Transcripts
Transcript For January 19, 2008, Hour 1
Hosts: Tom Kraeutler & Leslie Segrete(NOTE: Timestamps below correspond to the running time of the downloadable audio file of this show. Text represents a professional transcriptionist's understanding of what was said. No guarantee of accuracy is expressed or implied. 'Ph' in parentheses indicates the phonetic or best guess of the actual spoken word.)
BEGIN HOUR 1 TEXT:
(promo/theme song)
[audio timestamp: 1:00]
TOM: Coast to coast and floorboards to shingles. This is The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show. I’m Tom Kraeutler.
LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete.
TOM: Pick up the phone and call us right now with your home improvement question; your do-it-yourself dilemma; anything that you got started with, that you got stuck with. We’re here to help you get the job done. 888-666-3974.
We’ve got lots of tips in store for today’s program, including this one: we’re going to talk about ways that you can add some interest, some style, some texture to your front door. How do you do all that? Well, with container gardening. We’re going to show how you can do that and come up with a design that can last you all year long.
LESLIE: And also ahead this hour, we know that picking a paint color can be a tremendous decision in itself. But what about the best paint finish for your walls. We know it gets confusing; you know, do you go with satin, eggshell, gloss, semi-gloss. Oh, my. We’re going to help you figure out which is the right choice for you.
TOM: And some home improvements seem rather impossible; like how do you make a small space big. Well, you can do it visually with some decorating tricks of the trade which we’ll give you in just a bit.
LESLIE: And also this hour, we’re giving away a huge prize on the show. It’s the new ECO Model Reiker Room Conditioner. It’s worth $359 and it’s a ceiling fan but it also works like a space heater when you need it to be one but it’s out of the way so it’s much, much safer.
TOM: So call us right now at 1-888-MONEY-PIT for the answer to your home improvement question and a chance at winning that great prize from Reiker, the ECO Model Room Conditioner. You must have a home improvement question and be willing to come on the air and ask us.
Let’s get right to the phones.
LESLIE: Debbie in North Carolina, welcome to The Money Pit. How can we help you today?
DEBBIE: I got a house about four years ago, here in North Carolina. It was built in the late 1950s, I think. And at the time, I didn’t notice it but a hole is developing in the side yard. And it’s a deep enough hole …
TOM: A hole?
DEBBIE: A hole in the yard. And it’s a deep enough hole that I have a seven-year-old granddaughter and they were out playing and one of her feet fell down in it and she went in it up to her hip.
TOM and LESLIE: Wow.
TOM: Hmm.
DEBBIE: Yeah, and I’m a little concerned and yet I don’t know who to call or what it might be. I don’t know if it’s perhaps a where a tree was there previously and where they took it out, you know it’s just an indentation from the root ball or – we don’t use oil heat in the south very much but I wondered if perhaps since it’s an older house maybe there had been an underground oil tank and has a heat …
TOM: Oh, there’s lots of possibilities. You know, in our house we found an abandoned septic tank smack dab under the kids’ swing set, believe it or not. (chuckling)
DEBBIE: Oh.
TOM: And I didn’t get any father of the year awards for that …
LESLIE: Oh.
TOM: … but at least we found it. It was a very old house and obviously we had no idea where it is. So it’s impossible for us to say what’s under there but, you know, possibilities might be the septic tank.
DEBBIE: OK.
TOM: It could be some organic debris. It could be an old well. I mean it could be very dangerous. And so you need to get that excavated and figure out what’s going on there.
LESLIE: Would, Tom, a local call-before-you-dig company – you know, one of the local services that – you know, in my area it’s 311. You know, there’s a lot of different services across the country. If you look up your local zip code and call before you dig, say on a Google search, they can find, you know, where all your utility lines are; anything that’s underground that’s been documented throughout the history of your home, they come out and mark it out on the ground. They might be able to tell you if there was, in fact, something there.
DEBBIE: OK.
TOM: Well, if you call that number they come out for a mark-out and certainly that’s something that you have to do before you do any major excavation. But I think you’re going to have to – I would start with a landscaper and let him dig that area out and see what they find.
DEBBIE: OK.
TOM: If it just turns out that it’s loose soil or maybe they expose some decayed tree roots or something like that, then you can pack it in there and build it back up again.
DEBBIE: OK. Great. Well, I just didn’t know where to start or who to call.
TOM: Yep.
DEBBIE: I didn’t know what to do about it.
TOM: You’ve got to do a little exploratory surgery with that space but, gosh, you’ve got to get on that right away because that could be very dangerous.
DEBBIE: Yeah, yeah. It really could. I was just very grateful that she didn’t fall all the way in it; although, I really don’t know how deep it is. I took a broomstick and the broomstick would go all the way in it. But beyond that, I don’t know.
