#2448 – Hearing Crickets? How to Stop the Chirp | Heating System Upgrades

Show Notes

In this episode, we reveal simple tricks to keep pesky crickets out of your house and how to decide if a new furnace is worth the investment. We also introduce an innovative product that makes fixing leaky toilets even easier, and answer home improvement questions to make your other DIY projects easier, too!

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Ask Your Home Improvement Question
Podcast Transcript

Crickets: Stop the chirp with these tips for cricket control inside and outside your home.
Heating Systems: Turn up the heat on savings with the right upgrade to your heating system.
Leaky Toilet: An innovative product will have you flushed with success when it comes to repairing leaky toilet valves.

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.
00:00:37	LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete.
00:00:38	TOM: And we are here to help you take on projects you want to get done around your house. You got a repair project, you got a maintenance project, you got a job you’re wondering if you can do it yourself or you got to hire it out. Well, let’s talk it through and we’ll figure it out together. A couple of ways to reach out to us. The first is to call us at 1-888-Money-Pit. That’s 888-666-3974. Or go to moneypit.com slash ask. You can record your question right there by clicking the blue microphone button. It’ll come right to us for a quick response. Coming up today, with all the rain that we’ve seen this summer, have you noticed that crickets are like everywhere? I mean, they are in my house. They’re more prevalent than ever. So we’re going to share some surefire tricks to keep those crickets from chirping their way. Through your home.
00:01:23	LESLIE: And I know summer is just ending, but heating season is upon us and you might be thinking it’s time to upgrade your old furnace. So we’re going to sort out how you can determine whether a new heating system can provide a return on your investment that will leave you feeling all warm and fuzzy.
00:01:38	TOM: And maintaining your toilet is totally a DIY project made even easier with the new Super Flapper from Fluidmaster. We’ll share how this new product innovation can help stop leaky toilet flush valves that waste just a ton of water.
00:01:52	LESLIE: But first, we want to hear what you want to know. What are you guys working on? I know the kids are all back at school. Everybody’s busy in the sort of fall buzz, but this is the perfect time to tackle projects around your money pit. So what do you want to work on? How can we help you? Reach out and we can lend a hand.
00:02:09	TOM: Plus, I’ve got some great news. I’ve got hot off the press. Some copies of Home Maintenance for Dummies, my brand new book to give away to lucky callers. We’re going to draw names out of the hard hat at the end of today’s show. To all those that reach out to us with questions. This is your go-to guide for keeping your home in top shape. I cover it all. Squeaky floors, leaky faucets, you name it, it’s in the book. So reach out to us with your questions. You’ll get the answer and you might win yourself a copy of my brand new book.
00:02:37	CALLER: So give us a call at 888-Money-Pit. Sandy in Texas is on the line and needs some help with a carpet question. What’s going on?
00:02:45	CALLER: Well, I had a Scentsy, one of those little things that uses hot wax. And my granddaughter knocked the Scentsy over. Onto the carpet and part of it splashed upon my Henry Don chair, which is upholstered. And I didn’t, haven’t done anything yet because I don’t know really how to go about cleaning that.
00:03:02	CALLER: Well, the first thing you want to do, and this is, it’s kind of an easy fix. You just have to make sure you haven’t already scratched at it or rubbed it or anything. Take a brown paper bag and an iron. And you want to put the iron on a high setting without steam. And put the paper bag over the wax and then iron. And the wax will melt but then stick to the paper bag. And you’ll be able to peel it right off.
00:03:24	CALLER: Oh, that’s awesome. Okay, brown paper bag with a hot iron, not on steam.
00:03:27	CALLER: No steam.
00:03:28	CALLER: Just hot cotton and hold it on there for a few minutes and it will pull it out.
00:03:32	CALLER: Yeah, you don’t want to like sit it on there too long because you don’t want to burn it through. So you want to kind of just, you know, hold the brown paper bag, then put the iron on top. And then shift it around, you know, moving to a clean part on the bag as you get more of the wax onto the bag. This way you’re not re-spreading the wax.
00:03:47	TOM: So the bag kind of acts as like the absorbing medium here. That’s like the paper towel, right, Leslie? Exactly. The wax soaks into it. Okay, got it. Great trick.
00:03:54	CALLER: That sounds wonderful. Thank you so much.
