KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp The House Whisper on demand on the iHeart Radio app, live streaming in HD everywhere on the iHeartRadio App. Hey, welcome home. I am Dean Sharp, the House Whisper. I design custom.
Homes, I build custom homes, and most importantly today, I am your guide to better understanding that place where you live. Today on the show, a continuation of yesterday's topic, which was just taking your calls. That's right, it's an all calls weekend. I thought it would be really nice after a couple of well the three very harrowing weeks here in southern California, wildfires seemingly everywhere, and you know that we hear at kfire all in it. We double down,
we do what we need to do. Here on the program, we've been talking about every imaginable aspect of these fires, of fire, hardening your home, all of that, and of course, not to be insensitive to those who have just begun this journey because of the disasters that have befallen them
in these fires. We are going to continue to be discussing fires, fire related things for weeks and months to come, and so there you have it, but but it's also good sometimes to give yourself permission to just take a beat, press pause, and breathe a little bit. And that's what we're doing this weekend. That's what we're going to do today for the next three hours, you and I together, we're just taking a beat. And what that means is, I'm letting you tell me what the show is about today.
You set the agenda for the show. If you want to talk about fire, that's fine, that's great.
I'm ready to go.
But anything else also that has got you scratching your head or concerned or questioning something about your home design questions, DIY issues, construction questions, you name it. You know, I'm here for it all. That's what we're here to do. So the phone lines are are we Yeah, the phone lines are open.
Now.
Let me give you the number eight three three two. Ask Dean A three three, the numeral two, and then you just spell out ask Dean eight three three to ask Dean.
That's what we are serving up for you today.
So I'm just gonna welcome you to sit down, relax, whatever it is that you're doing right now, I'm glad you're with us. It is a cloudy day here in southern California. There's rain falling. Oh my goodness, how great is that? The temperatures have dropped, and you know it's a good day to pour yourself a warm beverage.
Here.
Let me do that for you. Look at that. Look at that.
I realized yesterday I started to do this, but the volume wasn't up on that little sound effect. And so when if you don't catch it right at the beginning, it is very important to hear this part. If you don't catch that right at the beginning, I'm gonna let it run, just for saying. And then you come in here just sounds like you're peeing. It just sounds like somebody's peeing. And that was not a comforting thought. Well, what are you laughing at? It's true?
Is it not right? You need that little I.
Don't know even what that is that resonant you first burst of coffee into the cup. Right anyway, there you go, hey, really quick, let me introduce you to our awesome team.
Elmer is on the board. Good morning, Elmer, Good morning, Dean Ago Bud doing good. That's Sunday, and that's it's good morning.
There it is there, It is uh, producer Richie standing by.
Oh, look he's handling some calls right now. So Richie is here.
He's going to be screening our calls today, as always, doing an awesome job. And then there's my buddy, Eileen Gonzalez at the news desk.
Good morning, Eileen, Good morning Dean. How's it going.
Uh, it's good. I'm I'm I'm glad that I don't see the sun shining right now. I'm just loving the kind of the overcastness.
We need rain, not too much, but yeah, not too much.
I don't think this is going to do too much. I don't think this is this is not gonna be like I don't believe that it's you know, oh, finally the rain is here. But and now it's gonna come down so hard and so fast that we're going to get landslides and ground movement in the areas that are burnt. I don't think it's gonna be troublesome for those areas.
I'm hoping not.
I don't think it will be Mother Nature's in charge, yes, yes, exactly. Oh and speaking of being in charge, sitting across the table from me, the person who's really in charge, my better half, my design partner, the co founder of a house Whisper, and my best friend in the world.
Tina is here.
I's drop my coffee. Great, all right, we're gonna get to it, y'all. It is an all calls Sunday. We've got some calls on the board, but there's still room for you. Eight three three two Ask Dean your home with Dean Sharp the house Whisper.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from kf I A M six forty.
Ah.
