In this weeks mid week special we dive into what you can do to green up that lawn and have that best looking yard in the neighborhood, we talk about current lumber prices and where they are headed and how to save some money on that power bill that keeps skyrocketing in areas of the country. Plus we talk about this plumbing that was done completely wrong in a house that could have been deadly. All this and more in this weeks Around the House show mid week special.

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[00:00:39] Eric Goranson: Hello, Caroline

[00:00:43] Eric Goranson: old are they? 34 around the house. Turns 34 on Friday. We're

[00:00:54] Eric Goranson: Yeah, back to 34. Ooh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Um, [00:01:00] No, I don't want to go back to 34, actually. That was a bad year. I had a really crazy ex at that point. So I want to go to 34.

[00:01:21] Caroline Blazovsky: That was it. It's like, I feel like we were kids at 34. I

[00:01:29] Caroline Blazovsky: come on. You've never made a bad decision. I don't buy

[00:01:38] Eric Goranson: Oh, good. Oh good. Well, man, we've got so much to talk about in this mid-week special. No. I mean, it's, it's interesting out there. You start looking at the markets out there. Lumber futures prices are going down. So that's good. That means that lumber prices are going to start kind of dialing back in. I mean, as of today, they're down, um, which is awesome.

[00:02:18] Caroline Blazovsky: means a wood deck could be coming.

[00:02:26] Eric Goranson: You start to see, you know, even though that's not OSB prices, it does affect all those lumber futures, prices, all that commodity stuff. So when you go in and look at the two by four sitting there at, you know, at Lowe's or home Depot, That's that's where you can see where the trends are. And I think we're going to be battling that, but with interest rates rocketing up on homes right now, I mean, I was talking with a buddy realtor of mine and he does in my area, you know, million dollar homes, which to be honest in my area, that's pretty common, [00:03:00] uh, in the city I'm in.

[00:03:28] Caroline Blazovsky: We'll see how. The housing market, because right now it's crazy. Every time, you know, we're in the market and we're looking, there were 30 people ahead of us to look at a house this weekend, this weekend.

[00:03:54] Eric Goranson: People go, oh wow. Housing's going to slow down. Cause people it's more expensive. You have to put a bigger down [00:04:00] payment down because the housing, it costs you more to get the money. So when you look at that, it tends to go, okay, this is going to be interesting so that the market goes, oh, wow. Maybe we're not in such of a housing building.

[00:04:30] Caroline Blazovsky: me.

[00:04:40] Eric Goranson: Dang. This

[00:04:51] Eric Goranson: Yeah, there are places in the country. And I saw Connecticut being an example where you could see a [00:05:00] 25% electricity spike just in your electricity bill.

[00:05:27] what

[00:05:31] Eric Goranson: Hey, you're taking a look at my electrical work seriously. It's one of those things that, yeah, it wouldn't, you know, so things that you can do around the house coming into spring summertime. Is watch those, those heating bills. If you're on electric heat and an air conditioner, maybe watch that thermostat because this is that time of year.

[00:06:00] Caroline Blazovsky: other thing too, is everybody sort of wants to put that air conditioning down in the sixties. And they were like, I want it freezing cold.

[00:06:33] Caroline Blazovsky: And it's also going to keep your humidity lower cause higher temperature actually promotes lower heat.

[00:06:46] Caroline Blazovsky: It is like the colder these basements get. And you know, you get a lot of this. What I call blow over, right? Your basement gets super, super cold.

[00:07:05] Eric Goranson: What's with your steam, your client and the steam generator, dumping wastewater. When it flushes itself into the radon system, what's with that hot mess.

[00:07:18] Caroline Blazovsky: gosh. So I call Eric because Eric is the king of steam shower. So he knows everything about a steam shower. If you want to know about steam shower, you call Eric. And I see this, I'm looking at this radon vent pipe in one of my client's home. And I follow up, there's a hose that's dumping into the radon pipe and the radon pipe in this house was three inches.

[00:07:53] Caroline Blazovsky: 2012. Yeah.

[00:08:02] Caroline Blazovsky: steams are us and decided to vent their machine into the radon pipe.

