Speaker 1: KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp the
Speaker 1: house Whisper on demand on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Dean Sharp,
Speaker 1: the house Whisper, craftsman builder, custom home designer, here to
Speaker 1: help you turn your ordinary house into an extraordinary home.
Speaker 1: We are doing an all calls weekend. I want to
Speaker 1: talk to Stephen. Hey, Stephen, welcome home.
Speaker 2: Hello Dean, I'm so glad to talk to you. You know,
Speaker 2: I have a tankless water heater. I just replaced it.
Speaker 2: Actually the first one died after fourteen years, and now
Speaker 2: I want to add a recirculation pump under my kitchen sink.
Speaker 2: But I don't have a dedicated return line for the
Speaker 2: research pump. I found several products that'll do it, but
Speaker 2: I'm a little concerned of how they work, so I'm
Speaker 2: hoping you can give me some guidance.
Speaker 1: The world of recirculation pumps has changed radically over the
Speaker 1: years here, and fairly recently too, in terms of construction innovations.
Speaker 1: Right over the last ten years, there's been a radical change,
Speaker 1: Especially over the last five years. It has truly truly
Speaker 1: taken hold, so much so that the research pump that
Speaker 1: I'm about to tell you about. And I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about a brand, I'm talking about a style. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of brands out there. You can shop those
Speaker 1: out for yourself. But the research pump style or concept
Speaker 1: that I'm about to tell you about in southern California
Speaker 1: and throughout the state in many places, has been now
Speaker 1: adopted as a requirement for new home builds and for
Speaker 1: major remodels. That's how important it has become because it
Speaker 1: is a water saving recirculation pump that does not require
Speaker 1: a dedicated return line. So what we used to do
Speaker 1: and what we still do, Okay, what we still do
Speaker 1: if we know that we're building a custom home from
Speaker 1: the ground up and the client's like, listen, I just
Speaker 1: want hot water everywhere, at every sink and every file
Speaker 1: all the time, right, I don't want to wait two
Speaker 1: minutes for the hot water to show up. Then what
Speaker 1: we will often do still today is instead of plumbing
Speaker 1: out the hot water system like a tree branch, like
Speaker 1: a tree coming out from the water heater that branches
Speaker 1: out and keeps breaking off into smaller and smaller lines
Speaker 1: until it eventually reaches every source like the tub and
Speaker 1: the sink in the bathroom and so on, we will
Speaker 1: take each one of those and return them back in
Speaker 1: a loop back to the water heater. And that allows
Speaker 1: us to put a recirculation pump on that just keeps
Speaker 1: hot water moving through those lines, because the reason why
Speaker 1: the hot water disappears is that it sits there for
Speaker 1: an hour or two or three or however long you
Speaker 1: haven't used the hot water, and it cools off, right,
Speaker 1: it cools off sitting in the pipe.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: So the brilliance of the new fangled recirculation pumps and
Speaker 1: that is so much in the pump itself, but in
Speaker 1: this tiny little device called a bridge valve. A bridge
Speaker 1: valve is a device that gets mounted underneath a sink,
Speaker 1: the sink in question, and it gets mounted and what
Speaker 1: it does, it's a one way valve that actually joins
Speaker 1: the hot water supply to the cold water supply underneath
Speaker 1: the sink. Now why is this important? And what it
Speaker 1: does is it allows you then to mount a small
Speaker 1: recirculation pump that draws hot water off of the hot
Speaker 1: water line. And even though there isn't a return circuit,
Speaker 1: what it does is it draws hot water off the
Speaker 1: hot water line and it pushes that hot water into
Speaker 1: the cold water line so that you get the action
Speaker 1: of a recirculation pump, but we're not we don't have
Speaker 1: to run a return circuit, and we're not wasting water
Speaker 1: because it's still your water. It sits in the cold
Speaker 1: line and it cools off and it becomes cold water
Speaker 1: for you. So that's how they work. And this little
Speaker 1: brilliant one way valve called a bridge valve in combination
Speaker 1: with the recirculation pump. Now, configuring a research pump is
Speaker 1: something that you can do a number of different ways.