We are just enjoying an all weekend, taking a little bit of a break from all the craziness that we've been covering for the last two or three weeks now, and uh taking your calls because I just want to talk to you today.
That's all there is to it.
I just want to talk to you find out what's going on with your home. So time to go to the phone. So, by the way, the number to reach me eight three three, the numeral two.
Ask Dean.
That's eight three three two, Ask Dean A three three the numeral two beep and then you just spell out ask Dean. I don't know why, Tina laughs every time I do that.
Every time it just catches you by surprise. I just don't expect you to do it.
Eight three three two ask Dan, there it is. Oh, this is why I found the right girl. I did stupid jokes. She's just laughing away.
All right, let's go to the phones. I want to talk to. Let's just talk to Susan. Hey, Susan, welcome home, Thank you.
Hi.
Are you with me?
I am? Can you hear me?
Yeah? I can hear you. How can I help?
Okay? Yeah? I saw something advertised. It's like a polar panels that you buy and then it looks like it powers up a generator that somehow plugs into your house. You're it's like two hundred and twenty watts. It's like four thousand dollars, and we get our power turned off a lot out here because of the fires. I'm out in the country and you know, it's cold and I want heat or I want to cook, you know, and I can't. So I was just wondering if it is it like even worth it, or is it would it
power up? Would it be enough to turn on heat and in the summer turn on air conditioning?
Okay, great question, great, great question. Susan.
A lot of generator and backup battery questions have come recently, especially with all the power outages with the wind and such. So let me see if I can help you kind of break this down. By the way, this one at Costco, how many watts did you say it was?
You think it's too I think it's.
Wats something like that.
And how much is it selling for.
It's like thirty seven?
Whoa?
Okay, all right, So so you probably don't have those numbers right. I'm sure you have the price right, but probably don't have the numbers right. Okay, So all right, So for everybody, generators and backup batteries the same. They are right on what their output is, Okay, their output is going to be wattage now twenty two and twenty watts. That that is very very very very small amount of output.
Okay. That's why I doubt that that's the right number.
It actually may be a backup battery capable of doing two twenty voltage, and that's a whole different ballgame, Okay, two twenty voltage as opposed to one twenty or what we call two forty. Anyway, the point is this, go back check the specs. But here's how you can figure out what kind of generator you can get by with or what kind of generator you want. There are whole house generators. There are great companies out there. Daffy Power,
Honeywell makes a great generator. Generak makes great whole house generators. They usually run off of natural gas that you hook them up to your natural gas lines and uh and they'll hook into the house and you can size them to your entire home to be automatically activated whenever the power goes down. So if you want a whole house generator run your entire house, they'll do the calculations and they'll size that and it'll just be an automatic thing.
Where power goes down, you see a you know, the lights dim about three seconds and boom, the generator kicks on and you're back in business, living life just the way you were before, without any concern about do we have to recharge the generator, do we have to refuel the generator because it's just hooked into the natural gas supply, whether that's just regular natural gas coming from the city or your municipality, or whether you know, if you're way
off in the country, if you if you're running your house on a propane. It'll run on propane, not a problem either way. Then below whole house generators that could that's going to be in the thousands of dollars, definitely, in the thousands of dollars. Below that, uh is are portable generators and they come in all shapes and sizes, and these days portable battery packs come in all shapes
and sizes. That's what sounds like you're looking at a costco because a generator, it's not a battery pack, is not really a generator.
It's a battery. So well, it's.
Supposed to be it's supposed to be getting into energy from solar panels instead of gasoline or propaine.
Exactly, it's a battery.
It's a battery that's recharging using solar panels and and so, and that's great, that's great. Usually so there's a there's an upside in the downside. Usually a battery like that is not going to be as powerful as an equivalent generator for a lot less money that's running off of like propane or gasoline. But it's also rechargeable via the sun and uh and so it's always trade off. So but here's the key, and I'll just give this right before we have to go to break here.
The key is this.
