#2462 – Soot Happens: Chimney Cleaning Tips | Why to Service Your Heating System

Show Notes

Today, as temperatures cool, learn the importance of servicing your heating system and having your chimney cleaned. You’ll also hear an easy way to stop leaky toilet flushes, plus lots of expert advice for DIY homeowners just like you to get projects done the right way!

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Chimney Cleaning: Soot happens, but cleaning your chimney will keep your home safe and smoke-free.
Heating System: Avoid winter woes by having your heating system professionally serviced.
Leaky Toilets: Flush out the problem with this innovative fix for a leaky toilet flush valve.

Ask Your Home Improvement Question

Do you have a home improvement or decor question? Call the show 24/7 at 888-MONEY-PIT (888-666-3974) or post your question here.

Podcast Transcript

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00:00:02	TOM: Coast to coast and floorboards to shingles, this is the Money Pit Home Improvement Show. I’m Tom Kraeutler.
00:00:40	LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete.
00:00:41	TOM: Here to help you take on the projects that you want to get done around your house, whether you are in a house, whether you’re in an apartment, whether you’re in a condo, whether you live in a yurt in the middle of the woods. We don’t care. We’d love to talk about your projects and help you get started on the right foot. Reach out to us at 1-888-Money-Pit with your questions. That’s 888-666-3974. Or, you can post your questions at MoneyPit.com slash ask us. Click the blue microphone button for the fastest possible response. This is episode 2462, and if you’ve got questions, we’ve got answers. So reach out to us right now. Hey, coming up on today’s show, as temperatures drop, it is time to get your heating system serviced. It doesn’t matter if you guys are heating by gas, oil, propane, or electric. An annual service by a pro is really key to making sure that system remains safe and efficient. So we’ll talk about what steps you need to take to make sure everything is covered.
00:01:36	LESLIE: And maintaining your toilet is totally a DIY project. It’s made even easier with the new Super Flapper from Fluidmaster. We’re going to share how this new product innovation can help stop leaky toilet flush valves that waste water. And fun fact that I learned from my mom. My son’s sixth grade science teacher is November 19th is National Toilet Day. So maybe we should plan to celebrate that.
00:01:58	TOM: I think so. I love that name, Super Flapper.
00:02:01	LESLIE: It’s the official gift for National Toilet Day.
00:02:04	TOM: There you go. And getting your chimney cleaned is a job that’s most necessary, and one that comes too frequently with a chimney contractor that offers fraudulent advice in the hopes of getting even more money out of your wallet. So we’re going to sort out the facts from all that smoke.
00:02:18	LESLIE: All right. But before we get to what we want to talk about, we want to hear what you want to talk about. Whether you are planning a small decor project, or you are diving into a full-blown renovation, we have got you covered.
00:02:30	TOM: And here is the absolute best reason to call in your question today. One listener drawn at random who reaches out to us with their home improvement question is going to win an amazing product. It’s brand new. It’s from Cuisinart. And it’s their outdoor walk station worth over $400. That’s going to go out to one listener drawn at random from those that reach us with their home improvement questions. So you can do that by calling us at 888-Money-Pit. You can also go to moneypit.com slash ask and post your question. Reach out with those questions, and we’ll toss your name in the Money Pit hard hat, and you might just win that amazing new product from Cuisinart, their outdoor walk station. So let’s get started. Leslie, who’s first?
00:03:12	LESLIE: Donna in Arkansas is on the line and has a noise issue. How noisy is that place?
00:03:16	CALLER: Well, I don’t know. My son and his roommate live in a duplex, and the common wall between their living rooms, they can hear the neighbors, and so I’m sure the neighbors can hear them. They were just wondering what they could do on that wall to block some of the noise.
00:03:34	TOM: What they would need to do requires a pretty significant addition to the existing wall. What they would do is they would have to put a second layer of drywall over the existing layer. And there’s two options here. You can use a noise-resistant drywall. There’s a couple of different brands of this out there. And basically, it has some sound deadening built into it. Or you can use a product called Green Glue, which is sort of like a gelatin-like adhesive. And you would apply that to the old wall, and then you would put new drywall over that, and that creates a noise barrier. And you also have to be very careful around the outlets and any openings in the wall, and they have to be sealed properly. And even after you do all of that, you will still probably get some sound.
