Winter is upon us, and if you think you can just sit back and sip hot cocoa while the snow piles up outside, think again! Eric G and John Dudley dive headfirst into the chaotic world of winter home prep in this episode. They kick things off with some cheeky humor, reminiscing about last year’s ‘hot dumpster fire’ of a winter. Seriously, if you thought 2025 was rough, just wait until you hear their plans for tackling the rest of this winter! From cleaning gutters that are probably full of leaves and pine needles (oops) to ensuring your downspouts are actually doing their job and not just creating a lovely waterfall effect next to your foundation, they've got you covered. And let's not forget about the importance of checking your roof and chimney because, let's face it, nobody wants to deal with a leaky roof when it's freezing outside. They remind us all to prioritize safety and get those gutters cleared out—before that kindling turns into a bonfire courtesy of your neighbor's ill-timed fireworks. As the banter continues, Eric and John touch on the importance of insulating pipes and keeping your home warm enough to avoid those pesky freeze-ups. They drop some knowledge bombs about how letting your faucets drip can save you a lot of headache (and money) down the line. You’ll learn how to prep your home for unexpected weather patterns because, let’s face it, Mother Nature is a bit unpredictable these days. If you think you're safe just because you live in a warmer climate, think again! They share tips for everyone, whether you’re in the balmy south or the frigid north—seriously, nobody is safe from winter's wrath! Finally, they wrap up this informative hour with some laughter and relatable stories, emphasizing that a little prep can save you a ton of grief later. So grab a cup of joe, sit back, and gear up for a winter full of projects that’ll have your home ready to tackle anything the season throws your way. Seriously, you don’t want to miss these tips; they could end up saving you a ton of cash and a whole lot of stress!

Takeaways:

1. Winter home prep is essential; tackling simple projects can save you big bucks later on.
2. Maintaining your gutters is crucial; don't let them become a fire hazard with debris buildup.
3. Check your roof and chimney regularly to avoid winter leaks and costly repairs when spring arrives.
4. Insulate your pipes and keep them warm to prevent those dreaded frozen pipe disasters this winter.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. aroundthehouseonline.com
2. youtube.com

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Foreign.

Ready to turn your house into the home you've always dreamed of without the headaches or huge bills.

You're tuned to around the House, the nation's number one home improvement radio show and podcast with expert advice that's helped millions tackle everything from remodels to repairs.

Hosts Eric G. And John Dudley have got you covered with the best advice and information about your home.

Now let's get this hour started.

Welcome to the around the House show, the trusted source for everything home improvement.

I'm Eric G. Thanks for joining me today.

John Dudley, good to see you again, brother.

Happy New Year, brother.

Good to see you.

Happy New Year.

I'm just going to keep saying happy New Year for the next few episodes because I'm really happy.

It's a new year, really.

Yeah.

I'm done with the last two, actually.

Yeah.

And I'm feeling really good about this one.

So happy freaking New Year.

Happy New Year.

So I'm happy to get that behind me.

For so many of us.

So many.

Almost everybody I know just had just a crazy, yuck year.

Yeah, it was a dumpster fire.

But a lot of people had it.

So to all you guys out there, happy New Year.

Happy New Year.

There we go.

Today.

You know, now that we're in January and I thought we'd talk about some winter home prep.

If you haven't done it yet, it's a good time to.

We're getting the heat of things out there or the chill of things, depending where you're at out there.

And the cool thing is our audience, we've got people in Alaska, we got people in Michigan.

We got people in Southern California.

We got people in Texas, Florida.

So everybody, winter means something completely different.

So we're going to try to address all of those things for everybody equally today because my son in North Dakota does things way different than our friends in South Florida.

Big difference between longer board shorts and three pairs of Carhartt.

Right?

Big difference.

Big difference.

And one of the things that I like to do talk about here is just some of the things that you need to maintain, like, great example, people with gutters and downspouts out there.

You know, I was at my buddy Scotty's place this last week in Southern California, and he had palm tree fronds all just in his gutters and everything else.

I'm like, see, up here we get all the things like leaves and all the different pine needles and that junk.

They're a nightmare.

They don't work well with the gutter guards the people put up there.

Yeah.

And they just get to be from the fir trees.

Those things just get absolutely brutal.

But you got to keep those things down for one reason, you want them to drain well.

