Speaker 1: KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp the
Speaker 1: House Whisperer on demand on the iHeartRadio app. Hey, welcome
Speaker 1: to home where. Every week I help you understand that
Speaker 1: place where you live. I am Dean Sharp, the house Whisper.
Speaker 1: By the way, follow us on social media, we only
Speaker 1: do the good kind, uplifting, informative, inspiring social media. We're
Speaker 1: on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, x, all the usual suspects. Home
Speaker 1: with Dean is the handle for them all. And a
Speaker 1: reminder if your home is in need of some personal
Speaker 1: house Whisper attention, if you say to yourself, you know what,
Speaker 1: we'd love to get that guy in my kitchen staring
Speaker 1: at that problem so we can just get that dealt with.
Speaker 1: Then you can book an in home design console with
Speaker 1: me and the t just go to house Whisperer dot design.
Speaker 1: All right, thank you for joining us on the program.
Speaker 1: We are doing part two of a two part series
Speaker 1: this weekend about big moves for or a tracked home
Speaker 1: remodel that pay off in spades. I mean disproportionate amount
Speaker 1: of good for the money that they cost because of
Speaker 1: understanding the unique properties of a and we could say
Speaker 1: unique weaknesses of a tract home. We're taking advantage of
Speaker 1: those weaknesses. We're dressing them head on, we're fixing them
Speaker 1: where we can, and as a result, we're getting big
Speaker 1: changes disproportionate to the cost. And we're going to get
Speaker 1: back to that list in just a bit. But it's
Speaker 1: the top of the hour right here, just a few
Speaker 1: minutes after ten, which means it's time to go to
Speaker 1: the phones, and I want to talk to you. What's
Speaker 1: going on with your house? And I'm gonna ask let's
Speaker 1: talk to Nichee. Hey, Nische, welcome.
Speaker 2: Home, Hidin.
Speaker 3: Thanks for taking my call.
Speaker 4: You are very welcome. How can I help you?
Speaker 5: So?
Speaker 3: I have an in ground a swim spot. It's very
Speaker 3: large and I need to resurface it. And I have
Speaker 3: heard that it's not good to let it sit empty,
Speaker 3: So I'm curious how true that is. It might I've
Speaker 3: already emptied it, but it might be a couple of
Speaker 3: months before I actually get to the resurfacing part.
Speaker 4: I got you, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm trying to figure out the exact right way
Speaker 1: to address this for you. Here's the thing, Uh, it
Speaker 1: is never a great idea to leave an in ground
Speaker 1: pool or spa just sitting around empty for an extended
Speaker 1: period of time. Okay, so that's number one. Normally, what
Speaker 1: I would have recommended to well, absolutely, what I would
Speaker 1: have recommended to you is keep the water in it
Speaker 1: until it's time to actually do the resurfacing work. Not
Speaker 1: a problem at all. To empty it, to fix it
Speaker 1: and fill her back up again. Okay, whether or not,
Speaker 1: it's a good idea too. And I know you just
Speaker 1: emptied it. And so now like the idea of like, oh,
Speaker 1: you want to pay all that amount of money to
Speaker 1: fill up the water again for a couple more months,
Speaker 1: That's where it gets tricky and a gray area because
Speaker 1: it had that has everything to do with ground conditions
Speaker 1: in your area, the water table in your area, how
Speaker 1: high is the water table, Because the problem is this,
Speaker 1: if the water table, you know, unexpectedly rises up in
Speaker 1: your area because we get a strong spring rain in
Speaker 1: the next eight weeks or so, uh, then we have
Speaker 1: seen pools and spas literally been forced from the water
Speaker 1: pressure underneath them out of the ground because they're empty
Speaker 1: and they're you know, relatively light at that point, and
Speaker 1: boom they actually pop up out of the ground some
Speaker 1: and then the whole thing is. You know, all bets
Speaker 1: are off. The whole thing is messed up. So what
Speaker 1: would your statments bet be to refill it or at
Speaker 1: least get it filled half or three quarters of the
Speaker 1: way to get some more weight in there. Now am
Speaker 1: I saying that that structure? That's my only concern. By
Speaker 1: the way, that's my only concern. Okay, I'm not concerned
Speaker 1: about it cracking.
Speaker 4: I'm not.
