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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 ADT plumbing, electric heat and air owner, Andrew Twidwell and Rosalie Brown, with a helpful hand. Here are Andrew and Rosalie.
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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 does and dont’s. I’m zooming in with Rose Lee Brown, and you’ve got a fuzzy background, you’ve closed out your background?
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I did. Do you want to know why? Because it’s 10 o’clock here. So that means that I have people in my house that are gonna be waking up any minute. And even though this video doesn’t make it to the internet, the idea of her like she does she’s not a big fan of like walking into. So I was like, just in case the prints
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like the Zoom school meeting thing, right? But while I’m in the background, doing her hair, something in her underwear in school,
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so she’s not a big fan of having an audience. So I just did that for her protection. You already know what I look like so, but it is weird, right? You’re like Don’t take my coffee. What’s going on? I got so you’re so so the obvious here that everyone’s suffering through right now we’re having a incredible heatwave and some power outages and things like that. What’s the
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one? I was just looking at friends? Yeah, our friends. Our mutual friend Burton’s? Yeah, no power and 100 degrees. And yeah, it’s just brutal, man. Just brutal. We do. Just to let you guys know, we do install standby backup generators, so that it’s literally when the power goes off. The generator turns on, you don’t even really notice other than like a second of lights being out. And maybe even sometimes doesn’t even do that. Sometimes it doesn’t even change the clock. You won’t even notice on your like your VCR who has a VCR anymore, but on your range or whatever. But yeah, but yeah, it’s been brutal. I mean, the triple digits, consistent triple digits and heatwave and potential fires and, and fires because yeah, we had another mutual friend who almost lost her house last week. And yeah, it’s fun time to be alive.
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So there’s a some really strange video kind of making its way across the interwebs is probably I’ve seen it about five times on Twitter already. But so I want to say this might have been Saturday, I forget what day it is. We had a long weekend where I’m in Santa Clarita, which is actually a lot of people think that it’s by La it’s not really by LA but it’s when you come through the grapevine you kind of drop in and the first kind of civilization you hit is Santa Clarita, so it’s typically pretty hot there. So Santa Clarita, they had 160 degree temperatures, right. And I think we were I was like, somewhere I was close to that, but not as not as hot. Anyway, they had this incredible thunder storm and winds that had you would have thought if you saw the video that oh my gosh, it was insane. And the whole time is crazy. 106 degrees out why that’s happening. I was like, Okay, we are really in a weird, weird.
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The weather is not fun right now. Yeah. Like meat and all this fun stuff. Anyway, that’s a whole other story. So let’s break off into some fun stuff. So what are some fun things that have been going on with you? Because, well,
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what’s the fun? Well, I have no more coyote Eagle sightings, right? No, and actually, I’ve been carrying about with me every day. But people again, like I said, before people misunderstand. I’m not trying to bash a coyote in the head. If you hold a bat up and you like make yourself taller, or if you pound the ground, you know, so it’s more like, but you know, look, whatever if it’s gonna make people stay away from me, I’m good with that, too. So no coyote sightings, but I’m traveling, actually this week and then again in a couple weeks travel again, so I just got a passport, but these are domestic trips, but I just got my passport. So I’m trying to send a message to the universe. I’m ready. I’m ready. I got my passport. Let’s go. Looking for transport already. I took in my passport.