What you're looking for is that you're looking around the house and you're thinking, all right, what do I want to run off of this when.
When the power goes down?
And if it's the answer is I just want to run everything, then you need a whole house generator.
Bottom line done. That's it.
But if you're willing to limp by with less but still have the comfort level that you're looking for, then what you do is you want to find out what is the wattage consumption of the appliances and or the lights that you want to have going right. So you can find that out by looking at each of your appliances. You know, most of us want the refrigerator running right. It has a certain wattage uptake that's required. A lot of us would like to still be able to cook right.
For Tina and I, we have an induction cooktop that is a two hundred and forty amp induction cooktop that's not going to fly for us during a power outage. But a little induction hot plate that you know, ironically we got from Costco takes about fifteen hundred watts of power and so it'll run just fine on our little generator circuit as well as our microwave, and the circuit that runs and fires are.
Our water heater.
Our generators are not powerful enough to start up my air conditioner, but some are, and so it's all a matter of choosing what it is that.
You want to run, and how long you want it to run, and the convenience level there.
Obviously, you're going to pay the most to set up an automatic whole house generator system. You're going to pay a lot lot less to set yourself up with smaller portable generators, but then there's some inconvenience and some less abilities as you go. Always look at the wattage output though. This is the key, because that's what's going to tell you what it's. You know, just like your you know your hair dryer, fifteen hundred WAT hair dryer, Well, a fifteen hundred WAT generator.
There you go.
You can run a hair dryer and then you turn off the hair dryer you go to do something else, but you can't do it all at once, all right, Susan, thank you for your question. I hope that helps you at least get your arms around the beginning of the subject and uh, good luck, good luck with all of that. All right, I ran late with this very first call. I'm not going to do it again.
I promise you're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Dean Sharp the house whisper here for you on this rainy Sunday morning here in southern California. And you know what, not a minute too soon, honestly, not a minute too soon, loving it, loving the rain this morning. Uh the number to reach me eight three three two. Ask Dean eight three three, the numeral two. Ask Dean eight three three two, Ask Dean. Because it's an all calls Sunday morning. And I'm gonna go back to the phones right now. Lisa, Welcome home.
Hiking. I need your design help. I'm in the process of remodeling my nineteen fifties tracked home with a front facing garage to a craftsman's style. The sighting is going to be Benjamin Moore white dove front door. Garage door are yet to be determined.
Green.
My exterior accents and my window frames on the exterior are bronze oil rub bronze. My husband didn't like the brown roofs when it came to that, so we went with the charcoal roof. But now that we're thinking about the gutters, I'm stumped. And that's where I need your help. Is I don't know if Anitia I would have gone with the oil reb bronze, but now against the black wrist,
that doesn't seem like that will looks right. And if I go with black and I have black down spouts, and I don't know if I try and go with one of those two colors, or do I not even try and go with the brown or the black and just go with some green or I don't know, some other color.
Ah, all right, well, Lisa, you just threw like eight hundred colors at me and I haven't had the chance to see your house, and everybody who's listening is like, I don't know. I'm completely lost now. But I'm gonna but I'm gonna make it simple, Okay. I'm gonna give you an answer, and I'm hoping fingers crossed. I'm gonna guess that it's probably ninety percent possible that this is the right answer for you, okay, And I'll tell you why.
Because there's a thing that I have with gutters and down spouts and various other forms of metal on the outside of a house.
Here is the thing.
