Show Notes
Today, we’re shedding light on the best kitchen lighting options, solving damp laundry dilemmas with clever dryer hacks, and adding life to your backyard by attracting winter birds. Plus, listen in as we help callers with their toughest DIY challenges!
Table of Contents[Hide][Show]
- Clothes Dryer: Put a new spin on drying your laundry with tips to avoid wrinkles, damp clothes, and static.
- Kitchen Lighting: Get bright ideas for choosing the perfect kitchen lighting for every task.
- Bird Feeders: These bird feeders will have feathered friends flocking to your yard this winter.
Top Questions & Answers
- Gutters: Risa’s gutters keep getting clogged with leaves. We recommend thin mesh gutter guards as the best option and warn against gutter sales scams.
- Flooring: A leaking French drain is bubbling up Keith’s epoxy flooring. We have tips for repairing the drain and adhering commercial tile to a damp slab.
- Electrical: The automatic light in a closet sometimes arcs when it comes on. That’s a very dangerous electrical fire hazard that Ming needs to have replaced immediately.
- Foundation: Steve wonders if a solid concrete foundation is better than cinderblock for preventing moisture. It may be stronger, but improving the outside drainage is most important.
- HVAC: Is it possible to convert a fireplace to open both ways if there are two chimneys? Danuza learns why it can’t be done and what to discuss with a fireplace expert.
- Roofing: Paul needs options for replacing his old flat roof. We stress how quality workmanship makes all the difference when installing a flat roof.
- Bath Tile: Spider cracks are suddenly forming on Stephanie’s acrylic liner walls. If it’s just the glazing on the surface, she can apply car wax to buff and hide the cracks.
Ask Your Home Improvement Question
Podcast Transcript
Read Transcript
| 00:00:23 | TOM: Cost to coast and floorboards to shingles. This is the Money Pit Home Improvement Show. I’m Tom Kraeutler. |
| LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete. | |
| TOM: What’s on your to-do list? What do you want to do with your house? Is there something that you want to get done? Is there a repair? Is there a project? Is there an organizational job? Do you want to convert your garage to a place that you can enjoy for hobbies? You know, I noticed there’s a lot of traffic on one of our posts, Leslie, about folks that want to convert their garages by putting hot tubs in there. It makes sense because hot tubs, you can buy those blow-up hop tubs today. They’re not that expensive and you can have a hot tub in the winter in your garage and not have to, you know, walk through the snow to get to it, right? So there’s a lot of projects that people tackle this time of year. And of course, we’re all getting excited for the spring season, which is really not too far ahead in my mind. It’s another two or three months, but I consider that pretty close. So whatever’s on your to-do list, whatever you’re thinking about doing, we would love to hear about it. We’d love to help you. So give us a call right now. The number here is 1-888-Money-Pit, or better yet, go to moneypit.com slash ask, click the blue microphone button, and you can record your question right there. Hey, coming up on today’s show, as days get darker earlier, the right combo of kitchen lighting can definitely spruce up your space and improve the functionality of work areas. And that is especially true in that kitchen space. So we’re going to highlight the best options for ambient task and kitchen accent lighting. | |
| 00:01:45 | LESLIE: And also ahead is your laundry coming out of the dryer, damp or looking wrinkled. Well, we’ve got some hacks that put a whole new spin on the best way to |
| 00:01:53 | TOM: dry your clothes. And you don’t need to settle for a dreary outdoor view all winter long. You can bring some life and some color to your backyard simply by attracting a variety of winter birds by using the right kind of bird feeder and food. We’ll show you what you need to know. |
| 00:02:08 | LESLIE: But first, do you feel like you’re in a constant game of tug of war with your house and your house is winning? How about that? Well, we’re here to help you take back the lead from advice to answers to hot new products. We are your one-stop shopping for all things DIY. Give us a call with your |
| 00:02:24 | TOM: questions right now to 888-Money-Pit. 888-666-3974. Let’s get started. Leslie, who’s first? |
| 00:02:32 | LESLIE: Risa in Oregon, you’ve got the Money Pit. How can we help you today? |
| 00:02:35 | CALLER: Well, I need someone to recommend a really good gutter guard so that I don’t have to keep cleaning my gutters all the time because every time we’re up there, it gets more dangerous because we’re getting older and they keep getting clogged because we have big trees around our house. We have maple, ash, and big firs. And so consequently, you’ve got tiny little needles, pointy little seeds, and big, flat, wide ones. |
