#2362 – Holiday Havoc with Self-Cleaning Ovens | DIY Winter Roof Check | Easy Spray Foam Insulation

Show Notes

It’s the season for heating up your home improvement hacks! In this episode, we’ll spill the beans on self-cleaning ovens, winter rooftop inspection tips, and the cozy world of spray foam insulation. Listen now to hear what we’re cooking up next!

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Self-Cleaning Ovens: Find out why the holidays are the worst time to run your oven’s self-cleaning cycle, plus get some oven maintenance tips.
Roof Inspection: Winter weather is rough on roofs, so now’s the time to do a DIY roof check-up.
Spray Foam Insulation: Seal drafts and lower heating bills with this easy spray foam insulation system.

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0:00:29	TOM: Coast to coast and floorboards to shingles. This is the Money Pit Home Improvement show. I’m Tom Kraeutler.
0:00:35	LESLIE: I’m Leslie Segrete.
0:00:54	TOM: And we are here to help you take care of the projects you want to get done around your house. The holidays are coming quickly and if you’ve got a project you’d like to get done before the hordes of family and friends show up from all around the country. Well, now’s a great time to take that first step because we’re here to help. And we will share your to do list. Just reach out to us with your questions at 1-888-Money-Pit. That’s 888-666-3974 or better yet, go to moneypit.com/ask and click the blue microphone button. Coming up on today’s show, if you’re thinking that now with the holidays just ahead, it’s a good time to run your oven self-cleaning cycle. You want to get it all cleaned out in advance of all that pre-holiday baking, right? Wrong. But the worst time is to clean your oven before you actually really need it because cleaning cycles put them through super-duper stress and they’re very likely to fail, especially when getting repairman. And because you like double time and a half. So we’ll give you some alternatives to that process.
0:01:35	LESLIE: Yeah. And then where are you going to find a precooked turkey on Thanksgiving? come on, guys, use the noggins. And winter is very quickly approaching as well. And that is a season that’s super tough on your roof. You think about you got all the snow, the ice, the freeze and thaw cycle, and your roof takes a ton of punishment, especially at this time of year. And that’s why now, right as we’re approaching the end of fall, right before winter comes, really is a great time to plan for any roofing work that might be needed to be done come springtime. So we’re going to share some tips now for a DIY roof check.
0:02:09	TOM: And one of the most effective ways to reduce drafts and lower home heating costs is to seal the spaces where cold air leaks in. Now, spray foam is a great way to do just that. We’re going to share some tips on a new product that makes that job easier than ever.
0:02:23	LESLIE: But first, you guys have some home improvement questions for the holiday season. And Santa is not answering your letters quick enough. Well, turn to us over here at the Money Pit. We can help you save money, save time, avoid those home improvement hassles that can slow you down on the road to making your dream house.
0:02:40	TOM: And the number once again is 1-888-Money-Pit. Or just go to MoneyPit.com/ask. So let’s get to it. Leslie, who’s first?
0:02:48	LESLIE: All right. We’ve got Ruth on the line from Saint Thomas, Pennsylvania. You got us all excited. We’re going to the Caribbean, but we’re sticking in the Northeast. How can we help you today?
0:02:58	CALLER: Well, I have a heat pump in my house. That’s how we heat through that. And somebody told me that I have to have that serve every winter for the heat pump. And in the spring I have to have the air conditioner service. Is there any truth to that? Because I someone else told me that if you have an electrical heat pump, you do not have to have it served serviced every year. So I was just wondering.
0:03:27	TOM: So you do need to have it service, but just once a year, because it’s pretty much going to operate the same and the heating system and the cooling system. And they test both systems as part of the normal service. The difference between the heating and the cooling is one valve called a reversing valve, and it basically reverses the refrigeration cycle. Okay. And that can be checked as part of the summer AC service. So I don’t think you have to do it twice a year. You certainly have to do it once a year. But living in Pennsylvania, heat pump is probably a very expensive way for you to heat. I will tell you, there’s new technology out there now in heat pumps that are designed for northern climates. BOSCH Home Comfort is a manufacturer of many of these inverter heat pumps that can actually handle heating when the temperature is like minus five or minus ten outside and don’t cost more to operate than what a gas furnace might be. So they’re certainly a good option for those that don’t have access to gas, for example, for the heating where you can get air conditioning in the same system at a very, very affordable cost. So that’s something to keep in mind for when it’s time to upgrade the system. But for right now, I’d say servicing it once a year is the hot ticket.