Speaker 1: You can put a research pump under every single sink
Speaker 1: in your house. It's a little overkill in most homes.
Speaker 1: The way that we like to do it typically is
Speaker 1: if you're only concerned about getting the hot water at
Speaker 1: the kitchen sink immediate, then fine, just put it right
Speaker 1: under the kitchen sink. But if you have a sense
Speaker 1: of the way you're plumbing is kind of bridged out,
Speaker 1: one way to do it is you take the sink
Speaker 1: that's furthest away from the hot water heater, the furthest
Speaker 1: end of the tree branch, as it were, the furthest
Speaker 1: branch on the very end, and you put the research
Speaker 1: pump there on a timer on a regular rotating timer
Speaker 1: so that it fires on and it pulls a little
Speaker 1: water and then it turns off, and that it fires
Speaker 1: on and pulls a little water and it turns off.
Speaker 1: And the net benefit of that it's drawing the hot
Speaker 1: water through all of the main branches and getting hot
Speaker 1: water closer to all of your sinks with one research
Speaker 1: pump properly located under the right sink, so you can
Speaker 1: do it under every sink. You could do it under
Speaker 1: one sink that you want to prioritize, or you can
Speaker 1: run it at the end of the very very furthest
Speaker 1: branch in the house, and you'll get hot water quicker
Speaker 1: out of all your sinks and all of your appliances.
Speaker 1: It won't be instant it's not instantaneous, but instead of
Speaker 1: like waiting two minutes, you know you're waiting ten seconds
Speaker 1: and that well, and instead of.
Speaker 2: Dumping how many gallons of water down the sink, and
Speaker 2: then I don't waste the water. And my kitchen sink
Speaker 2: is ideal because it's the furthest away from everything, and
Speaker 2: it'll cover my bathrooms, my laundry room, all that perfect good.
Speaker 2: I guess my only concern is there's nothing on the
Speaker 2: back end, and so there's got to be a checkbowve
Speaker 2: or something back there to keep water from flowing in
Speaker 2: the wrong direction as it's using the cold side as
Speaker 2: the return pipe. And I just want to make sure
Speaker 2: I'm not going to hurt pipes.
Speaker 1: Or you know, yeah, yeah, not at all. No, that
Speaker 1: is what the bridge valve is. The bridge valve is
Speaker 1: essentially a check It serves as a as a bridge
Speaker 1: between hot and cold. Like I said, it's a one
Speaker 1: way valve. It allows hot water to move into the cold.
Speaker 1: It does not allow cold to come back into the hot.
Speaker 1: It is both a bridge and a check valve. It
Speaker 1: in no way threatens your plumbing system. They are approved,
Speaker 1: they are embraced, and everybody really who can afford to
Speaker 1: get one should get one. These research pumps, by the way,
Speaker 1: they range in value anywhere from like the mid two
Speaker 1: hundreds to the mid three hundred, three hundred bucks three
Speaker 1: fifty or so two fifty to three hundred dollars. And
Speaker 1: the check valve itself is you know, the bridge valve
Speaker 1: is you know, it's like a sixty dollars item. So
Speaker 1: it's a really really good set up. And I wouldn't
Speaker 1: worry about your plumbing in any way, shape or form, Stephen.
Speaker 1: It's one of the it's one of the things water
Speaker 1: heaters only. Does you know one of our sponsors is
Speaker 1: one of the benefit ads that they do to a
Speaker 1: house when they're installing a new water heater. So anyway,
Speaker 1: a really really good system and great questions, Stephen. It
Speaker 1: allowed me to explain this to everybody who is listening,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the reasons why we take calls.
Speaker 1: Not only answer your question, but answer the thousands of
Speaker 1: other listeners who are having the exact same situation in
Speaker 1: their house and have that same question in their mind,
Speaker 1: but didn't call to more of your calls. When we return,
Speaker 1: you are listening to Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper.
Speaker 4: You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
Speaker 4: KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 3: Thanks for joining us on the program.
Speaker 1: Now it is time to take some calls, and I
Speaker 1: want to do exactly that.