00:04:19	TOM: Unfortunately, soundproofing is harder to do after the fact than it is to do when you’re building it from scratch. So not always the answer exactly that you want to hear, but that’s really what it takes to try to soundproof the rooms in this situation.
00:04:32	CALLER: All right. Well, we sure appreciate you taking our call, and thank you very much.
00:04:36	TOM: All right. Well, good luck. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-Money-Pit.
00:04:40	LESLIE: Mac in Missouri’s on the line has a question about a pool. What can we do for you?
00:04:44	CALLER: Well, every year I seem to open my pool up in the spring, and it’s always green. I would have to drain it and clean it out and all that stuff. So I had this brilliant idea to just leave it going all winter long, just put the cover over it, put it on a timer and just keep it open and have it come on every day for, you know, every 15 minutes, every couple hours or something so it doesn’t freeze. What do you think about that crazy idea?
00:05:11	LESLIE: I got to tell you, we have a pool, Mac, at my family. Like, my parents own a summer house out on the North Fork of Long Island. Every spring we take off that cover, that pool is the nastiest green-looking thing you’ve ever seen. We have never drained the water. You use a whole sort of chemicals, which is sad, but you shock that water, you get the system up and running, and it goes right back to beautiful crystal blue, and we’re swimming in it in no time.
00:05:33	CALLER: Yeah, I know. It takes a lot of chemicals to do that.
00:05:35	LESLIE: I know. But, I mean, the other option is, I mean, I wouldn’t leave things running all winter long. I feel like it’s going to put pressure on the system. It’s going to overload. You’re not probably getting the proper amount of air and things into it that it needs because the pool is covered. But if you’re so frustrated with it, I mean, and the chemicals, why not think about a saltwater pool?
00:05:54	TOM: They’re cheap. At least you’re honest about it.
00:05:58	CALLER: Well, I know you guys like honesty, so I’ll probably go against all conventional advice and try it.
00:06:04	TOM: All right. Well, good luck. Let us know how you make out. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-Money-Pit.
00:06:10	LESLIE: Hey, Money Pit Podcast fans. You want to help us out? Well, go ahead and leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and we’re going to give you a virtual high five. Plus, you’ll be helping us spread the word about our show. Just go to MoneyPit.com slash review. Here at the Money Pit, we love to help you out with all your projects, but we love to also give you another great reason to reach out. We’ve got an awesome prize up for grabs this hour. We’ve got an outdoor walk station by Cuisinart. It’s creative. It’s fast. You can make some amazing meals in minutes. And it allows you to deep fry, saute, boil, sear, griddle, braise, I mean, pretty much every amazing form of cooking. It includes a premium 14-inch diameter round bottom hand-hammered carbon steel wok. It’s got an innovative burner system with a 50,000 BTU propane-powered burner, electronic ignition. I mean, this is fun. I can imagine cooking all sorts of great meals outside. And who doesn’t love to cook an amazing meal outside? Check it out. It retails for $349. But we’re throwing in a cover and a tool set, which is going to make this prize package worth $420.
00:07:15	TOM: You can check out the Cuisinart outdoor walk station at Cuisinart.com. But we’ve got one here in the studio going out to one very fortunate, very lucky listener. And that’s going to be drawn from random from those who reach us with their home improvement questions. So call us at 888-Money-Pit or go to MoneyPit.com slash ask.
00:07:32	LESLIE: We’ve got Audrey in Michigan on the line who’s dealing with some cracked porch steps. Tell us what’s going on.
00:07:37	CALLER: We have a portion on our front porch next where the pillar comes down and supports the roof on the right-hand side where we had tiles that were laid that were slate. And water worked under them when the slate sheeted off one winter and then expanded and got into a crack on the porch and then split that corner of the porch off where the post comes down. And I would say it’s maybe like a 9 to 12-inch area in both directions of the corner of the porch. Mm-hmm. So you can take a whole hunk of the cement off. And I’m not sure how to go about re-putting that cement on because we do have a base that the cement porch sits on that’s brick, that’s laid brick. And then there’s a cement slab over top. Right.