Speaker 1: You know, the the an in ground pool or spa,
Speaker 1: if you have one on your property, is the strongest
Speaker 1: piece of concrete you've got on your property. If you
Speaker 1: had any idea what the amount of rebar and the
Speaker 1: and the PSI standards for the gunnite or the shot
Speaker 1: crete that went into forming that structure was, you would
Speaker 1: see that they are, you know, multiple times stronger than
Speaker 1: the foundation that your house is sitting on. All right,
Speaker 1: So I'm never personally worried about, oh, if we empty
Speaker 1: out this pool, because sometimes pool remodels can take the
Speaker 1: better part of a month or so to do, so
Speaker 1: if we empty out this pool for a month, I'm
Speaker 1: never worried about, Oh, the shell might crack or just
Speaker 1: I've never seen it happen. I've heard stories, but I've
Speaker 1: never seen that happen, and if we're working on it,
Speaker 1: we got to empty it to work on it. My
Speaker 1: concern has always been that if we're doing this during
Speaker 1: the rainy season, if the water table rises then, or
Speaker 1: if ground pressures are just right, that we may end
Speaker 1: up popping that shell out.
Speaker 4: Of the water.
Speaker 1: So I'm not worried about it cracking or collapsing. Just
Speaker 1: that's incredibly, highly unlikely. It's just a question of whether
Speaker 1: water pressure underneath it, working on a much lighter container
Speaker 1: now pops it out of the ground.
Speaker 3: Does that make sense, Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I
Speaker 3: did watch them build it, so I know that there
Speaker 3: is a ton of rebar in there.
Speaker 1: Crazy strong. I mean it is crazy strong. It really is.
Speaker 3: Well, okay, that's a little bit reassuring. Okay, so I
Speaker 3: got a little bit of time anyhow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say, you know, I just don't want
Speaker 1: to be the reason I hesitated, And he says, I
Speaker 1: just don't want to be the one who says, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: you should be fine. What a couple of months, you
Speaker 1: should be fine? And then you're calling me back saying
Speaker 1: with a bill like, hey, Deane, remember when you told
Speaker 1: me that I could just have this thing sit around
Speaker 1: empty for eight weeks. Here's the bill for rebuilding my spa.
Speaker 1: So I just wanted to give you the full, full
Speaker 1: picture of that.
Speaker 5: I appreciate disclosure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because because I just don't want to be the
Speaker 1: person who gives you the wrong advice. So it's better
Speaker 1: for me to just give you the whole, the whole perspective,
Speaker 1: you know. I if you're working on it, of course
Speaker 1: you have to empty it. But uh, and and I've
Speaker 1: seen pools in homes that you know, We've walked into
Speaker 1: a property where a new a new owner has just
Speaker 1: bought a house and they've called this out because they're like,
Speaker 1: this thing is in terrible shape. What we want to
Speaker 1: know right now? The best way to read design this
Speaker 1: house before we move in. And we walk into the
Speaker 1: backyard and we're like, oh, there's an empty pool in
Speaker 1: the backyard, and the realtor is like, yep, it's been
Speaker 1: empty for the last six and a half years and
Speaker 1: it's perfectly fine, perfectly fine. I mean an empty pool.
Speaker 1: By the way, your plaster you're stuck though. The plaster
Speaker 1: on the pool will crack. Okay, that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: the pool shell will crack. But pool plaster is designed
Speaker 1: to stay submerged in water. But so anybody who just
Speaker 1: drains their pool and thinks, you know, that's gonna be fine,
Speaker 1: I'll just fill it up next year again. Nor your
Speaker 1: pool plaster is gonna crack because that's a particular kind
Speaker 1: of plaster that's designed to stay submerged, and you expose
Speaker 1: it to air too long and then it cracks. That's,
Speaker 1: by the way, why there's tile at the water line
Speaker 1: of your pool. Okay, the tile line of your pool
Speaker 1: is so that pool plaster doesn't just come up out
Speaker 1: of the water and there's a portion of exposed to
Speaker 1: the air and a portion of it underwater. Because because
Speaker 1: if we expose a portion of it to the air,
Speaker 1: it will crack and fail. That's why there's tile there instead.
Speaker 1: So the plaster's going to fail if you leave a
Speaker 1: pool empty for an extended amount of time. But the
Speaker 1: whole reason you've got it empty is to refinish it,
Speaker 1: so you're not worried about that. We're talking about the
Speaker 1: shell failing. I don't think the shell is going to fail.
Speaker 1: I think the odds are unbelievably low that the shell
Speaker 1: will fail. But whether it gets popped out of the
Speaker 1: ground by pressures unseen.
Speaker 4: That's the only wild card in the factor.
Speaker 1: So there you go, Nishe thank you so much for
Speaker 1: the call, and I hope that helps at least give
Speaker 1: you some perspective.
Speaker 3: Yes, thank you, Dean.