| 00:03:02 | TOM: Okay. Well, there’s a number of different types of gutter guards and on MoneyPit.com, we have a very popular article that kind of walks you through the different types and tells you whether or not they’re worth it or not. The type of gutter guard that I seem to like the best are the ones that are mesh, a really thin mesh that has tiny holes in it that are permanently attached to the gutters themselves. And then the water basically runs through it and the leaves kind of wash off it. So I’ve had good success with that type of gutter guard personally. So that’s something that you might want to look into. They also have different types of nylon gutter guards or one called Likewater. We call it the bottle brush where like the brush sort of lays in the gutter. But the kind that are mesh, I think, seem to work the best. There’s a number of manufacturers out there that do that. And then the second type I would look at is called the reverse curve. And that’s a piece of metal that goes up under the roof shingle and over the top of the gutter. And basically, because water will sort of hug that gutter guard, it will run into the gutter and the leaves will wash over the top. But if you go to MoneyPit.com and search for Cost of gutter guards, are they worth it? You’ll find that story and it’ll walk you through all the options. |
| 00:04:23 | CALLER: Well, I can try. But the biggest problem I’ve had is the big fat maple leaves because they just stick to just about every gutter thing I’ve tried. I bet, yeah. And then the water goes over them. |
| 00:04:35 | TOM: Right. Well, I’m telling you, I think a lot of the gutter guards that are out there that you find at home centers just don’t work very well. But I’ve found that the reverse curve and the mesh gutter guards seem to be the best. I will caution you, though, one sort of problem I have with the gutter guard industry is they tend to try to hard sell you on these systems. So I would just make sure I find a very reputable company to deal with on that. I remember having a very bad experience some years ago where I was just strolling around and trying to figure out what was going on. And I found that the reverse curve and the mesh gutter guards seemed to be the best. I will caution you, though, one sort of problem I have with the gutter guard industry is they tend to try to hard sell you on these systems. Now, I’ve been sitting down the boardwalk in New Jersey and there was a home show going on. And there was a gentleman there that just kind of pulled me out of the crowd, wanted to sell me on gutter guards. And so I just kind of let him talk, and man, I could not get him to tell me how much his product cost. He kept trying to get my wife and I home in the house at the same time so that he could try to close the deal. And I’m saying, look, what if I had a 60 foot ranch with a one story house with four leaders? I was trying to think of like the simplest gutter job I could think of. Even then, he could not or probably more accurately would not quote me what his prices were. So that’s a problem. It shouldn’t be that hard to figure this out. So just be careful in making sure you find a good guy. Head on over to HomeAdvisor.com and read the reviews on the roofing contractors there. I’m sure you could find one through that site. |
| 00:05:57 | CALLER: I will. I’ll check yours first and go to the next one. |
| 00:06:00 | TOM: All right. Good luck. Thanks so much for calling us at 1-888-Money-Pit. |
| 00:06:04 | LESLIE: Thank you. Heading out to Nebraska, we’ve got Keith on the line who’s dealing with a super old worn-out floor. What’s going on? |
| 00:06:11 | CALLER: Well, it may be old, but it’s not super old and it’s not worn out. Okay. But I’ve had five epoxy floor coatings on this shop floor in the past 45 years. And the older it gets now, I’ve discovered that my trench drain, which is 20 feet long in front of the overhead door, has been leaking. Cracked. It won’t hold water overnight. And I suspect that that’s leaking back underneath the floor. |
| 00:06:40 | TOM: Okay. Yeah. Usually when you have floor finishes that don’t stay and they start to separate, there’s usually moisture involved somewhere. |
| 00:06:47 | CALLER: Yeah. So I got bubbles on my floor after only two years. A $20,000 floor has lasted two years. And so what I’m wondering is, I’m going to strip all this off of there, probably grind it off. Or shop blast it off. And I’m wondering about using an automotive shop tile that’s made in Germany. And a lot of high-end dealerships have this on their shop floors. But I want to let this moisture that’s coming up through this cement, I want to open this cement up on the top, put the tile on it, and then let that water come up through the grout lines, more or less, and dissipate. |
| 00:07:26 | TOM: Oh, so you want to let it actually sort of flow through the floor? Yeah. |
| 00:07:30 | CALLER: Breathe. I don’t know about that. Use a cementious-based grout, so it’s not an epoxy grout. |