But two, if you ever have any kind of a fire, and I'm not talking just a wildfire, but I'm talking about maybe your neighbor burning the house down or somebody getting crazy, the fireworks or something dumb happening.

Yeah.

It's nice to not have that kindling in a box right at your eaves.

Yeah, for sure.

Fireworks.

A great example.

Like, oops, that bottle rocket came down right on a giant pile of pine needles, which will smolder and smolder for hours before it actually lights your house on fire.

And.

Yep.

And I'm sure you have stories about that like I do.

Yeah, I was younger when things like that would happen.

But absolutely no, I was a little kid.

There were many times that we were shooting off bottle rockets and the pipe would fall over and all of a sudden the garage door for the neighbor's house, 2 inches up above the ground, somehow it goes in there.

And I wasn't even aiming for it.

If I was aiming for it, I couldn't have hit it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Then we got older and wiser and actually made bazookas so you could shoot the floral balls down the street.

Potato guns all get to bigger and bigger.

Here's one thing that people forget to do.

And if your gutters are draining into the downspouts, the downspout should go into a drainage system that gets that at least 20ft away from the, you know, a foundation.

12ft is a minimum, but 20ft is where you want it because that water will creep back in the crawl space.

But that underground dry well, or whether it goes out to your street or however it's designed in your area, that should be cleaned out about every five years.

This is where you want to really get in there.

Maybe have a plumbing company that can come and hydro jet that out, but really get that cleaned out because all that stuff when it rains hard gets shoved down the downspouts into your below grade storm drain system.

And that gets nasty.

I had a house one time that I used as a rental, probably because I was moving, and it just went into a rental for a little while between houses and oh, my gosh.

That went down into the storm drain system.

The storm drain went down and came through the side of the curb into the streets.

Since they had the storm drain there.

Yeah.

That had tree roots in it.

I actually ended up hooking up a rope to the back of my truck and pulled out about 20ft of tree roots that were in that corrugated pipe that was in there.

Wow.

And I just pulled it all out of there.

And because I started to get the snake on it, I'm like, why is this not going anywhere?

Then I got the snake caught, pulled it out, and went, oh, wow.

Okay, here we go.

And it was free.

I went.

I'm hooking the truck up.

Here we go.

Grab my.

Grab my F150 that I had at the time and drug it out of there and got it cleaned out.

But it filled up my whole yard recycle bin just from the junk that was out of it.

And then the house drained.

Yeah.

So that's part of it right there.

Just getting that stuff cleaned up.

And many times when people have basements that have water issues in them, many times it's from those gutters and downspouts draining right next to the house.

And we had a big problem with that in Portland here.

And they designed.

In my area here, where I'm at, Johnny, they designed the whole storm drain sewer system to be one and only.

In the middle of the 20s, 30s, or whenever they designed that system, when it rained, it went into the street, grabbed it, it put it in the sewer system.

So everything connected well.

The sewer system would overflow, and they get big rains here.

So they.

In the 60s, 70s, I believe, they made everybody disconnect and gave them a nice little tax rebate to disconnect their storm drains coming out of their gutters into the sewer system.

To say they did that.

They just dumped them next to the house.

There's thousands of homes that now have foundation damage in Portland just due to people disconnecting them incorrectly.

Yeah, that's.

Yeah.

I don't know if there was ever issues like that in Tacoma, but I can tell you, I saw so many.

Every house in Tacoma had a basement, and always there was water issues, and always it was water draining right next to the house.

People try to throw some gravel down in a splash block and like, dude, that ain't gonna fix it.

And we saw a lot of those basements have to put in those.

You know, they'd go in and channel out around the interior of your basement and put those inside curtain drains and.

Yeah.

Pump it out.

You'd literally have a sump pump in your basement.

Keeping the water out of there.

Because wasn't set up right in the first place on the outside of the house.

Man.

I had one where I had foundation damage and it was from somebody that was trying to do the right thing and store their rainwater.

What they did is those pallets.

They look like about the size of a pallet but they're those square tanks that have the metal around them for.

They're almost like a pallet sized tank.

They're a square block.

But you can put chemicals or anything.

And it's like a four by four square with.

And they've got a metal mesh over the outside.

Somebody stacked some of those up to store rainwater.

But then when they did it, they put it right up against the house.

That pushed the foundation wall in.

Yeah.

Was collapsing into the basement because.