00:08:21	TOM: So it’s the cement slab portion that’s broken, right? Yes. Mm-hmm. Yep. Okay. This is actually a fairly common problem. And, you know, as we describe it, that’s exactly the reason that we get so many calls about this because when you get a crack and water gets in there, it expands. And it actually makes the crack worse. And if it’s across the diagonal of a step or a porch, it’s actually going to break a chunk off. So fortunately, there are solutions for this. The thing you need to know, though, is you can’t use regular cement or regular concrete to repair this, even though that’s what the porch may have been made of originally. You have to use one that’s designed for repairs because the components of a repair product make it possible for the new concrete patch material to stick to the old cement. If you try to just use regular cement, it might dry and look great, but it’s going to split off right away, probably the first winter. Mm-hmm. So you need to use a repair product. I would look at Quikrete. They have a quick-setting cement designed specifically for repairs. It’s pre-mixed, comes in a tub, and you can go ahead and build it up and basically restore that broken chunk of porch there. Now, if it’s big and you’re worried about supporting it, you could think about framing in that corner as sort of a temporary frame. Right. It’s going to form for the concrete, but you may just have to— With some pieces of wood? Yeah, exactly. It may be able to support itself, depending on how deep that is, but that’s an option as well. But yeah, do that, and that’s going to basically solve it for you, okay?
00:09:46	CALLER: Do I have to do anything to the remaining concrete that I’ll be attaching the new to clean it or prep that site?
00:09:52	TOM: You certainly need to clean it. You don’t want to have any concrete dust in there, so I think you just brush it real good just so it’s a nice, clean surface. That will make sure you have good adhesion. But when you buy the product, there’s going to be a temperature range recommendation. Just double-check that to make sure you’re still within that range. This dries actually pretty quickly. This dries in like 20 minutes. So as long as you have a nice, decent day to do it and it’s not below freezing out there, you should be good to go.
00:10:16	CALLER: Okay. And then so I have to plan for that and make sure that I’ve got it all prepped and everything before I go about getting it opened up and working on it.
00:10:25	TOM: I like the way you think. Be ready. Landing makes perfect. Thanks so much for calling us at 1-888-Money-Pit.
00:10:32	LESLIE: Sam in Idaho. You’ve got the Money Pit. What can we do for you today?
00:10:35	CALLER: I have a length of cedar fencing someone gave me. I’m going to plan it. It’s 10 or 12 years old, never been in the ground. I’m just curious if you would recommend treating the post.
00:10:47	TOM: Well, you can treat the post if you want to put like a wood life on it and make sure you get into the end grain. It will help a little bit. But, I mean, the best way to stop that post from rotting is more about the installation. And what I would recommend is this. I would use a post hole digger to dig it. The hole just slightly wider than the post itself. I would put about four inches of gray gravel stone in the bottom of the hole, set the post on top of that stone and then use the rest of the stone to fill around the post and tamp it down. Now, you can use a tamping iron or if you don’t have a tamping iron, you can use the butt end of a two by four to do the same thing. But do not concrete those posts into the ground because the concrete will hold a lot of water against the post that will cause rapid deterioration. If you just put the stone in, it will be really, really strong and it will drain well. So, that’s the best way to preserve it. Okay, guys. Thank you. You’re very welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-Money-Pit.
00:11:41	LESLIE: Well, as temperatures drop and heating systems are turned on, it’s important to make sure that they are serviced for safe and efficient operation. We’ve got tips on how to best get that project done.
00:11:51	TOM: Now, first up, if you’re thinking, hey, the heating system worked fine just last winter, so I really don’t need to do anything now, right? Wrong. Because that logic doesn’t really hold. It doesn’t matter if you heat by gas, oil, propane, or electric. A service by a pro is really key to making sure that system remains safe and efficient. Yeah.
00:12:09	LESLIE: Not only can your heating system become inefficient, that’s going to cost you more to operate. It’s going to be dangerous with conditions that can build up like carbon monoxide that might only be spotted by a pro who’s got years of experience when they are looking at your heating system. Yeah.
00:12:23	TOM: Now, for homes that are heated with gas, oil, or propane, those fuels leave deposits on the burners, which can cause them to become blocked. Now, a service pro is going to clean and adjust the burners to make sure they’re running properly, as well as check other key elements of the system, like the heat exchanger, because if that develops cracks, it could cause combustion gas like carbon monoxide to leak into the air in your home.
