Show Notes
Join us as we uncover tips for navigating the often-confusing process of window shopping. Then, we discuss a versatile portable battery system for both travel and home integration. Finally, learn about micro-irrigation, an efficient watering method that can save your garden. Plus, we’ve got more home improvement answers to inspire your DIY projects!
Table of Contents[Hide][Show]
- Buying Windows: Expert advice makes shopping for replacement windows a transparent process.
- Battery Backup: Stay charged with a portable power backup system to use at home or on the go.
- Micro-Irrigation: Transform your garden with micro-irrigation that’s rooted in efficiency.
Top Questions & Answers
- HVAC and Fans: Marie wonders if fans will improve her air conditioning. Ceiling and furnace fans won’t help very much, but we recommend installing a whole-house fan to pull air through the house.
- Pest Control: Daddy longlegs are a problem in Will’s garage. Sticky traps, spraying white vinegar and vanilla extract, cleaning, and vacuuming will control the spiders.
- Jacuzzi Mold: Robin has issues with moldy pipes and a fading finish on her Jacuzzi bathtub. It’s hard to refinish the fixtures, but a bleach solution will sanitize the pipes.
- Fire Pit: Katherine has questions about fire pits. Options include buying a metal model that can last 5 to 8 years or a DIY kit to build a fire pit with bricks or pavers.
- Insulation: What kind of insulation should Albert add to his attic? Spray foam insulation is an excellent choice that expands, seals, is more efficient, and needs no ventilation.
- Ceramic Floor: Sandy can’t get her old ceramic tile floor clean. It sounds like the glaze has worn off, so we recommend installing laminate flooring or a second layer of tile.
- Foundation Cracks: Cracks in the basement floor and seepage through the wall seams have Tom worried. He gets tips on sealing the cracks and improving drainage.
- Oven Cleaning: Gail can’t clean the glass on her self-cleaning electric oven door. It’s a tough area to reach and she’ll need to disassemble the door.
Ask Your Home Improvement Question
Podcast Transcript
Read Transcript
| 00:00:15 | TOM: Coast to coast and floorboards to shingles, this is The Money Pit Home Improvement Show. I’m Tom Kraeutler. |
| LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete. | |
| 00:00:24 | TOM: Coast to coast and floorboards to shingles, this is The Money Pit Home Improvement Show. I’m Tom Kraeutler. And I’m Leslie Segrete. And we are here to help you take on the projects that you want to get done around your house. So if you’ve got a project in mind for today, tomorrow, this weekend, next, months ahead, reach out to us with your questions. Now is your chance to get some impartial expert advice. And you can do that by calling us at 1-888-Money-Pit or you can go to MoneyPit.com slash ask. Hey, coming up on today’s episode, according to the Department of Energy, shopping for new windows is not all that clear of a process. Man, I have to agree with that because there are just so many variables. And unfortunately, those window dealers sometimes are a bit tricky in the description. So you really need some help. So what we thought we’d do is share the Department of Energy’s recommendations for what exactly to look for when you’re thinking about replacing your windows. |
| 00:01:22 | LESLIE: And if your idea of portable power is defined by the length of your extension cord, we’ve got a better idea. Just ahead, we’re going to review the new EcoFlow Delta Pro 3, which is a portable battery system that can work on the road, or you can integrate it into your home’s power system seamlessly. |
| 00:01:40 | TOM: And if your garden is looking like it’s had a bit too much sun, one of the best ways to make sure your plants thrive is with micro irrigation. And we’re going to talk about how this system of tiny sprayers gets water right, exactly where you need it, with no waste. |
| 00:01:54 | LESLIE: But first, we want to know what you want to know. It’s our job, our mission to educate, to inspire, and to help you build confidence on all of these projects that you want to get done. |
| 00:02:04 | TOM: Yeah, that’s right. But your job is to help yourself first by reaching out to us with those projects and questions. A couple of ways to do that, you can call us at 1-888-Money-Pit, that’s 888-666-3974, or just go to moneypit.com slash ask and click the blue microphone. Which I see folks are already doing, so let’s get to it. Leslie, who’s first? |
| 00:02:26 | LESLIE: I’ve got Marie from Ontario on the line, who’s got a ceiling fan question. What’s going on at your money pit? |
| 00:02:32 | CALLER: Actually, I’m in a one, a four, one, just a four ranch, okay, three bedroom ranch, no basement, just a good concrete crawl space that’s insulated, no problem down there, my furnace is down there. But I would like to know, please, is it financially better off to use ceiling fans and just have the fan on? My air conditioner fan on, or run the air conditioner itself? |