So they put thousands of pounds right next to the foundation, which it wasn't designed to be.

And it just pushes the wall in.

Good idea.

But run a pipe out to it 20 foot from the house.

Right.

Just get it away.

Get it away.

And that's one of the.

You just got to plan ahead and think ahead with these things.

And storing rainwater can be cool.

You just got to make sure that you think about.

You get an inch of rain that traditional downspout will fill up that 50 gallon thing tank that you have out there.

Your barrel that you design with so many times that'll fill up really quickly.

And so just be real careful out there.

Make sure you got it so it can go after that and you'll be good to go.

The other thing too is I think it's really important this time of year as well is to really check your roof and chimney as well.

Make sure that the.

Those flashings are good.

If there's snow on the roof or frost up there, don't go up and check that out.

Do it on a nice sunny day where you can get up there safely.

Or just hire a professional to come up there and take a peek at it.

You know, have the roofer that put the roof on three years ago come up and do a yearly inspection.

Yeah, it's really smart.

Because if you got a problem, you can fix it.

Because we're stupid enough to walk on ice.

We don't want you to be.

Yeah, we're that guy.

Which isn't good.

And that's why we end up on the.

On the craziest home video.

Or you see us limping around with crutches because we Did.

Why we end up in the chiropractor for the rest of our life?

Absolutely.

They take my money each month.

I can guarantee that.

Johnny.

We come back, let's run out to break real quick.

We come back.

I want to talk about some preventing pipe freezes and some money saving tips as well.

In the wintertime, whether you're down south or up north, we can get you either way.

Around the House.

We'll be right back after these important messages.

Don't change that dial.

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Kids these days, you'll never understand.

What.

It'S like to play an instrument.

What's up?

This is Sticks it in Ya and.

Satchel from Steel Panther.

And you are listening to around the House with Eric G. Yeah, we love.

Eric G. And you should too.

1987.

Welcome back to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

I'm Eric G. And John Dudleyman.

I love talking about these kind of preventive things we could do like we are today, about those tips for winter prevention around your house.

Because there are so many things where you can spend 20 minutes to a half hour and prevent hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands of dollars of damage that you're fighting later on.

And I love it when you can spend a minute or two and fix things before they get bad.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's so important that I'm the guy that always puts that stuff off.

I'm like, no, It'll only take 15 minutes.

So I'll do it later instead of doing it 15 minutes.

That's the cobbler's shoes, man.

That's the cobbler's shoes is what that's.

For you and me.

It's the cobbler's shoes.

And then you throw in our ADHD of where we're squirrel and we're jumping on something else too.

It goes that way between you and.

I, but no, yeah, the stuff's so important.

And literally.

And I used to be forced when I was married, Michelle be like, all right, this Sunday we're doing all the winter stuff and you just, you take a Sunday, put something that smells good in the oven and you brew a bunch of coffee and just crank some music and get it all done.

Because like you say, it's all pretty Mild stuff.

And it's stuff you didn't notice during the summer, but you're gonna start noticing the minute the weather starts getting rougher and you get.

You guys are getting seven inches of rain.

And like, oh, I didn't think about the gutters.

I didn't think about the chimney flashing.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

One of my biggest prod things that I've had to do here, just as we get into this is my girlfriend's.

Amazing.

We painted one of the bathrooms here that her son had that kind of destroyed builder grade paint in there.

So they put flat paint in the bathroom.

So as soon as that kid started taking showers, he's an adult now.

He's moved out.

The paint didn't hold up in there very well, so we went in there and painted that room.

My biggest challenge was handing over a paintbrush to somebody else that I knew.

Yeah.

But I got it.

No, she wants to jump in.

I'm like, oh, you're really good at this.

Okay, cool.

I have help.

And that was really nice because usually I'd hand the brush off and it was like, no offense to the 8th graders out there, but it looked more like a finger painting project than it did finish paint.

It's been a period of growth of me of letting her into the project, which no problem.

I got no problem with that.

But she's capable and that is helpful.

But it's hard to get a brush out of my hand because that's honestly my favorite part of construction is like cutting in windows.

Cutting into, like, seriously, out of 30 years of experience, you put a decent fat paintbrush in my hand and let me cut stuff in all day.

I'm tickled.

It's like meditation.

It is.

Yeah.

I love it.

I know.