[00:08:15] Eric Goranson: So that steam system to prevent buildup flushes itself, as soon as. As you're done using the steam shower. So it flushes all the water that's in the steam generator out, down there. Well, I'm not sure if that's direct plumbed, so they don't put steam down there. It probably drops into a pan. And then that pan where it dumps out, drains down into the radon, put that system.

[00:09:10] Eric Goranson: Not going out the

[00:09:20] Eric Goranson: I don't know, but think about this. Here's the thing, too. If you turn that steam, if you turn the radon pump on, right? Think of, think of having a stroke, you ever have a, a shake and you bent the straw and you broke it and it won't, you, you can't use the straw cause you broke the straw.

[00:09:55] Caroline Blazovsky: Wait, and I have more information in this case.

[00:10:18] Caroline Blazovsky: Remember I told you they did two double fans. He said he would lose his license if he actually did a lead house like this, because you cannot put the rain on fan in the home, it's got to be exterior. And that fan is.

[00:10:35] Caroline Blazovsky: Remember we were trying, I had done air testing and I was trying to figure out how this radon Mo this Mo this pipe in the basement where they had taken this drainage into the radon pipe, had gotten all moldy and disgusting. And there was mold going all the way up, you know, growing all the way up the line, going up into the second floor.

[00:10:57] Eric Goranson: course it is. Yeah, because you're right. Thinking [00:11:00] about that. Every radon system I've ever seen the fan is exterior to the structure

[00:11:10] Caroline Blazovsky: If you have a lead built home, you have to have the fan on the exterior. Otherwise you could lose your

[00:11:26] Eric Goranson: Yeah. See, the two fans looks even worse cause they're going to fight each other

[00:11:34] Eric Goranson: Fascinating insanity. Wow. Okay. So we got more to that

[00:11:45] Eric Goranson: No, don't go put in your drain water down in, down the pipe.

[00:11:58] Caroline Blazovsky: Oh, go ahead. Just tell them about [00:12:00] code. So now you have a four-inch radon plate back then they were using a three inch, so it could get confusing. You could accidentally go into a pipe that you thought was, you know, sewage,

[00:12:21] Eric Goranson: You could look at that. It was clearly marked where they put that in there. They knew that was a radon system. You would have had to a blind person would touch the outside of that and go. That seems to be a radon system because of all the markings and the things on it. Any, there's not a single plumber that would have done.

[00:12:46] Eric Goranson: benefit of the doubt. There was either somebody working on that that had no idea what they're doing, and I guarantee you there wasn't a building inspection on it. Cause there's no inspector that went you're training water into the radon system. That can't be good.

[00:13:08] Eric Goranson: You got it. You got it. Send us head over and around the house online, hit the contact us page and see if we can tackle that for you. Well, another thing I've been tackling because my weather has been good out here. I got the first good lawn mow in this season. That felt good.

[00:13:27] Eric Goranson: Yeah. You're like, it's like.

[00:13:37] Caroline Blazovsky: alert. Um, what is that called? When it comes down really fast. So the snow

[00:13:43] Caroline Blazovsky: we had that just the other day. You saw the pilot out in Pennsylvania. Did you see that massive amount? Oh my God.

[00:13:51] Eric Goranson: yeah, that was horrible. And, and by the way, people, if you get into that pile up situation like that, Get away from your car when it's safe, [00:14:00] don't stand around next to it. I saw people that were nearly killed that got lucky. You know, man, just get out in a way because you got to get away from that situation.

[00:14:27] Eric Goranson: Wonder that's what I mentioned you.

[00:14:34] Eric Goranson: No, actually it's been actually get a lot of my companies. I've actually that I get stuff from have switched to ups, so I don't get lost back packages anymore, but you know, sorry, FedEx, I love you guys, but just deliver the stuff. But I do like it after they've replaced it, you know, they, they send you a new one and then.

[00:15:02] Caroline Blazovsky: So do you have news? I need news on how to keep my lawn green.

[00:15:12] Eric Goranson: you know, a lot of it's just care. You know, if you've got a lot of snow, you gotta kind of do a, uh, a little bit of a, you know, a shortcut on it with the lawnmower. Cause you'll get. That snow mold that happens out there where the snow just kind of mats down and makes it look quite yellow and nasty. But for me, I always hit mine because I have Mohs in mine and I really have a battle with high acid because of the trees.