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Because yeah, because I’ve heard it’s been really really really slow. It’s
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not it was not slow for me. And I was I was surprised I was it was a six about a six week wait now I knew there’s different ways to do the passport wherever you are. But what I recommend is getting paperwork done on your computer you know printing it out and then going to make it make an appointment at your local post office. Oh, my god the post office took like three minutes I gave him the checks he looked at my paperwork took it it was done and then it’s out of my hands so I just figured whenever it arrives it arrives six weeks was my was what I waited so I felt like that was pretty reasonable. So
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yeah, and if you got and for everybody out there that you know they were reached traveling right and we’re getting into the to the fall travels session. I know we’re going to be traveling. If your passport is So this is most people know this, but just in case you don’t know this, if you’re traveling, if your passport is going to expire six months from now, it’s time to renew it because you’re a lot that they won’t allow you back into the United States if it’s going to be expiring that soon. So I know we were traveling with some friends and they had had that issue and they had to have their passports extra expedited. But now all you need to do is get now you need to work on getting your global reentry and TSA so you can get through the lines that
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I did do the I did to the domestic TSA, because again, that was easy for you. I got that done. And I’m gonna be honest with you, that lady at that office put me through more like it was I was actually sweating. I felt like I was in a police interrogation situation. That lady was not messing around. But I got my TSA number, whatever they call it. Um, so I’m ready to travel or whatever. Yeah, I’m ready to go. So I just got to it’s so worth it. By the
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way, it is so worth it. I can’t tell you how many times it’s it saved my bacon when I’m like, running a little bit late to the airport, then all of a sudden I get there and you see this huge line and then yeah, Walker right up into the line and go right through and have time to go sit and I actually went to a convention. Guts pre COVID. But we were a convention with two other staff members. And I had TSA, Mike Sia, right? Cuz Yeah, it’s other plumbers and stuff. So they went through regular. So I went in, I had already I had sat down in a restaurant already had a beer in my system by the time the first person showed up. And then the second person took him another half hour, 45 minutes, because he went into secondary and we know who that is. We know. Oh, my gosh, yeah, TSA is the bomb, if you’re traveling at all it is it is huge. And global reentry is another nice one. If you’re traveling internationally, it’s totally worth it. I will never DIY tip you know, get it taken care of because
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I am. I will repeat travel at all. I will report back because I’ll be traveling this weekend. So I will report back and let you know, although I’m going to be honest with you. The reason I wasn’t in a big rush to get my you know, precheck and all that. Honestly, it’s usually for the places I’m going to because when I fly out of Burbank Airport, you know small Burbank Airport. It’s like, it’s literally the best thing ever you hit the curb, and your three security met your date and like eight months, so I’m really doing it for the other side of the trip. But anyway, so I’ll have some I’ll be able to report
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back on but you never know you may end up getting a cheap flight to La excellent day. And then oh my gosh, you definitely want an lax
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God help me if I have to fly to LAX. I think I’d rather drive. But that’s a whole nother that’s a whole nother thing. Hey, let’s talk about some DIY man.
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Yeah. So we were going off this list that you found it’s in the Reader’s Digest a trusted friend and complicated world. In a complicated world. I just read a little thing.
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Yeah, that sounds like a complex. There you go.
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That’s our show. So yeah, so let’s let’s get on, get going with this first one. Sometimes you don’t even need me. So me being a plumber. I’m going to let you know that. We’ve talked about this before but an Allen wrench, a simple allen wrench can dislodge a jammed disposer they actually come with Allen wrench. And you may see at the bottom of your this may have been floating around on the bottom of your cabinet underneath your sink for years. You’re like what the heck of this that when they come from the factory, they have a little little plastic pouch you have a double sided sticky tape, you’re supposed to stick to the side of the disposer. Not everybody does that. But sometimes they do do it and then it just falls off and then it floats around. That thing is really key. It literally there’s a ballon set or allen key allen screw and the center of the disposer bottom that spins the entire mechanism that spins a little plate that spins the blades inside the disposer. So if it gets jammed when you hear that little noise before the circuit breaker pops, it could just be as simple as taking that little allen key and moving it back and forth and on jamming it. Take a flashlight, take your cell phone flashlight or whatever and look inside. See if you see what jammed up. It’s usually a little piece of metal like a fork or a paperclip or bottle cap. That’s usually what does it. Pull that sucker out of there. Before you put your hands in