00:12:45	LESLIE: Mm-hmm. And you know, the blower motors need to be checked and cleaned, and those filters need to be replaced as well. And if your home is heated by electric, like a heat pump or even an electric furnace, those systems also need to be checked to make sure that they are not wasting energy, especially since electric is pretty much the most expensive way that you can heat a house.
00:13:04	TOM: And by the way, I’ll give you one more tip on burners. If you see your flame come on with the burners and it’s got a yellowish tint to it, that’s a dirty burner, and that’s a dangerous burner because it’s not fully combusting that natural gas, and that really can increase your risk of carbon monoxide, which, by the way, finally, make sure you get carbon monoxide detectors installed in every level of your house if you’re heating by gas, oil, or propane.
00:13:27	LESLIE: Natalie in Wisconsin is on the line and is having some issues with old windows. Tell us about the problem. Hi.
00:13:33	CALLER: I have vinyl windows, which served us very well, but now that they’re older and I want to raise them up, oh, five or six inches, they won’t stay there, so I have to brace them up or else they’ll fall down, and they are quite heavy. Do you have any recommendations?
00:13:50	TOM: So the window jams have springs in them, and the springs have obviously broken down, and the problem with vinyl windows is unless it’s a name brand where you can easily find parts is that it’s really almost impossible to get those fixed. Okay. And so I’m not going to have a really good solution for you here, Natalie. If it was an old wood window, we could talk about ways to deal with that because it’s a vinyl window, it’s already an upgraded window, and if the internal parts are breaking down, it’s difficult to find repair parts for that. Okay.
00:14:23	CALLER: Yes. I have been trying, and I didn’t have any luck so far.
00:14:28	TOM: Well, I mean, I would search online for the manufacturer and see if there are repair parts available, but short of that, it might be time to start thinking about new windows. Okay.
00:14:35	LESLIE: Thank you so much.
00:14:36	TOM: You’re welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-Money-Pit.
00:14:40	LESLIE: Scott in South Dakota, you’ve got the Money Pit. What can we do for you today?
00:14:43	CALLER: Approximately two weeks ago, we had a major thunderstorm down here. We got eight inches of rain in one hour. We bought this house two, three months ago. Previous owners told us they’d never had rain in the basement. Water in the basement. Well, on the front corner side, we got rain that water came in the foundation up onto the carpet. Not a little, but not a lot, enough to where we had to tear the carpet out and get rid of it. And the front of the house has got this landscape, got a retaining block, like a landscape retaining wall where they’ve got a graded level and bushes and stuff in there. I’m wondering. And that seemed to be the area where it came in at first coming to the basement. Is there something I can do? Do I got to tear that down and just keep it sloped away?
00:15:31	TOM: First of all, a couple of things. Because this happened with such a tremendous storm, I wonder if some of this might be covered by your homeowner’s insurance. So that’s one thing to look into if you’ve not done it yet. This is not sort of a normal occurrence. This is something that was like a more of a one-time occurrence brought on by, you know, eight inches of rainfall. That weather pattern will be well-documented. It might, in fact, be covered by your homeowner’s insurance. It might, in fact, be something that’s covered by homeowner’s insurance. In terms of the solution, basements flood after rainstorms because of two things that usually go wrong with the drainage. One and the most important one is the gutter system. The gutter system has to be free flowing and the downspouts have to be extended. If your home is susceptible to water in the basement, they need to be extended about four to six feet away from the house minimum. Now, most of the time gutters will be discharging. They’re discharging within a foot or so of the foundation and that water will just go basically from your roof right into your basement like nonstop. Now the second thing, of course, is grading and as you mentioned, as you’ve described, when you have a retaining wall right in that sort of what we call the backfill zone around the house where the house was originally excavated and then the soil was pushed back in against the foundation and then you build a retaining wall over that, you’re really preventing any drainage whatsoever from getting away from that wall. And you’re right. Fixing that is kind of a big deal because you have to take the retaining wall down or you have to improve the grading in some way to get it moving away. You may have to use some stone at the front edge of that so water can get through it. What I would suggest to you is to work on the gutter system first because that causes most of the problems in my experience. And then if you still have an ongoing issue, then deal with the drainage second. But fixing the gutter system is the easiest first step. Make sure that those downspouts are extended away from the house. If you want to really do something on a permanent basis, you could run those downspouts underground through solid PVC pipe, not the perforated kind, but solid PVC pipe and then break that out to grade somewhere or through a curb into the street, whatever is permitted by your local municipality. Or you could possibly go out solid for say 20 feet and then use perforated pipe in a stone trench and have it run back in the soil there when it’s well away from the house. But manage that roof water first and then worry about the drainage. We’ve got a lot of people who have had to do that. And I think that’s the first step. Second, because that’s obviously much more difficult and more costly to correct. Now, if you tackle those projects in that order, I think you’d be good to go and pretty much flood free. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-Money-Pit.