Speaker 3: I want to talk to Cheryl. Hey, Cheryl, welcome home.
Speaker 5: My question is with regards to drain maintenance. I love
Speaker 5: my husband very much, but I'm noticing that the bathroom
Speaker 5: drain bath sink drain is a little bit slower. I
Speaker 5: have no blockages anywhere, but I'm thinking it's from his
Speaker 5: shaving cream and shaving. So what is the proper drain maintenance? Monthly? Weekly?
Speaker 5: I went to a local store and there was chemicals
Speaker 5: and enzymes, and there were things for the disposer, and
Speaker 5: then another product for the toilet, another product. What's the
Speaker 5: best product to use baking soda, vinegar and hot water.
Speaker 5: I also read, so how often and what is best
Speaker 5: for maintaining a drink of the drains weekly or monthly?
Speaker 1: Okay, great question, and uh so here's the answer. Now
Speaker 1: you're dealing specifically with a bathroom drain, okay, And but
Speaker 1: also people are wondering like, okay, but what about my
Speaker 1: kitchen singing two? That's where my problem is. And so
Speaker 1: here the first rule is for drain maintenance is don't
Speaker 1: put the wrong stuff down the drain.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: So if your husband in shaving cream and whatever, let
Speaker 1: him pull the stopper on the sink and let the
Speaker 1: sink fill up, okay with water as he shaved, so
Speaker 1: that the shaving cream is diluted in the water before
Speaker 1: it goes down the drain. Don't let just big clumps
Speaker 1: of shaving cream go down the drain undiluted, and the
Speaker 1: reason is that they have a tendency then to cling
Speaker 1: more to the sides of your drain pipes, and it's
Speaker 1: that eventual build up that leads eventually to some kind
Speaker 1: of clog. The same is true for women who are
Speaker 1: prepping out a sink. If you're doing your hair or
Speaker 1: something like that, pull the stopper on the drain, let
Speaker 1: the hair get stopped in the sink, and then grab
Speaker 1: that hair, throw it in the trash can. Don't let
Speaker 1: it go down the drain, and your drains will be happier.
Speaker 1: And in the kitchen, stop putting food down the garbage disposal,
Speaker 1: so much of it macerates it into this mush, this
Speaker 1: biological mess, and that stuff clings to your drain pipes
Speaker 1: as you go down. So that's just first the tip
Speaker 1: number one. Number two is I am a fan of
Speaker 1: drain maintenance. No heavy chemicals, So definitely not the draino
Speaker 1: definitely not the liquid plumber or any of that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. It ultimately does damage to the drain pipes themselves.
Speaker 1: What you can put down, don't put bleach down the
Speaker 1: drain either. Bleach is useless down to drain.
Speaker 3: It doesn't.
Speaker 1: That's not what it's made for. Okay, vinegar and water,
Speaker 1: hot water. Fill up a sink with hot water, add
Speaker 1: some white vinegar. Let that go down the drain. That's
Speaker 1: great because vinegar has an ascetic acid in it, and
Speaker 1: that acid eats away at the junk that sits on
Speaker 1: the edge of your drain pipes. Baking soda also a
Speaker 1: good answer, because it has its own way of breaking
Speaker 1: down that material. Never baking soda and vinegar together because
Speaker 1: us even though you get this fizzing action, that's not
Speaker 1: extra cleaning power. That's the acid and the pH neutral
Speaker 1: balance neutralizing itself. In other words, it's canceling itself out
Speaker 1: and rendering both less useful than they are on their own.
Speaker 1: So pick the vinegar or the baking soda, but not
Speaker 1: both at the same time. That's good for making your
Speaker 1: kids high school volcano project, but not for cleaning anything
Speaker 1: around the house. The thing that I like the best, though, Cheryl,
Speaker 1: this is my preference, is a nice well referenced enzyme.
Speaker 1: You know, I mean well referenced meaning that it has
Speaker 1: good reviews. Right, you can buy this stuff just about
Speaker 1: anywhere at the local hardware store. You can buy them
Speaker 1: at the big box store. I'm staring at one right now.