| 00:02:55 | TOM: Okay, I’m going to give you a different answer than that, because I wouldn’t say that the ceiling fans are decorative, in my view, and they’re not necessarily an efficient way to move air through your house. But I’ll tell you what it is, and that’s called a whole house fan. So where you have a fan that’s basically mounted, you said you have a ranch, so it would be mounted in the ceiling, probably of the hall, and it will take air from the house, and it will pull it up into the attic, and then you can leave it there, and then you can put it back in the house. Okay. And then you can enlarge the vents in your attic to make sure it can exhaust that air, and whenever it gets a little bit thick outside, a little bit uncomfortable, what you do is you open a window, a couple of windows or doors at each end of the house, and you run that whole house fan, and if you run it even at a low speed, it will pull a really nice breeze through the house, and what that does is it has the effect of delaying how much of your air conditioning you actually have to use. You know, I had one in a house that I owned when we first got married, and it was great, because we would turn it on just a low speed in the evening and go to bed, and by the time we fell asleep, the fan went off, and the evening had gotten, you know, much cooler, and we were comfortable for the whole night, so I think a whole house fan, in terms of comfort, is a better option than ceiling fans. And in terms of the air conditioner itself, you know, I think if you were to limit the amount of time you used it, because you could tradeoff between the whole house and the ceiling fan, you’re going to have to use a lot of air conditioning. You’re going to save money on your AC, too. |
| 00:04:14 | CALLER: I meant, like, my furnace fan itself, not using the AC, my furnace fan. |
| 00:04:19 | TOM: Oh, your furnace fan? Yeah, furnace fan is definitely, that definitely does not make sense to use. That’s a very expensive way to move air through your house. Oh, well, okay. |
| 00:04:27 | CALLER: Yep. |
| 00:04:28 | TOM: Yeah, same answer. A different fan, but same answer. |
| 00:04:31 | CALLER: So the best situation, the best solution would be to put the fan in the hall. |
| 00:04:37 | TOM: Yep, a whole house fan. To suck up the air through the house. And don’t confuse this with an attic fan. I’m not talking about the little, round, silver-dust fan. This is a whole house fan, and it’s a quite large footprint. It’s usually maybe about two foot in diameter, maybe a little bit more, depending on the size you buy. And it has a set of baffles that are like louvers that lay flat. And when you turn them on, they gently open up, and they pull a nice breeze through the house. It’s really marvelous. |
| 00:05:03 | CALLER: |
| Oh, wow. Well, thank you so much. I didn’t mean to be ignorant, but, you know, yeah, you do surprise me. Oh, no, no. You do call back. You can’t possibly be. I love it. I love it. I love it. Any chance I get. | 00:05:15 |
| TOM: And I want to say that when we called you, you said, you do call people back. How about that? Yes, we do. | 00:05:22 |
| CALLER: And I greatly appreciate that. Thank you. So it’s called a whole house fan. | 00:05:28 |
| TOM: W-H-O-L-E. A whole house fan. Yes. A whole house. | 00:05:31 |
| CALLER: Like the whole thing. Okay. Great. Well, God bless you. Thank you so much. All right, Marie. Good luck. Be safe. Bye-bye. | 00:05:38 |
| LESLIE: All right, now we’re heading down to Florida, where Will is dealing with some unexpected visitors, daddy-long-leg spiders. | 00:05:44 |
| TOM: | How can we help you? |
| 00:05:46 | CALLER: Not in the garage. And there’s a lot of daddy-long-legs. I tried spraying a couple of different things inside the garage, and they seem to keep coming back, and I don’t know how to get rid of them. |
| 00:05:57 | TOM: Okay. Well, I mean, I can give you a recipe for sort of a natural way to deter them, and that is if you take a cup of white vinegar and a third cup of vanilla extract, if you put that in a spray bottle and you shake it, and you shake it, and you shake it, and you shake it, and spray the areas where the daddy-long-legs have been spotted indoors and out, that smell, that combination of the vinegar and vanilla is really offensive to them, and it will repel the insects without you having to add any additional toxins to your environment. The other thing to do is sort of basic cleaning in the sense that when you see the spiders and the nest, make sure you’re vacuuming them up. That’s the easiest way to get rid of them and to keep that space as dry. And then finally, you could use sticky traps as well. Sticky traps, if you lay them where you start to see them collect, they will get stuck to them and they won’t go any further. So there are a few ways for you to deal with it. Does that help? |
| 00:06:54 | CALLER: Oh, yeah. That sounds great. |
| 00:06:56 | TOM: All right. |
| 00:06:57 | LESLIE: Do you love learning about home improvement on our podcast? Well, we love bringing you all the latest tips and tricks. |