0:04:40	CALLER: Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.
0:04:42	TOM: All right. Well, good luck with that project.
0:04:45	LESLIE: Heading out to Brian in Pennsylvania who need some advice on how to remove a door from the hinges. That is a project. What’s going on?
0:04:51	CALLER: How’s the best way to take a door off the changes and more importantly, to put it back on its hinges? I’ll be doing all this work for myself. What I’m doing is replacing the bottom sweep.
0:05:03	TOM: Well, it’s actually not that difficult. What you want to do is this. The exterior hinges are going to have a hinge pin that runs through them, and the hinge pin will be accessible from the bottom of the hinge. So you take a nail set and your hammer and you gently tap that pin up from the bottom of the hinge to you see it start to come out of the hinge at the top. You may need some help to do this. I typically like to do this with the door in the fully closed position because it helps support the door. But I will pop out that hinge pin from all three hinges and then I will turn the handle and then lift that door or lead it towards me and take it out of its opening. That way. Now, you mentioned that you want to cut this door, trim this door, do some work on it. I strongly recommend that when you get this out and you lay it on some sawhorses that you mark the bottom because the top and the bottom of the door was out of the frame look surprisingly similar and you wouldn’t want to cut the wrong size. Don’t ask me how I know that. You just wouldn’t want to do it. Okay, so pop this in, pinches out just like that by tapping them out from the bottom of the nail set. And sometimes if you can’t get the nail set in under the lip of the hinge pin, what you could do is use like a screwdriver and just tap the screwdriver a little bit to root to get it to come out the rest of the way. When you put it back together, remember to pull WD 40 on those pins and we’ll go back together very, very easily.
0:06:20	LESLIE: Hey, Money Pit podcast fans, you want to help us out? Well, go ahead and leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts and we’re going to give you a virtual high five. Plus, you’ll be helping us spread the word about our show. Just go to Money Pit dot com slash review. All right. Now we’re going to remote Alaska, where Loni has an igloo question. I don’t think we’ve ever talked about an igloo.
0:06:41	CALLER: Okay. Well, we have the opportunity to purchase a monolithic dome, which is more it looks like an igloo. Okay? And when we’re touring it, it’s only a 20 foot in diameter, but they did have a dehumidifier fire inside and on the outside. It had just been painted with a like a vinyl paint, a thicker paint. And there was bubbles on the outside.
0:07:10	CALLER: And I took a knife and poked it and water drained out. So I’m wondering if there’s a condensation problem, especially for mold and what it would take to remedy that.
0:07:23	TOM: So what is this? What is this dome constructed out of? Is the entire thing concrete or what’s it made out of?
0:07:28	CALLER: It is concrete.
0:07:29	TOM: Well, listen, you’ve got to have some sort of a system to try to manage moisture in a space like that, because let’s face it, first of all, concrete is very high gyroscopic. So water that well will get into that concrete at the base where it comes in contact with the soil draw up into the concrete surface and essentially saturate the entire thing. If there’s bad drainage, you can get worse. But I could definitely see how it would stay very, very damp. The moisture that you’re seeing inside the paint is clear evidence of the fact that this serve the structure is holding a lot of water. Now, it could draw from the soil or it could just be from the humidity in the air that’s getting into the walls. So it definitely has to be managed. And it sounds like just the dehumidifier by itself may not be the answer you might need to really have an HVAC pro design, a system that could manage that moisture. And in terms of the paint itself, you also have to choose a paint that is designed to stick well to concrete you mentioned is a really thick paint. We’ve seen a lot of paints out there that claim to be sort of almost like a liquid siding that are very thick for the problems, that they’re not vapor, permeable, so they don’t breathe. As a result, everything stays underneath it. And then when you see those bubbles in the water just forming right there, it’s just going to continue to push that right off. And I imagine when it gets really, really cold, it’ll probably freeze and expand crack that paint, basically making it worthless. So I think you have reason to be concerned. And I would definitely if there’s a good professional home inspector in that area that could look at it for you, that might be a pro to start with, but I definitely think you’re going to need to have an expert design a system that works for that. typically when you paint concrete, you want to use an epoxy based paint that has really high adhesion and really strong durability. But it sounds to me like this paint that they used in this case was not that type of paint.
0:09:20	CALLER: Okay.
