040 50 years old, which a lot of them are or potentially 7080 years old, it’s probably kind of falling apart. So as soon as you pull it off that that piece of pipes is going to kind of fall apart, you can’t really do something on it. So look for that. The second thing is if the toilet moves, if it rocks, and you want, you need to pull it to replace it because it’s leaking, there could be bigger issues underneath that that are occurring. So typically, you know what, what holds the toilet down. Literally, the only thing that holds the toilet down are the closet bolts, and there’s two of them that come up and you know those little caps that you see on the base of the toilet. Those are covering nuts and washers where the bolts come through, that’s literally the only mechanical thing that’s holding a toilet to the ground. If those bolts come loose, it’s typically because the the flange, the pipe that’s underneath it is broken. So you got a broken flange, that’s another big project we gotta get in there with an interior cutter or gourmet the house and cut the pipe out the sewer pipe not just the waterline now we’re talking the sewer pipe and put in a new flange or potentially new elbow and I mean it can be a big deal and I’ve seen this so if it’s not rocking and you’ve got a newer installed compression fitting with a nice braided stainless steel supply line, go for it. Once you pull it, if somebody put new flooring in, in the recent history, and they’ve the flange is below the flooring, the pipe that holds the bolts on is below the floor, you’re going to want to get some plastic back flange stackers because you want that flange to be up above the floor line by about a quarter inch. Some people some novices and some handyman will double put two wax rings in to fill the gap wax the wax rings are really only supposed to be about a quarter inch thick by the time they compress, not two to three inches thick and I’ve seen this And we’ve seen a lot of water damage because of that. So
15:03
bingo. Yeah, sorry, I just want to go back to the brother in law story didn’t go, I’d never saw what he did. Oh my god, the wax ring was like three, like three inches. I was like,
15:14
What are you doing you’re like, literally we’re we’re lying on wax as a pipe, it doesn’t work that way, it’s supposed to be a seal between the toilet and the flange. And it’s not supposed to be any greater than a quarter inch, and even a quarter inches is pretty thick. So it should really, it smears out to about it should just be almost paper thin. So if you do have that flange that’s recessed below the floor, it’s a pretty, it’s not a huge deal for us. And but for a DIY kind of project, do it right, because you do that one wrong. And you’re talking about potentially 10s of 1000s of dollars of damage from sewage dripping into underneath the house and rotting out all the framing and floor underneath it. So, you know, these were the caveats of if you are capable of moving a toilet around, you are capable of replacing it.
16:08
I mean, with these whole like, and the organic matter is gonna get like stop I get it like when you send toilet and you started talking about cutting a sewer line I in my head, I was going places I could see things happening. So they got it. Don’t get me don’t
16:27
you know, I don’t know what to say all this stuff to scare people. But you know, you do see these headlines all the time. And you see him on DIY shows. It’s like, those DIY shows where they’re showing you those, that’s like the perfect scenario. That’s like an install that happened within the last 10 years and you’re just replacing the toilet because of aesthetics. You’re not replacing the toilet because it’s 40 years old. And it’s and it’s pink, you know, orange, blue, or black or something like that some off color. Even those aesthetic ones. I mean, yeah, we haven’t I’ve installed the pink toilet and I don’t know, man, I have installed pink toilets early in the day. Yeah. Dusty Rose was the was the color color. Yeah, dusty road in the early, it ran through the 80s. And just, I had still people would ask for it in the 90s. But it was it was completely just like, yeah, just like the brass faucets and stuff it was on its way down. But I was still installing it for some people because they still like that look, they just didn’t quite didn’t quite catch up to what was going on. So you can install a toilet but know that if you have some of those things like the integrated the welded supply line or the rocking toilet, or somebody put a new floor in there, you’re going to have some issues, it’s going to be a lot more difficult than you may think it’s going to be and especially those YouTube where those those shows ACN HGTV make claim make it make these claims that it’s so easy. Yeah, you know, try being a plumber. Okay, I got time for one more. I’m just gonna go over the easy one I was gonna do install a dishwasher. Well, let’s do it. Install a dishwasher. I got time for that and selling a dishwasher. Much like replacing a toilet installing a dishwasher is more about moving the bulk unit in place than about complicated plumbing hookups. Trudo point. If they aren’t, you really only have two hookups, you’ve got the drain and that supply, right or supply and drain, because you’re thinking of the direction that it goes. So it is relatively simple low and a power cord right. Most dishwashers don’t come with a power cord, you’ve got to wire the cord. So you got to have some electrical knowledge on how to hook up a pigtail. And using twisting the wires and using wire