| 00:07:02 | TOM: And if you want to make us smile, leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Just go to MoneyPit.com slash review. |
| 00:07:10 | LESLIE: Robin in Missouri is looking to get a new home. She wants to relax, but that’s not happening with mold in the jacuzzi. What’s going on? |
| 00:07:16 | CALLER: We have this large bathtub jacuzzi, and it has some marble stairs and trim around it. And it’s a beautiful jacuzzi, but I noticed that the pipes, there was like, I don’t know if it’s like mold coming out of it or what. When we got the house, it set for a while. And then we filled it up and put palm-olive dishwashing liquid in it, you know, and tried to clean it out and so on. |
| 00:07:49 | TOM: Eventually, it got very sudsy when you did that. |
| 00:07:51 | CALLER: That’s what they said to do. And anyway, we also got it glazed or painted, you know, as they usually say, and it kind of faded off. And we had the fixtures painted, too, and we thought the people that were doing it were really reputable. But now, the… Yeah. The fixtures, you know, where the jets are, the rings are on the jets and so on, the paint’s kind of fading. And… |
| 00:08:17 | TOM: All right. So it sounds to me like we’re talking about two issues here. Number one, you have some sort of growth that’s been inside the internal plumbing system of this jetted tub. And secondly, the finish has faded, and you had it restored some time ago, and the finish is starting to fade and chip and so on. So let’s tackle the second one first. It’s very, very hard to refinish a plumbing fixture, I can tell you that right now. There is a way to do it. It’s extremely caustic. I don’t even know if you could do it to a jetted tub, which is usually a fiberglass-type material. It’s very hard to do when it’s a, you know, cast iron, the tubs and sinks that folks love to restore, which is a very, very caustic process. And then the products that they sell that you can sort of paint over them, you know, don’t have nearly the life expectancy that you would hope for. In terms of whatever may be going on in the internal plumbing system, you know, what I have often advised over the years is to use… Use a bleach solution. So if you were to fill that tub up and, you know, run, if you had a big tub and you run a half gallon or a gallon of bleach through those jets, you know, that’s going to help to sanitize anything that’s growing in there. So with my tub, I’d probably fill it up with hot water, throw in some bleach, and let the thing run for a while. I wouldn’t put anything sudsy in there because, you know, there’s a reason that dishwasher detergent, for example, doesn’t suds up. It’s designed not to do that. But if you put dishwasher, if you put dish soap in there, it’s going to suds up like crazy. But I think all you really need is hot water and some bleach to sanitize it. And that might do a pretty good job of cleaning it. And I know that the jetted tub industry have other special products that they sell for the very same reason. But I think it’s important to do that because you don’t want anything growing in the internal plumbing and then, you know, potentially making someone reactive, having an allergic reaction or making them sick or something. So I would definitely want to clean that out. So I know that’s not the answer you want to hear about the painted surface. So I would definitely want to clean that out. But it is certainly the way to sanitize the internal plumbing system of it. Okay. |
| 00:10:14 | CALLER: And yeah, that’s why I never use that tub. I just don’t use it. |
| 00:10:17 | TOM: You didn’t have a good feeling for the right reason. So why don’t you give it a shot, though, and see if we can clean this thing out and let it…and we start to see that it’s consistently, you know, shooting out some clean water. Maybe you’d feel better about dropping into it now and again, okay? |
| 00:10:32 | CALLER: What about the jet fixtures on it and the tub itself? How do I get that glaze-type finish off of it? |
| 00:10:42 | TOM: Well, if you’re talking about the plumbing fixtures like the spout and that sort of thing, those you would simply have to replace. If you’re talking about the body of the tub and you’ve already refinished it once, there’s not going to be much you can do about that. It’s just going to be the wear and tear of that particular appliance from now on out. |
| 00:10:58 | CALLER: Okay. So I’ll probably just replace it. Yeah. |
| 00:11:01 | TOM: Well, that would solve everything, wouldn’t it? |
| 00:11:05 | CALLER: Okay. Well, thank you very much. |
| 00:11:06 | TOM: You’re welcome. Good luck with that project. Thanks for calling us at 1-888-Money-Pit. |
| 00:11:10 | LESLIE: Well, according to the Department of Energy, heat gain and loss through windows is responsible for 25% to 30% of residential heating and cooling energy use. That’s why when you’re out shopping for some new windows, it’s really important to choose the most efficient windows that you can in your budget, and they’re going to work the best in your climate. So here are some ways that you can cut through all of the competing claims of energy efficiency, and find out what are the best windows for your home. Okay. |