We have our fans and audience out there that are going, you kid me.

I can't stand painting.

And I get it.

It's probably like drywall to you and I or insulation to you and I.

But for me, it's Zen.

Yep.

I love it.

So speaking of that, these are the times, too, that it's great to tackle those kind of interior projects in the wintertime when the weather's bad.

Whether you're 50 degrees in California and you're cold because you don't like 50 degrees or we're 50 degrees in the wintertime.

Feels like summer to us up north.

There's some stuff that you can tackle inside to do it.

And one of the things that I think is a real good time to do right now is check those smoke detectors, carbon monoxide Monoxide detectors and just prep up your emergency kit.

Make sure that the.

Is your first aid kit up to date or was that bought during the Clinton administration?

You need to maybe update some of those things.

Batteries, flashlights.

How are you going to cook if you got an electric stove, that stuff ready?

You're going to lose power a few times in the winter, especially if you live in the Northwest and you don't know.

Sometimes it's an hour, sometimes it's three days.

Be prepared for that, man.

It's funny just how you're going to.

Heat the house if you got old baseboard heaters.

Yeah, think about that stuff, man.

Dude, I moved from my old house and they had a lot of protected trees, so they couldn't trim the trees around the power lines like you would normally think.

So with that, we lost power once a year for five days, man.

And you had to plan for that.

You had to plan for.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a new place.

All the stuff's underground.

And she hasn't lost power here more than.

For more than like 10 or 15 minutes or hour max.

Yeah.

Nice to watch that in seven years.

Big difference.

Yeah.

All the food in your fridge can go bad.

Like, it's.

Yeah, you got to be prepped for that.

Have a decent sized ice chest.

Because here's what happens, right?

Everybody goes, nah, won't happen now.

I don't think about that.

Don't prep for that.

It's just like when you have the three hot days in Seattle and every Home Depot sells out of fans in one day.

Let's go get a fan just like 17,000 other people.

So speaking of power going out, power, water, Internet, all those types of things in storms, I got to tell you, I'm super surprised.

For as janky as everything is down here in Colombia.

Yeah, we never lose.

First of all, rarely do things go out.

If the power goes out, it's usually three minutes and it's back on Internet.

Same thing once in a while because there's.

It's jungly and it's wet and it's.

We get more like monsoon rains and they only last an hour and a half.

But the canals fill up and everything just gets wacky and sometimes it'll blow stuff out.

But the most you'll lose water for is usually a day, usually within an hour.

Everything's back on.

Like, it's impressive considering that the infrastructure is not top notch, man.

But they're on it down here.

I love it.

It's great.

That's cool.

Yeah, I had a storm Here one time where we had ice storm and the power was so bad it actually took out a natural gas pump station.

And so there was a part of town where their natural gas turned off because the battery backup or their whatever it was monitoring that shut down.

And so they actually ran out of natural gas on the line.

It just went to nothing.

And I was like, holy smokes, never seen that happen before.

Wow.

Natural gas just disappear.

And they had a whole few neighborhoods that super rare, I guess.

But I've never seen natural gas not be there during a storm.

Then you're going, man, wish we had those baseboard heaters.

Yeah, I spent 20 grand on a backup backup power generator that runs on natural gas.

And why isn't that thing firing off?

Oh man, it just shows that anything can happen with that.

So really it's all about being prepared, man.

As we talked about just having some water, having some stuff ready.

Because it doesn't matter if you're on the west coast and you could have a, a firestorm to a, to an earthquake or you're a big snowstorm and blizzard in the north and south.

You get those hurricanes and storms coming through as well or tornadoes.

It's good just to have that stuff.

So you got it.

Maybe you'll never use it, but some of those freeze dried foods and stuff are good for 30 years.

Put them away and enjoy them.

At least a camp stove and the can of dinting more.

There we go.

There we go.

Some of that stuff's not too bad.

I like the mountain house stuff.

They make it here locally for us.

They sold across the United States.

You get an REI and those kind of camping places.

But the food's good.

You can have their Thai Thai noodles and they taste like coming out of a decent restaurant.

So you can't complain.

My bar is pretty low, man, I won't tell you.

I won't tell you how many times we just ate cold soup right out of a can on tour.

Oh yeah, that's what it's about.

You'd open that thing up, put it.

Up there in front of them.

Didn't even put it up on front on the engine while you're driving.