00:18:04	LESLIE: We’ve got Sandra in Maryland on the line. She’s got a really old house and an electrical problem. What’s happening at your money pit? Sandra in Maryland, Money Pit, 103 years old.
00:18:11	TOM: Oh, that’s great. That’s a good age for houses. It’s just starting to get seasoned, settling in a bit.
00:18:15	CALLER: It settles a lot.
00:18:17	TOM: Yeah, I bet. I bet. I bet. So has the wiring been updated at all or is it original? Is it knob and tube? What kind of wiring do you have?
00:18:24	CALLER: I have a mix of knob and tube and some updated. What’s down in the walls I think is still knob and tube. Okay. Some of the stuff that’s more out has been replaced.
00:18:34	TOM: And what are you planning to do? What’s precipitating this question? Is this just a general concern about safety or are you doing some other remodeling?
00:18:41	CALLER: Well, what I’ve done is we started redoing the kitchen and I took up the seven layers of linoleum. Got all the creosote out and got all the stuff that probably I shouldn’t have been inhaling out of the kitchen and we sanded the floors and kept the original old wood floors. And the paneling in the kitchen, I’m not willing to tear down because it’s horsehair plaster behind it and every time you touch the wall, you hear stuff fall.
00:19:07	CALLER: Right.
00:19:08	CALLER: So I’m not willing to replace it. We painted the paneling and I wanted to put new floorboard trim around, but all of the wiring, it’s those big black wires that go from one outlet to the other.
00:19:18	TOM: Let me give you some advice on this because it is time to update that wiring. First of all, any existing knob and tube wiring is very dangerous and here’s why. When it gets to be 100 years old, the insulation on that wiring is very dried out, very brittle, very crumbly. I can’t tell you how many times in the 20 years I spent as a home inspector that I found that kind of wiring in house and often found burn marks, very frightening burn marks on the framing that surrounded it. So you definitely want to deactivate that wiring. Okay. And then of course, you want to update that with new modern wiring that’s consistent with current electrical code. Now for the kitchen, you really want to do something different than what would have been done when the home was originally built. It had wiring, but it had all that kitchen, I’m sure, on one circuit. And that’s why in older homes, sometimes when you’re in a kitchen, you often see the lights dim when the refrigerators kick on because they’re both major appliance and lighting are on the same circuit. You want to have one circuit for your appliances, your dishwasher. Your refrigerator, perhaps even more than one circuit for that, and then a separate circuit for lighting and outlets. And of course, all of the outlets also should be ground fault protected because this is a wet location and ground fault protection protects you from receiving a shock if you were using an appliance that shorted or had any other type of electrical incident that occurred. So you are smart to be concerned about this. It is something that you should take care of, whether you do it one room at a time or the entire house at a time, you know, that’s going to be up to time and budget. But you should have on your overall remodeling plan the need to get rid of that knob and tube and completely de-energize it because it is unsafe. For the reasons I stated also, by the way, that particular wiring is not grounded nor is it groundable. So that’s another reason it’s unsafe. It’s just the way it was done back then.