0:09:21	TOM: Well, the holidays are approaching quickly. And if you’re thinking about cleaning your oven in advance, a pre-holiday baking bonanza, our advice don’t believe me. Do not do it. while self-cleaning ovens might be one of the century’s finest advances in cooking technology, running that self-cleaning cycle just before a big baking day might end up with you running to the bakery to buy pies instead.
0:09:44	LESLIE: Yeah, and here’s why You guys now running a self-cleaning cycle puts your oven through a lot more stress than pretty much anything else you can ask it to do. Studies show that ovens may tend to break down or perform inconsistently just after the self-cleaning cycle. And if your oven is on the verge of such a breakdown and Murphy’s Law being what it is, you can count on that happening just hours before the in-laws are about to show up expecting a grand home cooked meal, which if someone’s going to break, they are not going to get. And finding that service technician or even ordering parts and repairing the oven yourself is not something that can always be accomplished on such a short notice. So skip that self-cleaning cycle and stick to manual wipe downs until the guests are gone.
0:10:28	TOM: Yeah. Do you know how hot an oven gets in self-cleaning cycle?
0:10:31	LESLIE: Oh my gosh. Is it like 600 degrees?
0:10:33	TOM: No, it’s like 99. That’s like two or three times the hottest you would ever set it for normal cooking. That’s why it’s totally stress out now. In the meantime, if you can’t do the self-cleaning cycle, we’ve got three quick and easy oven maintenance tips that won’t leave your oven down for the count. First, check the oven temperature. You can find out whether your ovens Built-In thermostat is accurate with the aid of a separate oven thermometer. Set the temperature and then compare the temperature of thermometer with the set temperature. Thermometer temperature should be no more than 25 degrees above or below the set temp.
0:11:07	LESLIE: Now, you can also check your oven door gaskets. Now, that gasket is meant to keep the heat inside the oven. And over time, these oven door gaskets can become torn or deformed, and then that’s going to allow the heat to escape. So you want to inspect those gaskets, ensure that they’re in good condition, and if they’re not replacing them is a very simple oven repair.
0:11:26	TOM: And lastly, check out the oven door hinges. If an oven door does not close properly, it’s kind of like a window or door. If it has a little bit of a gap in it, heat can escape. So you want to make sure the door closes tightly and evenly. If it doesn’t check for broken or bent door hinges or door springs, which again should be replaced. And that’s a pretty easy DIY project.
0:11:48	LESLIE: All right. Heading out to Idaho, we’ve got Eric on the line who’s got some issues with moisture in their money pit. What’s going.
0:11:53	CALLER: On? Hi, Leslie. Yeah, we’ve got a duplex that was built probably in the late fifties, early sixties, and it had single pane windows. And both sides seem to have started having a moisture issue where the windows all winter long, even fall and spring, the two big kitchen windows that are maybe five foot by five foot and the big front living room window, they would get moisture and condensation on it really bad. And the strange thing is, is it doesn’t seem and they started to ruin the nice wood edges of the windows on the inside and things. The strange thing was what I was trying to figure out is we didn’t it appears that from 1950 until now, it didn’t it never really had that problem. And it just started suddenly. And I realized, right, I realized that I painted the house. I did it like an extremely good job of painting the house, sealing up every single crack with caulk. And I you know, and I’m wondering, I used really the best quality paint I could buy, sealed it, like, ridiculously. And I didn’t realize I heard some people saying, well, house needs to breathe. And maybe what I’m thinking is maybe the house had never even been painted that well and it could breathe through the slats and the wood under.
0:13:19	CALLER: What kind of siding do you have, Eric?
0:13:22	CALLER: Regular wood planks that were. Yeah.
0:13:27	TOM: I want to ask you, what changed? Because you’re right. Why did or why it happened to me? Well, I think it could have changed. I mean you could have more people living in the house. You could have more pets in the house. Maybe you had a fan. Now you don’t have a fan. There’s a lot of that kind of stuff. So certainly that could have contributed to it. You have a crawl space on this house.
0:13:42	CALLER: That and that was what I want to ask about, because we did we’ve done a whole bunch of things with fans and venting and all kinds of things. And when I crawl into the crawl space, it’s dirt under the whole duplex, both sides. There’s about three feet of space now before feet of space between the dirt, the dirt and the and there’s no there’s no kind of covering over the dirt. But what I noticed is, is that even in the middle of the wet winter or even in the spring, when the moisture is running off, the snow’s melting. Even in the spring under there, the dirt is bone dry underneath the house.