| 00:11:39 | TOM: So first up, you always want to look for the Energy Star and the National Fenestration Rating Council, that’s NFRC for short, energy efficiency labels. They’re both going to be on the windows, and the labels are going to help you make sort of an apples-to-apples comparison when comparing windows. This is going to include a couple of key factors. The first one’s called the U-factor. That measures how much the window conducts heat and solar resistance, which are the key There are two really important considerations in both summer and winter, and the labels will also specify something called the solar heat gain coefficient. This measures how much solar radiation is emitted through a window to reduce heat gain in the warmer climates. |
| 00:12:22 | LESLIE: Now by choosing windows with both low U-factors and low solar heat gain coefficients, you’re going to be able to maximize the energy savings in temperate climates with both cold and hot seasons. And lastly, when you’re looking for windows that are thermal pane and filled with an insulating gas, you want to make sure they have low E-coatings to reduce heat loss in colder climates and then reduce heat gain in those warmer climates. |
| 00:12:46 | TOM: Yeah, and now’s a good time to think about this project, because homeowners who replace windows are also eligible for a tax credit of 30% of the cost, up to $600. So good opportunity to save some money there as well. |
| 00:12:59 | LESLIE: We’ve got Katherine in Delaware on the line, who’s got a question about a fire pit. Hi. How can we help you today? |
| 00:13:04 | CALLER: Well, I’d love to have a homemade fire pit in my backyard. I don’t want to buy a metal one. They’ll only get rusty, right? |
| 00:13:11 | TOM: Yeah, they do, but they last a heck of a long time. You know, I did not want to put a built-in fire pit in my backyard because I didn’t want to have to, you know, deal with it in the off seasons. It would be hard to shovel around and that sort of stuff when the snow hits. So I actually, personally, have been using a metal fire pit for many years. And, you know, I find that they last, gosh, five to eight years. Before they start to show anywhere and tear. So I’m not afraid to use a metal fire pit, but I can tell you that if you want to do a brick fire pit or a paver brick fire pit, there’s lots of options right out there. One company that makes a kit for it is Rumblestone. It’s the pavestone company. And these Rumblestone pavers, they’ll sell you basically all the bricks that you need. The Rumblestone are sort of like a rough, a rough, beautiful colored stone that you assemble into a circle pattern. And then the way they design it, the way they make it, the way they make it, the way they make it, there’s a metal, like, sort of liner that drops right into the stone. And that’s where you build your fire. So you can do it yourself, but you could also purchase a fire pit. Depends on, you know, what look you are going for and how long you want it to last. Well, good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 1-888-Money-Pit. |
| 00:14:23 | CALLER: Thank you. I will. Bye-bye. Now we’re going to talk insulation with Albert from Massachusetts. What’s going on? |
| 00:14:29 | CALLER: Well, my house is about 50 years old. And the attic is unused space. It’s not very large. And it’s got minimal insulation, it’s just the strips of the fiberglass, the paper backing. And I’m thinking that it needs more than that, and I’m wondering if I should get, should it be blown in or sprayed on, open cell, closed cell, do you have any suggestions on that? |
| 00:14:58 | TOM: Sure. So, if you want to use spray foam insulation, I think that’s an excellent choice, especially if you’re going to be in this house for many years, because it does a couple of things. It expands and it seals, and it also is a much better R-value than the fiberglass insulation. We did this in our very old house. We were replacing a roof at the time, and my house is so old, it didn’t have roof sheathing. So when we had the plywood sheathing, I opted to spray foam the insulation from the inside. And we basically sprayed the bottom. And the roof rafters and the insulation and the sheathing effectively sealing in the entire attic space. You no longer needed any ventilation in the attic there, because spray foam is not impacted by moisture. And now we find that the attic is the same temperature as the rest of the house, or pretty close to it, even in the summer, when it used to be boiling hot up there. So I’m a big fan of spray foam insulation, so I think that’s an excellent option. Now you also mentioned that you’re not using this space that much. Right. If that’s the case. If that’s the case, blown in is a possibility as well. Okay. But once you do that, you’re definitely not going to be able to access it, because it’ll just be covered. And you will continue to have to ventilate that, because if you use fiberglass insulation, that is susceptible to moisture and humidity getting into it. And if it gets just a little bit damp, it doesn’t insulate very well. But I think you may find, as I did, that when you do spray foam, it’s an instant change. It’s just an incredibly efficient thing to do. It definitely makes the house more comfortable, and it cuts back on both your cooling and your heating bills. |