If we're building a super contemporary home in which we are trying to hide the gutter system, that's great. Hide it, make it go away, don't bring emphasis to it, because it's part of our design aesthetic that we're not trying to look at, you know, stuff hanging off the outside
of a house. However, if that's not our style of home, if we are doing some form of period home, like a nineteen twenties craftsman home aka a beautiful one of my favorite architectural eras of all time for a residential home, then guttering and down spouts, that's just part of the aesthetic of the house. And I am in no way a believer of hiding them. A good gutter on a period house is like a piece of crown molding hanging
at the end of the roof. Okay, and I love what I love about metal on the outside of a house is a design a rule for them. Now, you can split this rule in two directions. You can have all trim and decorative metals, you know, like your doorknobs on the front door, and you know, trim accents around a door and things like that, oil rub bronze, great, fantastic,
no problem. But when it comes to the functional utilitarian medals on the outside of a house, I almost always and I hesitate to say this because I am not a formulaic designer, but I just find myself nine times out of ten taking gutters and down spouts and leader boxes if you happen to have a leader box on your down spout, and those kinds of metals, and I
love to see them in iron, okay. And so it's not black, not jet black, because that is a little bit weird against your roof, Nor is it the oil rub oil rub broms would not be a bad choice, but with your with your darker roof, uh, it would be a little bit offsetting. What I would do is what I'm looking for, is I'm looking for like cast iron, which is like a charcoal black, okay, a flat kind of charcoal black. Basically you hold up a cast iron skillet,
and that's what I'm aiming at. And you know, you've got some freedom there as far as you know the shading. And what I like to do is I like to offset the gutters from the roof a little bit. So I will pick one of the darker tones in the roof and say, okay, this is the color that we're going to go with the gutter, so that the so that the gutter corresponds with the roof, but it doesn't absolutely match the roof.
Does that make sense?
Yes?
And then you just go with that down spouts down the wall, uh, and and so on all of it. We're not trying to camouflage any of it because it's it's a set of architects details, a beautiful set of gutters and down spouts that we want to actually emphasize, and it'll just be another bit of jewelry on the
outside of the house. So my vote, without having seen, just trying to imagine what you've described, my vote nine times out of ten for gutter systems is to keep them metallic, not shiny, and I lean away from the browns and the bronzes, and I lean towards unless we're doing copper, and that's a whole different ballgame, okay, But I lean away from the bronzes and I tend to go towards gray, charcoal kind of cast iron look for
the gutters. And that is the best that I can offer you on the phone without having seen a picture of your house.
Okay, anything I need to be aware of since I have open raftertails when I get the gutters done, just to watch out for as far as how they stay their going to install them.
No, not really, I mean, you know the the You know a lot of people think that facial board is required for gutters for them to work.
Really well, it's not true at all.
Gutters just tuck up under the edge metal that's coming off the roof and everybody, every roof has edge metal, so you just make sure that they're tucked well up under the edge metal and that they're secured properly.
Without facial board.
I want to see the gutter company strapping back onto the roof a little more often, and not just nailing into the ends of an open rafter tail, okay, with a with a nail. So I like to see strapping that guns runs up underneath the first twelve inches or so of the roofing material itself to make sure that they're secure and that they hold forever. But apart from that, no facia, no facia, open rafters, closed rafters, it's all good.
Okay, thank you so much.
I just worry because I'm going to have it a bronze window about five feet away from potentially a black gutter, and I'm like, oh, that's not gonna look right.
So yeah, you know what, I honestly think.
I mean, if if it was a jet black gutter, you'd probably be right about that. But again, if we go for this cast iron concept on the outside of the house, I think you're going to be surprised that it looks just fine. And you know what, once the gutters are are are up in place, uh, it's not the end of the world if you had to repaint them.
But put some samples up there.
Now, put just a tiny little section up and uh, and play around with it. I mean you could literally go I'm not talking about having your gutter people do it, but you could literally go down to a big box store and buy a cheap section of gutter, you know, an eight foot long section of gutter, tack it up over the house and paint it yourself until you decide, you know what, that's the right color. I'm all about that. Exp with it, take a little time and experiment with it as you go.
Lisa, thank you so much. For your call. I hope that helps.
I think you will all right, y'all when we come back more of your calls. It's an All Calls Sunday on this beautiful, rainy southern California Sunday morning.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Thanks for joining us on the program this morning. How quickly an hour just to kind of goes by when you're enjoying the company of good friends, which is what I hope that you feel reciprocal of what we're doing here, because I really really enjoy having our All Calls Sundays where you just get to determine what's going on, and I listen and help you out best I can.