TOM: Yeah, it’s a little bit over your head, this project, because, you know …
DEBBIE: OK.
TOM: … if you’ve got a sinkhole forming there you just don’t know what the end of it is. So I would get maybe a landscaper and start right there.
DEBBIE: OK, great. Thank you so much.
TOM: You’re welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Monica in Colorado is dealing with a situation involving a garbage disposal. Tell us what’s going on.
MONICA: Well, I moved into this house a year ago and I have a kitchen sink that has a double sink and the garbage disposal, when I use it, the stuff that I’m grounding up is coming up the other sink.
TOM: OK.
MONICA: Why is that doing that and in every other house I’ve lived in never did that? Why is it doing that?
TOM: Because the way the two drains are configured, the out port on the garbage disposer is too close or the pipes are not angled in the right way to push the waste down the pipe. It’s basically looking for the quickest way out so it’s throwing it up the other side. You need to have a plumber come in and change the configuration of those drains. There should be a Y connection that actually points the waste down so it can’t come back up again.
MONICA: Mm-hmm. OK.
TOM: The problem is with the configuration of the pipes. I suspect that the sink originally didn’t have a garbage disposer. Somebody came in and put it in; tried to hook the drain pipes up in the easiest way possible but it wasn’t the right way when you have a garbage disposer. So that’s why you’re throwing waste up the other side.
MONICA: Mm-hmm. OK, well I will get a plumber.
TOM: You’ve got to rerun the drains, Monica.
MONICA: Yeah.
TOM: Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: You are listening to The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show and if winter weather is keeping you indoors, why not pass the time with a project or two. We can help, so call in your home repair or your home improvement question 24 hours a day, seven days a week at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
TOM: 888-666-3974.
Up next, landscaping around your front door can provide a winning welcome to your home. When we come back we’re going to teach you how to do just that even if you live in a high-rise apartment.
[audio timestamp: 7:03]
(promo/theme song)
[audio timestamp: 10:45]
ANNOUNCER: The Money Pit is brought to you by Therma-Tru, the nation’s leading manufacturer of fiberglass entry and patio door systems. Choose the brand more building professionals prefer. And add up to $24,000 to the perceived value of your home. For more information, visit ThermaTru.com.
TOM: Making good homes better. Welcome back to The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show. I’m Tom Kraeutler.
LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete.
TOM: And we hold the nail for you because we have good health insurance. (Leslie chuckles) Pick up the phone right now and call us at 1-888-MONEY-PIT. We will seriously help you get your projects done and we may give you a great prize because this hour we’re giving away a Reiker room conditioner to one caller to the program at 1-888-MONEY-PIT. It’s a pretty cool prize because it’s a ceiling fan with an energy-efficient room heater built right in so it delivers year-round comfort. It’s worth 359 bucks. You want to win it you’ve got to have a home improvement question and come on the air and ask us at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Yeah, and with that great prize you can make that chilly room nice and toasty and get you in that summer mindset of those warmer days because now is the perfect time to start your outdoor garden display indoors. If you’ve got chillier temps outside go ahead and head to the nursery and look at those beautiful hothouse flowers and greenery and plant them indoors in some richly glazed ceramic urns or even beautiful pots. Up to you. Whatever your style is. And then go ahead and find them a sunny spot inside your home. They’re going to grow and mature indoors, they’re going to be perfect all winter long inside your house and then they’ll be really ready to be gorgeous on your front entrance come those summer sunny days.
TOM: Now you can even do this with some of the larger – like miniature bushes and things like that that we’ve often talked about using as a container garden outside; like, for example, an Alberta spruce.
LESLIE: Oh, absolutely. I mean anything green in your home during the winter, it’s going to make you feel better; it’s going to look springy and nice and it really just boosts your energy all winter long.
TOM: And the bushes are harder to kill, too.
LESLIE: Exactly. (Tom laughs)
TOM: 888-666-3974. Pick up the phone right now and call us with your home improvement question.
Leslie, who’s next?
LESLIE: Ralph in Arizona, welcome to The Money Pit. What are you working on?
RALPH: Actually, I’m working on remodeling my kitchen and I could really use some help in trying to figure out exactly what to do as far as tiling.
LESLIE: OK. Tiling the counter; the backsplash? What are you thinking about?
RALPH: Actually, tiling the backsplash. We’re going with granite countertops but …
LESLIE: OK.
RALPH: … you know, everyone’s asking – folks are letting me know that tumbled marble or ceramic tile and just not sure exactly what to really use.
LESLIE: Well, it really depends on what your design style is; you know, what is the décor of your kitchen, what is the color of your granite. There’s a lot of different choices when it comes to tile and, of course, budget ranges as well.