Speaker 1: All right, we will talk again, my friend. Let me
Speaker 1: know how that turns out.
Speaker 6: You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
Speaker 6: KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1: The overarching theme of our program today are remodeling facets
Speaker 1: of facets of a remodel specifically targeted toward tracked homes
Speaker 1: that yield a disproportionate amount of good and awesome for
Speaker 1: the cost and time. And what we're doing is we've
Speaker 1: laid the foundation of what a tract home is all about,
Speaker 1: where its inherent weaknesses are, and then we're addressing those
Speaker 1: in terms of renovation and remodel. And if we understand
Speaker 1: some things about our tracked home, then we can find
Speaker 1: the best places to invest our remodeling money to get
Speaker 1: the biggest bang for the buck. But right now, as
Speaker 1: is our custom, I am here in the middle of
Speaker 1: the show taking calls, and that can be and is
Speaker 1: about anything and everything. So I want to go back
Speaker 1: to the phones. Let's see where we're at here. Bump bump,
Speaker 1: bump bum. Let's talk to Jim. Jim, welcome home.
Speaker 7: Hi.
Speaker 5: How are you doing deed?
Speaker 4: I'm well. Sounds like you're doing well too.
Speaker 5: No, I'm doing pretty good. My question is is my
Speaker 5: house was is a track home. It was built nineteen
Speaker 5: eighty nine. But I got these dust collectors or plant
Speaker 5: ledges through every room.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and without like ripping out walls and everything, because
Speaker 8: I don't just want to dry wall them over and
Speaker 8: make it avoided space.
Speaker 5: I know, I can do cabinets and stuff, but from
Speaker 5: a design point, how can I make these not useless spaces?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, here is a class.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is one of my big critiques about
Speaker 1: you know, when I talk about track homes in general,
Speaker 1: obviously there are a lot of different kinds of track
Speaker 1: There are different eras of track homes. Yeah, I'll just
Speaker 1: say I was just going to say right now for
Speaker 1: everybody who's listening that if you live in like a
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, fifties, sixties or seventies ranch style house, you
Speaker 1: have the tract home that is most malleable. It is
Speaker 1: it can be changed, it can be customized. In so
Speaker 1: many ways because it's basically a very simple rectangular structure
Speaker 1: with rectangular rooms, and we hadn't ride, we hadn't arrived
Speaker 1: at the nineteen eighties and nineties, where my term for
Speaker 1: this is faux sophistication built into tract homes in the
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties. We're kind of tired of the ranch
Speaker 1: house builders were like, look at this, and you end
Speaker 1: up with a home like weird angles, strange softs. And
Speaker 1: because of all of that jumble of what looks oh
Speaker 1: very different and sophisticated, we find ourselves really limited in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. And one of the classics of
Speaker 1: a nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties tracked home are what
Speaker 1: you called them plant shelves, but basically, up above your
Speaker 1: eight foot wall, all of a sudden there's an indentation
Speaker 1: and an alcove and it runs all the way up
Speaker 1: to the vaulted ceiling. And you know, what do you
Speaker 1: put up there? Plants? I mean, there's a shelf up there.
Speaker 1: Now are you talking about that where it's you know,
Speaker 1: like up above running up to the ceiling, or if
Speaker 1: you've got something down at eye level.
Speaker 5: Oh no, no, no, it's that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 5: It's up above, going all the way to the vaulted ceiling.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So all right, so we've got these weird alcoves and
Speaker 1: plant shelves. So I mean, you already spoke to one
Speaker 1: of them. One of the solves, and that is and
Speaker 1: this is the thing that most everybody's hesitant to do.
Speaker 1: But I would say, honestly, Jim, about maybe at least
Speaker 1: a third of the time that I'm looking through a
Speaker 1: house like that from a design perspective, I just asked
Speaker 1: the question, well, what if you never knew it was there?
Speaker 1: What if you did just finish that off and dry
Speaker 1: walllet in, And how would you feel about the room
Speaker 1: at that point? And most, you know, a good third
Speaker 1: of the time, the real honest answer is we wouldn't care.
Speaker 1: It would be we just wouldn't care. The room would
Speaker 1: feel better, it would look better, just to ignore the weird,
Speaker 1: funky shelf. H So to just let it go. So
Speaker 1: that is always an option. And I say that even
Speaker 1: though you said you didn't want to do that. But
Speaker 1: I say it because you know, we've got a lot
Speaker 1: of people listening, and they're in that situation. Now you've
Speaker 1: got them staring at their shelves. Jim, thanks a lot.
