Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekend warriors home improvement show, built by bar lumber. When it comes to big or small projects around the home, Tony and Cory have got the know how and the answers to make your life just a bit easier. Here they are, your weekend warriors, Tony and Corey.
You know, Tony, if you don't maintain your house, eventually it's gonna fail.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: Nope. Everything inside the house eventually will fail. What lasts forever?
[00:00:34] Speaker A: Nothing.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: I mean, that's the whole point. I think, though, that we think it should.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: Maybe subconsciously we just think it should.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: You know what's really funny about that is I just remodeled my bathroom or my kitchen. Let's start there. I remodeled my kitchen. Probably, what, six? Longer than that?
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Eight.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: Yeah, it was in 2015, I think.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: So nine years ago, and stuff is already breaking in my brand new kitchen, and it drives me crazy because I'm like, this kitchen is brand new. And then I have to stop and say to myself, it's almost ten years old.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Holy cow. Yeah.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: You tell somebody a story like, oh, this thing happened at my house, and they're like, oh, well, what caused that? Well, guess what caused it? It's old age. It's exactly right. These things don't last forever. Nothing lasts forever. Everything has to be replaced eventually. I mean, you know, here's another thing, Corey, that people think lasts forever. Pressure treated material. They think, oh, it's okay. It's pressure treated that, well, that doesn't make it last forever. I mean, even pressure treated material will rot eventually.
Everything has a lifespan on it. And the sooner we realize that about all of the things in and around our home, the better off we'll be. Because if we take steps to maintain it properly, then its lifespan will be longer. And in addition to that, if we take steps to maintain it, we will be more in tune when it does need to be replaced, because you will see it as its performance starts to wane or as parts start to need to be replaced, you'll be realizing that it's getting closer to the end of its lifespan, and then you won't be caught unaware. So there's a lot of really good, positive things about knowing the things around your home that have the shortest lifespan. Right. That's what I'm talking about. We're going to talk today about the things in your home that have the shortest lifespan and that will also affect you the most negatively.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Yeah. House failures.
[00:02:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: So. But we're going to also give you some tips on how to prolong the life of these things. And sometimes, if you maintain things properly, you will get a lot of years out of them, and they potentially would last a very long time, a lifetime, so to speak.
All right, so let's. Let's start with plumbing, Tony. Faucets. Faucets are one of those things that regularly break. They start leaking, they drip, stuff like that. But if you regularly check for leaks and drips and replace the worn out washers and seals, almost every faucet that you buy, there's a rebuild kit for it. And those things are just made out of plastic and rubber. So the more you turn them on, turn them off, turn them on, turn them off, they wear down. And one of the other things that helps is to clean out the screen. There's a screen in there, and usually in most faucets that you can pull out. And, like, if you're having water flow issues, you can take that out, clean that screen, and it's good as new.
[00:03:53] Speaker B: Right. Normally, the water comes out in a nice little steady stream. Right straight down. When you turn it on and it goes. And water's spraying all the way. Yeah, there's probably some little rocks or debris in that screen which is causing the flow of the water to be disrupted.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, next one is, Tony. Toilets. You actually had a situation at your house where the toilet flapper wore out. You didn't even know about it.
[00:04:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: It ran for a month or a couple months, and your water bill shot through the roof. There are some things that you can do outside of just listening for water running. Uh, you know, you have to inspect the running water and fix the issue as soon as possible. You know, if you've got clogs, obviously take care of clogs immediately. But when you're looking at the flapper, one way to check if your toilet is leaking is to put a couple drops of food coloring in the tank. If you put drops of food coloring in the tank, come back overnight, leave it all night, and then come back. And if that food coloring has made it into the bowl itself, you have a leak.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:58] Speaker A: And it's time to replace that flapping, flushing mechanism.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: Yeah, it can sneak up on you because the water in the bowl, the static level of the water in the bowl is what keeps water from coming out of the tank. If the water in the bowl is leaking out through the trap, then it reaches a certain level where the water in the tank releases water to fill that bowl back up. So your. And that can happen at any time? It can happen once every half an hour or once every hour or once every 4 hours. And when it happens, you might not hear it. Maybe it's only for a short time.
So, yeah, it can sneak up on you that the dye in the tank is a good idea.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: Unless, of course, you're using the toilet multiple times during the day, in which case keep the dye in there and drop it in every time you walk away.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: Well, you could check it out overnight. You just put it in there before you go to bed and check on in the morning.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: I have toilets that are 20 years old in my house, but all of the guts in all of those toilets have been placed, replaced multiple times.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: A toilet does last for a very long time, but the parts that make it operate properly break and fail, and they need to be replaced.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: You know what break also? Pipes.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: Oh, man.
[00:06:16] Speaker A: Old pipes. And depending on what you have in your house, you could have copper, pvc, cpVc.
I've seen galvanized pipes, lead pipes.
There are newer products on the market, obviously, like Pex and Wurzbo. I think Pex is probably newer than Wurzbo. I'm not terribly familiar with it, but those products are known to be so much better than the old ones. But if you've got old pipes, one of the things you can do to prevent them from freezing is to make sure you're checking on them regularly. But insulate them if you've got pipes under your house in a crawl space like we have in the Pacific Northwest, most of our houses here are built on crawl spaces.
We have crawl space venting, and a lot of times, pipes will go right in front of that crawl space vent and not have any insulation around them. So they make round foam pipe insulation, pipe insulation that you just cut and you slap.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: Looks like a pool noodle.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: Yeah, it kind of does.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: Black. It's got a slit all the way down from one end to the other, so you can easily fit it over the top. And they make it in multiple sizes. Right, from, you know, a half inch up to inch and a 8th, probably, or inch and a half.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: Yeah. So you can insulate your pipes pretty easily. And if you've got a situation where you've got exposed pipes somewhere in a crawl space or in an air, any area, it's a good idea to insulate them. And that will seriously extend the life of those pipes.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:07:47] Speaker A: What's the next one? Toe?
[00:07:48] Speaker B: Water heater. Water heater. I have just recently replaced my water heater.