Speaker 1: I just pulled it up. Green Gobbler is a really
Speaker 1: really good one, and they sell it in gallons jugs
Speaker 1: at a place like home Depot. Okay, it costs you
Speaker 1: about twenty five bucks for a gallon. You use very
Speaker 1: little of it, and you just use it regularly. You
Speaker 1: don't have to use it every other day or anything
Speaker 1: like that. You know, once a week, once a month,
Speaker 1: pour a little of it down. Enzymes they're not critters,
Speaker 1: they're not alive, Okay. They are though naturally occurring biological
Speaker 1: molecular structures that dig in and break down biomass material.
Speaker 1: So enzymes will just basically coat over the slime that's
Speaker 1: building up on your pipes and start to break it
Speaker 1: up so that the next time you flush the drain,
Speaker 1: more and more of it goes away. Enzymes are not
Speaker 1: going to do any good to clear a clogged drain,
Speaker 1: but they are the best thing out there at keeping
Speaker 1: a drain from clogging in the first place. There you go,
Speaker 1: that's my best shot, Cheryl. Thank you for your call.
Speaker 1: Let's talk to am. I going to get this name right.
Speaker 1: Bobart welcome home.
Speaker 6: Yes, I have an eighty five year old father who
Speaker 6: is needs to be moved into his home, but he
Speaker 6: can't get into the bathtub anymore. We needs to get
Speaker 6: make it walk through backtop. So there's a there's something
Speaker 6: online that steps to step in and you cut apart
Speaker 6: the backtop and then you you've converted to a walk
Speaker 6: in Do you have any opinions about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know I've seen that. Uh and uh uh.
Speaker 1: What can I tell you? I have no direct experience
Speaker 1: with it whatsoever. So I'm being completely honest and transparent
Speaker 1: with you.
Speaker 5: Zero.
Speaker 1: I have zero direct experience with it. But but I
Speaker 1: will tell you water is heavy, uh, and water pressure
Speaker 1: against the side of a tub, uh is significant And
Speaker 1: I really really have trouble imagining that in the long term, uh,
Speaker 1: that a retrofit of a door on the side of
Speaker 1: an existing bathtub is actually going to hold up and
Speaker 1: be functional. I would much much quicker recommend to you
Speaker 1: that you simply remove the existing tub and replace it
Speaker 1: with a factory built walk in tub. The door swings
Speaker 1: in these tubs are built for exactly the thing that
Speaker 1: you are in need of it. They are for folks
Speaker 1: who need to sit down. The benches are located in
Speaker 1: the most convenient locations at the most convenient height. They
Speaker 1: need to sit down, they need to bathe, but they
Speaker 1: are not in a position to step over the edge
Speaker 1: of a tub because it's a danger to them. And
Speaker 1: so there is a door that simply opens up. But
Speaker 1: those doors are designed like you know, marine grade boat
Speaker 1: submarine doors. I mean, they seal. And I've never actually
Speaker 1: seen one of those from reputable walk in tub manufacturers fail, honest,
Speaker 1: And what I wouldn't want to have happen is for
Speaker 1: how a retrofit fail on you. So my recommendation is
Speaker 1: that you remove the existing tub and replace with one
Speaker 1: designed by the factory for just this purpose. You're going
Speaker 1: to have the best warranty and I think you're going
Speaker 1: to have the best results with it. I'm so glad
Speaker 1: you join him this morning. Hang tight, there is more
Speaker 1: to come. You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp the
Speaker 1: House Whisper.
Speaker 4: You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
Speaker 4: KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1: We are taking your calls, which I love. I love
Speaker 1: talking to you about whatever's going on with your home today,
Speaker 1: whether it's a DIY question, a construction issue, a design question.
Speaker 1: I love design questions, So anyway, I would love to help.
Speaker 1: So why don't we just dive back in. I want
Speaker 1: to talk to Jason. Hey, Jason, welcome home.
Speaker 7: Hey, thank you. I'm an original homeowner and as such,
Speaker 7: I have all the original photos of the framing, plumbing, electric.