this Bowser it’s a good idea to unplug it. I’m don’t normally do that, but it’s probably a good idea. They recommend that you unplug it because it can turn you’re handed the hamburger. But pull that sucker up and if it’s done, if you no longer hear that humming noise it means that the circuit breaker has been tripped. And if you Look underneath, it’s a little hard to see, because there’s not a lot of space between the bottom of the disposer and the bottom of the cabinet. But if you either look, or if you just feel around underneath, you’re gonna feel this little thing that moves. And it’s a circuit breaker, there’s a little red button that you can reset and reset the circuit breakers there so you don’t burn up the motor. So, hey, if you get a jam disclosure, I just told you how to clear it. If it’s something bigger, if you can jam it, then yeah, you just gotta get a new one. Sometimes I have such I’ve had situations where disposers were so badly jam that we couldn’t even get it out. So just put anyone in. But yeah, and if it is really bad, and if it is just a badger five or something like that. And if you do feel so inclined, you can replace your own disposer. Oh, since we’re talking about DIY, I will give you a little, a little tip on that. Because I’ve had this situation many times when people have installed their own disposers. And all of a sudden, their dishwasher doesn’t work. Or water comes out of the air gap that’s on top of their sink. Because inside of disposer Well, let’s suppose are made with a side outlet or inlet for the dishwasher drain. There’s a plug in there, because not everybody has a dishwasher that puts a disposer in. So if you’ve, you’ve got to remember to knock that plug out so that the water can flow in there once you hook the hose to it. So I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had calls where water is pouring out off the deck and oh yeah, my grandson or my husband or my friend just installed this disposer for me, and now it’s and it’s leaking all over the place. It’s just that they literally just didn’t know that little bit. If you read the instructions, it tells you that but yeah, who reads instructions right? I’m guilty as charged. So anyway, that’s disposers one on one. So that’s a good one. Where should we go? Oh, this is another good one. Don’t hang things from your pipes. Don’t hang close from your water lines in your basement or your crawlspace or your inside your house where you have exposed pipes. I’ve seen people do this. Pipes are not designed to be to function as a hair.
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Are you are you saying like so um, so when you say that I’m kind of picturing like, so someone’s like hanging their shirts to dry or something and they put like, literally
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hangers on pipes. I can’t tell him at times I’ve gone into people’s basements or crawl spaces. And they literally have hangers on pipes. And you know that if you stayed in hotels at all, you’ll see the little sign on the sprinkler head. Don’t hang your your clothes on the sprinkler head. I have a friend that was that’s in the water restoration business. And she was like, yeah, it happens all the time. People have literally hanging clothes and hotels on the sprinkler systems and the sprinkler system plus spot and floods the whole building so another place do not hang close. So you got water inside there just don’t mess with it. And especially if it’s an old house, if you have old galvanized pipe and you start putting extra pressure on it, there’s a good chance it’s it’s gonna leak.
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You’re gonna stay away you’re just you’re just just just don’t
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do it. Don’t hang anything. Don’t and and for you guys, you di wires don’t use plumbing pipes to hang another thing like I’ve seen people use the plumbing pipe to hang the drain pipe the water line to hang the drain pipe or the flue pipe will use just don’t use it or just don’t attach anything to the pipes. This is we kind of talked about this one off air last week but we never really talked about it on air. old toilet seats are a lot harder to remove than you think they are. I can’t tell you how many times people are like yeah, this can just replace the toilet seat. And if it’s got brass or metal bolts oh my god, it’s time to take this all Zola it’s a total nightmare. I’ve I’ve had situations where it’s taken me over an hour just to get a toilet seat off. And this is you know, an hour for me is a long time when I’ve done 1000s of toilets in my career. I mean, I was in San Francisco during the drought in the early 90s And they were given away a ton of money to replace toilets we go in and replace complete apartment buildings full of toilets at three a day for months on end. So anyway three to five days sometimes can
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I just want to touch on the toilet seat I can say with certainty that what you’re saying is spot on 100% Because the house I would in your your pal in mind that has he it was an old I want to say it’s American Standard. It was like a really old setup. And I remember thinking this is so weird. It had a wood toilet seat and oh yeah, okay, so to me like their hip in the 80s Yeah, okay, so to me like that just that just screams out like don’t even get me started like what? Yeah, so the problem with it is that as I got older it actually start are to come apart a little bit. So you know what it’s like to sit and have like, almost a splinter situation, then so that as that’s going on, I’m trying to replace it. But you know what, oops, I did call someone in because guess what it was so crazily effects to that day and coilette that it was a nightmare to replace it, I finally got it replaced. So it was much more comfortable and safe to use the toilet. But it is not just a simple Oh, I’ll do it myself. It really isn’t. So I tend to throw that in there. And