[00:07:55] Speaker A: I replaced mine, yeah, a couple years ago here.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: The water heater is a thing that you don't look at every day. It's usually in the garage or in the closet. It's hidden away. It sort of does this silent behind the scenes deal where it keeps your water hot, and the only time you think about it is when you have a cold shower or something weird is happening. My water heater silently just developed a crack in the bottom of the tank, the part where the tank sits in the pan. The problem is, the pan wasn't nearly big enough to hold the hundreds of gallons of water that would eventually come out of that tank. I had no idea. There was no warning sign, but I had not done any kind of maintenance or anything like that. You know, there's, there's a lot of schools of thoughts about how to properly maintain your water heater. You know, you could, on a regular basis drain it out and refill it. You could, on a regular basis, change the anode rod. Yeah, the sacrificial rod.
But if you're not doing it, then don't do it. It's not, it's kind of like switching from regular oil to synthetic oil. You, you don't do it in the middle of a car. You either start with synthetic and stay with it, or you start with regular and stay with it. The same things with your water heater. If you're regularly maintenancing it, then you can continue to do that.
[00:09:18] Speaker A: And I would say this. I've had this conversation with many people. I mean, we're not plumbers, but I've talked to plumbers and I've had this same conversation with several people, and they basically say this. If you have hard water and you know that you have hard water, flushing your water tank on your water heater once a year is a good idea. It will remove the sediment and it will, it will extend the life of your water heater. If you don't, then it's probably not that big of a deal. That's what I've heard. I mean, the why I don't have hard water in my house. And when we took my old one out, I just wanted to see. So we drained it all the way out and there was hardly any sediment that came out of it. The only reason we had to replace it was because the heating elements were shot.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: You know, it's a, here is a really good tip. If you go out to buy a new water heater, Corey, and you look at the warranty on that water heater and it says ten years, how long do you think that water heater is going to last?
[00:10:20] Speaker A: Ten years.
[00:10:21] Speaker B: That's what I'd say about ten years. Yeah. If the warranty is good for ten years, then your water heater is probably good to go for ten years. After the warranty is done, expect it to start doing its thing where it, you know, it. It loses its life, starts to lose its life. Right.
Temper your expectations. Water heaters, like so many other appliances, don't last forever. They will eventually need to be replaced because they will eventually stop working.
The downside is if you wait to. Mine was well past its warranty when it failed and resulted in an expensive remodel.
[00:11:00] Speaker A: Right.
[00:11:01] Speaker B: Because of the damage that it caused.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Cause your water heater was located inside the house in a closet.
[00:11:06] Speaker B: And I was on vacation when it happened.
[00:11:07] Speaker A: There was no drain line or anything.
[00:11:08] Speaker B: I was gone for a week. I came back for a week after a week vacation and had found 200 gallons of water that had left my water heater.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: 200.
[00:11:19] Speaker B: I mean, I didn't weigh it.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: I think most are 50 or 60.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: It was a lot.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: A lot of water.
[00:11:24] Speaker B: Yeah, it was a lot.
[00:11:25] Speaker A: Well, it ruined all your floors.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: Yeah. And so, uh, anyway, that's the thing. You just hope that because you're maintenance. Maintenance ing it regularly, that you're seeing what is going on and you're not waiting past its life expectancy.
[00:11:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: Hoping something's just going to continue to keep working for you years after its life expectancy is an irresponsible decision.
[00:11:45] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: And as was mine.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: All right, next one on the list, Tony, is a garbage disposal. Avoid putting hard, fibrous things down there. Orange peels.
You know, celery is a bad one to put down there. Potato peels. I know people that peel potatoes in their sink. Just shove them in there and turn the grinder on. Yeah, it's not a good idea.
[00:12:08] Speaker B: Eggshells.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: Yeah, eggshells. Not a good idea to do. Put stuff in there like that. I talk to plumbers, and plumbers say, don't even. Don't put anything down there. Don't even use it. They. They absolutely hate them.
One of the things, though, if you do use it and you have. You're cleaning off your dishes, it's really good for just, like, small, light stuff. Right. You can keep them clean by throwing ice cubes in there. That'll sharpen up the blades, they say, and putting vinegar down there with a little bit of baking powder and running it with those ice cubes. That's a good thing to do to keep it really clean. I actually had a situation in my house where we had a plugged. Our drain pipes were plugged and it was from the houses built in the seventies, so it was like 40 something years of grease buildup. And what he was saying, I mean, we don't put grease down there, but for years, whoever lived here before us did. So putting grease down there is a super big no no. But if you do, if you're washing off anything that is greasy, they say to use cold water, and I know you want to jump straight to hot water because it melts it off. The plate.
[00:13:19] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: Melts it off and just. It goes away. But what happens is that grease, as soon as it gets down into the drain, it cools off and then re hardens. It solidifies inside of your pipes, and when you get enough of it, that stuff turns to peanut butter. It is so thick and gross. Trust me. Use cold water, scrape it off, scrape your plates, and then. Or if you can scrape most of it into the trash, and then use a cold water to scrape off the rest.
[00:13:50] Speaker B: Yeah. If it's solid, when it goes down, it likely stays with the water and goes all the way out.
[00:13:54] Speaker A: All the way out.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: Yeah, but, but if it's. If it's liquid when it goes down, then it finds a cold surface down there and becomes hard and sticks there. Uh, yeah, they make some things you can drop. Little pellets you can drop in there to keep the. To keep the disposal fresh. What would you say you think the life expectancy is on, um, on a disposal? I mean, disposal is a brand name. Um, but you know what I'm talking about.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know. I I don't know. 10, 15, 20 years. 15 years, maybe.
[00:14:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I. My. In my experience, um, in the house that I'm in right now, I've replaced mine every five years.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: Really?
[00:14:30] Speaker B: Yeah. We. We are apparently very hard on the disposal.
[00:14:35] Speaker A: You stop putting orange peels in it.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: Well, I've learned a lot over the years, but. But I became pretty adept at replacing it.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: Nice.
All right, let's jump down to electrical. This one's pretty straightforward. You know, outlets. You want to make sure that the connections on your outlets are in good condition.
And it's hard to say an actual receptacle is going to last forever. It's not?