No, no, we just.

Nope.

Cold right out of the can.

There we go, there we go.

Hey Johnny, we're running out of time.

Let's go out to break.

When we come back, I want to talk about some energy saving tips.

Let's talk about that just as soon as around the House returns.

And hey, if you're new to the show, make sure you check out our website@aroundthehouseonline.com we'll be right back.

Around the House show is just getting started.

If you want to be in the virtual audience of an upcoming show, send us a message.

We would love to hear from you.

Just visit our website@aroundthehouse online.com make sure and subscribe to our YouTube page that has hundreds of videos to help you with your next project.

Around the house.

We'll be right back.

Now here is that band these two used to play in.

Welcome back to the around the House Show.

Before we get started, let's make sure you know how to find us.

To ask a question to Eric and John, send us a message at around the house online.com now let's get back to the show.

Welcome back to the around the House show, your trusted source for home improvement information.

Thanks for joining us today.

I'm Eric G. John Dudley.

I want to talk this hour about energy saving tips on this segment at least because, man, this is when either your AC bill in the south or your heater bill in the north gets absolutely insane.

It seems in this time of year you're dealing with humidity down south or some warm days or even some cooler days where you got the heat pump on.

And then January and February seem to be like the worst part of winter, at least for us, where we get the coldest.

It used to be like November, December, but now it's moved into kind of January, February.

And so we get the dark days of winter there.

But you know, running that thermostat sometimes correctly can really save you some money.

And sometimes the smart thing isn't just basically turning the heat off for the day while you're at work and coming home and turning it back on again because it takes a boatload of energy to get your house 10 degrees different.

Back up to it.

Yeah.

You think about how cold those quartz or stone countertops are or the tile floor, it takes a long time for that heat sink to get out of there.

So sometimes just setting the thermostat to 68 and then lowering it maybe 7 to 10 degrees when you're away or asleep.

And those programmable thermostats, the smart ones, are really nice because they can do those things automatically for you.

Yeah, those are, you know, they are one thing though, and I say this because I work with a lot of different utility companies out there.

Make sure you know what you're signing up for when your utility company is giving away that free smart thermostat, that smart thermostat that they give away many times.

You're also giving them control of that thermostat during peak times.

Yeah.

So let's say your power company says, hey, I'm going to give you this brand new nest thermostat.

We'll just throw a brand out there.

Like governors on them or something.

No, they've got control that you can allow them to use and you let them.

And they'll go, oh, my gosh, we are running out of energy.

It's a peak time.

We're gonna Change your thermostat 10 degrees to lower the pole on the network out there.

And now they're changing that peak load time, changing the thermostat for you.

So read the fine print many times.

If you get that thermostat and then click off that control thing, they might come back to you going, hey, are you going to buy that $100 thermostat because we just gave it to you so we could have control.

Yeah, I think I'll buy my own.

And I'll tell you, based on my experience of $600 a month bills in Arizona in the summer, I know we're talking about winter here, but I don't want anybody controlling my AC in the middle of summer.

People die down there in that heat.

And it's no joke, man.

And we get the rolling blackouts down there, and that's why.

But yeah, no, I'll buy my own thermostat.

I don't want nobody controlling my comfort.

Just as long as people know.

As long as people know, hey, these guys might be able to do it to keep the power on versus having to turn it off.

You just got to be good with it.

If you're not, go buy your own thermostat.

Yeah.

And not that I don't want to do my own part.

Like, I don't want to run it all.

The thermostat.

Yeah.

If my grandma's staying at my house for three days and I got to make sure she's warm.

Dude, don't.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just so you know, I'm not dogging them for it.

They're trying to control their stuff on it, but it's just one of those things that I look at and go, hey, read the fine print on that.

Understand it before you do it.

You know, they're trying to manage that whole network of car chargers to AC units out there.

Or that's a tall order.

Yeah.

And that's a tall order.

It makes sense that because they can see what's really happening.

Meanwhile, you're Cranking your heat.

And they're like, guys, everybody's cranking heat.

We got to back off a notch.

Like I, I sympathize with them.

I'm not saying it's bad, but the.

Other thing too is, you know, enjoy the solar heat when you can get it.

If you've got a sunny day, open up those windows.

At least you can let some of that heat come in.

Yep.