| 00:16:28 | CALLER: Mm-hmm. Now, with the spray foam, they would have to remove all that old fiberglass rolled-out insulation. |
| 00:16:35 | TOM: Actually, I didn’t do that. I left my old insulation, which was in the floor of the attic, because I didn’t see any point in removing it. There was nothing to be gained from doing that. It just was another job. Now, I already had some of that flooring down. I had to fill in some areas that didn’t have flooring, because I wanted to be able to take advantage of it for storage. But we applied the spray foam not to the flooring of the attic or the ceiling level of the second floor. We applied it to the roof rafters. And that’s the only time you would do that. If it was fiberglass, I never would have done that, because that would have been a very difficult area to vent. But because it was spray foam, I was able to spray the underside of the sheathing and the roof rafters. And now, if you go up in my attic, it kind of looks like a cave up there, because the foam is just everywhere. And they sprayed it all in one day. They had a really good crew. And I have a really hard house to work with with this, because I had some flat roof sections, and that sort of stuff. I had some top crawl spaces, and they did everything with spray foam. And we found an instant improvement. In fact, if you go to MoneyPit.com and search Guide to Insulation, the Money Pit Guide to Insulation, the story is in there, including my before and after utility bills, so you can see what effect it had. I appreciate the callback. Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-Money-Pit. |
| 00:17:48 | CALLER: Sandy in Nebraska, you’ve got the Money Pit. How can we help you today? Well, we have ceramic floors, and there’s ceramic tile, and they’re probably 20 years old. And they just don’t have a lot of insulation. They just don’t come clean anymore. And they’re real porous, and we’ve scrubbed them with a scrub brush, and they will come sort of clean, but that’s a whole lot of work. We’ve tried different cleaners, vinegar and water, and softened scrub, and Clorox and water, and soda and water, and they just don’t come clean. And short of tearing them up, what could we possibly do for them? |
| 00:18:15 | TOM: Yeah, it sounds like the glaze has worn off the ceramic tile, and as a result- |
| 00:18:20 | CALLER: Well, you know, I don’t even know if it ever had a glaze. |
| 00:18:23 | TOM: So most tile have a glaze, unless it’s like a natural Mexican tile or something like that. I would be very surprised to find any tile out there that didn’t have a glaze finish to it. The surface will wear down after a really long, long time, and it depends on the quality of the tile. So I don’t have a really good solution for you. It’s a fairly unusual problem. You know, you can clean the grout. You can replace the grout. You can seal the grout. But the tile surface itself, it’s not really possible to add an additional sort of glaze coat to that. So you might want to think about some other floor options. A really inexpensive one, by the way, would be laminate. Laminate floor, it works really well in the bathroom because it’s very moisture resistant. It kind of snaps together, and it floats on top of the original floor. So really all you have to do is install it, put in a new saddle where the door comes across, maybe some shoe molding between that and the baseboard, cut it around the toilet, and you’re good to go. So there are other floor choices. Or if you want to just maintain that ceramic tile, you could also put a second layer of tile over the top one, over the first one, without removing that original layer. As long as that original layer is solid, there’s no decay or softness or structural deficiency there, you could put a second layer of tile on top of the first layer of tile and still be good to go. All right, Sandy? Yes. |
| 00:19:39 | CALLER: Thank you very much. |
| 00:19:40 | TOM: You’re very welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-Money-Pit. Well, if you’re concerned about losing power this summer but you want a solution other than a noisy generator, EcoFlow’s new Delta Pro 3 Home Battery Backup is a really smart solution. Now, this Delta Pro 3 has some very powerful capabilities and a very elegant and compact design so you can easily integrate it into your home. It’s also portable so it can power outdoor activities, I mean picnics, dinner parties, tailgating, and more. If you need power on the go, this is the way to get it. |