Speaker 4: Sorry, And I'm going to say that.
Speaker 1: That at least at least a third of those cases,
Speaker 1: you know, you could just fill it in, Just fill
Speaker 1: it in. It's a little weird to put cabinetry and storage,
Speaker 1: you know, up up in the upside of a room
Speaker 1: that you've got to get on a ladder to get
Speaker 1: up to, but you know, in some situations maybe it
Speaker 1: would work. My suggestion if you're going to keep the
Speaker 1: shelf is that you make the most out of it.
Speaker 1: And making the most out of it usually doesn't work
Speaker 1: with plants, because a plant is a visible dust collector
Speaker 1: that you'll need to maintain regularly. And again you're getting
Speaker 1: up there. So so I actually I take off the
Speaker 1: construct the the the contractor hat, and I take off
Speaker 1: the designer hat, and I actually put on a decorator
Speaker 1: hat at this point and say, if we can put
Speaker 1: on that shelf right where the indent goes in, because
Speaker 1: of today's you know technology, if we can put a
Speaker 1: really nice strip of led lights there that will shine
Speaker 1: up onto that wall, then put above it the right size,
Speaker 1: the right proportion, the right volume of you know, a
Speaker 1: piece of art a tapestry, a poster, a you know,
Speaker 1: whatever the case may be. In other words, we can
Speaker 1: turn it into a a lit recessed gallery.
Speaker 4: Well that actually.
Speaker 1: Shows off something, something that nobody expects to go walk
Speaker 1: up to and touch, something that you look up to
Speaker 1: and you say, oh, that's really cool and leave it
Speaker 1: at that. But beyond that, Honestly, I got to tell
Speaker 1: you half the time, I'm filling them in. I'm just
Speaker 1: filling them in now. I just had a consult last
Speaker 1: week at a beautiful, beautiful home in Lagoon and Miguel.
Speaker 1: That's a very luxury tracked home, okay, but still a
Speaker 1: tract home nonetheless, And what we discussed in one of
Speaker 1: the children's bedrooms, they had exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: But it just so happens. And I was actually going
Speaker 1: to get to this a little later in the show,
Speaker 1: so I'm showing my hand ahead at that. Maybe I'll
Speaker 1: move this up front after our call, Jim. But what
Speaker 1: we had talked about was the fact that also it
Speaker 1: just so happens on that side of the house, there
Speaker 1: were all sorts of funky ac ducting chases that were
Speaker 1: taking up rooms and other houses. And I realized because
Speaker 1: this house. This room was located close to the garage
Speaker 1: that I said, Hey, guys, you know that funky shelf
Speaker 1: area in your son's room. If we filled that in,
Speaker 1: we could redirect the ac ducting back behind there and
Speaker 1: get it out of this gigantic thing that's taken up
Speaker 1: half the room in his closet. And so that is
Speaker 1: another just you know, I have no idea if your
Speaker 1: alcove that you're talking about is has any other practical function,
Speaker 1: But just think all of those options through before you commit,
Speaker 1: you know, one to the other, because maybe there's a
Speaker 1: duck that can run through there. Maybe you can fill
Speaker 1: it in and not feeling bad about it because now
Speaker 1: you're actually using it to help another room. But if
Speaker 1: all else fails and you're going to keep it, then
Speaker 1: let's try and make it something other than a plant shelf.
Speaker 1: Let's try and make it something with a little bit
Speaker 1: of lighting that sets off a beautiful piece of art.
Speaker 5: All right, well that sounds great, Thank you very much,
Speaker 5: because I didn't even think about looking at how my
Speaker 5: duckwork was run, So thank you.
Speaker 1: All right, give it some thought, Jim, really really good question.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad he called, because that just you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm going to take this side. I don't even know
Speaker 1: where it is on my list, but it's on the list.
Speaker 1: That's the next thing that we're going to be talking
Speaker 1: about when we get back. But as soon as we return,
Speaker 1: we'll try and take a couple more calls.
Speaker 6: You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
Speaker 6: KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1: Love that you've joined us on the program. Always an honor,
Speaker 1: always a privilege to talk to you about this all
Speaker 1: important thing that we call home. Today we are doing
Speaker 1: it part two of a two part series talking about
Speaker 1: the most effective ways and facets of a tracked home remodel.
Speaker 1: Specific areas, specific items on the to do list that
Speaker 1: yield a disproportionate amount of good relative to their difficulty
Speaker 1: and their cost. Low cost, low difficulty, disproportion proportionate amount
Speaker 1: of awesome. We're going to get back to that list
Speaker 1: in a bit, but right now I'm taking calls and
Speaker 1: I'm going to get back to the phones. I want
Speaker 1: to talk to Roe. Hey, Roe, welcome home.