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the caveat being is if it’s metal bolts, and those old brass ones, they pretty much all had our she’s old wood, wood, toilet seats, they had brass bolts, they bent a lot of times, they were just brass coated, they weren’t actually solid brass. So if you get to do that uses the bathroom for any length of time. And that place I know had you know grandpa in there for a while. The, you know, splatter can affects the toilets, bolts, and literally corrodes it. So, yeah, it’s, it’s not cool. So if you’ve got plastic, those are pretty easy, those will be a pretty good unit, we’ll take it off. So if you just look at the bolts to find out if you’ve got metal ones, you know, I would really, if it’s just a work, and you just want to upgrade it, I would think twice about it. If it’s broke broken, then yeah, definitely replace it. But it’s very uncomfortable.
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very uncommon. I’ll
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tell you right now sometimes, depending on how much your time is worth, sometimes it’s easier to just replace the entire toilet than it is to replace the toilet seat. I get a toilet faster than I could. So on some of these toilet seats. I mean, it usually takes about an hour hour and a half to install toilet. You know, just work time. But if it’s and I’ve had that I’ve had it take that long just to replace a stupid seat. So
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while I
16:51
Yeah, well, let’s go back because you brought this up. So we talked a little we briefly briefly, we talked quite a bit in depth about washing machine hoses. And you’re like, we need to remind people about this. So was
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my mind, Andrew? Take away. Listen, I just feel like this should be a PSA, it should be on every billboard, I’m sorry, when I think about how many times so on an average, I would do laundry like granted, like I didn’t have as many kids as maybe other people but for me once a week, okay, so I would do my laundry once a week and I would not think about it. And when I when you tell me the amount of pressure coming through that hose and how I could in a moment, I can flood my entire bathroom, laundry room or whatever, by not turning that water off between uses. It blows my mind, I feel like I was gambling and I dodged bullets like for years, because just a couple of minutes of that water running on your floor. We’ve talked about this, it is not just a Oh, literally you get imagine it happens to you and you’re not home, you are going to have mold. What happens when you have mold, they replaced everything in your house.
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Yeah, that leads in leads it into. And so like I was saying before I’ve got I’ve had friends that work in the water restoration business. And if an if this actually happened to a friend of mine on Bender mountain, the washing machine hose blue, and they had to literally vacate their house for months as everything was being rebuilt, because they were gone when it happened. And if you’ve got a water line that’s pumping out, you know, four to 10 gallons per minute. Over the course of a couple of days. It pretty much floods, there’s water everywhere, wherever you know it’s looking for it’s like a river right to find the path of least resistance and walk and tries to go out the door somewhere. But once it’s been in there for longer than 24 hours, now you got mold. And I don’t care what people say mold spores are everywhere. They’re already there lurking all they need is a moist environment to grow. So once the moist environment occurs, they’re literally the restoration companies coming in literally removing all the products because it’s cheaper just to replace them than it is to fix them. And water damages. And I’m reading this because it’s a little thing here water damage is expensive water damage is the leading cause of homeowners insurance claims, accounting for around 40% that’s across the board. 40% Basic flooding and sewage backups often caused by increasingly intense precipitation are responsible for most of the problems. Don’t let these problems lead to home inspectors that married have to see to believe and I’ve seen them I mean, we’ve literally walked into people’s homes and they’ve had lakes underneath their house because of other issues like sewer lines that were broken. Okay, that’s happened to us happens a couple times a year where we’ll have literally like the the homeowner has no idea that the sewer lines bust underneath their house. And they’ve got you know, six to three feet six inches to three feet of sewage to sitting underneath their house. smell something but then yeah, but if it’s underneath a crawlspace, I’ve had situations where it’s underneath the crawlspace at uni and smell it on the top of the house because it was all insulated and vapor barrier and stuff. But yeah, it could do a lot of damage really fast. Mold is everywhere, and it’s literally there, they’re going through and ripping everything out, throwing it away, putting charge and putting everything and they have to take all the drywall off, they have to take all the flooring up down to the sub floor, sometimes you have to replace the sub floor, it’s expensive. And you’re talking hundreds of 1000s of dollars from a flood that may have only been happening occurring for a day. And I didn’t actually even see damages done by a small leak, like dishwasher leak, were buckles the floor in the kitchen and get mold underneath, we have to replace the entire floor. Getting you know, there for a while there in the 90s people were putting carpet in their bathrooms, a little leak at a toilet and getting underneath the carpet and getting into the padding and saturating the entire area and mold having to rip up the whole floor sub floor everything. Yeah, it can do a lot of damage, really in a matter of you know, a day or two really.