[00:15:03] Speaker B: Nope, it's not. I have one right now that's not working. The top receptacle is not working, and the bottom one is fine.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: So they get. They get old, they get worn out.
[00:15:12] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:15:12] Speaker A: Things break in there. But guess what? They're a dollar 50.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:15:16] Speaker A: So pull the old one out, turn the electricity off in the house. Start off the breaker.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: Double check it with a. Double check it with a pin pointer.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: Yep. Electrical tester.
And. Yeah, replace it. Replace that electrical receptacle right away. Just make sure that you're getting the right one for the location that you're getting in. They make different types, and if you have to talk to the person, the expert, ask them which one goes there, because they do tamper proof, tamper resistant, where they have little things that cover over the. The slots in the receptacle in case you have little.
[00:15:53] Speaker B: Little hands.
[00:15:54] Speaker A: Little hands. They make GFCI.
[00:15:57] Speaker B: They make different with USB and USB C. That's right. Ports, ports for your devices, charging your devices.
[00:16:04] Speaker A: So there's lots of. But you just want to make sure you're replacing it with the same ones. They come in different amperage ratings, so I'm gonna say replace them. If they go bad, it's a good tip.
[00:16:14] Speaker B: Do not overload the circuits in your breaker panel. Circuit breaker.
Circuit breaker. Breaker. I mean, they call them breakers, right? Yeah, the 15 amp or 20 amp breakers.
You know, that's. We have a tendency to sometimes want to add things inside. We want to add an outlet or we want to add a light, or we want to add, you know, some sort of thing.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: And we want to run an air conditioner, and you want to run a few fans and then your microwave.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: Yeah, sometimes you'll just run an extension right off of another outlet right to another place, another outlet or another light or something. Those do have a limit. Those breakers, those circuit breakers written right.
[00:16:57] Speaker A: On there, how many amps you can put on them.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: They have a limit as to what you can put on them. And if you overload them, then you're just setting yourself up for failure.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: Well, and they pop, you know, a breaker pops, but they have lifespans. So if. If you're constantly popping a breaker, there's a mechanisms mechanism inside of that breaker that trips when there's too much amps running through it. So you would go reset it, and if you keep popping it, it has a lifespan, and eventually it's gonna stop being able to reset.
[00:17:24] Speaker B: It breaks down there, and eventually you'll never. You won't be able to use it. You'll have to replace it.
[00:17:28] Speaker A: Your breaker breaks.
[00:17:29] Speaker B: Yep. A broken breaker.
[00:17:31] Speaker A: Broken breaker.
[00:17:32] Speaker B: A broken breaker. Light fixtures also bulbs, obviously, right? We're all adept at replacing the bulb in a light fixture, but the light fixtures themselves also have a lifespan. Just because there's a light fixture on the ceiling in the house doesn't mean it's going to last for 100 years. Yeah, or 200 years.
[00:17:54] Speaker A: Wiring gets, you know, get bugs in there. You get wiring, cleaning them out. I have, you know those old lights that sit on the ceiling? You can. A lot of times you can take those off, unscrew them, take the glass to the sink, really clean them out, get all the bugs, vacuum the dust out. And what you should really do, what's a really good idea, is to air seal the hole where the electrical box is around it, between. If it's in an attic, if it's in an unconditioned space, and you'll be able to know it. If you change a light fixture in the middle of winter and you put your hand up there and you'll feel ice cold air literally blowing, that's because it's not air sealed. So it's a good time to do that.
[00:18:36] Speaker B: Indeed.
[00:18:37] Speaker A: All right, Tony, let's move on to H VAc. You know what h vac stands for?
[00:18:41] Speaker B: Heating, ventilating, and air conditioning. This seems like there should be another a in there.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: You read that off my hvac. Hvac, they don't put. And in hv, heating, ventilation, aac, air conditioning.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: Indeed. Furnace. I'm gonna let you talk about furnace, because I don't own a furnace. I don't have a furnace in my house. So speaking to it seems like it would be counterproductive.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, if you don't know a ton. I mean, I'm not an h vac contractor, but I do. I've had to replace my furnace in both the houses that I've owned, and one of my good friends is an H vac contractor. And you can basically break an h vac unit down to a few different components. You've got the lot. You have the main air mover itself. And then if you have air conditioning, there is a condensation thing inside of there that runs the coolant out to the compressor outside, and then it releases the heat into there, and there's the big fan out there.
Then the air mover will move that air across that cold section, and that's how you get the cold air coming out of your lines. But you also have the air ducts as well, and you have furnace. The furnace section, or, I'm sorry, the filter section. So it's actually a pretty straightforward system on how it works. You just have to think about the cold air. They call it a cold air return. Right, where used air in the summertime is hot air return, but it gets sucked in through ducts, and it brings it into the top of the furnace moves through the machine, either heats it or coldsen, you know, cools it and then pumps it out the other side.
[00:20:25] Speaker B: Pulls the air from inside the house to the furnace.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: Whether the furnace is in the house or outside the house, it takes it to the furnace through the filter, filtering out all of the stuff that's in the air that you're breathing in the house currently, then runs it either through the heating process or the cooling process, and then delivers it to your house through all of those registers. Right. A cleaner, more purified air at this point.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, should be. And if everything's operating and updated correctly and maintained, it should be. The air coming out of your furnace should be cleaner than when it goes in.
[00:20:59] Speaker B: Cleaner and more correct temperature that you're looking for. Absolutely. That's the whole process. It's the same air from the house.
[00:21:06] Speaker A: Now there are caveats to that. Cause there are different, there's lots of different types of things you can add on to furnaces. You have ervs and hrvs.
[00:21:14] Speaker B: These are things that pull, intentionally pull fresh air from outside heat recovery ventilators. Right.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: So there's other components. There's this. I'm just talking about a basic hd.
[00:21:24] Speaker B: The engine, if you will.