[00:16:18] Eric Goranson: Mulching it with a bad lawnmower blade or something like that. You know, maybe it's time to go in there. Here. We're starting to get into what I call fetching season, which is kind of before Memorial day weekend, where you can go out there and FACHE that lawn take all that buildup underneath that, and then, you know, haul that all off and then overseen it and you can get a really green lawn that way.

[00:16:45] Caroline Blazovsky: and people forget to see, I overseed my lawn because you want to make sure that the grass actually overtakes the weed versus the weed overtaking the grass. So, you know, making sure you did mulch up stuff from last season too, like I'm, I'm pretty, um, [00:17:00] It's the word, you know, I do, I am very adamant about going out there and making sure that I'm taking all that leave and debris and giving it fertilizer naturally, because I don't use it like to use a lot of fertilizer, but sometimes you'd have to, I'm not totally opposed to it because otherwise, you know,

[00:17:23] Eric Goranson: We have those here and you can go down there and they will give you a sample and tell you what that looks like. And then you need to go, wow, I'm low on iron. I'm low on this. I'm low on this. And wow, it's too acidic or, or, you know, too alkaline, whatever it is. And then you can kind of create the right. No, that's huge.

[00:17:46] Caroline Blazovsky: thing. We do that with a garden, you know, it's so funny. I do that so much with the garden, but I never do it with my lawn and I should, it's definitely a key.

[00:18:05] Eric Goranson: To really make sure that you're putting the right seed down there. If you've got like me, I've got dogs in the backyard, I gotta do something that's Hardy. But my challenge is, is what's Hardy and half shade, you know, that's where you start getting it because a lot of the shade grasses are more delicate because they don't get the full.

[00:18:48] Eric Goranson: My grandfather used to do this when I was in golf. Water would be scarce. And so they paint a lawn green to make it look like grass. I mean, you can buy this [00:19:00] off Amazon. Yeah. They're so expensive. Oh yeah. There's areas like if you're getting water shortages here in California, especially. Wow. You're like, it is illegal for you to water your lawn.

[00:19:35] Eric Goranson: That's the way. It's crazy. I'm not a fan, but, uh, Hey, you know, I'd rather have it green. And, but when you're short on water, you don't have too many options. To be honest, you're either going to be putting in turf or you're going to be putting in, uh, putting in new grass. But, um, you know, keep that lawn cared for the work you do now will pay off all year round.

[00:20:00] Caroline Blazovsky: back and, you know, I'm, you know what, I'm totally hot for. The zero turn. Isn't the zero turn radius. Electric mower.

[00:20:11] Caroline Blazovsky: That thing is bad ass. And I can say it because we're on a podcast

[00:20:22] Eric Goranson: I shared at my Greenworks video, I did last. I'll tell you what, there is no shade to the guys that love gas powered lawn lawnmowers out there. But I haven't had a gas powered lawnmower in four or five years now, and they just keep getting better and better every year you can get zero turns out there that you can do your lawn with.

[00:20:51] Caroline Blazovsky: Right. So awesome. You need to put that up. Do you have the video? We need to see that.

[00:20:56] Eric Goranson: last week? Actually. I see. And so [00:21:00] it's up on around the house. So I've got some other ones I'll put up here a little bit later as well, but, uh, check those out for that. Check it out. It's on around the house, Facebook page and a, you can catch it right there. All right. Carolyn, anything else that we missed?

[00:21:21] Eric Goranson: There we go. The slap heard around the world. I'm

[00:21:29] Eric Goranson: Oh, yeah. Oh, one other one other quick tip that I want to hit too. If you're worried about your electrical bill, make sure that you get like at home electricity home monitor, like sensor, one of those to monitor your electricity so you can see what's costing you money.

[00:21:59] Caroline Blazovsky: Yeah.

[00:22:12] Eric Goranson: Whew. You don't want to see that you don't want to see that aren't everywhere. We got a great show ahead.

[00:22:36] Caroline Blazovsky: architecture.

[00:22:45] Eric Goranson: Yeah, we have a good time in that one. And then we talk a little bit about your stuff too. About some, uh, some green building stuff that makes sense, which I love.

[00:22:53] Caroline Blazovsky: Good. But yeah, I'm so stoked. Oh, cool. Happy spring, everyone.