Now you're gonna get less of that if you've got a newer house because they're gonna have all the cool little UV and reflection stuff in there to keep that solar heat from coming in, you know, so you gotta be careful.

If you've got high tech windows, you're not gonna get as much heat as if you just have those 70s double pane aluminum ones.

Those will let all the heat in you want.

But yeah, windows are a big thing too.

And again, like I, I'm many years removed from the northwest and my last years were spent in Arizona when I was in the States.

And at night, when it's the summertime again, talking about summertime, but we're talking about energy efficiency.

And as soon as sun goes down, man, you rip open every window and you leave them open all night and you get up before the sun comes up and you shut them all again.

And you just saved a lot of money because you keep that coolness from the night in the house so it doesn't get so hot during the day.

Because again, like you said, you come home, you crank up the AC because the house is on fire and it takes a ton of energy to get it to get back down.

Yeah, yeah, it's big.

And in Arizona you had that luxury of having dry air.

So, you know, if you're in the south or anywhere else where humidity is an issue, you open the windows up at night and go, cool.

I'm gonna cool it down.

But you're also bringing in 80 relative humidity at the same time.

Yeah, no, it's not so cool in Thailand.

So you got to be careful.

You had that luxury there.

But I tell you what, here I like, I like bringing it down.

I like a cold room when I sleep.

So it's nice if I can get.

It better for your health, it's better for your mind.

It's.

Yeah, everybody piles blankets on, wants to be all warm.

But I'm a hot sleeper to begin with.

But yeah, no, it's science, right?

It's better to sleep cold.

So tolerate it, save some energy.

And yeah, if you've got a newer water heater, I say this, you can do some water heater tweaks, but a lot of the new water heaters are so energy efficient, it doesn't really matter as much.

If you change it from 120 to 130, it's really not that big a deal.

So if you've got an older water heater, yeah, you could save a little bit there.

But really you're going to save more by putting in that heat pump water heater like we talked earlier about than you are by changing at 5 or 10 degrees.

It's just not going to be that big a deal right there with rising energy costs out there because it sure as heck isn't getting cheaper out there.

These are all things you should probably pay attention to just a little bit more.

Now the other thing, and we should.

All take more cold showers.

Science again, it's better for you.

Yeah, I know.

I'm not into the cold plunge thing, man.

I got too much metal in my body that it hurts.

Yeah, you get used to it.

Even it's just 30 seconds at the end is good for you.

But I tell you what, back to Colombia, I don't know, dude, maybe half the country like this is, they don't have hot showers.

They're like, yeah, yeah.

Anyway, you guys also have that.

They just take cold showers.

I'm like, yeah, no, I heat like I've stayed on the farms and I'm like, I'll heat some water up in a pan and use a washcloth.

But.

But I do always rinse with cold.

Like I, I've gotten pretty good at it, but nice.

I don't want my whole shower to be that way.

No.

And then on top of it down there, you guys have the lamp cord going into the shower to heat the water heater that's hooked onto the.

Hooked on.

Dude, it's crazy.

The shower head.

Yeah, the shower head has a cord that you put into a receptacle that's right above the shower head.

And so all that humidity, all that.

Yeah.

And the trick with those shower heads, again, I'm digressing.

But those shower heads, the less water you feed them, the hotter they get because they don't really get hot.

You just get tippet.

So if you turn it way down so you don't have much water pressure, but at least you got hot water.

I've fried two of those things and watched smoke come out of the receptacle because you're not feeding it enough water.

You're just trying to get it so it's hot.

Yeah, I Just want hot.

Because I love hot showers and then cold rinses.

But yeah, I burned two of those things.

One in the wall, one on the head.

Ouch.

Yeah.

I don't want to be standing in the shower watching.

Watching you let the smoke out of something like that.

No.

Did you just see in this orange glow from the receptacle while water splashing up there, you're like, I think I'm about done.

Question I have for you before we go to break, Johnny, did you turn the water off first or did you just unplug it with the water going?

No, I just turned the water off.

And I leave the bathroom, I'm like.

I'm out of here.

There we go.

Okay.

I was going to say if you grab that power cord with the hot shower, that's like throwing the toaster in the bathtub.

That's not recommended.

I am an electrical.

Respectable, whatever.

I respect electricity.

I'm not stupid.

There we go.

There we go.

All right.

When we come back, guys, I got some pitfalls that we're going to help you avoid as well.