| 00:07:36 | TOM: Listen, I wouldn’t do this without talking with the manufacturer of these tiles about this particular idea for installation, because I see all sorts of problems with this. The first being the adhesive that you use to attach these tiles to the floor, and will it be durable enough when it’s constantly being hit with moisture? Let’s look at this a different way. This trench drain that’s holding water. Mm-hmm. Is there a way that we can rebuild the trench drain as part of this project? |
| 00:08:04 | CALLER: I’ve already sealed that up. Yeah, I built a stainless steel liner for it. |
| 00:08:07 | TOM: Oh, good. All right. That’s good. |
| 00:08:08 | CALLER: Still got moisture under the slab. Yeah. Probably going to take years to dissipate. |
| 00:08:13 | TOM: Well, maybe, maybe not. Here’s what I would do. I would contact the manufacturer about this unique situation and tell them that you have a wet slab, and you’re concerned because it’s been damp for years, and you’ve had issues with water coming up and failure of previous finishes. In a situation like that, what kind of adhesive would they recommend? What would you recommend you use to attach these floor tiles and take it from there? |
| 00:08:32 | CALLER: Yeah. I have done that, of course, and they don’t see an issue with it. |
| 00:08:38 | TOM: Well, all right then. |
| 00:08:39 | CALLER: I’ve called various grout manufacturers and, you know, mortar manufacturers, and nobody seems to have an issue with it. And they all say things like, well, yeah, we use tile on shower walls, but that’s kind of going in the backwards. Right. It’s the wrong way, right? Right. I’m coming from the bottom up. Right. It’s the top end. Right. |
| 00:08:57 | TOM: Yeah. But I’m just concerned with the adhesion of the tile to the cement floor, because that has to start there, right? You’ve got to make sure that these high-end tiles adhere properly to the floor. Otherwise, you’re going to have tiles start to pop up, and then you’ve got a whole different problem to deal with. Yeah. |
| 00:09:11 | CALLER: They seem to think it’s fine, you know. And so I’m just looking in every nook and cranny that I can find to get advice, you know, and then put it together and formulate an opinion. It’s a very unusual situation, you know. |
| 00:09:23 | TOM: It is. It is unusual. It is unusual. I congratulate you on the thoroughness of your review, and you’re basically doing what I would suggest, which is contact the manufacturer. It’s always the best place to start, and if they’re okay with this installation, then I think you should proceed accordingly. Well, thank you guys very much. Yeah, you’re welcome. Thanks for reaching out. Good luck with that project. Let us know how it goes. Okay. |
| 00:09:41 | LESLIE: Hey, Money Pit listeners. If we’ve saved you some time, money, or hassles with your projects, you would totally make our day by leaving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Just go to MoneyPit.com slash review. MoneyPit Ming in Texas, you’ve got the Money Pit. How can we help you today? Hi. |
| 00:09:58 | CALLER: I have a closet door that it’s supposed to, the light’s supposed to come on when I open the door. I have to jiggle that little button and play with it for a while before I can get the light to come on, and sometimes it arcs. |
| 00:10:12 | TOM: So you’re turning this light switch on and you’re getting an arc? That’s really dangerous. That is an immediate fire hazard. So you need to have an electrician fix that right away. See, these switches can basically deteriorate internally, and if they’re sparking like that, that’s a big problem. Consider yourself lucky, but that should not be happening and it has to be immediately replaced. Okay. All right? I should not use that door. You should get that switch fixed. It should not be doing that. All right? That’s your first thing, your first to do. Okay. Let’s prevent a home fire, shall we? |
| 00:10:54 | TOM: Thanks so much for calling us at 888-Money-Pit. Thank you. |
| 00:10:57 | LESLIE: Now we’ve got Mike on the line who’s got a drain issue. What’s going on at your money pit? |
| 00:11:01 | CALLER: House built in 1999. It’s on a septic, which is actually part two of my question. And the kitchen sink, I don’t know, about five months ago or so, started draining slowly. And so I’m not actually on a direct vent. It has a vent, what do they call it, I just pulled it off, a mini vent underneath the sink. Because it’s like on an inside vent. Inside island or what have you. So there’s no vent stack. And so I took the mini vent off, brought it to Home Depot or wherever, and I replaced it with another one thinking, well, maybe it got clogged or what have you. And it still is draining slow. Now when I, if I have a sink full of water and I undo the vent, it will actually drain quickly. Yeah. |