RALPH: Well it’s, again, granite top. I have a very light-colored floor and it’s a very contemporary kitchen, for the most part.
LESLIE: Alright. Well there’s actually a lot of interesting choices when it comes to tile as well. You can even find stainless steel tile that are sort of built in the same way that a subway tile is; almost in a mesh backing. There’s a lot of good choices and those would all make a lot of sense for the backsplash. And if you’re looking to save a couple of dollars, you can go with a ceramic tile that might not be as fancy or have a lot of design detail on it but you can choose something and use that as the field and even turn it on the diagonal just to give it a little bit more visual interest or maybe replace every third one with a more fancy tile. This way it sort of works within your budget if you’re trying to maintain a budget.
RALPH: OK, well that’s actually very informative. Can I ask you one other question?
LESLIE: Sure.
RALPH: The floor – for the ceramic tile on the floor there’s options to go into a diagonal pattern, a brick pattern or pretty much a straight pattern.
LESLIE: Mm-hmm.
RALPH: Just wondering if there is a pattern that is one is better than the other and – you know, to make the kitchen look larger, smaller, whatever.
TOM: Well, if you use a diagonal pattern it’s going to draw the eye to the floor and in my experience that, unless you have a very large kitchen, can make it look smaller.
LESLIE: Mm-hmm.
TOM: So I think that you want to keep the lines on the floor to be very parallel with the main line of the kitchen cabinets.
RALPH: Hmm, OK.
TOM: If you try to break it up with the diagonal – sometimes I go into houses and people want to do everything, you know, with a chevron or a diagonal kind of pattern and it really …
LESLIE: Oh, it can get so busy.
TOM: It gets way too busy, yeah. Just keep the floor line subtle and nice and solid as a base to this visual image but don’t make it too crazy with patterns.
RALPH: Great, thank you so much. Much appreciated.
TOM: You know a good example of this? Have you ever gone into a casino?
RALPH: Yes.
TOM: The casino carpets are absolutely the most distracting, busiest designs you’ve ever seen. You know why? Because they want you to look at the slot machines so they make it hard to look at the floor.
LESLIE: (overlapping voices) To draw your eye down.
RALPH: (overlapping voices) OK, so it makes perfect sense.
TOM: (overlapping voices) So keep it simple. Keep it simple.
RALPH: (overlapping voices) So keep the pattern simple and it doesn’t bring the eye down to the floor; kind of pushes it out to the cabinetry and the countertop.
LESLIE: Exactly.
TOM: Unless you want to put a slot machine in your kitchen. (Leslie chuckles) Then go for it.
Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Peggy in Utah’s got some unexpected visitors to the carport. What’s going on?
PEGGY: We don’t have bats in our belfry. We’ve got birds in our rafters. I have a double carport – it’s about 25x30 – and the birds just lived under the rafters and mess up our cars. How can I finish that off to make it both look nice and not too expensive? And my husband hates to paint.
TOM: There are – I’m thinking, Leslie, that she might want to invest in some of those products like …
LESLIE: Those little spiky …
TOM: Yeah, Bird-X makes them.
LESLIE: Yeah, it’s a …
PEGGY: Bird-X?
TOM: Yeah.
LESLIE: It’s a long strip that has these sort of spiky materials that stick off of it that makes it so that the birds can’t land on the area and you can get them in a variety of lengths and, you know, different looks. You can even get them in different colors so that they can blend in a little bit more appropriately with your setting.
TOM: Yeah, they have metal ones. They have plastic ones. The website is BirdX.com.
PEGGY: OK.
TOM: There are control spikes there that are very safe for the birds because once they figure out that they’re there …
LESLIE: They don’t want to land there anymore.
TOM: … they don’t want to land there. Exactly. And they’ll go and bother your neighbor and roost in your neighbor’s carport.
PEGGY: Right. And now, a question is, too, if I want to finish that off so it looks like a nice, finished area so that the top of the carport is finished, what would you suggest?
LESLIE: You mean sealing off the rafter so perhaps you have a beadboard ceiling or maybe just, you know, thickening up those rafters so they look more like proper yield-y type of supports?
TOM: How about some nice, flowy material …
PEGGY: OK.
TOM: … that would make – you know, that would make it very, very attractive? What kind of a batting material or something like that, Leslie, would be available for that?
LESLIE: You would have to use exterior fabric. Even though it’s in a covered carport area you would want to make sure you use something like Sunbrella or any of the other brands that make an exterior fabric just so that it doesn’t get affected by the moisture, mildew potentials. And then what you could do is – the way those outdoor fabrics are made, they don’t – oh gosh, what is that? They don’t fray on the edge.
PEGGY: Oh.