00:03:56	TOM: You’re welcome, Sandy. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-Money-Pit.
00:04:00	CALLER: John in Florida is on the line with a tiling question. What can we do for you?
00:04:03	CALLER: Well, I was thinking of tiling my bathroom. And I was going to put some cement board down on the floor before I tiled the floor. But the green board that’s on the walls, I was questioning whether I should just thin set and tile the green board. Or do I have to remove that? Or do I have to put cement board on the walls?
00:04:22	TOM: So it depends on how long you want the tile to last. You know, the green board is a water-resistant drywall, and it’s designed to put tile over it. So it’s something that people do. It’s something that builders do a lot, I’ll tell you that. And I never really liked it because typically I’ve seen five to eight years later, you know, that all has to be torn out because it’s just not as durable as putting the cement board up. So, you know, if this is a long-term house for you, I’d tell you that you’re probably better off taking that out, putting up a cement board, and then putting tile up this way. It’s going to last you pretty much indefinitely.
00:04:58	CALLER: Okay. Even go all completely around the tub surround that I’ve got in there now?
00:05:03	TOM: Absolutely, because that’s where all the water is going to sit.
00:05:06	CALLER: That’s what I had suspected. That was just verification to my question. Thank you very much.
00:05:11	TOM: All right, John. Good luck. You know, a lot of times folks really do have a gut, you know, feeling about the right way to do something. Using us as a sounding board is a great reason to call us at 888-Money-Pit. So glad we could help John out.
00:05:24	LESLIE: All right. Well, we’ve got security conscious Colin on the line here who’s got a very interesting question. What’s going on?
00:05:30	CALLER: Well, I’m building a house and I’ve made a cinder block room, you know, out of eight inch block and it’s like a six by nine room. And I want to put a vault door on it, so it’s kind of like an oversized gun closet. But it’s also going to pair as a safe room, a gun room.
00:05:57	TOM: So you want a really secure door for this new room that you’ve built, sounds like.
00:06:02	CALLER: That’s correct. And so, you know, I’ve looked at vault doors on there and that, you know, you can buy one for $1,700 and you can spend $10,000.
00:06:12	TOM: Well, first of all, yeah, the prices on these are going to be all over the map. The other thing to do is you could repurpose a door from an old safe, you know, and do this as a DIY project. Or if you don’t feel like you need that level of security, I mean, you’ve got an eight inch block wall and you’ve got this vault door on it. If I want to break into that room, I’m taking a sledgehammer to that block wall, the heck with the door. You know, why bother? I can get the software to go through the concrete block. But if you want something that’s affordable and will give you a better level of security, than a traditional wood door would, why not use a heavy duty commercial steel door that has a steel frame, right, and a heavy steel door, and then you back that up with deadbolt locks. You could put multiple deadbolt locks on it.
00:06:56	CALLER: Yes, sir. I’ve thought about that too. Yes, sir. Now, on these cinder blocks, I have them filled with steel and concrete.
00:07:03	TOM: Okay. Well, maybe you just made it a little harder on me if I was your neighborhood burglar. Okay. But you know my point. I mean, it depends on… Yeah. It depends on how much security you really feel like you need. I know it’s probably more is better kind of a thing, but still, man, it’s a lot of money to put into a door.
00:07:20	CALLER: Sure. Yeah. And I’m bleeding pretty hard on this house. I’m ready for the bleeding to stop.
00:07:27	TOM: Yeah. And I don’t think you’ll get a good return on investment. The other advantage of putting that door in is it makes the room much more welcome for somebody that you might ultimately buy your house and want to use it for a different purpose.
00:07:36	CALLER: Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, sure.
00:07:38	TOM: Okay. Well, good luck with that project. Thanks for reaching out to us at 1-888-Money-Pit. Thank you.
00:07:44	LESLIE: Hey there. We hope you’re enjoying this episode of our podcast. If you are, you know what would totally make our day is if you leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts.