| 00:11:45 | TOM: I think you’re talking about, you’re calling this a mini vent. I think you’re talking about an air admittance valve. Okay. Basically an under sink vent. Okay. So if you have a space for a roof vent and you have one of these air admittance valves, and you tried two of them and it’s still not working well? |
| 00:12:00 | CALLER: Well, the one, yeah, the one started slowing down. It worked fine before. And then when I took that off and put it, but then over time it slowly slowed down. And so I took that off and put the new one in. I guess my question is, can I extend that higher? Because right now it’s about, I don’t know, four or five inches below the sink, so I have enough room. I could put like a four inch piece of PVC a little bit higher and I’m wondering if that would help bring it in. Yeah. |
| 00:12:28 | TOM: It really shouldn’t make a difference. Now, I wonder if there’s another way you could get to this vent because sometimes you can vent through the floor joist and over to the wall and intercept with the vertical vent there. It doesn’t always have to go straight up from the kitchen. Okay. Because sometimes what you do is you take the drain from the kitchen sink, right? And where it turns down to drain the water. You sort of go up and sort of extend it. You take the U-shaped pipe, then go back down again and then across the floor joist and join the vent and go up. You kind of create this venting loop that could let more air in. Have you talked to a plumber about other possibilities? |
| 00:13:03 | CALLER: I haven’t yet now. No, we just wait an extra two minutes and then it goes down, but Tom. |
| 00:13:10 | TOM: Yeah. Well, sooner or later, you’re going to get really annoyed with all that time. And I also wonder if maybe you could step it up and put a bigger air admittance valve in too. |
| 00:13:19 | CALLER: Well, that was the other thought. Was, you know, right now, I don’t know. It’s an inch and a half, but it’s right on top of the drain. So for instance, that’s almost like a W. I got the dishwasher coming in one, the sink in the other, and then this air admittance valve just above it. So again, the thought was if I could extend that W, the center one, a little bit higher, but it sounds like that won’t make much of a difference. |
| 00:13:41 | TOM: I don’t think it will. So what’s your septic question? |
| 00:13:45 | CALLER: Garbage disposals, yay or nay? |
| 00:13:48 | TOM: There are disposers that are specifically designed for garbage disposal. They’re designed for septic systems, and the difference is that they grind the food up into a finer particulate. And I think if you do that, you’ll be fine. Okay. |
| 00:14:01 | CALLER: Perfect. Well, then I’ll talk to my plumber for both issues. |
| 00:14:04 | TOM: All right. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-Money-Pit. Well, the right combination of kitchen lighting can beautify your space, it can improve your work areas, and maybe even make you a little bit better cook. So here’s how to pick the best light for your kitchen. |
| 00:14:20 | LESLIE: Yeah. First of all, a kitchen space is going to require three types of lighting. We’re talking about ambient lighting, task lighting, and accent lighting. Now ambient lighting is kind of that overall light you have in the room. It’s generally provided by those larger fixtures and of course the natural light that the windows bring in. Task lighting is going to be focused and calibrated to a very specific work area, such as your counter space. And accent lighting does just that. It accents and highlights architectural detail. So you can see the details or objects within that design space, such as kitchen lighting that points up from the top of the cabinets or lights within the cabinets. You know, you get what I’m saying there. |
| 00:15:00 | TOM: Now, when you’re designing your light plan, you need to realize that more light in the kitchen is not necessarily a better thing. Smart lighting is really your goal. So make sure you match the amount and the quality of light, because boy, we have so many choices today, to the function in each area of the room. Now, second of all, you want to make sure you match the light and the quality of the lighting. So you can think about the lighting you’re using in your kitchen. If you’re using natural lighting. You’re going to want to make sure you’re not using natural lighting, so for example, kitchens are a great place to skip window treatments. Since windows contribute to the ambient light in the room. If you leave those window coverings off, you can boost that brightness level pretty significantly. |
| 00:15:37 | LESLIE: Now, you can also pull in natural lighting by adding sun tunnel skylights. And these are mirror-coated tubes that run from the roof to an interior ceiling on any level. And they’re far easier and less expensive to install than traditional lightings. |
| 00:15:56 | LESLIE: Audio are on the line with a question about a foundation. How can we help you? |