0:14:18	TOM: Yeah, might be, but there’s probably humidity and moisture getting up off of that. Okay, so let’s kind of just cover the whole space here. So first of all, just to set the record straight, the fact that you have condensation, a single pane windows is not the sort of default of the windows. They’re not insulated windows. So that’s going to happen. You have high humidity inside the house. How is that humidity getting into the house? So it gets in the house from cooking, from breathing, from pets, but it also gets in the house from drainage. That’s not set up right on the outside of the house. Now, humidity inside the house. If you have a fan like a like a range hood in the kitchen that needs to be vented outside, not recirculating. If you have fans in the bathrooms, those need to run on humid estates so that they automatically will run a good ten or 15 minutes after you leave the bathroom, because that’s when that humidity sort of hangs around and keeps it moving out. And again, they need to be vented outside the house. Now, in terms of that crawl space, you definitely need to put a vapor barrier on that dirt floor that’s going to make a big difference. You want to use a fairly thick plastic sheeting, Vaseline sheeting. You want to overlap it about four feet. So don’t go edge to edge, but overlap it, then get it right up to the edge of the of the of the wall. If you have crawl space vents, those ought to be open except for the very coldest of months. And then most importantly, I want you to do something you may not have connected to this moisture problem. And that is I want you to look at your drainage conditions outside the house. And what I mean by that is starting with the gutters, we want to make sure that they are adequate in size. They’re not overflowing, that the downspouts are discharging, not the way contractors typically leave them, which is sort of right at the corner of the foundation. You need to add an extension to all of those downspouts to go out five or six feet. So now we’re pushing water out away from the foundation perimeter and we’re really doing a good job at managing that roof for the next time you get a really heavy rainstorm in which to grab your umbrella and go outside and look at what’s happening with the water that’s gone on that roof and how it’s coming off that roof. Is it overflowing gutters? Are downspouts clogged? You might learn a lot about where that water is going. You definitely don’t need it anywhere near the house. You want to keep that first 4 to 6 foot perimeter as dry as possible, and you do that, number one by gutters. And secondly, by grading, having soil slip away, making sure we’re not trapping water against the house like we might do if we had like a landscape water or something of that nature. But if you keep the moisture away, that perimeter, if you add in the vapor barriers and if you have good ventilation in terms of fans and you’re using them correctly, that’s going to make a big difference in how much humidity is inside that house. Oh, and the last thing is attic vents too often. That attic, I don’t know what kind of rough shape you have, but if it’s like a standard roof, you want to have safe advance and ridge vents because a lot of that vapor pressure will end up in that attic and you want to make sure it’s vented when it gets up there. And it’s also going to help your insulation be more effective because when it gets damp, it loses our value. You got your next DIY project to tackle that.
0:17:12	CALLER: All right, Thanks.
0:17:13	TOM: All right. Thanks for listening. Good luck with that project.
0:17:15	CALLER: Take care. Bye bye.
0:17:17	LESLIE: Sylvia in Ohio is on the line and clearly spilled some glue somewhere. What’s going on?
0:17:21	CALLER: No, I didn’t spill glue. We have carpet in our kitchen. Glue that down like 20 years ago.
0:17:29	LESLIE: Did you say carpeting in your kitchen?
0:17:30	CALLER: Yes. They used glue to put the carpet down. My question is, how do we get it off the floor without tearing the whole floor out?
0:17:39	TOM: What kind of flooring was it glued over? Is it hardwood?
0:17:42	CALLER: No, just plywood.
0:17:45	TOM: Some sort of a subfloor. So really, you don’t get it completely off. You just have to kind of get it smooth so you can put whatever kind of flooring down you want to do over that. What kind of flooring do you want to end up with?.
0:17:55	CALLER: We want to put hardwood over or on it.
0:17:58	TOM: So what you should do is get a citrus adhesive remover. There’s a number of different citrus adhesive, citrus based adhesive removers and as caustic as some of the other adhesive removers. And what it will do is soften that adhesive. And your goal here is just to get any of the sort of thicker, chunkier areas removed so that what you could do is put down another layer of plywood and underlayment of plywood, say, like a quarter inch solution or something like that. Then on top of that, you can install your hardwood floor. There’s lots of options with the hardwood floor. You can use engineered hardwood, which is thinner, but very, very beautiful. And it’s more dimensionally stable. And it would be probably a better choice for a kitchen because if you put regular hardwood down and you ever had a big leak, spilled a pot of anything, it will swell up and become damaged. But if you use engineered, it’s much more stable and resistant to any type of swelling when it gets damp or wet.