LESLIE: So you can cut it and not worry about having to hem it. If you wanted to create a finished look you can even use an iron-on, like a fusible bonding, to create a finished edge if sewing is not your favorite task. And then you could go ahead staple it to the rafters or put grommets in the fabric edge and then maybe some eye hooks into the rafter itself and sort of drape it so it swags up and along and that might make a nice, finished look. And you can even do it the opposite way so that when you look from the street you see the swag going from front to back rather than you see the sides of it. It’s really up to you. And you know, I did – on a new show that I worked on the WE network called The Ugliest House on the Block, Peggy, I dressed up a carport that had those simple, steel support column poles holding up the carport. I got these beautiful …
PEGGY: We do. The round ones.
LESLIE: Mm-hmm. I got these beautiful sort of PVC columns that came in four pieces and they wrapped around the existing pole and this was sort of a craftsman-styled tapered column, so it started off real narrow at the top and then came down in a beautiful tapered column with even raised panelings and they really just snap together. The only work that I needed some tools for was to adjust the length or the height of each of these pieces. And it went together beautifully. It even went together with just gorilla glue. So if you wanted to really spruce up that space, you know, for a couple of hundred bucks you could get these wrap-around pieces.
PEGGY: Oh, thank you kindly.
LESLIE: Art in Iowa, you’ve got The Money Pit. What can we do for you?
ART: Hi. Yeah, you all had mentioned a few tips for, you know, home improvements and keeping your house up to date. I was wondering, when you said about draining water heaters, does that apply if you still have a whole-house filter? Is that still necessary to drain a couple of gallons out of your water heater every six months?
TOM: If you have a filtration system? Is that what you’re asking?
ART: Well, I have a whole-house filter that just – you know, it filters out like sediment and stuff like that.
TOM: Well, certainly you would be less likely to build up any type of a mineral deposit in the bottom of the water heater.
LESLIE: But don’t you still end up with rust in the bottom?
TOM: Mmm, well …
LESLIE: Not so much?
TOM: Now, the rust would not be in the water part of it. The rust would be if it’s a gas-fired water heater you can get rust in the burner compartment.
LESLIE: In the coil. In the burner itself.
TOM: Right, and it has to be cleaned. You know, in the years I was a professional home inspector I would very often open up those burner compartments and see like a cone-shaped pile of rust; looked like a little volcano …
LESLIE: Mm-hmm.
TOM: … you know, on top of that burner. So certainly you’ve got to keep the burner clean and functioning properly and that’s something that you would do periodically. But in terms of draining it, it’s not a bad idea to drain it once every six months or so but, certainly, if you have a filtration system on your house then you’re a lot less likely to get a scale buildup. (Baby cries)
Ah! (Leslie chuckles) The baby crying in the background.
ART: (chuckling) Yeah. My little boy there. Well, thank you all very much. I really enjoy y’all’s show.
TOM: You’re welcome, Art. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT. Bye, little boy.
LESLIE: (chuckling) Future home improvement doer.
Betty in Minnesota, welcome to The Money Pit. How can we help you today?
BETTY: Well, I sure hope you can because it’s really cold up here …
TOM: OK.
BETTY: … and my furnace is on the blink.
LESLIE: OK.
TOM: What’s going on?
BETTY: It won’t stay lit. It will keep running. I light it and it gets nice and warm and runs and the pilot light goes out but the motor keeps blowing cold air.
TOM: Well, the way a furnace works is when the burners come on the furnace heats up and then when it gets warm enough the blower comes on, circulates the warm air and then the burners go off but the blower continues to go and that’s a cycle. Now, if the burner is coming on but going off quickly, then probably the thermal couple is worn out and that’s that piece of metal that’s usually right next to the flame. Sometimes the flame is sort of embedded into it. But when the thermal couple goes bad, that’s exactly the scenario that happens. You’ll light it. It will come on but then it won’t stay lit. So at this point you’re going to have to get the gas company or the HVAC service provider that you have in your area to come in and take a look at that because that’s part of the control circuit. It’s definitely not a do-it-yourself project but, at the same time, these types of repairs are typically fairly inexpensive.
BETTY: So that means that’s the reason why the pilot light goes out?
TOM: Yes, because the thermal couple tells the pilot light to turn the gas on and if there’s no flame then the gas goes off. And so, if the thermal couple is bad the gas is just going to go off and not come on. It’s a safety system.
BETTY: So it’s not the motor?
TOM: No, the motor, you’re telling me, is running.
BETTY: Mm-hmm.
TOM: Yeah, so I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s a problem with the control circuit and it’s most likely the thermal couple.
BETTY: Thank you so much. I think you saved me a ton of money. (chuckling)
TOM: Well, you’ve very welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT. Stay warm.
You are tuned in to The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show.
Up next, picking the perfect paint for your walls? It’s always a choice between beauty and maintenance. Learn where that balance point is, after this.