Speaker 2: Hi, thank you. I live in your Belinda and we
Speaker 2: have horrible water here and the scale build up is bad,
Speaker 2: and I have a whole house water filter, m not
Speaker 2: the one that you advertise.
Speaker 9: And even though we have that, we have a really
Speaker 9: good filter on our ice cubes through the refrigerator, and
Speaker 9: those are garbage.
Speaker 7: We can't.
Speaker 10: I don't eat the ice cubes.
Speaker 2: I don't drink the water out of the refrigerator, even
Speaker 2: though that's filtered through the whole house filter and through
Speaker 2: the refrigerator.
Speaker 1: The I've got one question for I know, I know
Speaker 1: what you're about to say. The shower head just gets
Speaker 1: all white and gunked up and crusty and cruddy and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff, right yep, Okay, I've got
Speaker 1: a question for you.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 1: You say you have a whole house water filter, do
Speaker 1: you have a whole house water descaler as a part
Speaker 1: of that filter system?
Speaker 10: Oh?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: So here's the thing, my friend.
Speaker 1: Uh you hear me talk about like life Source the
Speaker 1: whole house water filtration system. Okay, there are uh and
Speaker 1: people can purchase from like source just the water filter.
Speaker 1: And when you say water filtration system, you know we
Speaker 1: talk about no longer needing a water softena or anything
Speaker 1: like that, and that speaking, you can purchase just the filter.
Speaker 1: But Life Source is one of the reasons I partner
Speaker 1: with them Life Source. Their their complete system that they
Speaker 1: do for most homes is two cartridges, two big canisters.
Speaker 1: One is the filter and the other is a descaling
Speaker 1: canister that specializes in pulling hard water minerals. Actually doesn't
Speaker 1: pull them out, it changes them so that they're not sticky.
Speaker 1: So it is a it's it's an often misunderstood thing.
Speaker 1: Ro a water filter does zero. It in no way,
Speaker 1: shape or form changes the hardness of your water. Okay,
Speaker 1: Hardness in water is not a toxin or a nasty
Speaker 1: that needs needs to be filtered out of the water. Okay,
Speaker 1: hardness and water, it's mineral build up inside the water.
Speaker 1: It's minerals like calcium and magnesium and things like that.
Speaker 1: Those are minerals that our bodies need. It's minerals that
Speaker 1: go into our water. And yeah, there are places in it,
Speaker 1: you know, depending on whether you're well water is part
Speaker 1: of a reservoir system or if it's well water coming
Speaker 1: out of the ground, there are places where the hardness
Speaker 1: of water, and we're talking about mineral content is intense.
Speaker 1: But a water filter is designed to take out things
Speaker 1: that aren't usually in water, not minerals. Okay, scale all
Speaker 1: of that that's mineral content, and so this is people
Speaker 1: have water softeners. A water softener system is also gets
Speaker 1: misunderstood because people are like, and I found that there's
Speaker 1: still chlorine in my water, and it's like, well, okay.
Speaker 1: A water softener is not a water filter. It doesn't
Speaker 1: take out anything out of the water other than the minerals.
Speaker 1: But a water filter is not a water softener system,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't remove actual minerals from the system. So
Speaker 1: that's why, like a life source system has a filtration
Speaker 1: element and a descaling element that reduces massively the amount
Speaker 1: of scale build up that happens in the house, a
Speaker 1: water softener also reduces scale build up because it uses
Speaker 1: salt ions that it passes through. That's why you have
Speaker 1: to keep feeding it salt. It uses salt ions to
Speaker 1: capture to grab on to calcium and magnesium and potassium
Speaker 1: in these things that these minerals that cause scale, and
Speaker 1: it pulls it out of the water completely, and so
Speaker 1: you're drinking water at that point in bathing it. It's
Speaker 1: why your water feels a little weird. It felt like silky,
Speaker 1: some people say slimy. Some people love it, some people
Speaker 1: hate it. But the water feels weird because it lacks
Speaker 1: any mineralization of substance in it. So in your situation,
Speaker 1: this is the big question. You may have a whole
Speaker 1: house filter and that's keeping things like chlorine and chloramines
Speaker 1: and other nasties from coming in. But if the real
Speaker 1: issue with your water is heavy mineral content, the filter
Speaker 1: isn't filtering out dissolved minerals. It's letting them through because
Speaker 1: it's supposed to. And that's where your scale build up
Speaker 1: is coming from. So you could either a contact the
Speaker 1: company that gave you the whole house filter and see
Speaker 1: if they have an additional component, or you could talk
Speaker 1: to a company like life Source and they can evaluate
Speaker 1: your system and get you set up with a filter
Speaker 1: and descaler, and that's when things will start to change
Speaker 1: for you.