0:18:57	CALLER: Oh, that’s great. Thank you.
0:18:59	TOM: Oh, you’re very welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-Money-Pit. Well, winter is very rough on roofs. with all the snow and ice and freeze thaw cycles, roofs do take a lot of punishment. This time of year. That’s why now’s a good time to plan for any roof work that might be needed to keep your home nice and dry. But what’s the smartest way to go? Can you repair the roof or replace it? We’ve got the answer.
0:19:24	LESLIE: Well, now, really, the first step is to evaluate the wear and tear of your roof. Older roofing shingles are generally made from a cotton or a glass fiber base, and then that’s covered with an asphalt coating. Now, as the sun heats the roof, the asphalt is going to dry out. So you’ve got to check your roof for signs of wear and tear. Now, the easiest and safest way for you to do that is by using a pair of binoculars and checking for cracked or curled or even broken shingles from the safety of the ground.
0:19:51	TOM: Now, if you’ve got a worn out section, maybe it’s just a limited small area. For example, maybe an area where a one story roof intersects with a second floor wall. Because what happens is situations like that is that the sun will bounce off the wall and kind of like give the roof doubly the amount of exposure. But if the roof is looking this way, the entire roof, then you really have to think about replacing.
0:20:13	TOM: Now have a roof replacement in order is important term and how many layers makes sense. You can usually add one layer of shingles, one additional layer for a total of two. That said, doing a tariff, though, is not such a bad idea, even if you only have one layer because the second roof layers don’t cool. Well, in the summer they will wear out much quicker than the single roofs will. And by the way, if your roof is not in terrible shape in terms of the shingles being totally destroyed, there’s a product you can apply called Roof Mexican, give you five additional years of life to that roof shingles. We use that on my mom’s house in Florida and actually help us sell the house.
0:20:48	LESLIE: Now, if your roof is actually leaking, you’ve got to check the flashing. Flashing that’s loose or deteriorated is probably responsible for most of those roofing leaks that you can find. And that’s an easy repair. Finally, if you do need a new roof, you want to make sure that you improve your roof’s ventilation at the same time, because a cool attic is going to keep the roof cooler and the cool roof is going to last a lot longer.
0:21:10	TOM: That’s right. The best type events to add are passive vents like not the fans, the kind of vents that don’t use any energy. They’re really better than using attic fans continuous ridge and soffit vent systems, for example, are ideal. These vents are inexpensive and they can usually be added to a house of any age.
0:21:27	LESLIE: Stan in Texas, you’ve got the Money Pit. How can I help you today?
0:21:29	CALLER: I’m at the end of my remodeling. My house installed the new dishwasher because after the remodel, well, we’ve put it up for sale. I want to put the dishwasher in. I noticed we started getting an odor out of the dishwasher then I didn’t have before.
	TOM: And this is a brand new dishwasher?
	CALLER: Brand new dishwasher. Yes.
0:21:50	TOM: Well, I wonder what kind of nasty debris would have collected so quickly. But here’s what I would suggest. There’s a product on the market that is a dishwasher cleaner. It’s made by a company called Glisten, and it’s called Dishwasher Magic. And it is quite easy to use. It’s essentially a bottle where you loosen the cap, turn it upside down and put it in your dishwasher as if it was another piece of glassware to wash. And the cleaner comes out during the wash cycle and completely scrubs and cleans and disinfects the dishwasher. In fact, it’s the it’s the only EPA registered dishwasher cleaner. And I’ve used it at my house and it works really well. And it was quite amazing how bright and shiny and clean and odor free the dishwasher was at the end of the cycle.
0:22:43	CALLER: Okay, It’s glisten, right?
0:22:45	TOM: Yep. Glisten. Dishwasher magic. You can find it in your local supermarkets and home centers. Go to their website at Glisten cleaners, dotcom. They have coupons there and a list of a whole bunch of stores where it’s available.
0:23:02	CALLER: Okay, appreciate it. I’ll try that.
0:23:04	TOM: Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-Money Pit.
0:23:09	LESLIE: Now we’re heading to South Dakota, where Esther has a garage. Question What can we do for you today?