Speaker 7: The house is about fifteen years old, three thousand square feet,
Speaker 7: two story. I'm in Orange County. We want to do
Speaker 7: a modest extent or expansion of our existing dining room,
Speaker 7: so that we would push out an exterior wall to
Speaker 7: basically capture an existing outdoor alcove type area that also
Speaker 7: has there's an exterior entrance to the kitchen that goes
Speaker 7: into that same area. So if you can imagine a
Speaker 7: first story, little maybe hundred square foot alcove, there's an
Speaker 7: exterior door from the dining room to that alcove. There
Speaker 7: is an exterior door from the kitchen to that alcove.
Speaker 7: And I'm like, well, hey, if we just pushed out
Speaker 7: that wall maybe eight feet, we could have a way
Speaker 7: to get into the kitchen from the dining room, and
Speaker 7: we'd gather up another one hundred square feet. I reach
Speaker 7: out to various contractors and they're like, hey, do you
Speaker 7: have the drawings? I'm like, well, what do you mean? Well,
Speaker 7: if when you go to get permits, they're going to
Speaker 7: want a drawing of the entire house, not just that
Speaker 7: little section. And I'm like, gosh, I'm yours aloner, but
Speaker 7: I don't have any drawings. Well, you know, you either
Speaker 7: have to get a firm to draw up the entire
Speaker 7: elevation of the house as it's existing and the plan
Speaker 7: for that wall, or or find another way to get them.
Speaker 7: I'm sort of perplexed on like, a does the whole
Speaker 7: house really have to get drawn up just to move
Speaker 7: one wall? And secondly, do I, as like an original homeowner,
Speaker 7: do I have any sort of entitlement to maybe those drawings?
Speaker 7: Because I'm learning to hire an engineering firm to come
Speaker 7: in and draw the whole house. It's quite expensive for
Speaker 7: a small project like this.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, all right, so let me help you kind
Speaker 1: of break this down. First of all, your contractors are
Speaker 1: right ish, but they're probably correct. It changes municipality to municipality.
Speaker 1: But generally speaking, if you are doing a structural addition
Speaker 1: onto a house just for context sake, right, the city
Speaker 1: is going to be bare minimum. They're going to be
Speaker 1: looking for an exterior elevation of that three sides of
Speaker 1: that push out and three sides meaning three cardinal directions. Right, So,
Speaker 1: if you're pushing out on the south side of the house,
Speaker 1: they're going to want the south elevation looking straight on.
Speaker 1: They're going to want the east and west elevations looking
Speaker 1: at the sides of that alcove. As a pushout, they
Speaker 1: won't care about the other side of the house, okay.
Speaker 1: They basically want context, and they want context in relation
Speaker 1: to where this alcove is in relation to the first floor. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're not affecting anything on the second floor, they
Speaker 1: your city may not need second floor drawings, okay, they
Speaker 1: may not care about that, or they may feel like, okay,
Speaker 1: what is this affecting upstairs if anything. So that's the
Speaker 1: first thing you need to know, and the answer to
Speaker 1: those questions reside at your local building department, not with contractors,
Speaker 1: but actually just making a trip down and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: this is what we're planning on doing with our home. Secondarily,
Speaker 1: your city may may it's getting rarer these days, but
Speaker 1: they may actually have your original house plans on file,
Speaker 1: especially if it's only been fifteen years since the house
Speaker 1: was built. So while you're there, you should also ask
Speaker 1: the city at the planning department, do you have the
Speaker 1: original blueprints for my home or at least my tract,
Speaker 1: And maybe they've got blueprints for your floor plan that
Speaker 1: are flipped, that have been submitted by the builder of
Speaker 1: the developer back in the day. Those will work. That
Speaker 1: gives you a massive head start. Now sometimes the city
Speaker 1: will say, well, yes, we do have that. We can't
Speaker 1: release it to you though without notifying the builder, the
Speaker 1: original developer, or the architects first. That's just a technicality.