Speaker 10: Does that make sense absolutely, that's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Thank you, all right, ro good luck with that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's something that is confusing, I know, So let
Speaker 1: me just clarify that for everybody again. A water filter
Speaker 1: does not take hard water and change it into soft water.
Speaker 1: It simply filters out nasty chemicals and things that shouldn't
Speaker 1: be in our water, Okay, like chlorine and chlorines and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. That's a water filter, a water softener.
Speaker 1: This is like one hundred year old concept. The water
Speaker 1: softener uses rock, salt, salt sodium to grab onto minerals
Speaker 1: that usually cause scale build up and keep them from
Speaker 1: coming into the house. Okay, so there you've got a
Speaker 1: demineralized water coming into your house. So far less scale
Speaker 1: build up. But a water softener does not filter chemicals
Speaker 1: out all right. If you want both to happen, you
Speaker 1: need a system that has a filter and some form
Speaker 1: of descaler. Now, water softeners I never recommend them. They're
Speaker 1: one hundred year old technology. They're out moded. A descaler
Speaker 1: canister that like the one that comes in a life
Speaker 1: source system, actually doesn't pull the minerals out of the water.
Speaker 1: It changes them. The best way to explain it in
Speaker 1: a non scientific way is it makes what would be
Speaker 1: a sticky scale league stick to your pipes and your
Speaker 1: shower head mineral turns it into a crystalline structure that
Speaker 1: still gets into your body where you want it, but
Speaker 1: doesn't cling to the surfaces of your fixtures and your pipes.
Speaker 1: And that is a twenty first century descaling system. And
Speaker 1: that's the kind of thing you can get from you know, life, soorece.
Speaker 1: So everybody just understand descaling and filtering are completely different animals,
Speaker 1: and the best kind of whole house system has both,
Speaker 1: not just one or the other.
Speaker 6: All Right, you're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on
Speaker 6: demand from KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1: Welcome home. How is this lovely spring Sunday morning going
Speaker 1: for you? I hope yours is blessed and beautiful. It
Speaker 1: is a gorgeous day out there. We are hoping to
Speaker 1: spend the afternoon with friends outside and soak in as
Speaker 1: much of it as possible. And I hope you've got
Speaker 1: some plan to take an advantage of it. If you're
Speaker 1: not sitting in southern California where we are right now, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I know. This is why we pay the
Speaker 1: big bucks to live here. But if you're not, and
Speaker 1: if spring is looking a little different for you, I
Speaker 1: hope you're in a good spot too, I really do.
Speaker 1: I hope you just have plans to take full advantage
Speaker 1: of the day, because you know what, the day that
Speaker 1: is in our hands, that's the one that we've got.
Speaker 4: So here we go.
Speaker 1: We are in the middle of a two part series
Speaker 1: talking about unique things, special things that can be done
Speaker 1: to a tract home that disproportionate good results. We're gonna
Speaker 1: return to that conversation right after the next news break.
Speaker 1: But we've had so many calls this morning that I've
Speaker 1: kind of stretched our calls a little bit further. We've
Speaker 1: got one more round here, so I want to go
Speaker 1: back to the phones. I want to talk to Stan. Hey, Stan,
Speaker 1: welcome home.
Speaker 7: Thank you, Dean. I haven't able to get to a buffet,
Speaker 7: but I've had like ten cups of coffee.
Speaker 4: Hey you me too, my friend me too.
Speaker 7: That's good, all right, thank you. I'll tell you it's
Speaker 7: a small project. I've got a concrete stamped walkway and
Speaker 7: it's a powder colder. It's about twenty years old and
Speaker 7: I want to know how to refinish. And it's been
Speaker 7: stated by the sun it's not cracked. I don't know
Speaker 7: if it's power stripping as you do.
Speaker 10: Is our our?
Speaker 7: You know our pressure wash can stain and can stay,
Speaker 7: can stealerr be into the stain if they decide to
Speaker 7: restain it already have to put on the sealer afterwards.
Speaker 7: How's that first?
Speaker 5: All right?
Speaker 1: So, yeah, concrete, did you hear our concrete show a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks back.