00:21:06	CALLER: I think some of the kitchen had been done because I did have an electrician friend come in and install some new outlets and he just ran from one to the next. And I do have different circuit breakers downstairs and all that kind of a stuff, but one of the things that when I do have, I think the one wall hasn’t been done. I know that sounds odd. But when they have the wires that are out, the big black, you know, wires going across or any of the wires, and I don’t want them to go behind the wall because they can’t without damaging the wall. So I need to put those metal covers over them before I can put the trim board down so I don’t…
00:21:39	TOM: Well, if you have, if you’re talking about the original knob and tube wiring being big black wires, you can’t bury that. That’s very unsafe. Okay. And here’s why. Okay. Knob and tube wiring. The reason, and by the way, for those that are not familiar with this, if you’ve ever seen an old house where wires seem to be strung on little ceramic posts that stick off the side of beams, those are the knobs. And then where the wires go through the framing, there’s a ceramic tube. That’s the tube. That’s why it’s called knob and tube. And the reason that it sticks off the beam, Sandra, is because it has to be air cooled. So that’s why you can’t bury knob and tube wiring under trim. You can’t even put insulation around it because it makes it doubly unsafe.
00:22:22	CALLER: So if it’s the big black wire, then I know I’ve still got original knob and tube in there.
00:22:25	TOM: I would have your electrician come in and determine where that wire is being energized, make sure that if it’s knob and tube, it is completely disconnected, and then run whatever you have to do from there. And if you can only do it one room at a time, you’ll be just that much more safe. But if you could do the whole house, then just do it.
00:22:40	CALLER: Okay.
00:22:40	LESLIE: Great. Thank you so much.
00:22:41	TOM: I appreciate it. You’re welcome, Sandra. Good luck with that project.
00:22:44	LESLIE: Well, have you noticed that your toilet is noisy or it’s running? If so, that means that your flush valve is leaking. Now you can stop wasting all that water by simply replacing the toilet flapper, which definitely is a DIY project, especially thanks to the new super flapper from Fluidmaster. Yep.
00:23:03	TOM: The innovative new design replaces either a two inch or a three inch flapper, and it takes just minutes to install. It’s the only flapper you’re going to need. Installation is easy. Especially with the expert guidance that you’ll find on Fluidmaster.com. So start saving money and stop watching your cash get flushed down the toilet and get that old, noisy, leaky running toilet fixed up today.
00:23:27	LESLIE: I mean, Fluidmaster has been the go-to brand for plumbing pros for 65 years, so you know you’re getting a product that’s built to last and it’s trusted by the experts. Yep.
00:23:37	TOM: Super flapper is available exclusively at the Home Depot. So learn more at superflapper.com. That’s superflapper.com.
00:23:43	LESLIE: All right, now we’ve got Nick in Florida on the line who’s dealing with the bathroom vanity. Tell us what’s going on.
00:23:51	CALLER: I bought a vanity kit from Home Depot with the bottom and the top. The top’s made out of some kind of, it looks like artificial marble, and I want to know the best way to attach the top to the base.
00:24:05	TOM: So Nick, I hear you. It can be very confusing because those vanities don’t have any way to physically attach the composite top that they come with. But the thing is, they’re not really designed or they don’t really need to be solidly attached. So what I would do is this. I’d put the vanity in, get it all level where you want it. Then I would dry fit the top by inserting it down into the vanity and making sure that my pipes for my drain and my supplies are all aligned and can easily go together. Then I’d take it apart one last time and I would use some adhesive on the top of the vanity edge. Okay. And then when you press the top back in place, it’ll kind of compress down, it’ll dry and seal it. And the last thing you do is to caulk it against the wall. And between the sealant against the wall, the caulk between the glue and the plumbing connections, you’re going to find it’s very, very solid and definitely is not going to move. And that’s all you’ll need. Well, here on The Money Pit, we give away a lot of beautiful products to our listeners. And we’ve got one today that is absolutely astounding. It’s the Outdoor Walk Station by Cuisinart. Now if you want to win this product, you’ve got to call us with your questions at 1-888-Money-Pit because we’re going to draw from all those that reach us for today’s show one winner and send them the walk station. This offers cooking versatility, which creates fast, fresh, and fabulous meals in minutes. You can fry in it. You can saute. You can boil. You can sear. You can griddle. You can braise and more. It includes a premium 14-inch diameter round bottom. Hand-handed. It’s a hammered carbon steel non-stick walk. It’s got a great burner system. The whole thing retails for about $350, but we’re going to toss in a tool set and a cover for a total value of $420. So if you want to win it, you’ve got to be in it by reaching out to us with your questions at 1-888-Money-Pit or post a home improvement question at MoneyPit.com slash ask.