00:07:53	TOM: Absolutely. Just go to moneypit.com-slash-review and let the world know how much you enjoy our home improvement tips and tricks. And you might even win a copy of our book. Reach out to us with your questions at 1-888-Money-Pit. If you do, you’ll get the answer to your home improvement question in just a couple of minutes. And you might just win a copy of Home Maintenance for Dummies, a brand new book. You can check it out at moneypit.com-slash-dummies. But I cover it all. Fixing squeaks, fixing leaks, preventing disasters like floods. It’s all in the book. I’m going to give one copy away to one lucky listener that reaches out with those questions. So reach out to us right now again at 1-888-Money-Pit or post your questions at moneypit.com-slash-ask.
00:08:35	LESLIE: Terry in Ohio is on the line and dealing with a stinky hot water smell. Terry, does it smell like rotten eggs? No, it doesn’t.
00:08:40	CALLER: It’s only happening in one bathroom. My husband replaced our electric hot water heater two years ago with a gas that actually has been happening almost since that switch occurred. But the smell is only in the upstairs bathroom. And so I don’t know why we’re getting this smell. We’ve put bleach down in the tank and tried to clean out the tank, but we continue to get the smell back.
00:09:03	TOM: When you say the tank, you’re putting bleach in the water heater itself?
00:09:06	CALLER: It’s very diluted, just a little bit. Yeah.
00:09:08	TOM: Okay. Well, a couple of things. First of all, if the water smells throughout the entire house, then that’s usually caused by a problem with the anode rod in the water heater itself. But since it’s only two years old, I’m thinking that that’s probably not the case. It’s more likely a problem with biogas and that could simply be something in the drain in that particular bathroom that’s causing this issue because you’ll get these microbes that will grow inside the drain and they can really smell terribly. So what you need to do in a case like that is to – the best thing to do is to take the drain apart. If you can get into the sink and take it apart and clean it really thoroughly in another sink somewhere and get like a bottle brush down there and scrub it with a good strong bleach solution or you can use some oxygenated bleach, even better yet, and that will kill those microbes that are there. And then once you put it back together, I want you to fill the sink up to the point where you have that water goes down the overflow, which is usually built into the sink body, and make sure you put some bleach in the hot water too so that it will slowly trickle down that overflow for a bit of a time. So this way, if there’s any – if there’s any – if there’s any – if there’s any – if there’s any organic matter in that overflow, it will also be eliminated. So I suspect it’s in the drain as opposed to being a problem with the water heater because if it was a problem with the water heater, every single sink would smell the same way.
00:10:18	CALLER: That’s kind of what I figured but we couldn’t figure it out so I thought – I listen to you guys every Saturday so I thought I’d give you a call. Yeah.
00:10:25	TOM: Well, you know, it’s hard because it doesn’t – it only happens to, you know, sometimes to you once a lifetime but we hear about this all the time so we have a pretty good idea where to look for the problem. Okay? Oh, great.
00:10:34	LESLIE: with all the rain that we’ve seen this summer, crickets might be more prevalent than ever inside your home. So to help, here’s a few surefire tricks to keep those crickets from chirping their way through your house.
00:10:45	TOM: So step one is to really eliminate the conditions in your home that attract crickets. So for example, you ought to seal the entry points. Look for cracks, gaps or openings especially around windows and doors and foundations and then use caulk or weather stripping to seal the gaps. You also want to take whatever steps you can to reduce moisture. Moisture crickets are attracted to moist environments so make sure you’re fixing any leaky faucets or pipes or drains and make sure your home is well ventilated to reduce that humidity. And next, you want to remove any food sources so keeping your house clean and avoid leaving crumbs or food particles around goes a long way towards keeping crickets away. Yeah.
00:11:22	LESLIE: Next up, let’s talk about setting some traps here. So first of all, you want to place some sticky traps near the areas where you’ve seen the crickets. These traps can catch the crickets and then help you monitor their activity. Okay. Or you can also use a baited trap and that’s kind of interesting because you use a sweet or a bread-based bait and that’s going to lure those crickets in. Either way, you want to catch them so that they kind of figure out we don’t need to be here and they’ll go somewhere else.
00:11:46	TOM: There’s also some options in natural repellent essential oils works. You can spray those like peppermint, lemon or lavender around entry points and other areas where crickets are sort of congregating. Or you can use diatomaceous earth. If you sprinkle food grade diatomaceous earth around baseboards and entry points, this now will get rid of the maggots and the maggots will also get rid of the maggots and the maggots And of course, natural powder will dehydrate the crickets so that will also help reduce the population.