Speaker 7: I probably did. Yeah, I would see every every week.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So my friend Chris Carson was on with me. He's
Speaker 1: a concrete expert, concrete concrete tractor, my favorite one, and
Speaker 1: we were discussing. We were discussing how he and I
Speaker 1: kind of that are sort of our least favorite kind
Speaker 1: of concrete is stamped concrete, only because not because it
Speaker 1: doesn't look good, you know, good on day one, but
Speaker 1: because of the things that you're talking about. Now it's
Speaker 1: faded now, it's you know, and it go on. So
Speaker 1: you know there. If Chris were here, he might have
Speaker 1: a couple of other thoughts about this. But but generally speaking,
Speaker 1: I think what you've already mentioned stan is probably your
Speaker 1: best tact. It just has to be handled carefully. Number one,
Speaker 1: you may want to, uh, you got to make sure
Speaker 1: that if the concrete right now is unevenly glazed, unevenly sealed,
Speaker 1: that we've got to strip off the remaining sealer right now.
Speaker 1: Sometimes that means pressure washing and scrubbing. Sometimes it means
Speaker 1: a sand blast. But we just have to be careful
Speaker 1: with a sand blast because we can end up, you know,
Speaker 1: exposing aggregate in the concrete and changing its look entirely. Okay,
Speaker 1: but the idea generally, Uh, sometimes through a chemical process,
Speaker 1: we can strip back the seal, the glaze that's only
Speaker 1: half there. If we can get yeah, if we can
Speaker 1: get to the the you know, the open up the
Speaker 1: porosity of the concrete uniformly and with the right pro
Speaker 1: involved a professional concrete staining company. Uh right, I think
Speaker 1: those are your best odds to restoring color.
Speaker 4: I like stains.
Speaker 1: I don't want to paint your stamped concrete because you
Speaker 1: know we've talked about before, concrete has a porosity and
Speaker 1: absorbs moisture from the ground, and that water will push
Speaker 1: paint off from the backside. I mean, it'll look fine
Speaker 1: for a bit, it won't look really realistic because it's paint,
Speaker 1: and nobody sees stamped stone looking like paint. That's a
Speaker 1: viable thing. So I would have the stain stain could
Speaker 1: work for you.
Speaker 7: Okay, it's one more thing, stain. Uh is there any
Speaker 7: stain that's already when you put it down on every ceils,
Speaker 7: I have to apply sealer afterwards, like a low chine seiler.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I wouldn't even put a sheen on the ceiler. Personally,
Speaker 1: I would stain it and then use a penetrating seiler
Speaker 1: and leave it be.
Speaker 7: You know, you want any gloss on it penetrating Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not. Yeah, I wouldn't put a gloss sealer
Speaker 1: on it. I would try and stain it. It's gonna
Speaker 1: feel modeled, modeled, you know, meaning you know, you know,
Speaker 1: color change this darker, that lighter, but the right pro
Speaker 1: can can hopefully blend that all in, so the whole
Speaker 1: thing feels uniformly modeled, and it feels like.
Speaker 4: It looks right.
Speaker 7: Oh great, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: You are so welcome. Stan, good luck, good luck, my friend.
Speaker 1: Do I have room to slide one more in here?
Speaker 1: Let's talk to Fred. Fred, welcome home.
Speaker 10: I did question about I was impacted by the eating fires,
Speaker 10: and I'm getting started, I'm getting ready to start the
Speaker 10: face to clean up, and I'm noticing around my block
Speaker 10: a lot of my neighbors that I've had it done.
Speaker 10: What's left over is this massive crater, you know, because
Speaker 10: they come in to take off six inches of top soil,
Speaker 10: but also.
Speaker 4: They pull out yes, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 10: So my concern is this is that you know, in
Speaker 10: the future, we can Moraine. I don't know how long
Speaker 10: this is going to take to rebuild that. You know
Speaker 10: water will accumulate there and that it might have an
Speaker 10: impact on the future foundation settlement of the house of
Speaker 10: a new house.
Speaker 5: Should I be.
Speaker 10: Concerned about that? Should I backsill it with their How
Speaker 10: should I anticipate or remedy that issue.
Speaker 1: It's a really really good question, Fred, and it would
Speaker 1: be a much longer conversation for you and I to
Speaker 1: have to cover every detail. But let me give you
Speaker 1: a quick overview. Okay, when you rip A when you rip,
Speaker 1: because this is the critical thing. I'm just going to say,
Speaker 1: you need to before you get going again and make
Speaker 1: sure this is included in your claim with your insurance company.
Speaker 1: Make sure all of these things are being addressed appropriately.