Speaker 1: And most of the time what happens is they'll tell you, listen,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do the official notification and we will let
Speaker 1: you know in seven days if we haven't heard back
Speaker 1: from them, we're going to release the plans to you
Speaker 1: and you can have them on usually a digital file
Speaker 1: that you can then turn into a PDF, and you're
Speaker 1: off to the races as far as plans are concerned
Speaker 1: for your home. At least somebody doesn't have to pay.
Speaker 1: Somebody's still going to have to draw the plans, right,
Speaker 1: You can't just work off of those original plans. But
Speaker 1: you can use those original plans instead of somebody having
Speaker 1: to remeasure the whole house and go to that expense.
Speaker 1: So it's going to reduce the cost. Finally, the thing
Speaker 1: that I want to tell you is that never ever
Speaker 1: hire an engineering firm to draw your house. The engineers
Speaker 1: come in after the fact and just pay them to
Speaker 1: deal with the specific engineering issues that this thing involves.
Speaker 1: As far as the rest of the plan, whatever the
Speaker 1: city tells you the rest of the plan has to be.
Speaker 1: You can hire a draft I mean technically, Jason, you
Speaker 1: can do this yourself. You are a homeowner and you
Speaker 1: could actually draw the house yourself, but that is a
Speaker 1: headache for a lot of people. You can hire a
Speaker 1: drafts person. There are people out there for hire who
Speaker 1: will give you a really good price to draw up
Speaker 1: the layout of your home and draw the elevation. Believe me,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of drafts people out of work
Speaker 1: and looking for work. It's a good time these days
Speaker 1: to hire a drafts person. It does not require a
Speaker 1: licensed architect or a licensed engineer to draw your home.
Speaker 1: I am not a licensed architect right and yet I
Speaker 1: design and build custom homes and have for the nearly
Speaker 1: forty years now because in the state of California, you
Speaker 1: do not the city. The state does not require a
Speaker 1: licensed architect to be involved in most cases up to
Speaker 1: three stories in a residential home. Okay, so when it
Speaker 1: comes to residences, anybody who knows what they're doing can
Speaker 1: draw and submit those drawings generally speaking as a general
Speaker 1: rule in most municipalities. So it all starts with you
Speaker 1: go into the city getting the info you need from them,
Speaker 1: finding out if your plans are on file. If they're not, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're going to have to break down to follow whatever
Speaker 1: they are looking for, and you just give them the
Speaker 1: minimum of what it is that they're looking for. They're
Speaker 1: not going to be super impressed if you give them
Speaker 1: extra extra extor they just want what they want. Uh,
Speaker 1: And you start it there, but don't hire an engineering
Speaker 1: firm to do it, because yeah, those guys are Those
Speaker 1: guys are engineers and they make engineering money. Hire and
Speaker 1: don't hire an architect. Hire a drafts person who work
Speaker 1: for engineers and architects in order to actually put the
Speaker 1: drawings together. By the way, you hire an engineering firm
Speaker 1: to draw your house, they're going to hand it to
Speaker 1: their drafts person to actually do the measurement and the drawing.
Speaker 1: The engineers aren't going to do the drawings themselves until
Speaker 1: engineering time comes around, but you're going to get charged
Speaker 1: engineering prices for the whole thing.
Speaker 3: So there you go. You sub it out as you
Speaker 3: need to as you go along. Does that help?
Speaker 7: Thank you? No, that's great, all right, buddy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, you can get that done
Speaker 1: for for way less okay, and get it done well
Speaker 1: all right. So but start with the city. That's the key. Jason,
Speaker 1: Good luck, my friend on that remodel. Hope everything turns
Speaker 1: out really, really well. How about some more of your
Speaker 1: calls when we return. You are listening to Home with
Speaker 1: Dean Sharp the House Whisper.
Speaker 4: You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
Speaker 4: KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1: I dropped my pen Dean Sharp, the house Whisper. Welcome home.
Speaker 1: The number to reach me at eight three three two
Speaker 1: Ask Dean eight three three the numeral to ask Dean
Speaker 1: give me a call. I would love to help you out,
Speaker 1: all right, without any further ado, why don't we talk
Speaker 1: to Ann?