00:26:03	LESLIE: Audrey in South Dakota, you’ve got The Money Pit.
00:26:04	CALLER: What can we do for you today? All right. I was listening to your show last weekend and I heard you talking about some kind of like contact paper. But you put it on like your kitchen wall and you can put tile on it for a backsplash? Yeah.
00:26:16	TOM: That’s a product called Bondera Tile Mat Set, kind of a long name. But basically, it’s a two-sided adhesive sticky material that if you want to do a backsplasher for that matter, a countertop, you pull off the backing on one side of it, press it against the wall in your case for the backsplash. Then you can stick the tiles right to the other side. If you pull off the backing on the other side, you stick the tiles right on. And then you can pretty much grout immediately there. So you don’t have to wait for glue to dry or even mix up glue or get a tile glue that can kind of get all over the place. It’s all on the mat. So you cut it to fit, put it on the wall, pull off the back, and then go ahead and glue the tile right to it. I would caution you though that I would not recommend you put this right on drywall because it’s going to be a permanent. You’re never going to get it off. And if you ever want to replace it, you have to cut the wall out because they’ll just pull the paper right off. And what you could do is just put a thin sheet of LeJuan plywood on the wall first. And then put the tile right on that. Okay.
00:27:14	CALLER: All right. Thank you very much.
00:27:16	TOM: Good luck. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-Money-Pit.
00:27:20	LESLIE: Well, fireplaces are great for ambiance and more efficient models can even help you cut your home heating bills. But they can also do more harm than good. Now fireplaces account for almost half of all home heating fires, a huge number considering how little they’re used compared to your heating system. So this is one area of the house that really needs careful attention.
00:27:41	TOM: Well, the first step is to have your chimney professionally cleaned once per year or once for every quarter of wood that you burn. Now a good chimney sweep is also going to inspect the fireplace and the chimney structure to make sure it’s intact. And checking for creosote is another part of what these guys do. Creosote, as you may know, is a highly combustible byproduct that forms when the fires are too big or when the airflow is restricted or when the wood is wet, sort of almost too wet to burn. So it’s a great way to keep the fire out. It’s black or brown in appearance, and it tends to stick to the inside of the flue. And too much of it can cause a very serious fire in your flue.
00:28:18	LESLIE: Now while these are all really important reasons to hire a chimney sweep, you do want to proceed with caution there. The chimney sweep industry is ripe with questionable sales practices, so you want to make sure that the pro you hire is certified through the Chimney Safety Institute of America. Yep.
00:28:34	TOM: And once the chimney is clean, be sure to only burn seasoned wood. Now that means it’s been dried for at least six months. Not only does that seasoned wood give off more heat, it’s also a lot less likely to deposit creosote inside your chimney. It’s just a lot safer.
00:28:47	LESLIE: All right. Now we’ve got Randy from Maryland on the line with a decking question. How can we help you today?
00:28:52	CALLER: I just put a brand new deck on the back of my house. The house was actually built in 1988, so it’s good and settled. I just wondered how soon I could treat it. I’ve heard, you know, two months, three months. I’ve heard a full season. I don’t want to wait too long, but I don’t want to do it too early.
00:29:07	TOM: Randy, what’s the material the deck is made out of? Is it pressure-treated lumber or cedar or redwood? What?
00:29:12	CALLER: Yeah, it’s pressure-treated lumber.
00:29:13	TOM: Okay. So what I would do at this point is I would wait until next spring. Let it be exposed to the environment for a while. It is true that the lumber, when it first goes in, is very moist, and by waiting maybe six months in your case, you’re going to find that it’s going to dry out a bit and it’ll be ready to sort of take a stain better than taking it right now. So I would certainly let it sit for a while and then stain it. Before next summer when it gets, you know, sort of cool and dry out. And then in terms of the stain itself, I would recommend that you choose a solid color stain. It will still show the grain through, but it’ll have more pigment in it and it’ll last longer. Does that help you out?
00:29:54	CALLER: I think so. So basically you say wait a full season then? Yeah.