| 00:16:11 | CALLER: My neighbor had a house built within the last year. She had a solid concrete foundation put in with her crawl space, and I’ve got cinderblock walls on my foundation. And I’ve had a lot of, I’ve had some water penetration through my walls, and I’m thinking because she has solid concrete, I think maybe if I ever had another house built, maybe that’s the way to go with solid concrete. I don’t see how water can penetrate that. |
| 00:16:44 | TOM: And I wanted to bounce that off of you and see what you had to say about it. Well, water can certainly penetrate solid concrete walls, perhaps not as easily as it can a concrete block wall. But in either case, you can stop that very simply by improving the grading and the drainage at the foundation perimeter. Most of the time when a foundation leaks, whether it’s a leaked crawl space or a basement, there’s something wrong with that drainage. So, your gutters are clogged and overflowing. The downspouts are perhaps not extended out four to six feet from the house because most contractors leave them go out about a foot or so, which is a mistake. Or the soil is too flat, or the soil is sloping back into the wall, or there’s some landscape element like, I don’t know, brick edging or four by four timbers or something like that that’s holding water against the foundation. If you want to stop a foundation from leaking, you want to manage that drainage. But if you are sort of starting from scratch and had your option to go with a block wall or a solid concrete wall, I do agree that a solid concrete wall will be much stronger and much more solid and not be prone to some of the issues that we’ve seen with block walls over the years, like leakage or cracking and that sort of thing. |
| 00:17:58 | CALLER: Yeah. |
| 00:17:58 | TOM: Well, I appreciate that information. All right. Well, good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 1-888-Money-Pit. Hey, Leslie. You know, I think I sort of discovered another hack. What is it? I did a little research this weekend. I was repairing a chair actually for a neighbor friend of mine. All right. And I needed to clamp this leg of the chair in an unusual way. It didn’t really fit all the many different types of clamps I had. |
| 00:18:21 | LESLIE: And you have every kind of clamp, by the way. |
| 00:18:23 | TOM: I have a lot. Right. I have a lot. So what I did was I used zip ties. And I thought, that’s a great way to really tighten up an area that’s hard to get to. I wrapped zip ties. I put two zip ties together to make them longer, but these are the bigger, thicker ones. And I was using that to clamp it in place while the glue was in place. And when the glue dried, when it was done, I just snipped the zip tie and took it off and it was solid. It was good to go. So keep that in mind. If you’re working on a project, there’s a lot of ways to help you clamp things together. Zip ties are one. I’ve done this also with a heavy cord. I’ve made like a tourniquet. But in this case, it just didn’t seem like it was going to fit very well, but you could do that with a rope as well. So zip ties, rope, it just makes a really easy way to secure something that’s unusually shaped. |
| 00:19:02 | LESLIE: All right. You’re always coming up with something. |
| 00:19:04 | TOM: Can’t help it. |
| 00:19:07 | LESLIE: Danuza and George is on the line with a heating question. Everybody is chilly this winter. What is going on down there? |
| 00:19:13 | CALLER: It’s cold. It’s very cold. And I’m asking, calling about a fireplace. We live in an arts and crafts house, and there’s a fireplace smack in the middle that faces two ways, to the entrance and then opening to what would be the kitchen and dining area. The opening to the front door is a fireplace. The other one was at one point blocked. And I know we have two chimneys. My question is, is it possible, do you think, for me to integrate, to open it straight through to make it a one fireplace that would go both ways, or would I have to stick to the way it was built? One way and |
| 00:19:56 | TOM: So in other words, you would like the fire pit to go straight through from one side to the other? |
| 00:20:01 | CALLER: Yes. But I have two. |
| 00:20:02 | TOM: I have two chimneys that’s on top. I don’t think so. I don’t think you can do that, because the structure of this is such that you probably have one physical chimney and then you have two liners, so two flues, and one is on the fireplace side and one is on the other side, or one’s on the living room side and one’s on the kitchen side. So why would you want that to be opened up? Just for aesthetics? |
| 00:20:24 | CALLER: Yes. Exactly. And my question would be, even if I did it using, you know, the gas kind of dealie, or do I still need a chimney for that? |