[00:21:25] Speaker A: Yeah, it's basic.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: And I mean, if you have some of those other things, there are maintenance things with those, a lot of them with filters and keeping them clean and how those things operate. And. Which is a good idea. The same thing goes for your furnace. You want to maintain the furnace, you should probably should just have an elect H vac contractor come out regularly, every, whatever it is, every two, three years to maintain the furnace, clean it all out. Because depending on where you have it, it's air is coming in through the cold air return, but it's also moving air in and around the furnace. So things just get sucked in there and you'll pop the COVID off of that thing. It'll just be loaded with dust bunnies.
[00:22:07] Speaker B: Right. It doesn't all get caught in the filter.
[00:22:10] Speaker A: Right.
And depending on how humidgest your area is, if you live in a really humid part of the country, it can develop rust and then things start not moving the way they should. And lighting. And if, you know, one of the worst things you can have is a furnace that doesn't light. So.
[00:22:29] Speaker B: Oh, the igniter.
[00:22:30] Speaker A: Yeah, the igniter just keeping it maintained. But some of the things that you can do are on your air conditioning unit, your, your compressor outside, it's got that big thing with the fan. You can keep that clean, make sure that you keep it clean, because if it's not clean, it's not operating optimally, and you're not getting the cold air that you need inside the house, and you're putting stress on the system. Another thing you do is extend the lifespan of your furnace is to keep your doors open in your house. If you're closing off areas of your house, you are putting stress on the furnace itself, and you can shorten the lifespan of that furnace.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: Those are good tips. The only thing you didn't say, which you probably should have said eight or nine times. Replace the filters early and often. Replace the filters.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: That's the easiest.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: Like it is the easiest thing. It's not any different than anything else. Your refrigerator.
If your refrigerator dispenses water and ice, then it's got a filter. That filter should be replaced. It tells you it sets off a little alarm.
[00:23:35] Speaker A: Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: Your filter needs to be replaced. And then we reset the filter setting, and we don't replace it. Well, we've got pretty clean water in order. We don't have to worry about that so much. But the air needs to be clean all the time. Your lungs require it, which means that you need to replace the filters in your furnace all the time. I mean, on a very, very regular basis. Something else I wanted to say. You talked about taking the panel off of your furnace and finding a dirt or lint or whatever. Schmutz. Right. All caked on the side of the furnace. Well, that's because your filter got full and then couldn't take anymore, and it gets pushed off into all the other areas and gets trapped there. Yeah, because the air can't. The debris that's in the air can't go through the filter. The debris has to stop somewhere, and so it gets stuck there anyway. Replace the filters in your furnace. It's the number one way to extend its life, and it's no one's responsibility except the homeowner.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: That's right.
But like I said, those things you can do. Replace the filter. Clean the coils on your air conditioning unit. You know, check your thermostat. Make sure that it's set at the right temperatures that you want. If you have a. Make sure you have a programmable thermostat, at the very least. And you can check those temperatures and make sure that it's heating in the wintertime and cooling in the summertime, running things. I had a. I had a smart thermostat on my furnace, on my h vac system. And I actually, I don't like it because it's so smart. It's dumb.
It will. It will run my ac at night, you know, and then I'll have it set to, say, 70 degrees at night. And then when I wake up in the morning, I want it at the 72.
So it, instead of just not running the ac, it starts heating my house.
It's so bizarre.
[00:25:35] Speaker B: That's. That's the opposite of what you want to happen.
[00:25:38] Speaker A: I'm like, I don't want it to turn my furnace on. I just want it to stop cooling. So it takes some finagling with, especially with the one that I have.
But it's a good thing just to make sure your thermostats all dialed in. And another thing is, with the ductwork, make sure your ductwork is sealed, make sure it's kept clean. You can have guys come out, they run a machine and cleaning sweeps to clean out your. Your ductwork. It's a good thing to have done every so often. And like Tony said, replace the filters.
[00:26:06] Speaker B: Replace the filters. Good job. The next item is going to be outside roofing and gutters. We talk about this a lot. I feel like roofing and gutters. This is very important. If you've got. It doesn't matter what kind of a roof material you have, whether it's wood shingles or composite shingles or tiles or metal or metal, whatever it is, it has to be cleaned.
These roofs have a tendency to get dirty, and then moss grows on them, and moss that grows on your roof. Regardless of what kind of roofing you have, when it breaks free from there, it will end up in your gutter. And then if it goes in your gut, it'll end up in your downspout, and moss will create a blockage in your rain drain at lickety split. That'll be the very first thing to cause a blockage. Then you'll have water backing up that's not draining, and you'll have a problem. If you've got that happening, then you've got water potentially surrounding your foundation and going into the crawlspace.
[00:27:07] Speaker A: And because it's going somewhere.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a mis. It's a bad, bad situation. You don't want that. So address that problem at its source, which is the moss on the roof, and keep the moss from growing on the roof by treating your roof for moss, and then clean off the moss that is there and scoop it up. Don't leave it in the gutter and let it go down the downspout. And if you have composition or, or wood shingles. Make sure that you replace any missing shingles and fasten them down properly. And make sure that you are very carefully, regularly cleaning your gutters. Obviously, if you're going to be on the roof, you should tie off. If you can do it from the ladder, even better. Or if you've got a single story house and a long wand with a 90 degree bend on it, and you can clean the gutters from the ground, more power to you. That's the way. That's the way to get it done.
But it is something that needs to be addressed regularly. Make sure you keep your gutters clean, your downspouts clear and free from debris, and make sure that your water is getting from the roof to its final destination, which might be the rain drain at the street, maybe it's at the curb or wherever it is. Make sure that whole system is running clearly before winter time comes.
[00:28:29] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's. It's all about maintenance. I mean, at that point, just keeping it clean, keeping your roof clear, keeping it clean.
It's so easy.
[00:28:37] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it's.
[00:28:38] Speaker A: Well, it's not easy.
[00:28:39] Speaker B: I mean, it's work. It's work, work, but it's. It's known work. It's not. You don't have to sit down and contemplate it. You just gotta get off the couch and do it.
[00:28:48] Speaker A: All right. Next one on this, Tony, is windows and doors. You want to check the seals around your doors regularly. If they seem worn out, replace them. You can replace the weather stripping. If you have a sill and you can see daylight under the sill, check the door. A lot of times you can adjust the sill up or down.