nuts. And then making sure you cover the the junction box again with the cover that comes with from the manufacturer. I’ve seen DIY people not do the cover and the wires, you’re just kind of loose hanging in there. fire hazard. One thing that I do notice a lot of times up here is the lack of what’s called an air gap. It’s that little cap that’s on the counter we’ve talked about it before, doesn’t seem to serve any purpose. Well, it does serve a purpose. It literally keeps sewage out of your dishwasher. That’s the purpose. Aesthetically, they’re not really great. And I’ve got a friend who’s a contractor up here, and we’ve argued on Facebook about it. He’s like they’re just so ugly. And I’m like yeah, I’ll give you that. But for me, you know, I’d rather not have a backup and have my dishes in said funk because I don’t have an air gap because the reason why we have to install them by code is because
19:38
actually we have to install them by code in residential installations and not commercial installation is because we tend to leave our dishes in the dishwasher. As a storage rack. They can be in there for days right? So while they’re sitting in there for those days if you get any kind of backup, some funky water can get in there and funk up all your your dishes. So encumbered. So they’re pulling them out right now that yeah, they don’t want them in the dishwasher. Right. So the air gap, I think is really critical. And I’ve had some arguments like I say with some friends, fun arguments, but you know I’m the, our job is plumbers is to help protect the health of the nation. And one of the ways we do that is we keep poopy water separate from clean water, that is the basis of our job. So anytime there’s a chance for any poopy water getting into things that I eat off of, or drink from, or drink the water, I want to do everything in my power to make sure those things are separated. And an air gap literally is a air separation, the water shoots up hits a cap, and then drains or mushrooms around the side of it. And there’s literally a one inch air gap so that there’s no way for that water to siphon back into the dishwasher. So they’re really good thing. So is a dishwasher easy to install pretty easy. And then the only other thing I would say when you’re installing is make sure you get the Eric app, make sure you use either a copper line or a braided stainless steel, don’t use one of those plastic hoses, they will cause a lot of water damage. There’s a big pain, not good. Then the other thing is make sure you attach the dishwasher to the countertop I’ve seen a lot of people forget that process. And one day the your little your grandkid, or your kid comes over and puts their knee on the door on the dishwasher and it falls on top of them. So you want to make sure you actually attach it. I got time for one more. I’m gonna do this one, I’m gonna pass up the installation, installation is too easy, and selling a garbage disposal but selling a garbage disposer or when installing or replacing garbage disposer by yourself. The heavy lifting of this project literally is the heavy lifting units can weigh 10 to 15 pounds or even 20 pounds having a partner help hold the disposer while you secure it to the bottom of the sink helps immensely. I totally agree with that. It is something that it might at this point in my life, I probably would get a helper to do it. I used to be able to do it in my 20s and 30s. And even 40s in my 50s probably would get somebody to help because I’ve had those things drop on my chest and it hurts when you’re installing it in underneath the sink and kind of hit your chin stuff. It’s not fun. So installing additional dispose or if you’re stalling like for like you can potentially reuse the basket, which is the thing that attaches to the sink itself. That’s kind of the chintzy way of doing it because that thing is was installed 10 years before So replace the basket. It’s relatively simple. Use plumber’s putty don’t use silicone. The reason I say that is a lot of new construction guys use silicone because it once it’s done very few callbacks. But if you’ve got to replace it, again, it’s a major pain in the butt to get the silicone off. And you got to get that thing clean of all silicone before you put back on plumber’s putty does the job. We’ve been using it for 100 years it works. So you replace the basket than the other thing. If you have a dishwasher, like we were just saying any of the disposer and you have an air gap. Don’t forget to knock the little plug out of the disposer drain, I’ve had that call when people do it themselves. And all this water is coming up. And I just literally gotta go in and pop the plug out. So anyway, hopefully that helps. And we’ve got some kind of graphics and stuff on disposers on our Facebook page on our website, so you can kind of see it. Hopefully this kind of helps in terms of, you know, making you decide whether or not you can do it and I can’t be the judge of that you are out there. So this is purely for entertainment value. So hope you enjoyed it and hope this helps. And if you do need us to come and help bail you out. Or if you want to have somebody just come install these things. Give us a call at 530-230-9092 and the number again 530-230-9092. You can also find us on the web. It uses abt or abt plumbing.com. And please like our Facebook page. We’ve got all this information on here and on it and it’s pretty fun. Thanks and we’ll catch you guys next week.
24:21
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 News Talk 830
Transcribed by https://otter.ai