00:12:07	LESLIE: All right. Now let’s talk about getting rid of the crickets that you already have. And there’s two ways that you can do that. First of all, vacuum. Regularly vacuum those areas where the crickets are active. You want to make sure that you get rid of the vacuum bag immediately to prevent them from escaping because maybe they can do that. I always worry about them crawling back out the tube of the vacuum hose and kind of then
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00:15:34	LESLIE: We’ve got Margaret on the line who wants to talk about lead in a bathroom.
00:15:37	CALLER: Tell us about it. My house was built in 1948. It has an old metal tub and ceramic tiles. But the ceramic tiles have been tested and confirmed to have lead. I was advised that if I ever want to remove them, I should be sure that the contractor who does that is trained and certified on safe removal of tiles containing lead. But when I’ve asked some local contractors about that, they kind of shrug and don’t seem to understand that anything different would be required. Can you suggest some questions for me to ask contractors to help determine if they truly do know and understand how to deal with tiles containing lead and safe removal?
00:16:23	TOM: Hey, Margaret. You know, we generally don’t hear tales. We don’t hear too much about lead paint in baths or, in their case, in ceramic tiles. The glazing, I know, of some of those older tiles can contain lead. More often, we’ll hear about lead paint in a house of that age. But to your question about how to find a contractor, you need somebody that is EPA certified in lead paint renovation or lead paint removal. That’s the type of professional that you would need to hire, and if the contractors you’re talking to just kind of shrug their shoulders when you say that, then obviously, they’re not the right firms. Now, I will say that the risk of lead paint exposure from a tile is probably a lot less than from the paint, just because it’s harder for it to be released. But another option to consider, which some folks are doing, is that they are re-coating the tile with an epoxy finish. Now, you could use a product like Ecopel, which is an epoxy tub resurfacer that I recently used and was very pleased with that can coat the tub surface, even coat the tile surface, and give you a really dense, smooth surface. It’s a durable surface that will prevent any lead exposure to the surface of the tile, but it all comes down to the risk happening when it’s time to remove those tiles. That’s when it can get into the air, and that’s when you have to basically be set up right to contain that dust and get all that material out and away from the house without exposure to anyone in the area and certainly anyone in the house. So I hope that gives you some direction, some options to follow, and good luck with that project.
00:17:50	LESLIE: We’re going to help Pat out with a shower that’s just not keeping a good temperature. What’s going on? Hi.
00:17:56	CALLER: After setting the water temperature to comfort in the shower, the water keeps getting hotter and hotter, and it has to be adjusted to comfort again, and it keeps getting hotter. The plumber replaced the part in back of the handle, but it’s still getting hotter.
00:18:11	TOM: Well, Pat, I don’t know how old your house is or your bathroom plumbing is, but with an older house with standard plumbing valves, what happens is that you can have an imbalance between the hot and the cold mix that changes. So, for example, if you get ready to go in the shower and you set the hot and the cold, you’ve got the perfect mix, and then you get in the shower and somebody flushes the toilet or runs the washing machine or something, and it starts to use more hot or more cold, and then the balance changes. The solution is not a part that your plumber would have replaced on a handle, but it’s called a pressure-balanced valve, and what that does is keeps the mix of hot and cold steady for the whole time, so it really never changes. So I would ask… I would ask your plumber if you already have those, because if not, I think that is the solution to your problem.
00:19:00	LESLIE: Well, chances are you’re living with a heating system that was in your house when you bought it, and if that system is inefficient, like, for example, maybe you have electric heat, you might be wondering whether a conversion to gas or oil is going to be worth it. Well, here’s a few things to think about to determine if the return on investment makes sense.
00:19:18	TOM: Now, the fuel that you use to heat your home is something that most of us kind of feel stuck with. Because our heating systems work, for the most part, on a single fuel, like electric, gas, or oil. But as systems become more efficient, it could make sense to make the change.
00:19:33	LESLIE: First of all, every fuel is going to have its advantages and its disadvantages. For example, natural gas. It’s going to be the cleanest of all fossil fuels, and it costs less than most, but converting to natural gas from an electric home is going to be expensive. Now, propane could be a convenient alternative when natural gas isn’t available. However, it’s more expensive and potentially dangerous if it’s not handled well. And oil? Well, that can be convenient if you’ve already got it, but the price does fluctuate wildly, and storing it on-site can lead to very costly leaks. So, Tom, let’s say you’ve got an electric heating system at home, the most expensive of all forms of heating there. How do you go about figuring out if it’s going to be cost-effective to make that switch to natural gas?