If your sweep is just too high, you can adjust that sill up to meet the sweep. That way you're reducing your energy loss. And if the sweep, if the sills all the way up, and adjustable sills all the way up as far as it'll go, and you still see daylight, replace the sweep.
[00:29:25] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:29:25] Speaker A: It's a pretty simple process.
[00:29:27] Speaker B: If you look around the door and it all the way around the door anywhere, when it's light outside and dark inside, and you can see light around the door when it's closed, that's a problem, folks.
[00:29:40] Speaker A: Yeah. That's your weather stripping gone bad.
[00:29:42] Speaker B: Yep. That's a problem. And if you replace the weather stripping and you replace the sweep on the bottom of the door and you can still see light around your door, then it's time to replace the door and the jam. The whole scenario, you can't believe how much money you're spending heating and cooling your home. If you've got an open highway of air traveling through your entry door, I mean, that is where. That's where it all goes in and out your door. So, um, you want to have a door that seals properly, and that's money well spent, folks. Look, doors don't last forever. They don't. The door, the jamb, the weather stripping, the. All of that stuff has a lifespan.
[00:30:27] Speaker A: If you maintain it, though, it fails. If you keep a nice coat of paint on your door and you've kept all the stuff clean, you've lubricated the locks, they can last a very long time. So that's kind of the next thing on the list there is. Lubricate your locks and your hinges.
Make sure all the screws are tight in your hinges. Over time, you'll notice that sometimes doors will sag and they won't close like they used to. Check the hinges. Check the screws on the hinges. Tighten them up. Sometimes that'll happen. And if they're loose, everything is loose. The door is hitting wrong. It's not locking right. It can easily be maintained by just tightening things up.
[00:31:10] Speaker B: Yep. And if you have to, if your screw is not getting tighten, it's time to take that screw out, find a screw that is the same gauge, but longer, and drive that baby home. Put a three inch screw in there, it'll go. It'll go right in through the jam and right into the framing, and that screw will never come loose again.
[00:31:28] Speaker A: I would caution those careful not to over tighten it. Yeah. I would say if you have sidelights, sometimes that mullion, that jam between the door and the sidelights, where you have the hinge. Hinge side on, it's. Sometimes it's not very wide. So you really do have to be careful of the screw. You're not screwing through something into something else, like a piece of glass.
[00:31:53] Speaker B: Right. That's true.
[00:31:54] Speaker A: Yeah. So if you do have a loose screw hole like that, there's other things you can do. You can take popsicle sticks with glue and shove it in the hole.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: Toothpicks.
[00:32:02] Speaker A: Toothpicks. Yeah, that works. I mean, there's a lot of things you can do to. To tighten up those screws. So not necessarily getting that three inch one. I actually have a situation where I have a hinge side that's mounted on the other side of it is windows, sidelights. So I couldn't put a three inch screw in there. Cause it would crack and destroy the glass.
[00:32:22] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:32:23] Speaker A: Interesting.
Wind with your windows, wanna make sure that they're running smoothly. Put silicone in the the base and the tracks of the windows. You can lubricate the locks. Make sure that they're closing and latching properly. Check the screens. Make sure keeping them clean. Keeping them clean. And if they have tears, you can replace that screening pretty easily. Now, on glass, sometimes you'll get insulated glass units IG use that will fog up. You'll get fog in the middle or a condensation on the inside of them. Then you can't wipe off because it's between the panes of glass. Guess what? You don't have to replace the entire window. You can go buy a brand new igu. You can replace the insulated glass unit. You just get some measurements. You go into par lumber, give them those dimensions. They could order you a new one.
[00:33:18] Speaker B: I've done it many, many times.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: I know. You helped me do it at my house twice.
[00:33:22] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:33:22] Speaker A: It's not a terribly difficult job if you take your time and you have the right things.
[00:33:28] Speaker B: If you want to talk to somebody about it before you take that project on. Absolutely. Talk to the people at par. They can help you with that. Par lumber gives free advice, and it's always good.
[00:33:38] Speaker A: I wouldn't say always good. Sometimes it's great.
[00:33:44] Speaker B: Foundation and structural. We alluded to this a little bit when we were talking about rain drains. Yeah. Water management. It's very important. Um, but if you've got a crack in your foundation foundation, that is something that needs to be addressed. I had a customer came into the store two days ago, um, two days ago, and he said, I really need to talk to somebody about some cracks that I have in my foundation. Now, obviously, he didn't have pictures. We couldn't see what he was referring to, but I could see that he was giving it the proper amount of consideration. He said, I'm concernicus about the cracks that are in my foundation. They're not small. And he says, I have cracks on top of cracks, and they're shifting. So he has a major situation going on with his foundation, and he is ready to address it. We, of course, gave him contact information for a concrete contractor that pours foundations and would have a very good idea of what needs to be done to correct that problem. But I was really glad that he came in looking for some advice, because he's definitely getting it taken care of. Leaving a crack or some cracks in your foundation unaddressed is not the solution. Ever.
[00:35:00] Speaker A: Small cracks turn into large cracks.
[00:35:02] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:35:02] Speaker A: And large cracks turn into failures big time.
[00:35:06] Speaker B: That's right. That is not good. So address cracks, settling, um, support beams that you might find in your crawl space or underneath your deck. Um, I've spent a little bit of time in my crawl space. I've spent a little bit of time in Corey's crawl space, actually. And I've seen a lot of under structure. If you, um, if you're, if you're underneath the house and you see under structure that looks like it's not doing what it's intended to do, like a post under a beam that's not sitting on the concrete pad that's underneath it, you know, that's an example of something has your structure of your home has shifted or changed, and it's resulted in something that not looking the way it was looking when it was originally built, that's something that needs your attention and you need to look at it. I'm not saying that you're going to make changes to the foundation or the structure of your home, but I get a professional, have them come over and take a look and. So that you're not caught unaware.
[00:36:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Nope, you make a good point. The other thing, if you're down in the crawlspace making sure everything is well ventilated, checking for mold, checking for rot in different places, you get that smell, that wood rot smell, you can make sure that your vapor barrier is intact. The vapor barrier is there in a crawl space to prevent moisture from creeping up through the ground and then condensating on the underside of your house.