| 00:20:13 | LESLIE: Yeah, and the best part is the setup is plug and play, so it’s really hassle-free and it’s seamless. It can be used as either a stand-alone backup battery or it can be integrated within your household power system to cover just that. Plus, the circuits and appliances that you choose, in fact, the DP3 offers a maximum continuous output of 4,000 watts and both 120 or 240-volt output. That means that you can power almost everything, including your household appliances, like your dryers, the water heaters, air conditioning, even induction stoves. |
| 00:20:43 | TOM: Yep, and the unit can function alone or be expanded in capacity to power multiple high-power home appliances simultaneously. Plus, with seven industry-leading fast charge options, the DP3 will be ready to go. |
| 00:20:54 | LESLIE: And, you know, there’s no need to venture outside during these extreme weather conditions to adjust or operate a gas generator. And while traditional generators can be noisy and disruptive to daily life, the DP3 features X-Cooling exclusive technology, which gives you ultra-quiet operation at just 30 dB under a 2,000-watt load. |
| 00:21:16 | TOM: Yep, so get yourself ready for the next power loss this summer because they’ve already happened and will continue to happen, but you can be ready with the new sleek and powerful Delta Pro 3 from EcoFlow. Check them out at EcoFlow.com. That’s E-C-O-F-L-O-W.com. |
| 00:21:32 | LESLIE: Tom in Ohio is on the line and has a question about a basement. What’s going on in your money pit? |
| 00:21:37 | CALLER: I have a basement with some cracking issues. The house was built in 2000, and the floor is cracking in numerous places. They’re not wide cracks. Some of them, none of them are greater than a quarter, usually about an eighth, and they’ve also got a poor basement wall. And I’ve got a couple of things that when it rains really hard, I’ve got a little bit of water seepage, nothing puddling on the floor per se, but just on two spots in the whole entire basement. And I’m just wondering if that’s…these new epoxies where you can inject it into these walls for the leaks, if those things are something that would work for my situation. And as far as the cracks in the basement, I don’t think they’re structural, but it’s settling, I think. But anyway, I’m just wondering. Do you guys have any kind of suggestions on that? |
| 00:22:29 | TOM: Absolutely. We can fix both of those issues for you. So first of all, let’s talk about the basement floor. The basement floor, you mentioned it may be settlement. It might just be a poor installation. If it wasn’t reinforced, if the concrete wasn’t mixed right, there’s all sorts of reasons it could get cracking. But the floor itself is not structural, so that’s really just to be a separator between you and the soil below. So for those cracks, you certainly could seal them with like an epoxy crack sealant that you can find in any home center. Quikrete makes a bunch of products for that that will work well. In terms of the basement leakage, the leakage through the wall, the fact that this is happening when you have a bad rainstorm is indicative of the cause. The cause of this is a drainage situation right outside those walls. So it’s going to be one of two things, or it could be both of these things, one of which is if your gutters are overflowing. If they’re insufficient and not handling enough liters to handle the runoff, or if the liters, the spouts, are not discharging far enough away from the wall, anything that collects water or keeps water close to the foundation allows it to build up in that first four to six foot area between the house and the yard. That’s going to lead to a leak in your walls. It could even push down around the walls and show up coming up through the floors. It is not caused by a water table. It’s simply a drainage issue. It’s a drainage issue caused by this heavy rain. So to that, you want to look at those areas. Look for the gutters that are overflowing. Look for the downspouts that are not extended. You want them to be at least four to six feet out from the house. And those two things will solve that. Gutters and grating, leading cause of almost all wet basement problems. A lot of folks blame rising water tables and things like this and look towards expensive solutions like sump pumps, virtually never needed. You just need to fix the gutters and the grating. And then if you want to seal the cracks as a last step, that’s fine. But remember, Tom, it’s the last step. It’s not the first step. You can’t seal every crack in the wall and expect to hold back the tide. You’ve got to stop the water from getting there by fixing up the drainage first. Okay? Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you. I appreciate it. All right. Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-Money-Pit. |
| 00:24:44 | LESLIE: All right. Now we’ve got Gail on the line with a question about her oven. What’s going on? Yes. |