Speaker 1: They're going to scrape the lot six inches down, but yeah,
Speaker 1: they're going to leave a crater because that slab is
Speaker 1: not just four to six inches thick. It has got
Speaker 1: all of its perimeter. I mean it goes down fourteen
Speaker 1: sixteen maybe even deeper into the ground, and all of
Speaker 1: that dirt, all of that soil is going to be disrupted.
Speaker 1: And you don't just shovel back in to fill up
Speaker 1: those holes, because what actually has to happen there in
Speaker 1: the perimeter of where the foundation was, it's going to
Speaker 1: once that soil is disturbed like that, you're going to
Speaker 1: need under a deputy inspector observation, the removal, the scraping
Speaker 1: back of all of that soil down to its deepest
Speaker 1: point and then recompaction in four to six inch layers
Speaker 1: soil is put in and then it's compacted, and then
Speaker 1: it's tested, and then another four to six inches of
Speaker 1: soil is laid on and then it's compacted, and then
Speaker 1: it's tested all the way back up to the finished
Speaker 1: level of the rough soil for the property. And so
Speaker 1: the process that has to happen in order to have
Speaker 1: proper soil conditions to dig the new footings in is
Speaker 1: that that has to be kind of restored to essentially
Speaker 1: sort of virgin soil area to dig into for the
Speaker 1: first time. So what's going to be involved here and
Speaker 1: the individual the professionals who you need to talk to
Speaker 1: about this when it happens to your property and have
Speaker 1: this as part of the claim is a soils engineer,
Speaker 1: a soils engineering company needs to look at the property,
Speaker 1: needs to evaluate the current compaction the kind of soil
Speaker 1: you have on the property. The basis of their soils
Speaker 1: tests will tell you what needs to be done in
Speaker 1: order to get your lot back to buildable state. But
Speaker 1: you can't jump over that. The city's going to require
Speaker 1: it anyway. Your codes and your permits are going to
Speaker 1: require it. But that's your next step, and don't let
Speaker 1: the insurance company kind of skip over that step with you,
Speaker 1: because it is literally the very beginning. It's the foundation
Speaker 1: of rebuilding the proper house on that property. So one
Speaker 1: you have yanked a sixteen inch deep footing that's twelve
Speaker 1: to fourteen inches wide out of the ground. You have
Speaker 1: disrupted all of that soil down to that level. All
Speaker 1: of that has to be recompacted. Again, I'm not really
Speaker 1: worried about water accumulating in that crater. I have very,
Speaker 1: very rarely, unless you're on a hillside and you've got,
Speaker 1: you know, soil erosion concerns, that's one thing. But if
Speaker 1: we're just talking about kind of a standard lot, I'm
Speaker 1: really not worried about water accumulating from rains while you're
Speaker 1: waiting to have all of this done, And I don't
Speaker 1: think the soils company will either. In fact, I would
Speaker 1: say in general, homeowners spend too much time trying to
Speaker 1: get water off their property instead of letting it soak
Speaker 1: in through their soil down into the aquifers below. Very
Speaker 1: very rarely does an accumulation of water on a piece
Speaker 1: of property pose a threat to that piece of property
Speaker 1: or change your soil's conditions. But the tearing out of
Speaker 1: the foundation and the disrupting of that previously very stable soil, well,
Speaker 1: that is going to change the rebuild, and so a
Speaker 1: soils engineering company is going to be the one to
Speaker 1: tell you, all right, based on your soil, your situation,
Speaker 1: here is how we have to return the soil to
Speaker 1: buildable conditions.
Speaker 10: God, thank you very much, already appreciate it. I'll definitely
Speaker 10: make a strong note and share it with all my
Speaker 10: community members that were impacted.
Speaker 1: There you go, Fred, thank you so much, and I
Speaker 1: am so sorry for your loss and for the devastation
Speaker 1: there in the eat and fire, and best wishes and
Speaker 1: keep listening and feel free to reach out anytime that
Speaker 1: you've got questions about rebuilding.
Speaker 5: There.
Speaker 1: All right, everybody, when we come back, we're going to
Speaker 1: come back to this topic of these key areas of
Speaker 1: remodeling A tract home that yield the disproportionate good for
Speaker 1: the amount of time and energy and money put into it.
Speaker 4: All of that.
Speaker 1: Next your Home with Dean Sharp, The House Whisper on KFI.
Speaker 1: This has been Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper.
Speaker 1: Tune into the live broadcast on KFI A six forty
Speaker 1: every Saturday morning from six to eight Pacific time, and
Speaker 1: every Sunday morning from nine to noon Pacific time, or
Speaker 1: anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.