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So literally turn when you’re not using your washing machine,
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the washing machine, you’re supposed to turn the valves off when you’re not fixing. But no one really does it. I at least put in braided stainless steel hoses, and that’s a DIY thing, you can go to a hardware store, pick them up for 3550 bucks for the SAT or something like that I can’t remember. But compared to the deductible of a grand or two grand, and the amount of time you’d be at your house is so worth it. They also stamp it on there don’t leave under pressure all the time and a five year lifespan. So if it’s so if you had the washing machine installed five years ago, or more, which most of us do time to replace them, or you know, just replace, if you got black rubber or grey rubber or any of the rubber hoses, just replace them, put the stainless steel on, there’s a DIY Shep just replace them, it’s not worth it’s not worth worth the risk that you have by having old rubber hoses, we’ve got time for one more. A lot of this stuff is a little LS is a good one, I’ll leave this one. I’ll finish up with this. We’ll check things for free. So this is written by a plumber. And this is something that yeah, we will literally if if a plumber or H factor or electrician is at your house for another job. And you remember you have something else that you want us to look at, or somebody you need us to look at or even another company that you want them to look at nine times out of 10, they will look at it for free. Once they’re on site. Obviously, there’s going to be there’s an expense to get one of our technicians or most companies charge something to get somebody to the house because of gas prices, labor cost, workers comp all this stuff. And we can’t even begin to tell you how expensive it is to be in business in California. Or in this time and age and the amount of money we got to paradise these days and downtime, sick time, vacation, pay all this stuff that blah, blah, blah, blah. But once they’re there, take advantage of the fact that they can check things out. And at least give you an idea of what needs to be done to mediate the problem. A lot of times our guys will ask, is there anything else you’d like for us to look at? Unfortunately, most people just say no, because we’re automatically trained to say no, when anybody asks us anything like that, because you know, we go to a store, kind of help you find something now I’m just looking, same sort of thing, right? Take advantage of it. If you got some little thing that has been bugging you take advantage of just having to take a look at it. You know, as long as it’s within their skill set, they can take definitely give me a give me an idea of what it will take to finish it. Anyway, on that note, if you do have any plumbing, electrical heating or air problems, please give us a call. We’re at 530-230-9092 530-230-9092 You can reach us on the web at easiest att.com or abt plumbing. You can find us on Facebook, like our page. We’ve got a lot of fun stuff that we that we say here and share on there. And some pretty fun stuff. We got a lot of comments on the one from yesterday. But it’d be fun to become a plumber. They said to be fun. You know the guy’s knee deep into it. Been they’re not fun.
24:21
It’s funny to me, but I am knee deep
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in sewage in the rain in mud. Yeah. Been there multiple times. It’s one times anyway, give us a call. Thanks for listening. We’ll catch you guys next week.
24:32
Bye. 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
Transcribed by https://otter.ai