00:20:18	TOM: Oh, great question. So, I think the first step would be to start with a heating system that’s going to be cost-effective.
00:20:25	TOM: Now, there are a number of heat loss calculators online. It’s usually something that’s done by an energy professional. The better ones are going to ask a lot of information. They’ll ask about, obviously, the kind of heat you have now, how many windows you have, what size the windows are, what size of the house the windows are, how much insulation you have in the attic. All of this goes into calculating how many BTUs you have. All of this goes into calculating how many BTUs of heat you need to handle the climate in your particular area. But it’s an important number to have because it basically tells you how big to make the system. Now, you can note the efficiency numbers of both the existing and the new systems, so you can kind of provide apples-to-apples comparison between those systems, and then sort of take on a comparative cost analysis. If you live in an area with low-priced natural gas and sky-high electrical rates, a new, more efficient heat pump may not pay itself off very quickly. So you need to factor in local energy rates. So you need to factor in local energy rates, including peak and off-peak rates. So you calculate your potential savings and the potential payback.
00:21:28	LESLIE: Yeah, and you know what? No matter what, you want to make sure that you take the opportunity to step up your insulation, you want to fix any big drafts or any other obvious improvements that will help the efficiency of your home. I know, Tom, you had to do some of this, but it was kind of an unexpected afterthought, right?
00:21:43	TOM: Yeah, just when you thought I had all the answers to home improvement, Les. I hate to admit, but I didn’t have this one, at least not right away. So I put it in a new heating system. That was a smart move. I put it in a Will McLean combi boiler, so it gave me hot water and heat. And I noticed when we started using it the first winter that the first floor was really cold. And I couldn’t figure out why. And I’m kind of messing with the boiler and turning the heat, temperature of the water up and down. And it didn’t occur to me right away until I did what I like to call the sit and stare, when you just sort of sit down and stare at a project for a while or a problem and it solves itself. And I thought, huh, I know what was going on because the old boiler, which was an old, inefficient cast iron boiler from my old house, like so many of us have, was wasting so much heat. It was basically heating the underside of the basement and the crawl space floors. So I kind of had in-floor heating in a 100-year-old house. And when I took that out, because I no longer needed that wasted heat, I no longer had heating under the floor. So guess what? The floors were cold because they were not insulated. So I insulated the floors, problem solved, comfort restored, energy bills down.
00:22:44	LESLIE: All right. You got to love that. I do love the toasty spot on the floor though.
00:22:50	LESLIE: Well, what’s up guys, what are you working on this weekend? Do you have some home improvement questions, but you’re wondering who’s going to give you the best answer? Well, you’re listening to us right now. We love to lend a hand. So let us know how we can help you save money, save time and avoid those home improvement hassles that can slow you down on the road to your dream house. Be sure to follow the Money Pit Podcast at moneypit.com slash podcast.
00:23:13	TOM: Hey, do you have a home improvement question and don’t know the answer? Well, I’ve got the answer. It’s in my new podcast. It’s my new book, Home Maintenance for Dummies, and I’m giving copies away in today’s show. Reach out to us with your questions at 1-888-Money-Pit and we will toss your name in the Money Pit hard hat and you might just win a copy of my brand new book, Home Maintenance for Dummies. Any questions that you have about home improvement, I guarantee are in that book because I wrote it. Call us now with your questions at 1-888-Money-Pit.
00:23:42	LESLIE: Abraham in New Jersey is on the line looking to vent an attic. What’s going on there? Okay.
00:23:47	CALLER: I basically have a regular home. It’s a colonial and the attic is a rough attic with spray foam insulation. There’s zero ventilation in the attic and the second floor has central air. So I would like to know two questions. Would I be saving on air conditioning if I would vent the attic? There’s no ceiling fan. I don’t think if I put in either an attic fan or a window exhaust fan and also partly the attic has an entrance door. Have you done that? I have done that. If I had to leave the attic, would it save me the air condition to leave that entrance door open, thereby allowing the hot air to enter the attic and leave with an exhaust fan? That’s something I should not be doing.
