Oh you eight eleven on the morning shows, seven hundred w l W. Kind enough to join us each and every Thursday at this time. You can hear him syndicated on nearly three hundred radio stations coast to coast. I mean the brand, the man Gary Sullivan.
Mister Brenneman. How in the world are you good?
Buddy? How you doing today?
Good? You got your overalls. We're gonna work today.
Are we? I'm ready to go.
Let's go, toolbox, got your goggles.
I got a hat, need a hat. My hair's fallen out, and so all of a sudden it's skin being exposed rather than hair. Doesn't happen to you.
I got hair.
You got a whole head full of hair. Goodness, gracious, good yeous. All right, right now, you told me that there are a few things around your house that have bothered you lately. Right, okay, so you tell me. The first one is whenever you go to you say the vanity like shave in the morning, that kind of thing. Right, there's an odor there right now? Now? What is going on with that?
Yeah? You ever have that problem?
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, it's a fairly common problem. And what it is, it's bacteria. I mean that's what causes odors and the reason. And there's always going to be bacterian drains, whether it's the kitchen and you got food particles, whether it's you know, the vanity and you've got flakes of skin, hair shaving residue, all that. But really, what's happened in the cosmetics industry? A lot everything is kind of sticky. I mean, we've got hairspray. Of course, you don't need that now you're losing.
Your That's exactly right, that's exactly right.
You needed that day. Yeah, thanks a lot, you bet you. We got shaving cream that's not really soapy, it's kind of just sticky. It's kind of like a gel. Yep, So we got all these things on toothpastes of a jail. Everything's a gel. So the inside of the pipes get a little sticky, and when we turn the water on, or before we turn the water on, you start having this odor from the bacteria. And so people will get in there and they'll put drain cleaners in there and
different things like that. But we kind of started the odor. So what's going on?
What is going on?
Yeah, And a lot of cases people overlook one thing and that is the overflow tube on the inside of the vanity bowl. So in other words, if your drain was not running very well and somebody left the water on, which by the way, happened to me about thirty years ago when the kids were home, and the water spills over, well, that's because it wasn't able to take enough water down during that overflow hole. But that's where the odor is
coming from. Everybody's concentrating on the drain and you should ud but bathrooms are humid in a lot of cases, that bacteria is being activated by moisture, and the odor is actually it's in the drain, but it's also coming up through uh the overflow tube. So the overflow tube agains on the front side of the ball tom usually about right where the right where your gut is on the inside of that bowl. Get some either bleach or dishwashing for the dishwasher, that soap, and just puts that
down there. It'll migrate down into the pipe and it will also sanitize that overflow and I'll tell you, within a day or so that odor will be gone. And it's almost something that's going to be relatively a maintenance thing. You get a little whiff of that. Just get just get that. Uh, get that solved with the dishwashing.
Okay, So if I if I hear you right, this is not only you, you were making reference it for you. It's in the bathroom where you shave the vanity, et cetera. This is the same kind of thing. Because I noticed yesterday around our house that it was the kitchen sink right, the disposal. Right, So you're telling me this same thing works for.
That, Well, I'll tell you what I would do. So there's different products that will sanitize your disposal. Some of them look like a big giant pill. It looks like a hockey puck. You just put it in there, grind it up, and it'll sanitize the inside of the disposal. But if you're having that odor, throw some ice cubes in there, threw a lemon in there, grind it up.
That'll clean the inside up pretty good. Okay, But where the odors coming from on a disposal, Tommy, You that a little black gasket that fits down in the drainkyp pull that out, it just comes right out, sure, and scrub the back of it with just some dish soap. That's what happens when the food gets ground up, it splashes on the back side of that gasket and that bacteria starts growing. It creates an odor. So it's as simple as just as cleaning that out, and it's pretty simple to clean.
It's funny you bring that up because just experiencing that yesterday. Okay, another thing that you said bothering you about your house. These days, you're getting gaps around the door and your floors are squeaking. Let's take each of those in and out by themselves.
Yeah, they're all related. Okay, they're all related, which makes it really simple. And I don't know if you have that, but if you got some crown molding and all of a sudden you can see a gap between the crown molding and the ceiling or baseboards, the baseboard to the wall, there gets to be a little grap gap. And it's especially this time of year or around the doors and the floor squeaking. And the reason is your house is
drying out. It is cold out there. It's going to be cold all weekend, and when it's really cold, humidity gets very very low. When everybody checked their indoor humidity, it should be between thirty and thirty five percent, you probably are running. If you don't have a humidifier, you very well could be running humidity around twenty twenty five percent. It dries out the wood and it causes squeaks. It causes squeaks. So now a really good thing for around
the gaps between the crown molding and the floor. This is a perfect time to clock those. You can use in acrylic, siliconized calcking good stretch ability. Because you go, your house goes.