| 00:20:34 | TOM: I think if you’re asking me, and I put a gas fireplace in there without venting it, and I would say no. No. Okay. Yeah. Well, because there are non-vented gas fireplaces. I’ve never liked them at all. They’ve always made me very uncomfortable. They do dump a lot of moisture into the house, and you know, they’re allowed here in the States, but I think last time I checked, they were illegal in Canada, who is much more conservative about things like this. Okay. So I would never use an unvented gas fireplace. I also would not convert those existing wood fireplaces to gas fireplaces, because they’re going to burn a lot of gas, be really expensive to run. What you might want to do is think about seeing if there was an insert that might be available for the fireplace side, because that can have some built-in circulation with a vent fan that could improve the heating distribution of that one side, and then you mentioned that one side’s blocked. I’d like to know why it was blocked, if the chimney is still, the flue is still functional, if it’s deteriorated. Maybe it’s not lined. I don’t know. But you ought to find out why it’s in the condition it’s in. So I think you need to talk to a good home inspector or a very good chimney contractor, not a sweep, okay? And I want you to be cautious not to find somebody that just wants to sell you a big repair, but somebody that can give you some true independent expert advice as to what it’s going to take to get this working again. Okay? |
| 00:21:53 | CALLER: Okay. Thank you very much. That was very helpful. That was very helpful, because I think the thing that most helped me was about the non-venting thing too. Yeah. I didn’t realize how dangerous that could get, but thank you. I really appreciate it. |
| 00:22:07 | TOM: Yeah. Take that out of consideration. All right, Denuza. Good luck. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-Money-Pit. |
| 00:22:12 | LESLIE: Well, warm clothes, fresh from the dryer, definitely feel great. I mean, my kind of favorite thing to do when I’m folding laundry that’s fresh out of the dryer is if there’s a towel that’s in that load, I kind of wrap it around like a kid. Yeah. I just love the warmth of it, but what happens, guys, when you’re doing the laundry and it comes out and it’s kind of wrinkly and it’s damp or it’s staticky, well, we’ve got some tips here to keep your clothes and you looking your best. |
| 00:22:41 | TOM: All right. So first up, you may be shocked in a good way to learn that aluminum foil can actually eliminate the static. Here’s how it works. Instead of using dryer sheets, crumble up a piece of foil into a tight, smooth ball, and toss it into the dryer. It works, and there’s less waste because the foil can be used multiple times. Now another idea is if you want to dry your clothes as fast as possible, take a clean dry towel, then add it to your wet laundry for the first 15 minutes or so of the drying cycle, and then remove it. Because that dry towel, it absorbs some of the moisture from your clothes, so they actually dry faster. |
| 00:23:16 | LESLIE: All right. Now, are the clothes coming out a wrinkled mess? You know, letting those dry clothes sit in that dryer too long is often the culprit. I mean, we’re all busy, and we’re all moving. We’re all multitasking. So what you can do is you can toss a handful of ice cubes into that dryer with those wrinkly clothes and then run a quick cycle. The steam from those ice cubes truly is enough to just get rid of those wrinkles. Another way to avoid the wrinkles is just to quickly fold that laundry right after it dries. But let’s be realistic. Not everybody is doing that. I mean, we all have the chair in our bedroom where the things kind of go to and maybe sit for before you fold it. Now. Are you also finding that your clothes are always wrinkled? Well, you’re going to want to take a look at your dryer and see if you can get a better You can always accessorize with pet hair. If you love your pets but you don’t like wearing their fur, try drying your clothes first before you put them in the washing machine. That dryer is going to lift off the hair before the clothing becomes wet, and then you’re going to have a hard time separating the hair from the clothing. So this is great. It’s all going to end up in that dryer vent. Clean it out before you run the load, and no cat hair or dog hair. |
| 00:24:16 | TOM: And there’s nothing worse than having your sheets and blankets ball up into a big wet wad. So the solution? |
| 00:24:22 | CALLER: I have a 45-year-old built-up roof, and it’s the age of the house, and it needs to be replaced. And so I’m looking at one of three options, the EPDM, which is the 0.06-inch rubber that would have, I guess, have recovery board under it, and then there’s two torch down options. One is APP, and one is SBS. Now, I’m told the SBS, there’s one contractor that actually offers that, and he says that it’s less susceptible to cracking, so it lasts longer. We have about a 100-degree swing in temperatures here in Anchorage, between about 80 above to maybe minus 20. But the SBS can be torch down, cold, or mop. And of course, the APP, I guess, is just basically torch down. Okay. |