[audio timestamp: 22:47]
(theme song)
ANNOUNCER: The Money Pit is being brought to you by – well, by us. Get a $1,000 guarantee that the contractor you hire gets the job done right with your new Money Pit American Homeowners Association membership. And get $50 in Zircon tools if you join in the next 30 minutes. Call now. 866-REAL-HOME. That’s 866-REAL-HOME. Now here are Tom and Leslie.
TOM: This is The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show. I’m Tom Kraeutler.
LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete.
TOM: Call us right now at 1-888-MONEY-PIT, 888-666-3974, with your home improvement question; your do-it-yourself dilemma. We’re here. You’re there. Just call us.
Hey, before the break we were talking about paint. It is one of my favorite home improvement projects because it’s cheap. (Leslie chuckles) And it’s also an easy way to completely change the look of a run and choosing a paint …
LESLIE: Huge impact.
TOM: Huge impact. That’s right. For not a lot of money. But choosing a paint color, that’s pretty hard. And have you noticed how many paint types there are as well? You’ve got to choose not only the color but you’ve got to pick whether it’s satin, eggshell, semi-gloss. It can get pretty confusing. So here’s what you need to know; the Tom and Leslie guide to paint finish.
First of all, starting at the top: gloss enamels. Great, great finish. Very hard, very durable, very shiny. If you have any imperfections in your materials – in your wood or you walls, if it’s trim or going on the walls – don’t do it. But otherwise, great choice.
LESLIE: A good rule of thumb to keep in mind when you’re selecting your paints: if you want best results you want to use semi-gloss paints on any trim work; anything that you’re going to be – window sills, doors – you know, where you get a lot of hand contact, so you can easily clean it off. And you want to use flat paint on walls and on ceilings. For new work you really want to make sure to apply a primer first. It’s got different adhesion qualities, so you want to make sure that you’re really prepping the surface for that paint to stick well.
And lastly, always buy the best paint possible that you can afford in your budget because painting, it’s mostly the labor and the best paint means less work and a longer-lasting paint job. So, if you spend less money on paint you’re going to be doing it again more quickly than you would if you spent that maybe 10 extra bucks in the beginning.
TOM: Do it once, do it right and don’t do it again; at least not too soon.
LESLIE: Yeah.
TOM: This is The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show.
Let’s get back to the phones.
LESLIE: Rhonda in California is dealing with a built-in vacuum cleaner that doesn’t quite suck so good. What’s going on?
RHONDA: I’ve tried everything. I got my blower out to blow through the hole to try and unclog it. It’s not working. The house is fairly large. I’ve narrowed it down to the bottom downstairs where the actual unit is towards the unit. But to like snake it out or something, it’s just too windy when you first go through. I didn’t know if you had any tips how to unclog it.
TOM: Do you have any clue as to where the clog is?
RHONDA: It’s probably on the bottom floor about halfway through the house. The unit’s on like the west end so this is more towards the east end of the house.
TOM: Hmm. Well, I would try to zone these central vac lines so you can attack them one at a time. The key here is that even though where the exhaust port is where the hole is on the wall, that’s not where you to insert the snake. You have to get in before that so you can push towards that hole. It’s probably going to be at a turn. Do you have any idea what actually is the obstruction? Did somebody like suck a toy into it or something like that?
RHONDA: Probably. Probably. (all chuckle)
TOM: Good chance, huh?
RHONDA: Yeah, very good chance.
TOM: You’ve got to actually get before the elbow and try to get it out there like with a snake or something like that. You’re not going to be able to do it from like the exit port where you actually hook up the vacuum. You follow me?
RHONDA: Yeah, and the problem is to do it from the actual unit it’s so sharp corners.
TOM: Right. My point is you can’t do it from the unit because, you see, that’s where you want it to come out. You’ve got to do it …
RHONDA: Oh, I see. OK.
TOM: … on the back side of that. You want to push towards the unit. You don’t want to go in because then you’re just going to make it tighter and tighter and tighter. So what you have to try to do is understand how each one of those lines goes through the house; try to isolate them as if they’re all separate zone, then start as far away from the unit and push toward it until you loosen the thing up.
RHONDA: OK, I was going the opposite way.
TOM: Yep. Yeah, you were going backwards.
RHONDA: OK.
TOM: OK?
RHONDA: Great. Thank you so much.
TOM: Alright, good luck. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT. 888-666-3974.
Good news, she has a built-in vacuum system. Bad news, she sucked a toy into it. (chuckling)
LESLIE: Yeah, and even better news is one of her kids is going to be super happy to get whatever it is stuck in there back. (Tom laughs)
Mark in North Carolina is looking to get some hot water to those far places. How can we help?
MARK: I’m actually having some problems with my dishwasher.