0:23:14	CALLER: We have a long, skinny garage with one door, and I would like to extend the cement floor, of course, And loosen all those bolts, that fastener to the cement and turn it on its side and put two doors or a double door on the wrong side so we can fit two cars in there.
0:23:38	TOM: So you want to take the door from the end of the house where it just basically opens up to this long, extra-long garage and you want to swing the doors over to the side of the house so you can have room for a double door. Is that correct?
0:23:50	CALLER: Yeah. I wouldn’t turn the garage. I would leave the holes on the end. I would make it into a sliding door and sort of overhead door so it wouldn’t get in the way of the trail on up and time. But someone said that they didn’t seem to have that way. Then the tracks would be going parallel with the stringers across the top.
0:24:07	TOM: So your first challenge here, before we talk about your doors is that’s the last thing that you have to deal with. The first challenge is you have to actually structure change that long side of the house to be able to have these two now two large garage doors in it. So that is going to require rebuilding of those walls. And is this a two story house on that side?
0:24:31	CALLER: Okay, Now, this is not an attached garage. This is a freestanding garage.
0:24:35	TOM: So on that long side, though, is that with a roof sits?
0:24:38	CALLER: Yes,
0:24:39	TOM: So the roof rafters come down on that side. All right. So that is a load bearing wall aster. So it has to be reframed for a standard garage opening. That’s a big job. This is not just a matter of moving the tracks over and knocking out a few two by fours. This is a big job. You’re going to have to have a header across that as much as a beam.
0:24:57	TOM: It’s going to support that roof.
0:24:58	CALLER: Now, would it be better to have one wide, wide door with the beam across or two separate doors with a column in.
0:25:07	TOM: Just as much work. Doesn’t matter.
0:25:08	CALLER: Oh, okay.
0:25:09	TOM: Big job. Not a do it yourself job, job for a pro. Frame that out and then and then you could you know, perhaps you could preserve the old garage door and move it to one side. But I got to tell you, garage doors are a real pain in the neck to take apart. They’ve got about a million pieces to them and they’re a lot easier to put together when they start all disassembled and are built in place.
0:25:31	CALLER: Well, we have turned garages before many different places where we live.
0:25:36	TOM: All right. So this is a project that you’re very familiar with, except in this case, you’re going to have to reframe that exterior wall. And that is the bigger part of this project. Okay, that’s good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-Money Pit. Well, one of the most effective ways to reduce drafts and lower home heating costs is to seal the spaces where cold air leaks in. Now, spray foam is a great way to do just that. And DAP has just launched a new spray foam system that’s perfect for builders remodelers and serious DIYers.
0:26:08	LESLIE: Now it’s called the touch and foam professional wall and cavity foam, and it’s a portable, self-contained one component polymer and foam dispensing kit that’s perfect for sealing gaps in wall and floor cavities, as well as your attics, the basements, the crawl spaces all around those drafty spots.
0:26:25	TOM: Now, here’s a big advantage. Unlike two part spray foam systems that require mixing separate components, the DAP wall and cavity foam product consists of one container that has both the A and B components already mixed inside. This makes it a less complicated and much easier to use solution that can be applied in a wide temperature range of between 40 degrees and even up to 120 degrees.
0:26:49	LESLIE: Now, the kit is super easy to use both for professionals and homeowners. If you’re doing a repair or renovation or maybe even a new installation, it’s going to effectively air seal and insulate your home and buildings while it enhances the R-value and provides class a fire resistance.
0:27:05	TOM: And DAP has revolutionized spray foam application with the first one part components broadcast spray foam. You’ll find the DAP touch and foam system at Menards and at Select Home Depot stores. You can also learn more at DAP.com. That’s DAP.com.
0:27:22	LESLIE: You’ve got the Money Pit. What’s going on in your house?
0:27:24	CALLER: Well, in the wintertime, we have a little mold around the windows and I can’t seem to alleviate it. So I was wondering if you guys had any ideas mainly in the wintertime.
0:27:36	TOM: So the mold is going to form where you have moisture and you have a food source that’s organic, which could be like wood trim, for example, or frankly, even dust can do that and air, of course. So when you find the mold, what happens is very often people will just try to wipe it away, but they end up leaving residual pieces of it behind. So what I would suggest you do is to mix up a bleach and water solution where that where it’s about, say, 25% bleach in about 75% water and spray it lightly around that area. Be careful to keep it away from drapes or anything like that that you’re concerned about staining and let it sit and that will kill the spores that are behind the mold and then you can wipe it off. There’s just a little bit that’s okay to do yourself without much risk of exposure. That makes sense.