00:24:27	TOM: So Abraham, that’s a great question. And if you told me that your attic was insulated with fiberglass insulation as most are typically, we would talk about what kind of ventilation you’ll need. But you said your attic was insulated with spray foam. So is the spray foam up on the underside of the roof rafters as well as across the floor? Describe it to me.
00:24:48	CALLER: Not on the floor. The floor just has regular boards between the second floor and the attic. But all the walls and the roof all have spray foam.
00:25:00	TOM: So what you have, Abraham, and it’s actually the same kind of insulation setup that I have, it’s called a conditioned attic. In other words, the attic itself is conditioned and it does not need ventilation. So no, you do not need to vent that. It’s actually pretty efficient right the way it is. Now you mentioned that there was a door between those two spaces. If that door tends to get a little warm or the wall or the ceiling tends to get a little warm, you could add some additional insulation there. In my case, I actually had an older house, so my attic floor slash second floor ceiling already had fiberglass in it. We left that there, but then we spray foamed the underside of the roof rafters and the gable walls. And it’s amazing. When we go up on our attic, it’s practically the same temperature as the rest of the house. It’s just done so well. So you do not need to ventilate an attic that was sprayed with foam, because it’s not the type of attic that needs to be vented.
00:25:57	CALLER: Yeah, because when I go up to my attic, it is extremely hot. I never measure with a thermometer how much warmer it is. So that’s why I was wondering if that’s going to warm up the second floor, requiring me more air conditioning for the second floor. So I was thinking of ventilating the attic to cool off the attic.
00:26:13	TOM: I think that if it was done right, you don’t need to vent it. How long ago was the spray foam done, and who did it?
00:26:21	CALLER: It was done locally, and it was within the past year. It’s a new home.
00:26:26	TOM: Oh, really? Oh, it’s brand new, within the past year. Yeah. I wonder if they put enough insulation in there, because the insulation should be keeping that heat on the outside, and the air conditioning or the internal ambient temperature of the house should be keeping it pretty comfortable on the inside. I wonder if you have enough insulation. I have a suggestion for you that you speak with another spray foam manufacturer, a spray foam contractor aside from the one that did it, and kind of have an opinion as to whether or not there’s enough insulation there for your part of the country. I think that will actually make a lot of sense. Okay, thank you so much. I hope that helps you out. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-Money-Pit.
00:27:10	LESLIE: So have you noticed that your toilet is noisy or constantly running? Well, if so, it means that your flush valve is leaking. Now, you can stop wasting all of that water by simply replacing the toilet flapper, which is totally a DIY project, especially thanks to the new super flapper from Fluidmaster.
00:27:29	TOM: Yeah, this innovative new design replaces either a 2-inch or a 3-inch flapper, and it takes just minutes to install. It’s really the only flapper you’re going to need. Installation is easy, especially with the expert guidance you’ll find on Fluidmaster.com. So start saving money and stop watching your cash get flushed down the toilet. You can fix that old, noisy, running toilet today with Super Flapper.
00:27:54	LESLIE: Yeah, and you know, 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 trusted by the experts. Super Flapper is available exclusively at Home Depot. You can learn more at superflapper.com. That’s superflapper.com.
00:28:14	LESLIE: We’ve got Peggy on the line who needs help. It’s a product to help with a bath painting project, actually the bathtub. Tell us what you’re working on.
00:28:21	CALLER: I have a bathtub where the refinishing sort of came off, and it’s got a water stain. I think it’s a calcium stain. It’s sort of a grayish on this ivory tub. Is there anything I can use to get the coating back on there and get that color back where it was?
00:28:37	TOM: Hey, Peggy, so when you have a finish that starts to come off of a tub like that, or in this case it may be some erosion from the water, that pattern you described is actually very, very common, and it’s not easy to—really, I shouldn’t say it’s easy. It’s impossible to touch it up and have it look anything close to the way it naturally used to look. I do have a solution, though, for you, and it’s a product that I discovered, and it’s called Ecopel. Now, the Ecopel is like an epoxy refinishing kit. I found it on Amazon. I did a lot of research on it. Folks were saying that it was very effective as long as you very, very carefully follow the instructions, which they’re pretty good about. There’s lots of instructions and videos to go along. But when you apply this Ecopel, it essentially will look like a brand-new finish. In my case, I was refinishing a tub from the 1950s that was badly worn and actually had been painted with some sort of a tub finish once before. This Ecopel, though, made it look like it was brand-new porcelain right out of the factory. I was really impressed by it. So you can check that out. You’ll find it on Amazon, probably other retailers as well. But you can’t just touch up an area like that. You really have to redo the entire surface of the tub.