LESLIE: OK.
MARK: It doesn’t seem like it’s that far from the hot water heater but it takes forever for water to get to the faucet near to the dishwasher.
TOM: OK.
MARK: And what I end up doing is running the water at the sink by the dishwasher, pretty much …
LESLIE: Before you run the dishwasher.
MARK: Not just before but actually through the whole cycle.
TOM: Oh, that’s crazy.
LESLIE: Wow.
TOM: What’s up with your dishwasher? Doesn’t seem like it’s working very well.
MARK: Yeah, and I don’t know if there’s a way to test the heating element in it or if it’s just a matter that, you know, when it’s not demanding the water that it – you know, since it does take so long.
TOM: Are you finding, Mark, that if you don’t do that the dishes come out dirty?
MARK: Yes, that’s the reason that I started checking on the hot water.
TOM: Well, listen. I think the problem is your dishwasher. It’s not your water heater.
LESLIE: How old is the dishwasher?
MARK: About three years old.
LESLIE: Hmm.
TOM: Yeah, I suspect that the water heater in the dishwasher, which is supposed to boost the water temperature up, is not working.
MARK: Hmm.
TOM: You know, there’s a good website, it’s called RepairClinic.com, where they can …
LESLIE: It’s an excellent website.
TOM: They can diagnose the specific part based on the specific model.
MARK: Mm-hmm.
TOM: And then you can actually buy the part and they provide you step-by-step instructions on how to fix it yourself. You might want to head on over there because I don’t think this problem is with your water heater. This problem is with your dishwasher and you’re probably wasting boatloads of cash.
MARK: Yeah, and I’m not running it on a high – at a high amount. I get it hot and then I let it trickle during the hot water cycle. But still, I know that that’s not great.
TOM: Yeah, but listen. The temperature of the water that you need to clean dishes is higher than the temperature of the water …
LESLIE: That comes out of the faucet.
TOM: Yeah, that you clean yourself with.
MARK: Hmm.
TOM: There’s supposed to be a booster in the dishwasher that boosts that temperature up a lot. I mean it comes out of the water heater – the maximum it could come out of the water heater is – and this is assuming that the water heater is completely set improperly …
MARK: Mm-hmm.
TOM: … at maybe 140 degrees or so …
MARK: Right.
TOM: … which is absolutely scalding and totally dangerous. It should be down around 110 or 120. But the dishwasher itself should be boosting that up to 160-ish …
MARK: Hmm.
TOM: … because of the temperature inside. Did you ever notice when you open up a dishwasher mid-cycle and there’s just all this steam that comes out?
LESLIE: It’s like a steam bath.
TOM: That’s not happening …
MARK: Yeah, I don’t get that. (Leslie chuckles)
TOM: Well, that’s not happening. Obviously. That’s not happening because the water’s going in at 120. It’s going in – it’s happening because there’s a heater in there. So your heater is not working. That’s the problem that you need to solve. OK, Mark?
LESLIE: And that’s a young dishwasher …
TOM: Yeah, exactly.
LESLIE: … so you really should take advantage of the repair.
TOM: Yeah, at that age it’s definitely worth fixing.
MARK: And you say it’s ApplianceGuru.com?
TOM: RepairClinic.com and yes, the – that is one of their characters there. I think it’s the Repair Guru or something like that. But it’s RepairClinic.com.
Mark, thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
MARK: Thanks.
LESLIE: More great home improvement advice coming up when The Money Pit returns, including info on that small but cozy kitchen that you’ve got in your house. We’re going to teach you some tricks of the trade that the pros use to open up your tiny space that’s not going to involve a lot of expense, so stick around.
[audio timestamp: 30:46]
(promo/theme song)
[audio timestamp: 34:14]
ANNOUNCER: This portion of The Money Pit is brought to you by Ryobi, manufacturer of professional feature power tools and accessories with an affordable price for the do-it-yourselfer. Ryobi power tools. Pro features, affordable price. Available exclusively at The Home Depot. Now, here are Tom and Leslie.
TOM: This is The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show where we make good homes better. I’m Tom Kraeutler.
LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete and we’ve got a great prize this hour to make your good home even better. It’s the Reiker room conditioner. It’s worth $359 and basically it is a gorgeous ceiling fan. Ah, but the cool trick here is that flip a switch, use your thermostat, adjust it from a remote and all of a sudden you’ve got a built-in space heater up, out of the way to heat that extra chilly room or that three-season room or even like Tom’s chilly kitchen that he had in his house until he got a Reiker room conditioner.
TOM: I did. It works great. In fact, I can tell you we had the heat go out not too long ago and …
LESLIE: And did it save the day?