00:29:57	TOM: I would wait a full season and then I would stain it after that. Okay.
00:30:00	LESLIE: Gordon from Des Moines, Iowa reached out to Team Money Pit and says, last winter we had a pretty bad storm that caused ice dams to form on some of my neighbor’s houses. So I’m going to wait a full season and then I would stain it after that. Can you explain what an ice dam is and how I can prevent them from forming on my own roof?
00:30:14	TOM: Sure. So what an ice dam is, is if you have a snowstorm, for example, and the area that is right above the body of your house, so the area say inside the wall area of your house, that area is warmer than of course the exterior. So that warmth as it gets up into the attic space will cause the snow directly above it to melt. Right. Yeah. When it gets to sort of the overhang of the roof, that part still is at a much lower temperature so it will freeze or that water will freeze and build up and effectively cause a dam. And that dam, when it blocks the water, will allow that water to sort of reverse or like a U-turn and go up under the shingles and leak into your house. It can really cause quite a bit of damage. Now the way you prevent this is a couple of things. First of all, you want to make sure your attic is well insulated and properly ventilated. Sometimes the ceiling insulation. That’s in the floor of the attic gets pushed too far towards the outside edge and blocks off any air getting in the soffit fence. And when that happens, it can make the situation a lot worse. Now the other thing that you can do is if you have a really heavy snow, you can use a roof rake to remove your snow buildup. Now a roof rake is sort of a telescoping rake that is designed to not to harm the shingles but basically from the ground, you could stick it up there on the roofs or pulling some of that snow down and that will stop the ice dams from forming. Right. So if you have a remodeling project or you’re replacing your roof, there’s a material called ice and water shield that should go underneath the shingles from the edge of the roof up about three feet or so. Some people use it across the whole roof to really seal it in. But the ice and water shield will also prevent that leakage from happening. Now if you do get damage, the good news is that that repair is typically covered by homeowners insurance. But we don’t want it to happen. We don’t want to have to go there and we don’t want you to have to deal with it. So if that is a concern for you, those are the ways to do it. There’s a lot of ways to sort of manage it. Check the insulation, check the ventilation and don’t let the snow build up. Use a roof rake to pull it down.
00:32:14	LESLIE: All right. Now we’ve got one from Tara who says, I’m looking at putting my inflatable hot tub in my garage for the winter. What size of dehumidifier would you recommend for this? Now it’s interesting. We also at my house have the inflatable hot tub and it goes away October-ish because once the temperatures are in the 40s, like it really can’t support heating it because it’s rubber. So I’m wondering first, is this garage heated? Oh, Because if it’s not, you’re going to run into the same problems as if it were outdoors.
00:32:42	TOM: Yeah, possibly. The question is really based on how tightly sealed the room is and the cubic footage. You’re going to need a very good quality dehumidifier. Take a look at the guide on Santa Fe dehumidifiers website. That’s santafeproducts.com and for a garage, I’d call that loosely sealed and so they’re going to spec that you’re going to need somewhere around a 3,600 to 4,000 cubic foot dehumidifier and that’s going to cover a 20 by 20 average size of a double car garage. But I’ll tell you. Putting those hot tubs in the garage, pretty popular project. But you’re right, Leslie. You got to make sure it can handle the heat.
00:33:12	LESLIE: All right.
00:33:12	TOM: Enjoy it. This is the Money Pit Home Improvement Show on air and online at moneypit.com. Hey, guys. Thank you so much for spending a chunk of your day listening to our show. We hope that we’ve given you some valuable ideas and information to help you improve the place you call home. Remember, if you’ve got questions, I know they come at all different times of the day. That’s why 24-7 you can leave your message at 888-Money-Pit or better yet, 888-Money-Pit.com.
00:33:39	TOM: And we will get back to you the very next time we’re in the studio. But until that, I’m Tom Kraeutler.
00:33:47	LESLIE: I’m Leslie Segrete.
00:33:48	TOM: Remember, you can do it yourself.
00:33:50	LESLIE: But you don’t have to do it alone.

	(Note: The above referenced transcript is AI-Generated, Unedited and Unproofed and as such may not accurately reflect the recorded audio. Copyright 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.)