[00:36:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And it doesn't creep. I mean, it comes out.
[00:36:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:42] Speaker B: Moisture coming out of the ground all the time. Constantly.
[00:36:45] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:36:45] Speaker B: And if you don't have poly down there that's blocking that moisture, then the wood that your home is built of is getting moisture in it all the time.
[00:36:55] Speaker A: Absolutely. And then you'll have sometimes have to, like, do what I did. Put some pumps in to pump the water out.
[00:37:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:02] Speaker A: If you have a basement, adding a dehumidifier fire is a good thing. If you ever walk in that, walk down to a musty basement.
[00:37:08] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:37:09] Speaker A: Nobody likes that smell.
[00:37:10] Speaker B: No, musty's not good.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: Put in a dehumidifier, it'll extend the life of anything that you put down there.
All right, so let's move on to appliances. This one's actually kind of easy because all of your appliances in your house take almost the same maintenance.
Cleaning the coils, cleaning the filters, or replacing the filters. Yeah, or replacing the filters. And I'm talking about your refrigerator, your dishwasher your washer and dryer, they all have filters underneath. On the refrigerator has these coils underneath. Sometimes they have these mesh filters on the top, on the bottom. That as that refrigerator has a fan that's pulling air through, and it's. It works just like your air conditioner at home. It pulls heat out of the air, leaving cold. And that air you have, it has a fan to brush across those coils to keep it cool and move that hot air along. And if you're moving air, you're also moving dust, right?
[00:38:10] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:38:11] Speaker A: And over the years, dust will build up and build up and build up, and then your refrigerator will work harder and harder and harder and harder and stay running longer and longer and longer to keep that same temperature. So you're reducing its lifespan. Same thing with your dishwasher. Dishwasher has filters in it. So to keep the. Just keep it clean. A lot of them, you just pop right out, rinse them off, put them right back in your washer and dryer. Same thing you, I mean, everybody cleans the filter on their dryer, I think, at least. But, you know, most, some washers, front load washers have filters.
[00:38:45] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:38:45] Speaker A: So pull, pop those out, clean them up super easy.
[00:38:48] Speaker B: And that what you're, the advice that you're giving is really just based on just the family. Add a pet or two pets to that, and the amount of buildup that your coils on your refrigerator or your air conditioner, that's three times as much or four times as much, because they shed so much material from their bodies, and that material ends up on the floor or in the air. And when, when those appliances are pulling fresh air, it's pulling all of that product that's on the floor with it. So. Yeah. Even more so if you've got pets.
[00:39:30] Speaker A: Yeah. It's so much hair.
[00:39:33] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a lot.
[00:39:34] Speaker A: You know, one of the things with the oven and stove, it's kind of one of those things that doesn't really need to be said. But keeping your oven clean, what you get the elements, especially if you have a. An electric stove.
[00:39:48] Speaker B: How do you clean an oven?
They're self cleaning. Yeah, it's a button. Right?
[00:39:54] Speaker A: Sometimes. But sometimes, you know, you get this stuff dripping down and it gets collected in there.
[00:40:00] Speaker B: Self cleaning, it turns it to ash, and then you can just wipe it off.
[00:40:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:03] Speaker B: It incinerates it self. Of course, if it's 100 degrees outside, you don't really want your oven at 500 degrees for an extended period of time. The cleaning cycle on an oven is quite long, actually, that's a long time to have heat being generated this time of year, but. Yeah, but it is an option.
[00:40:26] Speaker A: All right, let's jump out to the outside.
[00:40:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Talked a little bit about outside. We talked, of course, about the roof and the gutters. So we were outside for a minute. We talked about the foundation and the. And the structure understructure of the home. So let's talk about what else is outside besides the roof.
[00:40:43] Speaker A: Well, your siding.
[00:40:44] Speaker B: Oh, of course.
[00:40:45] Speaker A: Walk around your house regularly. And I would say right by once a year, walk around your house and look at your siding. Is the paint peeling? Is the caulking around your doors and windows and you're flashing everything. Is it cracked? Do you see holes? Do you see bugs? You see bugs climbing in and out of your house through cracks in your siding. These are the things you need to look for and keep maintained. Because if your siding fails, that is an expensive fix. I'm telling you right now.
[00:41:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:16] Speaker A: Residing a house is not cheap.
[00:41:18] Speaker B: No, you're absolutely right. You should be keeping paint on the exterior of your home replaced, I don't know, every five years, probably paint.
[00:41:27] Speaker A: No, ten.
I would say a good paint should last you at least ten years.
[00:41:33] Speaker B: Okay, ten years. So there you go. You would be getting your home repainted every ten years. The. My point being this.
The paint on the exterior of your home will fail. It will fail. And you need to be touching it up as often as possible. It will fail in. In some places first before it starts to fail everywhere. Eventually you will have to paint the entire house. But it doesn't take ten years for. For one area to need to be touched up or some areas to need to be touched up. So be prepared to be maintenance. Seeing the paint job on the exterior of your home regularly, um, you should be looking at it every single, um, fall before you go into winter. Checking your. Your. Where you might need to scrape or sand some old peeling paint and replace it with new paint. And then when that gets to be too much, then you get the whole house repainted. Maybe every ten years.
I've painted my house twice in 20 years. So that's actually probably pretty good advice. Yeah.
[00:42:44] Speaker A: If you've got a deck, if you got a composite deck, all you gotta do is keep it clean. Check for loose boards. Sometimes fasteners do break. If you have stainless steel fasteners, they're probably going to last a bit longer. But if you've used steel fasteners, regular steel fasteners that are coated, they can expand and contraction of the deck boards themselves can break fasteners. So checking for loose boards, making sure it's screwed down properly, and check the framing. Look at the framing of your deck. Do you see anything with weird gaps? Do you see anything moving around or rotten? Address it as soon as it happens. Because a deck is, especially if it's high off the ground, can be very dangerous if it's not maintained properly.
[00:43:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:30] Speaker A: If you got a wood deck, put a nice coat of sealant on it, clean it first, you can use a wood brightener and then a nice coat of oil based stain. I think the oil based stains will prolong the life of the deck a lot better than some of their acrylic little brothers.