| 00:25:28 | TOM: Well, first things first. In terms of the flat roof, I mean, torch down roofs or the EPDM roofs, I think, would be my choice in those environments. And what really makes the difference with these flat roof installations is simply the workmanship, because there’s just no tolerance for errors. You know, if you’re putting in a sloped roof, and you can be a little slow. You can be sloppy with your assembly of the roofing shingles, for example, and they’re pretty forgiving and usually don’t leak. The flat roof, if you get it wrong, you’re going to have a mess on your hands. So I would make sure that the contractor was very experienced with flat roof installation and then let them work with the product that they’re going to be willing to back up. Thank you very much. Well, if you’d like to add some life to your backyard during the winter season, you might think about making some simple changes to attract winter birds. Yeah. |
| 00:26:14 | LESLIE: You know, not all birds head south at the first sign of cold weather. Even the northernmost parts of the United States have cardinals, woodpeckers, finches, and many more winter-loving birds, and you can attract them to your yard simply by giving them the right food. Now, most winter birds eat seeds. I mean, they have to because insects are kind of hard to find in the cold. So you want to stock up on both sunflower seeds and safflower seeds. And the great thing about safflower is that the squirrels don’t like them. Now, if you love woodpeckers, you can hang suet for them, but you want to hang that high, because most winter mammals don’t like them. So, like, deer, love suet as well. Yeah. |
| 00:26:50 | TOM: And don’t forget about water. If you’ve got, like, birdbaths, you could easily break up that ice now and again or add some warm water to melt the ice. And the birds, having the right water, having the right seed, they will flock to your backyard from all over for a little bit of refreshment, and really add some color to that dull and dreary winter space. |
| 00:27:10 | LESLIE: All right. Now we’ve got Stephanie on the line from Tennessee who needs some help around The Money Pit. What’s going on? |
| 00:27:15 | CALLER: We have a somewhat… It’s not a lot. Audio Transcript by Tom Kraeutler and Quikrete. What? |
| 00:27:48 | TOM: No duct tape was available? |
| 00:27:49 | CALLER: Duct tape and Gorilla Tape is everybody’s best friend. |
| 00:27:52 | TOM: There you go. Okay. |
| 00:27:53 | CALLER: But I put it on there to prevent more moisture in there. Right. But it just made these little spider marks. I haven’t had any more. You could barely see them but I really don’t want to tear out a shower. |
| 00:28:04 | TOM: So the sides are acrylic? Yes. |
| 00:28:06 | CALLER: It’s like acrylic marble. The head wall where the faucet and the shower head is and the side where the soap dish is in the shower stall. Okay. |
| 00:28:14 | TOM: So it’s kind of like a liner almost, it sounds like, that’s over the wall structure. That’s acrylic. Does that sound about right? Uh-huh. Are these cracks all the way through or are they just on the surface? Because it might be the glazing on top of the acrylic. Okay. |
| 00:28:28 | CALLER: Actually, I believe they’re on the surface. Okay. And they all seem to originate from the embedded, I don’t know if that’s the right word, soap dish. But they’re just spider and, you know, but there’s, you can’t feel them. |
| 00:28:42 | TOM: You probably stressed that part of the… Maybe liner. Maybe you grab on the soap dish. I don’t know. Plus it’s, you know, it’s an area where you’re going to have an expansion and contraction pattern that’s different than the rest of it. If they’re not going through, they’re just the surface, I would not worry about that. I’ll give you one trick of the trade to kind of maybe make them less obvious and that is if you were to apply car wax to the walls of the shower, not the floor, all right, because you’re going to slip and break something. But to the walls. To the walls. You will find that that will buff in really nicely and the water will of course, you know, run right off it. And I think it might help to hide some of those spider vein kinds of cracks the same way it does that on the finish of a car. |
| 00:29:26 | CALLER: Oh, great idea because actually we’re going to be selling our house in about six months and I was like, I’m trying to be ahead of the ball game on things I know I need to address without having to do the whole enchilada. |
| 00:29:39 | TOM: Well, here’s what you do. Here’s what you do. You polish up that shower, right? And when you sell your house, you take a brand new can of car wax and you put a bow on it and you make that the housewarming gift for the new owners and you can tell them about your call with The Money Pit and explain to them how to use it. |
| 00:29:54 | CALLER: Hey, I really appreciate that. I really do. I listen to y’all show a lot of good information. We appreciate you down here in Tennessee. |