0:28:21	CALLER: It makes sense. I’ve done it before, but I’ve never let it sit any time I just write it on or wipe it off.
0:28:27	TOM: That’s generally what people do, and it makes a difference if you let it sit because it has to sort of take effect and really kill what’s there and then wipe it off.
0:28:34	CALLER: It sounds pretty good. I can do that.
0:28:36	LESLIE: Janie wrote in and says, It takes multiple cycles to dry a single load of clothing. I thought maybe thermostat was bad, so I bought a new dryer and I’m still having the same problem. My dryer is vented through the floor and runs 20 feet to the outside. Could the problem be the length of the vent?
0:28:53	TOM: It may well be the length of the vent, so depends on the length of the vent. It depends on how many turns you have in that vent. Because every time you turned 90 degrees, that’s the equivalent of another 20 feet of pipe, because the warm air has to kind of make it around that curve. But the other thing and the thing that would be most concerning is to make sure that that vent is totally clean, Janey, because if it’s obstructed with dryer lint, which it very well may be, then that also could be responsible for the time it takes for you to dry those clothes. So a couple of things to do here. First of all, you could just turn the dryer on and go outside the house and look at that flap on the dryer vent, see if it looks like it’s pushed out all the way. That would give you an indication to have some decent flow there. The second thing you might want to do is to clean that dry air vent from both sides. Now, there’s a tool that we’ve been recommending for years called a lint ear, and what a lint eater is. It’s a fiberglass rod with a brush on the end of it. And there’s sections or extensions to these rods. And the idea is that you screw them together, you hook it up to the end of a drill, and then you slowly work it in to the dryer exhaust duct from the outside, and then maybe also from the inside going back and forth until you pull it out. And you will find that there will be like just oodles of lint collected on this dryer brush.
0:30:14	LESLIE: It’s gross and amazing.
0:30:16	TOM: At the same time, right? Yeah.
0:30:18	LESLIE: It really is.
0:30:18	TOM: It’s kind of like when your cat coughs up the a lint ball. Except it’s really, really big.
0:30:23	LESLIE: Except it’s your house.
0:30:25	CALLER: So it’s super important.
0:30:26	TOM: You have those ducts, the drug exhaust, duct clean. And by the way, if there’s another way you can prevent that, I encourage that. we used to have second floor laundry where we would run the dryer, exhaust through the floor underneath the floor of my son’s room, which is about ten or 12 feet and outside. And we had sort of the same issues because when you come in the dryer and you got to turn down the vent and then the vent turns back into the wall and so on and so forth. So when I remodel that room and I put in a stack dryer, the exterior wall was right there. So I was able to run the exhaust duct right out that exterior wall. So now my exhaust duct length is like literally 12 inches. So everything dries really fast. So a couple of things to check into. Good luck with that project.
0:31:10	LESLIE: All right. Now, Denise from San Jose writes, We’re having engineered wood flooring installed in our second floor bedrooms. What are the benefits and drawbacks of having it glued down or floating?
0:31:19	TOM: if it has a locking seam, you don’t need to glue it down. And I think a floating floor is fine. You’re going to find that the engineered flooring, which by the way, let’s just clarify, that’s like hardwood flooring, except it has a thin layer of hardwood and then it has a stable base. The advantage of engineered over hardwood is it’s dimensionally stable. So if it gets damp or moist, it’s not going to swell up and be totally ruined. You can’t get it to wet, but it’ll take a little bit of moisture. But I think a floating floor is a great idea because you’ll make that floor late on top of the old floor. You’ll have a piece of molding that trims the outside edge and allows it to expand contract very, very nicely.
0:31:58	LESLIE: All right. And that’s really a great choice. You find a lot of beautiful options.
0:32:01	TOM: This is the Money Pit Home Improvement Show and man’s holidays are coming up fast. I hope that you guys have picked up some ideas and tips to fix up your home sweet home before your friends and family show up. But remember, if you’ve got questions, we are available 24/7 literally at 888-Money Pit or at MoneyPit.com/ask.
0:32:23	TOM: I’m Tom Kraeutler.
0:32:24	LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete.
0:32:25	TOM: Remember, you can do it yourself, but.
0:32:27	LESLIE: You don’t have to do it alone.

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