Here you go again, Gary, Here you go again, Here you go again.
I told you talk about cruelty.
Again, here we go. I'm not down for me how easy that is, because I'm sure it probably is.
It's not that different, okay, And if you don't want to do it, it's okay. Just let's work on getting the humidity level up to around thirty five percent in your home. Maybe you get a umidifier in your furnace, maybe you get a bedroom youmidifier. Again. Putting some moisture in the air will alleviate some of these problems and you'll feel better. Your nasal passages will feel a lot better in the morning, and your skin's gonna feel better.
So getting that humidity up so you can see it wherever there's organic material like wood, and you take the moisture out because the air is very, very drier. Of course, your wood floors are gonna squeak, right, and there's gonna be gaps. Things are shrinking your houses literally breathing and
shrinking and expanding in contraction. So if you don't want to get the calking out, even though you can siliconized to crily calking, it's paintable, it's stretchable, and it will do a great job of filling that up and it'll close up real nice in the summer. As it stretches next winter, you'll have that elasticity to cover that gap.
So this sounds like a stupid question, but you know, I'm not a bright guy on this stuff. Generally, when the humidity comes back, as things warm up again, those things take care of themselves.
By and large, they do, Okay, they really do. Yep. They'll expand and fill out. But it's not very you know, it's not very pretty in the winter time, and if you want to stay on top of it, this is a perfect time to fill those gaps.
Okay, last thing I wanted to ask you about, and and look I don't care if you have a house it was built last year. It feels like this time of year, when it gets this cold, you get anywhere near a window, there seems to be a little bit of a draftiness to it.
Is that fair? Yeah?
Okay? And what to do?
Yeah, you know sometimes Toms, it's as basic as making sure the window is locked. I know it sounds weird, but if it's a casement window or a double hung window, there's locks. You know. You got the two little locks on the top of the slider of the double hung window. Make sure they're locked because that pulls the two windows together. And I'll tell you when people complain to me about drafting windows and I tell them about checking to make sure it's locked, I can't tell you how many times
they go, oh yeah, different, I bet. So that's one thing, just double check. Another thing you can do is pull the blinds down. That'll help, you know, alleviate a little bit. It's the draft's still gonna come in, but it's not gonna blow right on you, so pull the blinds down. There is also I'm gonna go back to the calking thing. A lot of people don't realize this product exists. There's one called a draft stop, and I think one's called peel away. It's a clear calking. You can literally calk
your windows closed. So where the two meet the frame, or where the two panels meet each other, you can put a bead of cocking there. Like the draft stop. It's clear. It'll seal that draft come March. You can just pick and peel that away.
Hmm. Okay, I got one more question, all right, and this wasn't on our list as far as the flume is concerned. Okay. In a fireplace, okay, right, and it's really really cold, there has to be some air that's coming down there if you leave it open, and it probably it gets in even if you have it closed. Okay, But is there a rule of thumb about really should I close it or can I just leave it open? The difference?
Do you have a gas fireplace?
Yes, but then I turn off the gas and let the wood burn?
Yeah, I would, uh, First of all, when the fires burn, of course, the flu stays open. Second or the four it's everything's extinguished, everything is out. I'd give it a half hour and i'd definitely close it, okay, because what it is, it's like a metal plate that just kind of you know, it's not like weather stripping and rubber on it or anything. It's just a metal plate. But it stops the draft. And as you turn a cooking fan on the bathroom fan, guess where it's pulling the
air right down the chimney. Yep, yep, ok, yeah, make sure that's cool.
My wife was all over my case yesterday about it.
Did you win or lose?
Why would you even ask me that?
I just thought, I mean, are you kidding that?
I just how long you've been marry Gary?
Fifty years?
Like, okay, you got me double. I hit twenty five a month and a half ago.
Yeah, that's why I can ask those questions.
You've lost a lot more than I have.
Oh I've lost one.
All right, my friend, Thanks for your time. As always, all right, I goes Gary Sullivan. You can hear him over on fifty five KRC Saturdays and Sundays, nine to noon. Danny Gleason produces his show that goes coast to coast nearly three hundred stations across America.