Speaker 3: Hey Ann, welcome.
Speaker 8: Home, Hi Dean, Okay, I just have a quick actually
Speaker 8: two quick questions. When I plug in my like vacuum
Speaker 8: or a san or something like that. And of course,
Speaker 8: you know your vacuum for a few minutes. When I
Speaker 8: go to unplug from the wall, that the plug is
Speaker 8: so hot you can hardly hold it. Is that something
Speaker 8: I should be concerned about.
Speaker 1: The actual plug at the end of the vacuum cleaner, yes,
Speaker 1: has has has gotten super hot?
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: And you know I vacuum for let's let's say at
Speaker 8: least ten minutes, because the room is kind of large,
Speaker 8: and I go over to unplug it to take it
Speaker 8: to another room, and the plug when I unplug it
Speaker 8: from the wall, it's really hot.
Speaker 1: Well that you know what that's That's a bit of
Speaker 1: a quandary, I got to tell you, because it's it's
Speaker 1: normal for an appliance plug to become warm after you've
Speaker 1: used it for a while. It is abnormal for a
Speaker 1: plug to actually get hot. It's usually some kind of
Speaker 1: internal electrical fault in the appliance itself that is ready
Speaker 1: to go off if it's drawing too much energy, like
Speaker 1: like if it's drawing so much power that it's going
Speaker 1: to overwhelm the wires in the plug. Sometimes an improperly
Speaker 1: grounded electrical connection can also cause a device to draw
Speaker 1: more power than necessary. So, you know what, that's a
Speaker 1: it's a bit of a mystery to me. I have heard.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen this firsthand, but I've heard that a
Speaker 1: properly an improperly grounded plug can sometimes allow an appliance
Speaker 1: to draw more energy than it should, and therefore the
Speaker 1: cord on the appliance gets way too hot. Now, if
Speaker 1: it's warm, that's one thing, but hot like oohow, I
Speaker 1: can hardly hold it. That would be a concern. Does
Speaker 1: that happen to the to the vacuum cleaner, Let's say,
Speaker 1: when you plug it into any of your outlets or
Speaker 1: just one in particular.
Speaker 8: Well, that's a I was going to suggest, is maybe
Speaker 8: I should try another because normally I use the same
Speaker 8: outlet because it's centrally located, you know, so that I
Speaker 8: can do the whole room. But maybe that's what I
Speaker 8: should do, is try another plug to see if the
Speaker 8: problem is that one particular outlet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, So I'm going to suggest a couple of things.
Speaker 1: Number One, that you do that first, Let's see if
Speaker 1: that happens on every single outlet. If that's the case,
Speaker 1: it's very likely. By the way, when was your house.
Speaker 8: Built, Well, the house was built in like around sixty
Speaker 8: But the two plugs that I use for the vacuum
Speaker 8: they are fairly new because I had a little remodeling done.
Speaker 8: So when you said it could be not grounded, I
Speaker 8: just wonder if the electrician didn't, you know, do something
Speaker 8: that he was supposed to do with those two new
Speaker 8: additional plugs or outlets.
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, so let's do what you were saying.
Speaker 1: Let's plug the vacuum cleaner into a couple of other
Speaker 1: outlets in the house and see run it for the
Speaker 1: same amount of time. See if we get the same
Speaker 1: reaction out of the vacuum cleaner for that, because it
Speaker 1: could just be an issue with the vacuum cleaner. It
Speaker 1: really could. But here's another thing that you can do.
Speaker 1: If you run down to the hardware store or a
Speaker 1: home depot or low someplace like that, and you ask them,
Speaker 1: like I tell them that you want to get an
Speaker 1: outlet tester. Okay, it's specifically an outlet tester. It's a
Speaker 1: little block of plastic. It's got three lights on the
Speaker 1: end of it, and it has a three prong plug.