| 00:24:48 | CALLER: I have a stove, an electric stove, and it’s about five to six years old. But I have a self-cleaning oven and right after I received it, it seems as though it’s in between the glass on the door. It doesn’t clean that when I use the automatic cleaner and I just wondered how I clean in between the glass. |
| 00:25:18 | TOM: That’s a tough space to clean and I agree. I don’t think you can. I think what you have to do is take it apart and that can be done. The door has to be disassembled and so it depends on how comfortable you feel about taking that project on. It’s not sealed glass in the sense of like a double pane window. It’s really two pieces of glass and sometimes because of heat and humidity and steam, it gets in there and it discolors. But you have to disassemble that door if you really want to get it clean. So it’s obviously not the kind of thing you want to do every time you clean your oven. No. |
| 00:25:49 | CALLER: And I noticed that it looks like there’s like Phillips head screws at the bottom part of the door. But the top part, it doesn’t look like, it’s not a regular screw. It’s just something that, you know, it doesn’t fit a screwdriver. So I don’t know if that bottom part, you know, and I’m afraid that once I get that undone, I’m not going to be able to get it back. |
| 00:26:10 | TOM: Yeah. Get it back together again. Now I hear you. I hear you. I hear you. I hear you. You know, I know that there are some great videos online of people doing this. I’ve seen them. And so you could take a look at YouTube. But the process is going to be to disassemble that door. Now it’s going to come apart one way or the other. The types of fasteners you’re describing, you know, may be the type of fastener that needs a specialized, not a screwdriver, but like a nut driver or something of that nature or like an Allen wrench or something like that. But it will eventually come apart. You’re just going to have to figure out how to do that. But if you’re not comfortable with that process, if you’re not really mechanical, you’re afraid to get into that because you might not be able to fix it, then I think you should just kind of learn to live with it, unfortunately. |
| 00:26:50 | CALLER: Now, is this true of all brands? Does it matter which brand it is? Do they all have to be, you know, does it happen to them all or have you heard? |
| 00:26:58 | TOM: Some may be better than others, but you know, if it’s happened to you, it doesn’t really matter if it’s happened to anybody else because you don’t want to have to replace that oven. You really just want to make sure you can get it clean. So that’s what you need to do. Yes. |
| 00:27:10 | CALLER: Okay. All right. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate your help. |
| 00:27:13 | TOM: You’re welcome, Gail. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-Money-Pit. Well, the best defense is a good offense and one of the best ways to beat the heat and make sure your plants thrive is with micro-irrigation. |
| 00:27:25 | LESLIE: That’s right. You know, micro-irrigation is a system of drip tubing and tiny sprayers and it really is a great way for you to get the water exactly where you’d need it. Now unlike a lawn integration system, installing drip irrigation systems are not as complicated as you think. Now, you don’t need a sophisticated irrigation network to supply that micro-irrigation. A spigot for a hose is going to do the trick and it’s perfect for flower beds and shrubs because it does deliver the water right where it’s needed under low pressure. |
| 00:27:54 | TOM: Now, most micro-irrigation systems consist of drip tubing, which is either a quarter inch or a half inch hose that’s fitted with tiny plastic nubs that are called emitters. And these allow the water to drip out at a very regulated pace without clogging. Now, the tubing then snakes around and among plants and trees to get that water into the soil right at the roots. There are also lots of accessories you can choose from. There’s sprays for ground cover, there’s foggers for hanging containers and single emitters for reaching plants that are sort of off the grid. And these all allow you to customize a system that’s perfect for your situation. So the best way to get started, just draw a plant of your garden and then map out a configuration of the tubing and the accessories that you’ll need. |
| 00:28:35 | LESLIE: Now, the actual plumbing connection is really simple, too. It’s really easy to do. It doesn’t have to be permanently installed. Instead, that system connects to an outdoor faucet. So first you screw the vacuum breaker to the pressure regulator to prevent contaminated hose water from backwashing into the house’s supply lines, just like a regular sprinkler system. You’ve got to do the same thing there. And then you just attach the filter to the pressure regulator and connect the hose to the filter. |
| 00:28:58 | TOM: Now, once the tubing is installed, you just cover it with about two inches of mulch to keep the water from evaporating before it reaches the plant roots. And it’ll also give the garden a very manicured appearance at the same time. So it’s a really great way to get the water where you need it, guys, and not waste it, and make sure your plants thrive, especially through these hottest days of summer. |