| 00:30:03 | TOM: So Leslie, you know our buddy Craig? Yeah, yeah. Craig’s somebody we’ve worked with for many years. He produces a lot of the television programs that we do. And so he reached out to me over this past week and he’s texting me, he says, should I replace my electric water heater that’s about to die with a hybrid? Seems like there are a lot of rebates. So I’m like, okay, I’ll buy it. What’s going on with the water heaters? He says, well, the water doesn’t get as hot and blah, blah, blah. |
| 00:30:30 | LESLIE: He does know he can just ask you a question, right? It doesn’t have to beat around the bush. |
| 00:30:34 | TOM: I said to him, look, Craig, you can get a hybrid. You know, it’s a heat pump water heater. It’s, you know, probably not going to work. It’s probably $2,000, $3,000 installed, easy. But let’s talk more about this electric water heater. How old is it? Well, it’s 10 years old. All right. Well, I mean, it’s old. It’s maybe at a warranty, but really it’s not that old for a water heater. I said, look, with electric water heaters, you have two coils, you have very few moving parts. You have two heating coils, one towards the top of the tank, one towards the bottom, and you have a thermostat. I said, it’s got to be one of those things if you’re not getting enough hot water. And I sent him a video on how to replace his coils. So he does that. He says, okay, well, the coils are fine. All right. How about the thermostat? Well, let me check. And then, like, an hour or two later, he comes back. It worked. It worked. He says, I looked at the thermostat. It was melting. I said, I went out and bought a new one for $14, and now we have hot water. So from spending thousands on a new water heater to spending 14 bucks, that’s all it took. |
| 00:31:32 | LESLIE: All right. I love it. And, Craig, just ask your question. Don’t pretend you got a lot of questions. If you have other questions, just ask. |
| 00:31:39 | TOM: So, guys, if you’re hit with a big winter storm and you don’t have your car tucked away in a garage, it is always a hassle to clear the snow and get that ice off your car. So to help, Leslie is going to share four quick tips in today’s edition of Leslie’s Last Word. Leslie, what do you got? Yeah. |
| 00:31:56 | LESLIE: First of all, know the forecast. You know, I leave for work at Good Morning America so darn early, and there is nothing worse than a surprise snowy car at 4 a.m. when you’re trying to get out the day. So plan ahead and do so by parking strategically. You want to park kind of at the end of your driveway, nearest the street. This way, the distance that you have to shovel is going to be not too far. It’s also smart to put your windshield wipers up so they don’t freeze to the car window. Now, Tom, you kind of learned this one the hard way, right? |
| 00:32:26 | TOM: Yeah. Actually, I did. I was really surprised, too, because I think I had the front window, the front windshield wipers picked up but not the one on the back of the SUV. And it actually froze to the window, and it broke the entire window on the car. So I had to actually replace it. That’s crazy. So I’ll never do that again. |
| 00:32:46 | LESLIE: Yeah. Seriously, guys, you know, learn from Tom here. That is an expensive mistake to make. Next, when you’re clearing your car and getting ready to head out on the road, try to get off as much snow as you can. Use a long-handled broom to get the snow off the top of your car before you open the door. I mean, that’s going to help you avoid all that wet snow that falls right in. And don’t forget to clear the snow around the car. It’s going to get on your headlights and your taillights. I always hate it when people don’t get all the snow off of the roof of the car, whether it’s a big car or a little car, and it kind of flies at you behind them in a sheet. So get all of that off. Now, if you find that your driver door is frozen shut, here’s a trick. You can use WD-40 to free up that frozen lock. Again, there’s 1,001 uses for that thing. And who knew? Freezing, getting rid of the frozen doors, that’s another one. So definitely be prepared, guys, because we’ve still got some snow ahead of us. |
| 00:33:32 | TOM: This is the Money Pit Home Improvement Show. Coming up next time on the program, now that you’re stuck inside for the winter, have you thought about what might be stuck inside with you, like maybe mold? We’re going to share five simple ways to stop mold before it starts and keep your home healthy and clean all year long. That’s coming up on the very next edition of the Money Pit. I’m Tom Kraeutler. |
| 00:33:58 | LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete. |
| TOM: Remember, you can do it yourself. | |
| LESLIE: But you don’t have to do it alone. | |
| (Note: The above referenced transcript is AI-Generated, Unedited and Unproofed and as such may not accurately reflect the recorded audio. Copyright 2025 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.) |
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