[00:43:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I.
[00:43:47] Speaker A: Every person that I've ever met that use an acrylic water based stain on a deck peels off.
[00:43:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
Stain should not be peeling. Stain. When I think of stain, I don't think of, like, a ready seal type product that, you know, creates a solid surface on the exterior of the product.
[00:44:09] Speaker A: Right.
[00:44:09] Speaker B: I think about an oil stain that soaks in and protects it from the inside out. That's really the way wood should be treated.
[00:44:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:16] Speaker B: In my opinion, especially in Oregon, it.
[00:44:18] Speaker A: Is more difficult to apply an oil based stain, though.
[00:44:22] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:44:22] Speaker A: You know, you have to use gloves, clean up with mineral spirits and.
[00:44:26] Speaker B: Yep. You gotta wipe it back and apply it again. Yeah, I get it. I get it. But that's what makes it work good. It's the amount of work that goes into installing it.
[00:44:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:38] Speaker B: Fences is another one.
I feel like I'm repairing parts of my fence all the time. I've got a dog. Of course. Um, your fence looks, your entire fence still looks exactly the same to me as it did the day it was installed. But, um. But my fence is, you know, aged so much, it needs to be stained again. I'm constantly replacing boards. One board here, three boards there. I've got two four by fours right now that are twisted, which has caused my gate to not close properly. Ugh. My fence. Here's a tip, folks. When you're picking out a four x four post to replace in your fence, because it's twisted. And I'm talking about picking out a post. When you look at a four x four post and you look at the end of it, if it resembles a bullseye and there's a dot somewhere in the middle and it's got rings all the way around it, that's not your post. Put it back. Get one that does not have the dot and that has very wide, broad rings. Maybe like one quarter of a. Of a round. A quarter round, maybe. That is telling you that this four by four came from the outer rings of the tree. If you choose a four by four with a dot on the end of it with circles around it, that came from the center of the tree. The center of the tree is not the stable portion of the tree. The outer portions of the tree, the broader strokes of rings are the ones that you want.
[00:46:11] Speaker A: I'm not.
[00:46:11] Speaker B: I mean, if you're buying a hundred fence posts, you're not going to be able to pick out 100 fence posts. But if you're. But if you're replacing a few and you're going to the. To par lumber or the lumber yard to get to pick them up, choose the ones with the broader rings and not the heart. What they call heart center.
[00:46:31] Speaker A: Yeah, heart center.
[00:46:31] Speaker B: The heart center of the tree is. Is volatile. It's a loose cannon, folks. You never know what's going to happen with that four by four. I've got. I've got some in my yard that need to be replaced.
[00:46:40] Speaker A: I'll tell you some other tips. When you're replacing and just building a brand new fence is. Think about a design for the fence with a top cap.
Top cap alone will extend the life of that fence. It won't allow moisture to enter the tops of every one of those fence boards. It'll prevent moisture from entering in your fence posts. It will extend the life of your fence at a top cap.
[00:47:06] Speaker B: Yep. It's a great tip because if you have to just replace the cap, you're a lot better off.
[00:47:11] Speaker A: Absolutely. Last one, you know, for the exterior is driveways and walkways.
Same thing with the foundation. If you got a crack, they get bigger over time. And then what happens is water gets in there and it starts undermining underneath the driveway. So you want to address those as soon as you can fill them. There's lots of different filling methods. They have stuff in tubes. They have stuff that you premix. There's, you know, if you're using some sort of powdered mixture formula that you're troweling in there, you want to use like a moose milk thing. That's. It's like an acrylic coating that allows it to adhere better. There's just lots of different ways. But my main thing is seal the cracks up and make sure they don't get any bigger. Cause the longer you let it go, the worse it gets.
[00:48:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:48:01] Speaker A: Then you start getting slabs that drop. You know, if you've seen these things where you have a slab that meets another slab and it's two inches below. Now you've created a huge trip hazard.
[00:48:10] Speaker B: Right. So the last thing you want to be doing is reporting your driveway.
[00:48:14] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. That's an expensive venture.
[00:48:17] Speaker B: Agreed.
[00:48:18] Speaker A: All right, we just got a last couple things here. In general, check your smoke detectors and co detectors. Regularly test them monthly. Replace the batteries once a year, and they say to actually replace the entire unit every ten years. It's a good tip.
[00:48:35] Speaker B: Yep. That is a good tip. Water softener? I don't use water softener. Corey, do you use water softener at your house?
[00:48:42] Speaker A: I don't. We have really good water here in Oregon, but where I grew up in Michigan, we did have water softener. We had a really hard water situation there. So, yeah, we had to put salt in that thing all the time.
[00:48:52] Speaker B: Really?
[00:48:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:53] Speaker B: Big.
[00:48:54] Speaker A: We'd get these big pallets of, you know, big salt pellets.
[00:48:58] Speaker B: Really interesting.
[00:48:59] Speaker A: We'd have to pop the top on the thing.
[00:49:01] Speaker B: Interesting. Yeah. I've never experienced anything like that. I mean, Oregon water is not like that.
[00:49:05] Speaker A: No.
[00:49:06] Speaker B: Yeah, we just don't have that. It's a huge luxury to have the water that we have to be able to drink water from the tap and have it taste exactly like the water that comes out of a bottle.
[00:49:18] Speaker A: For me, it's good water.
[00:49:20] Speaker B: I am absolutely very appreciative.
[00:49:24] Speaker A: We had water filters. We were on a well back where I grew up, and it was very sulfur y, so we had a water filter, and it was super hard. So we had the water softener. Wow, that's a whole treatment facility in our basement.
[00:49:38] Speaker B: Yeah. That's a lot.
[00:49:40] Speaker A: If you've got a sump pump, make sure you test that thing. Clean it out. You don't want a sump pump to fail.
If, if, when you need it.
[00:49:51] Speaker B: Tell me, tell me about testing your sump pump. I know where your sump pump lies. I helped you install it.
[00:49:57] Speaker A: Yeah, mine's hard.