Speaker 1: Just like you plug in the any appliance. The thing
Speaker 1: that an outlet tester it's gonna do is when you
Speaker 1: plug it into any outlet in your house, depending on
Speaker 1: how the lights light up, And there's a little menu
Speaker 1: right on top that shows you depending on how the
Speaker 1: lights light up, it will tell you whether or not
Speaker 1: that outlet is properly grounded, whether the hot and the
Speaker 1: neutral have been revert whether there's a wiring issue with
Speaker 1: the outlet. So if you plug in this outlet tester,
Speaker 1: it's the only gonna co you like ten bucks to
Speaker 1: do this. You can test every outlet in your house
Speaker 1: and you can know for sure whether or not the
Speaker 1: electrician properly grounded that plug.
Speaker 8: Well, I was just concerned with it starting a fire,
Speaker 8: you know, and that's what that was my main concern.
Speaker 8: But in talking with you, that's that's a good idea
Speaker 8: to try another plug, another outlet, I mean, and then
Speaker 8: also get that little testra thing.
Speaker 1: That's a good idea er And you definitely want to
Speaker 1: be concerned about starting a fire, and you don't want
Speaker 1: to mess with your electrical. If you're ever worried about
Speaker 1: your electrical just figure it out, get it tested, get
Speaker 1: it dealt with because we don't want to fire in
Speaker 1: your house. And thank you so much, sweetheart.
Speaker 8: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Let's talk to Antonio. Antonio. Welcome home.
Speaker 9: Oh, thank you, welcome home.
Speaker 3: Thank you, You're welcome. How can I help you?
Speaker 9: Regallion small detectors and carbon monoxide And I wanted to
Speaker 9: find out if it's the best place to put on
Speaker 9: if I buy it the combination of both or buy
Speaker 9: them separately and put one inside the the bedrooms like
Speaker 9: a smoke detector, and then the carbon monoxide on the
Speaker 9: outside of the of the each bedroom.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't have to put a carbon monoxide detector
Speaker 1: on the outside of each bedroom. That's more than you need. Currently,
Speaker 1: southern California and most municipalities, the code is going to
Speaker 1: be a smoke detector inside each bedroom, just inside the
Speaker 1: door of each bedroom, a smoke detector in the hallway
Speaker 1: leading to the bedrooms. Okay, okay, a carbon monoxide detector
Speaker 1: centrally located on each floor of the house. So typically
Speaker 1: what people do when they want to just be most
Speaker 1: efficient with their cash is they'll buy a regular smoke
Speaker 1: detector and put those inside each of the bedrooms, and
Speaker 1: then they'll take a smoke detector, slash carbon monoxide combo
Speaker 1: detector and put that as the hall waste detector on
Speaker 1: each floor outside the bedroom doors and that will get
Speaker 1: you covered.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, I appreciate it.
Speaker 9: Now, one last question is possible. How can you determine
Speaker 9: you know, they have the conservation facets or fixtures nowadays
Speaker 9: where you know you have to find out how many
Speaker 9: gallons of water you spend on the facets.
Speaker 6: How can you determine if that one is under the guidelines.
Speaker 1: Oh, everything that is being everything that is being sold
Speaker 1: in stores now legally is under the guidelines. I guarantee it,
Speaker 1: unless your city has extra stringent guidelines. So the best
Speaker 1: thing to do is simply if you're wondering, and you're
Speaker 1: and you're worried, is call your local city building department
Speaker 1: and say, hey, for our city, what what are the
Speaker 1: regulations for my toilet as far as how many gallons
Speaker 1: can my toilet use? How many gallons per minute can
Speaker 1: my shower head be? How many gallons per minute can
Speaker 1: my faucets be? They will tell you straight out. They're
Speaker 1: like it's going to be this three and a half
Speaker 1: gallons per minute, but one and a half gallons per flush,
Speaker 1: so on, and then you can just go shopping and
Speaker 1: on the side of every single fixture that you buy,
Speaker 1: you're going to see the gallons per minute for that fixture,
Speaker 1: so that you end up getting the right one.
Speaker 3: I see. I appreciate that, buddy.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. More of your calls to come.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper
Speaker 1: on KFI. This has been Home with Dean Sharp, the
Speaker 1: House Whisper. Tune into the live broadcast on KFI Am
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