For that last segment, we'll do that just as soon is around the House returns.

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We'll be right back.

Welcome back to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

I'm Eric G. Man, you guys, I wish we have to do one of these things live, Johnny, so people can see our rants in between the commercial breaks.

We just went down a rabbit hole of unsafe things that we saw out there.

And I was talking about El Salvador when I was down there working in the jungle with some of the guys and some of the sketchy situations that were daily things that we had down there that you would see that here in the United States.

We go, whoa, not even close.

Yeah, no, you're right.

Live it would be.

It's.

And I hate to say it, but the audience is actually missing a lot of the fun.

And it may not pertain to anything.

It may pertain to what we're actually trying to get.

Information we're trying to get out, but nothing else.

You'd enjoy the stories, so I think we should start including some of that.

We're gonna start doing that.

We'll start doing that one so we can include it in the show here coming up.

I'll tell you to everybody listening out there, send us an email if you want to hear us just tell more wacky stories and not be so precise about refrigerator compressors.

Obviously we're going to get you the good info out there and get you the details you need to take care of your house and do things right and do things smart.

But who doesn't like a story about bamboo ladders in Thailand connecting 6, 000 wires at a time in bare feet?

That stuff's interesting.

So let us know if you want to hear about it.

Send us an email, say, yeah, more of that.

So hit us there, Johnny.

Let's get back on track here.

One of the things that we see happen a lot right now when it comes to our homes is that especially in the wintertime in the heating areas that, that the furnace H vac strain, all of a sudden it's 30 degrees outside.

Then it goes to minus 10 or something like that.

And you're really putting that strain on your system.

And it's no different.

We were 90 degrees and all of a sudden we went up to 117 in Portland.

Yeah.

It's just all of a sudden things.

It's like an old car.

We use that last hour as a reference, but really it's like an old car and you're just pushing it hard.

Chance of a busting is good.

So you really want to make sure and keep those things maintained.

And whether you've got the air conditioning on down south of the heater up north, it's one of those things.

But even Denver friends around there just a few weeks ago I was looking, I'm like, wow, it's 72 degrees still in Denver.

Which is not a December thing you're used to looking at.

Absolutely not.

Yeah.

I couldn't believe that when you told me that.

And then, then my little brother sent me a bunch of photos of Park City, Utah, where there was grass showing.

Yeah, they're mowing the lawn in December.

Do it these ski places with no snow.

I'm like, oh man.

Okay.

So, yeah, things are shifting a little bit.

They are another one out there that just.

So in case this really applies to everybody in the US because at least the continental US we all can get that sneaky freeze that comes up on it.

Whether you're in Florida or California or any place else you in Texas.

That happens a lot.

And just make sure that the pipes are insulated.

The biggest thing that I want you to do is if you get that freeze that comes in and you don't have a well insulated house, you know, open up those cabinet doors underneath the sink, go in there, open those up, make sure you got good airflow on.

Make sure that you've got those hose bibs, take the hoses off the outside, disconnect them because those will freeze up even a frost free one.

If you've got water in it that'll blow those out.

And just make sure that you got things insulated and got airflow things keeping it warm because otherwise you're just going to be fighting it.

And that way you don't freeze it up.

The problem we see like in Texas is they ran a lot of California some too.

They ran the water lines in the ceiling of the ranch houses.

So if you don't have a lot of insulation up in there, guess what, it's frozen.

And you're just hoping that you've got enough heat loss to keep it going.

But really spend some time on that.

Frozen burst pipes can be a big issue.

Let the water run, waste it if you have to.

Might be expensive, but it's a heck of a lot less expensive than paying the plumber to come out with six or eight burst pipes that you have.

Yeah, a little bit goes a long ways right there.

And keep the house a little bit warmer too.

That will help.

Yeah, that heat loss is going to come out through it.

And then the other thing is too is if you get deep snow, you're up in the mountains or even if you're not, you get that extra two feet of snow, those metal carports to any of those things outside, those your lawn, patio pieces, all of those things can get really destroyed by that snow load.

So make sure that you're watching that.

And if you get too much snow up on the roof, that can be an issue.

In areas where they get they're used to 2 inches of snow and they get 10 or 20 inches of snow or even more that can add a big snow load on it.

So make sure if you have to get one of those snow rakes and take it off there and watch it and you'll be good.