| 00:29:17 | LESLIE: Vivian in Rhode Island reached out to Team Money Pit saying, I bought a 1938 house with a through-the-wall air conditioner and it doesn’t work. I want to know if it’s worth installing a mini split ducted system instead. Now, a through-the-wall air conditioner isn’t usually in the same spot or the desired spot of a split system. Is that correct? |
| 00:29:39 | TOM: That is correct. It is usually at sort of window height, which is pretty much the same as putting it in the window. Although I do have a house that’s got one that was a very old house from the 60s, and it actually had one up higher on the wall, and that actually worked okay. But when you talk about a through-the-wall system, what you’re talking about is that there are sleeves, or sort of the metal frame that’s installed in the wall permanently, and then the air conditioners slip inside of those. It’s kind of very similar to a window. It’s a window unit, but sort of just the body without the shell around it, and it slips inside that sleeve. Now, the sleeves are standard sizes, so you may be able to remove that air conditioner from the existing sleeve and put in a new air conditioner and have it fit perfectly. So make sure you measure it, find out what’s available, and that’s an option. A mini split, though, is also a good choice regardless. Of course, you’re going to have to deal with that big hole in the wall. But the mini split today, they can be both air conditioning and heat because they have heat pumps as part of their system. That can be installed anywhere. There’s all sorts of options. The air distributor hangs on the wall inside the house, has a small compressor outside, and you could be totally good to go. So I really think that the mini split is really a good option if you want to go. It’s going to be more expensive than just replacing an AC if you can’t find one that fits in that sleeve. But a mini split, definitely a good way to go. |
| 00:30:58 | LESLIE: But you know, interestingly, with the split system we have, I find that I almost never have it on cool. Like simply keeping it on like a dehumidify that comes on as it’s needed. Keeps it very cool. They’re really awesome and they operate super efficiently with minimal maintenance. Yeah. |
| 00:31:16 | TOM: That inverter technology that they all have now has really changed the game. Well, everybody wants to be a bit greener and cleaner these days. You can do both in your own home and save some green at the same time when you make your own non-toxic cleaners. Leslie shares how in today’s edition of Leslie’s Last Word. Leslie, take it away. Yeah. |
| 00:31:35 | LESLIE: You know, before we had all of these commercial products, we had to take care of them. So we decided to mix up our very own cleaners. So here’s a few recipes for a natural cleaner that is still going to work really well today for all of our needs. All right. Here’s a good one for a glass cleaner. You can fill a spray bottle with a quart of water and one tablespoon of vinegar. If you’ve got a larger project like a floor or a tile job, you can add a quarter cup white vinegar to a gallon of hot water. If you’re looking for an oven cleaner, you can make a paste of baking soda and water and then scrub those stains with steel wool. For 20 minutes. For tougher stains, you want to add some salt except for in a self-cleaning oven. Don’t add the salt. Now, if you’re looking for a sink and toilet cleaner, you can mix a paste of either baking soda or borax with water and then add in just a little bit of lemon juice. And if you want to polish some chrome, you can use rubbing alcohol or simply white flour on a dry rag. If you want to get the complete list of 10 easy recipes for natural cleaning products, head on over to MoneyPit.com. |
| 00:32:36 | TOM: We’ve also got an expanded list. We’ve got a list in my new book, which is publishing this summer, Home Maintenance for Dummies. It’s available on Amazon right now. |
| 00:32:45 | LESLIE: All right. Super exciting. |
| 00:32:46 | TOM: This is the Money Pit Home Improvement Show. Next time on the program, you know, now that we’re in that hottest part of the summer, it’s also peak season for ticks that can carry some pretty nasty diseases. So on the next show, we’re going to share the surprising way ticks can grab hold of anyone passing by and how to keep them off your body for good. I’m Tom Kraeutler. |
| 00:33:06 | LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete. |
| 00:33:07 | TOM: Remember, you’re listening to Money Pit.com. We’ll see you next time. |
| 00:33:10 | LESLIE: Bye-bye. |
| (Note: The above referenced transcript is AI-Generated, Unedited and Unproofed and as such may not accurately reflect the recorded audio. Copyright 2024 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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