Real quick.
I want to try and get back to the phones. Let's talk to Paul. Hey, Paul, welcome home, Good morning. How you doing, Bud? How can I help you?
Okay? With all the rebuilding going on, I was wondering if you designed a home and built it and you hardened it for flood and mud, fire, hurricane winds, and earthquakes, what materials would you use and what would it end up looking like?
That is a really really good question. And I love to you. Yeah, it's not as long as you think. It's not as long as you think. Here's the thing.
I'm going to use your question, Paul, as a as a springboard to answer a question or to address an issue that kind of gets under my skin every time a natural disaster happens.
And I understand why it happens.
I totally understand why this happens this way, but I want to be really clear about it.
So when was it, Tina? It was I think it was Friday. Friday.
We were talking to a gentleman and the impression that he was giving to us was, well, you know, with all this stuff happening, I guess it's it's gonna be all just concrete, concrete walls, concrete homes from here on out right to just protect. So the only way that you can guarantee you're not going to get blown away or washed away or whatever is just to build a gigantic concrete box or a bunker and live in it.
And I take issue with that, and I understand why people feel that way, because there's a natural kind of of thought process that leads to, you know, I mean, what's the safest structure on planet Earth. Well, I guess technically the safest structure on planet Earth would be like a nuclear fallout shelter. Okay, so that's what all of our home. We'll all just become mole. People will live beneath the ground, and now we'll all be safe and
we won't worry about these other things. But here's the thing. Not only is that obviously not realistic, nor is it cost effective.
Here is the truth.
The truth is, whatever region you live in, whatever natural disasters, and fortunately no region on Earth has to contend with all natural disasters, right, it's just your region. Right, So, whatever region on Earth you live in, and whatever natural
disaster you have to build your home to resist. The simple fact of the matter is, and I say this as a contractor, as a builder and a designer, the simple fact of the matter is, we have reached a stage here in the first quarter of the twenty first century, and which we can build your home pretty much looking however you want it to look, and have it in fact be resistant too that natural disaster. So my answer is,
what does the home have to look like? Anything you want, my friend, anything you honestly, anything you want, as long as we design it well and we build it wisely with the materials on hand that address the specific situation.
Right.
So again, I was getting that question this week from folks as I was talking to them about to ember resistant fire events, and they were saying, well, I guess we're all just going to have to have, you know, change the way our roofs look or change the way that I'm like, no, No, The fact of the matter is, I'll repeat this again. I'm going to repeat it later in the show as well. Eight out of ten homes that burn during a wildfire event do not burn because
the fire has arrived at to their home. It's because the embers have arrived. Eight out of ten. That means that if those very very beautiful, multimillion dollar homes in the palis A It's had all had ember resistant vents, which is a minor investment. Okay, if they had all had mber resistant events, we would not be looking at a loss of five thousand structures. We probably wouldn't even be looking at a loss of five hundred structures, okay, just from that thing alone. So the point is we
have to build wisely. We have to build with the materials on hand that address the real concerns and the real issues in our area. But I want to assure everyone who's listening. Technology has not brought us to a place where we have to retreat from creativity and beauty in our design. Technology has given us the ability to dream bigger and wider and broader than ever before. And you can, if you design it right, have pretty much whatever kind of house you want. And that is the
gosh honest truth about it. Paul, thank you so much for that question, because it let me get on my little soapbox and just to assuage everybody's fears that somehow we got to change the way southern California looks in order to be fire safe, No we don't.
We just got to do it smart, all right.
More when we return your Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper on KFI.
This has been Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper. Tune into the live broadcast on KFI Am six forty every Saturday morning from six to eight Pacific time and every Sunday morning from nine to noon Pacific time, or anytime on demand on the iHeart Radio app.