[00:49:58] Speaker B: How do you, I mean, when you think about testing your sump pump, let's say that's once a year, right in the fall, right before it starts raining. Um, how you gonna do it? What, what's your, and the only way.
[00:50:11] Speaker A: To do it is to get in there and with a pole, with a hook on it, and you can lift the float or push the float down.
[00:50:21] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:50:22] Speaker A: You push the float down and it kicks on and will drain water. And that's how you know that it's working properly. You want to make sure the water's going where it needs to go. And if you can test it to make sure that it is actually spitting water at where it's supposed to. Mine, for example, goes into my rain drains, which drains out to my street.
[00:50:41] Speaker B: Right.
[00:50:42] Speaker A: So I can hit it, walk out, and see, physically see water hitting the street.
[00:50:48] Speaker B: But you would have to have water in the hole around the pump.
[00:50:52] Speaker A: Well, if you have a sump pump, generally speaking, you're probably gonna have a little bit of water in the bottom.
[00:50:58] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:50:59] Speaker A: It doesn't drain them. Empty. It drains them to a point, and then the float drops, and then it turns off.
[00:51:06] Speaker B: But if you go three, four months without rain and heat under the house, probably gonna dry that up.
[00:51:11] Speaker A: No, no, mine. Mine always has a little bit of water in it.
[00:51:14] Speaker B: All right.
[00:51:14] Speaker A: You know, if you are in a situation where you have a sump pump and it's dry and it's dry, and it only happens. It only gets water when you have really bad rains. I've seen that. And those are the worst kinds. Those are the ones you don't want to break down because you know that sump pump is there for when you really need it.
[00:51:32] Speaker B: Right. So you take a gallon of water down there with you and dump it right in the hole, pour it in, make that thing go, take a five.
[00:51:37] Speaker A: Gallon pail, maybe pour water in it and push down the float or pull up the float. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry that. Yeah, you do. You have to pull up the.
[00:51:48] Speaker B: Pour the water in there, and that float will pop up and it'll go.
[00:51:51] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. It'll suck the water out.
[00:51:53] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:51:54] Speaker A: So just keep them maintained.
[00:51:55] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:51:55] Speaker A: That's all it's about, the checking your sump pump regularly, probably at least every year, and there's check valves on them. That's the other thing. Make sure your check valve is working, because when you pump sump pump water out, a lot of times it's being pumped up and out. So they have these reverse flow check valves. Water goes in one way, but it can't come back the other way.
[00:52:17] Speaker B: Right. Right.
[00:52:18] Speaker A: So if you turn on your sump water pumps out, and then you see the sump fill back up with water, then your check valve is bad.
[00:52:26] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:52:27] Speaker A: And you can replace those. Usually they're right there.
[00:52:30] Speaker B: So good tip. Here's another one. There's a couple of different places where you can see the insulation in your home. You can go into the crawl space, and you can see the insulation that's under the floor. You can go into the attic, and you can see the insulation that's above the ceiling. Those are places where you should have a good idea what your insulation looks like there. If you didn't build your home and you didn't insulate your home, then there is some question about the insulation. Depending on what year your home is or how old it is, what was used, how it's faring. You know, if you get blown in insulation, it has a tendency to settle over many, many years, and the code requirement for insulation becomes more and more and more. And so there's an opportunity for you to add insulation in the attic and maybe replace insulation under the floor. So familiarize yourself with the insulation in the home that you can see, again, if your insulation is not sufficient, you're spending money that you don't have to be spending heating and cooling your home because the insulation is not holding those temperatures inside the living space, in the. In the condition space.
[00:53:41] Speaker A: Right. And you're creating a very uncomfortable situation for yourself.
[00:53:45] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:53:47] Speaker A: Last one on the list here, Tony, is pest control.
[00:53:50] Speaker B: Call the killers.
[00:53:51] Speaker A: Yep, call the killers. Killers is who we use here. Matt White. He's, we've had him on the show several times. He does our house. They come out, they set the traps, they put the baits, they spray around for spiders, and they do a great job. But that's just one of those things keeping the bugs out of the areas that you don't want them keeping. The pests, always walk around your house. Look for entry points. If you've got holes being dug by squirrels or rodents of any kind, you get those stopped right away, because once they get in your house, they love it. It's nice and warm.
Lots of building materials down in your crawlspace. Insulation for nice little beds. They love it in there. So you want to keep those things out.
[00:54:36] Speaker B: If you've got a mosquito problem, then you've probably got standing water somewhere around the property or on nearby properties.
Look for standing water that mosquitoes will breed in or have bred in, and that's resulting in you having high concentrations of mosquitoes. Here's another little tip. This may be not for everybody, but if you've got a mosquito problem, build a bat house. Build a bat house and hang it out on the back fence or on the shop or shed out there. Oh, yeah, and let the bats come in. Bats eat there. This is, this is not a quote, and again, I'm not a. I don't work at a zoo, so I don't know a lot about it, but I understand that. I've been told that bats eat their weight in mosquitoes every night. That seems like a lot. That's a bunch of busy bats. Bats can eat between 6008 thousand insects per night.
[00:55:32] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:55:33] Speaker B: The exact number depends on the species and of course, their activity level. But I'm telling you what, if you wanna, you wanna take a crack at bugs in your backyard, build a bat house. We have a few bats around.
I think maybe that one of my neighbors has a bat house that I'm not aware of because we have bats that freak with our backyard. And I'll tell you what, I love it. We do not have a bug problem in my backyard.
[00:55:59] Speaker A: That's fantastic.
[00:56:00] Speaker B: And I see bats regularly. I like bats. I think they're cool. Anyways, just a tip, you know, a free pet doesn't cost you anything. Build a bad house and let them come and stay with you.
[00:56:10] Speaker A: Good idea.
[00:56:11] Speaker B: Friendly.
[00:56:12] Speaker A: All right, well, that's all we have lots of things around your house that can fail. And hopefully we gave you some tips that you can use or some reminders at least to get out there and maintain the things that you have to keep that house in top condition.
[00:56:27] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:56:27] Speaker A: Thanks so much for listening.
[00:56:29] Speaker B: We hope you enjoyed the show. Have a great week.