TOM: It pretty much did. We were all huddled in the kitchen under the Reiker room conditioner warming up. (Leslie chuckles) So it did. But it’s pretty cool. It’s a ceiling fan that heats. We’ve got one to give away. It’s worth 339 bucks so call us right now. If you want to win it you must have a home improvement question and be willing to come on the air and ask us and we’ll even try to answer it. How about that? (Leslie chuckles) 888-666-3974.
Now, we were talking, just a bit ago, about small spaces and how to make them bigger. Well, put on an addition. No. Anybody can do that. But if you have a small kitchen there are a couple of tricks of the trade.
First one, adding skylights. If you can get access to the roof above your kitchen, adding a skylight will definitely bring in a lot more light and make the kitchen seem visually bigger. If you cannot put in a skylight you can put in something called a sun tunnel, which is like a tubular skylight coated with mirror inside of it and it brings the light all the way down the tube right into the ceiling of the space and puts in a load of daylight. So if you don’t have access to the roof you can run it down through a closet wall or something like that and still have that kind of light.
Another thing you can do, remove the soffits above the cabinets. That’s the box that goes right above the cabinets. Just taking those out opens up that ceiling space, gives your eye a little more room to enjoy that ceiling and makes it look a whole lot bigger.
Also, think about, when you’re dealing with those cabinets, maybe replacing some of those wood doors with some glass-covered doors. If you open them up it really, again, improves the depth of the kitchen. So, a couple of decorating tricks of the trade that don’t have to involve a terrible amount of construction can definitely make the space feel that much bigger.
Need a decorating tip? Need a small space solution? Pick up the phone right now and call us at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
Leslie, who’s next?
LESLIE: Mary in California is having a problem with an addition in her home. What can we help you with?
MARY: I have a home that we had to rebuild after a fire and it’s all insulated and we’re making the garage into a family room.
TOM: OK.
MARY: And there is no heat going into the family room.
TOM: How is the rest of the house heated?
MARY: Rest of the house is by gas.
TOM: Forced air, hot water? What kind of distribution …
MARY: Propane. Propane.
TOM: OK, that’s the fuel.
MARY: Uh-huh.
TOM: What I need to know is whether you have ducts or radiators.
MARY: Ducts.
TOM: So, with a forced air heating system you have ducts that deliver warm air and cool air to a conditioned space and then return ducts that take it back. The problem with converting a garage is typically they have at least one if not two and sometimes three exterior surfaces. If you – if it’s a one-story. And so, you have the roof above and you have the door and maybe you have another exterior wall because they’re almost in the corner of the house, you have a lot of exterior surfaces there and even though you insulate them they need a lot of heat to overcome that space.
So what you’re going to have to determine is, first, can I extend the duct system into the garage so I deliver enough heat to be comfortable in there. That’s the first question. And if you can do that then you have to figure out how to extend those ducts to do that. If you can’t, then you have to look into zoning that which means adding a second heating system. If you’re going to zone you’re going to want to probably divide up different sections of the house so that some are on one furnace and some are on another.
Now, if the family room is going to be a place that you don’t use frequently, you could consider a less expensive type of heat like electric baseboard or even a through-the-wall heat pump. But again, that depends on how much time you’re going to spend in there. If you want it to be comfortable all the time the best way to do that is to extend your existing central heating system.
MARY: So just extend it with a thing – heating going in and one going back out? Is that what you said?
TOM: Yes, but – that’s correct conceptually, but it’s a lot easier said than done because you have to make sure that the existing heating system is big enough to do that and that you’re moving enough air in and out to actually make it comfortable and warm.
My first step would be to get in touch with my HVAC contractor and find out if it’s possible to extend the existing heating system and if he or she thinks that you have BTUs in that system to do that because you want to maintain the value in your house and you want to create a family room. Let’s make sure that it’s just like any other space in your house that’s properly designed to heat all the time.
MARY: OK. So would it be best then for the guy that built the house, because it just go rebuilt from being burned …
TOM: Whoever is your HVAC contractor, that would be the person to talk to; not necessarily the builder, but whoever is servicing your systems. Because it’s a heat loss calculation. There’s a way to actually measure how much heat that you need in that space.
Mary, thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: You are tuned in to The Money Pit and up next we’re going to help an e-mailer answer the question about what’s going on with their gross roof and is it time to replace it, so stick around.
[audio timestamp: 39:47]
(theme song)
ANNOUNCER: This portion of The Money Pit is brought to you by Aprilaire, makers of professionally-installed, high-efficiency air cleaners. For more information, go to Aprilaire.com. Now, here are Tom and Leslie.
TOM: This is The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show. I’m Tom Kraeutler.
LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete and we have got some exciting news for you folks who are just sick and tired of running out of that hot water. In our next e-newsletter we are going to tell you some tips from the pros about your hot water heater and when it might be time for an upgrade, a replacement, some adjustments. We’re going to give you all the tips to make sure you’ve got plenty of hot water especially when you need it. If you’re not a subscriber then why the heck not? Go to MoneyPit.com, sign up now. It’s free. It will be in your inbox every Friday. You don’t even have to ask for it. It just shows up.
And while you’re clicking around MoneyPit.com you can look for a nice purple icon with some question marks on it that says “Ask Tom and Leslie.” If you don’t feel like picking up the phone you can e-mail us your question and we will answer it like we do every hour at this portion of the show. We’ve got one here from David in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey who writes: “My 18-year-old wood roof shingles have algae. I got several quotes and all are very costly to clean with diluted bleach – about $5,000. Should I wait until I need replacement with those new long-life shingles or should I just go for it?”
TOM: You know, algae and fungus on your roof is pretty unsightly and in the case of wood roofs it actually can impede the drainage of a shingle and that’s going to lead it to be wetter and possibly rot quicker. So that’s not a good thing to have on your roof.
Now, that being said, roof cleaning done improperly can damage the roof; especially if you did something like got up there with a pressure washer and sort of blasted those shingles. They’re very soft.
LESLIE: What’s the lifespan on those wood shingles? Is he close to the end?
TOM: The wood shingles are really only going to last you 15 or 20 years. They don’t really last that …
LESLIE: So he’s right there.
TOM: Yeah, they don’t last much longer. These are shakes so they’re thicker but typically they’re going to last you 15 or 20 years. So, a couple of things that you can do.
First of all, you can put a roof cleaner on the shingle and there’s different roof cleaners out there. There’s Jomax; there’s another one that’s called Roof Reviver that works very well. And the advantage of using these roof cleaners is that the runoff is not going to kill the plants all the way around it.
LESLIE: Mm-hmm.
TOM: Once you spray the roof, if you just spray it with one of these products and don’t kind of scrub it, it’ll stop the algae from growing. If you want to do something in the long haul and stop it from coming back, another think that you could do is you could add a copper or a nickel ridge vent to the roof. And the reason you’re doing that is because as water strikes the ridge vent and then runs off of it, it carries some of the metal with it and that acts as a mildicide as well. Did you ever notice a chimney where you have like bright streaks that come off of it?
LESLIE: Mm-hmm.
TOM: That’s because it’s coming off of the copper. The copper strikes it and releases the metal.
LESLIE: Off the flashing.
TOM: Right. And that cleans that roof. So if you put it across the entire top of the roof at the peak, at the ridge, that will clean the entire roof.
So those are the things that you’ve got to do. I would definitely not spend a lot of money having this done professionally because by the time you drop that kind of money you could be …
LESLIE: It’s time to replace it.
TOM: Yeah, you could be a quarter of the way towards replacing it or half the way towards the cost of replacing it anyway. And at 18 years old, you probably don’t have that many years of roof life left in it. So I’d say maintain it right now, clean it a little bit, stop the mildew from growing, stop the algae from growing, stop the fungus from growing and then in a couple of years you can tear it off and replace the whole thing.
LESLIE: Alright, got another here from Jim in Wolfforth, Texas who writes: “What is the correct way to repoint brick?”
TOM: Well, it’s not polite to point, Jim. (Leslie chuckles) Didn’t your mother every tell you that? No, actually the way to do that is to mix up a mortar bed that has a little bit more lime in it than usual. That makes it a little thicker and a little more creamy and it’s easier to get the new mortar to stick into the brick. So make sure you use a brick pointing tool, a special trowel that will help you get it in just the right place so it won’t fall out.
LESLIE: Alright, hope that helps you with that project, Jim.
TOM: You are tuned in to The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show. Thank you so much for spending this hour with us.
Well, Leslie, we are not even done with the first month of the year yet and already the New Year’s resolutions are falling behind the wayside. (Leslie chuckles) That didn’t last long.
LESLIE: They’re so easy to leave behind.
TOM: But don’t give up. If you’ve got a resolution that has to do with your house we are here to help you get through those. No guilt. You don’t have to apologize. Just pick up the phone and call us. We won’t ask any questions. We will just give you the answer to your home improvement question 24 hours a day, seven days a week at 1-888-MONEY-PIT. Also, online at MoneyPit.com where you can hear our podcast.
I’m Tom Kraeutler.
LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete.
TOM: Remember, you can do it yourself …
LESLIE: But you don't have to do it alone.
[audio timestamp: 44:30]
(promo/theme song)
END HOUR 1 TEXT
(Copyright 2007 Squeaky Door Productions, Inc. No portion of this transcript or audio file may be reproduced in any format without the express written permission of Squeaky Door Productions, Inc.)
Designed by: DVI | Developed by: Kurvits Media