The other one I want to talk about, and this is probably our biggest one in the winter.

Time to watch out for.

Man.

Humidity in your home can cause so many problems.

Yeah, if you're getting above 60% relative humidity in your house, and you should be watching it.

If you have a basement, you should have a humidity, basically a gauge down there and one upstairs just to make sure that you've got it going and you've got it under control.

Because once you get above 60, you've got dust mites, you're getting the opportunity for mold to grow.

But even your kitchen cabinets, if you've got maple kitchen cabinets, all of a sudden those are swelling up, and you're losing the finishes off of those, and the hardwood floors are moving.

You can really cause significant damage.

It's hard to repair when you get it back under control.

There's a lot of wood in houses and a lot of other materials that, with that amount of moisture, are gonna start moving, and that's what you don't want.

Yeah, no, that's a really good point that a lot of people don't think about until they notice the cabinet swelling or the door not opening.

They're like, what the heck's going on?

Yeah, that's what it is.

Any kind of gauge you can have that tells you, oh, this.

Okay, we got to do something about that.

Whether it's dehumidifier, run a fan or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, it's back up for a second.

I was just gonna say, you're talking about snow loads and.

And freezing pipes.

And I think if we've learned anything, speaking of no snow at the ski areas, it's to expect the unexpected nowadays, because things really are changing.

Portland getting 117.

Unheard of.

Right.

Seven inches of rain in one day.

That's pretty fierce.

Like, things are shifting, and we're getting different intensities of weather than we ever have.

So it's.

It's more important than ever, is my point to be respectful and be prepared for the unexpected because, man, things are weird.

Great example.

Yep.

When that blew up, sheesh.

How many years ago?

So it was 80.

Long time ago.

40 plus years ago.

When that thing blew up, it put down where the Spirit lake was.

It put in what they say, 60 or 100ft of silt in what was that?

Riverbed.

Yeah.

So when they had the big rains a few weeks ago up there, now all of a sudden, that silt has a water stream running through it.

And we know what happens with loose silt.

When you get water running through it, it just cuts through it like butter and a knife.

Hot knife cutting through butter.

So that goes through there.

So they've had all these silt issues now downstream.

Because when they get those big rains, if you've got 60 or 80ft to cut through and all that material's coming down, all of a sudden, that drinking water, whatever's pulling out of that river is not drinking water anymore.

That's messy, dude.

And that's how many decades later.

So you just gotta be careful with that stuff.

You just absolutely have to be a little careful with that.

The other one, too, I just want to make sure, as you understand, is outside of that is just pay attention to those carbon monoxide risks from starting the car up to warm it up with the garage door being shut.

I know so many people that go in their garage, start the car up, hit the garage door, open it up.

Should be the other way around.

You should be opening the garage door up, starting it up and going.

Because nobody wants to be hot boxing that carbon monoxide inside the house.

Because it's just gonna get in there.

That garage, as much as they try, is not her medically sealed.

And that air ends up going in there.

Especially when your H vac system stuff is out there.

If you're gonna warm it up, pull it outside to warm it up.

Just don't do it in the garage, shall we say?

Yeah.

Yep.

That can be a big issue.

And it's a bad habit that I see out there.

And the other thing is too.

And on all the newer homes out there, before we go to break this time of year, pay attention to your humidity.

I don't know how many times, Johnny, we see the nice glass garage doors.

Nothing wrong with them.

I'll be out going for a walk.

People will pull in their two BMW SUVs in that garage that is fully insulated and drywalled because it's part of the house now.

Yep.

They shut the garage door, and I can see the rain coming down on the inside of the glass.

Old glass.

And what happens.

It's like that glass of lemonade in the summertime that's cold.

It's just running down on the inside.

So, yeah.

And it's garage.

Your Christmas stuff stored out there, your kids toys, whatever.

And now that's got mold growing all over it.

So really watch the humidity in the garage as well.

Because when you bring those wet cars in, if you don't have a way to treat, that could be a moldy mess.

In today's newer homes with finished garages, be aware, let alone table saws and things like that are out there as well.

They love to catch rust.

Yeah, but that's okay, then you just get to buy a new one.

There we go.

On that note, Johnny, we are out of time for this hour of the show.

Thanks everybody for tuning in.

We'd love to hear from you.

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So I'm Eric G for John Dudley.

You've been listening to around the House.