00:29:43	LESLIE: Laurie reached out to Team Money Pit and says, We had a tub surround installed about 15 years ago, and the wood frame of the window has rotted away, and it looks horrid. I intend to have the whole thing torn out and redone next year, but I’d like to know if there’s anything I can do quickly that’s safe and relatively inexpensive for a great aesthetic fix.
00:30:03	TOM: Well, Laurie, I mean, wood and water certainly don’t mix, and it does sound like your frame eventually will have to be replaced. But rotted wood is actually quite common with these frames. But if the rotted area is limited, you can try filling it in. Now, not just with any type of wood filler. One product you might want to try is 3M Bondo Solutions Wood Filler. Another product you could consider is the one by Abitron. I’ve used this a lot. It’s called Wood Epochs, and it’s a wood replacement compound. And either of these pretty much restore the area of the rot. And then, of course, you have to paint it so it doesn’t get any worse. The other thing to think about is when you have a shower like this that’s got a window, is to put a shower curtain over it. You may have to buy a small one. You may have to cut it. Leslie, how small can you buy those shower curtains? Or do you just buy a bigger one and sort of trim it down to fit like a window that’s over a bathtub?
00:30:52	LESLIE: I mean, they do make waterproof curtains and drapes that are specific for inside showers, but the shower curtains are going to be much more affordable. And it just depends on the width. Like, you know, you’re going to have to deal with the standard spacing of the hooks. So if it seems like it’s going to be over sort of gathered or under gathered, you just kind of have to size that correctly. But you can cut the smallest shower curtain because they’re really all a standard size and cut it to whatever size shape you need. All right. Now we’ve got Jennifer who says, We’re thinking about replacing my windows. How can I tell a good window from a bad one?
00:31:26	TOM: Well, the first thing to look for is the ENERGY STAR certification. That’s important because windows with that label, Jennifer, meet energy efficiency standards that are set by the government. And they’re definitely designed to save energy. Yeah.
00:31:39	LESLIE: You also want to look for something called the NFRC label. And that’s going to stand for the National Fenestration Rating Council, NFRC. And that’s going to give you an objective rating for a window’s energy performance. It’s also going to include important ratings such as the U factor, the solar heat gain coefficient, visible transmittance, and air leakage. And these ratings really help you compare the energy efficiency of different windows.
00:32:05	TOM: That’s right. Now also consider the material that the window is made of. I mean, good windows are often made from very durable materials that resist warping and rot and corrosion. So we’re talking about materials like vinyl, fiberglass, and wood clad with aluminum or vinyl. Those are all good choices. And then next, inspect the construction quality. Look for features like welded corners, double or triple glazing, and low E coatings that enhance the insulation and reduce heat transfer. If you can keep that heat out of your house, your air conditioning bills are going to be a lot less.
00:32:37	LESLIE: And lastly, you’ve got to think about the window’s warranty. Now, a good window should come with a solid warranty that’s going to cover both the frame and the glass. And this will indicate the manufacturer’s confidence in their product. So if they’re really promising you a lot, that means they know their window’s going to stand up, and they’re not going to have to deliver on any of those promises. I mean, it’s so amazing how efficient these windows have become and how much more easy they are to operate and how beautiful they are. Of course, you’re going to see prices across the board, but you’re definitely going to have to think about that. You’re going to have something that’s efficient, and it’s going to last a long time.
00:33:11	TOM: You are listening to the Money Pit Home Improvement Show, and we are so glad you are. We love this time of the year because so many of us are wrapping up our summer and getting ready for fall, and that inspires so many home improvement projects. If you’ve got some on your mind and we didn’t talk about them today, or you’ve got a question about them, remember, you can reach us any time at 1-888-Money-Pit or just go to moneypit.com-slash-ask. Until then, I’m Tom Kraeutler.
00:33:37	LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete. Remember, you can do it yourself. 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.)