KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp the House Whisper on demand on the iHeart Radio app. Thanks for joining us on the program today. It is an all calls weekend. We are just going to the phones. You're setting the agenda today. The number to reach me eight three three two ask Dean, Hey, Jeff, Welcome home by Dean.
Yes, I had a question for you. I've got this crack that's going across in my slab. I've got part concrete slab on my house foundation in it in the hallway, it goes a little bit into the bedroom, so it's just like a crack. And I've been wanting to lay some flooring there. I had a flying person in there checking it out, and they said they couldn't do it because they had the one the kind of flying that
sticks to this lab. So I just wonder, is that something I need to get sixed before I can lay some flooring?
Like, okay, so you're going to be using floating flooring, a laminate or a luxury vinyl plank, something that floats, something that doesn't stick down.
I'd like to use something, you know, a crossair or even get it repaired.
Okay, all right, So yeah, yeah, a couple of questions now about the crack. You say it runs down the hallway and then into a bedroom. How wide is the crack? Is it what we call spider crack, just a nice long, ugly crack or has it spread open? And is their uplift meaning is one side now taller than the other
or has it just opened up? You know, that's what we need to know about this crack, because not all cracks are created equal, and not all cracks are actually a concern on it from a structural perspective, and the way that we approach filling them up or ignoring them has everything to do with the nature of the concrete crack itself. So describe it to me a little bit more detailed.
Then carbon covered with some cheap carpets for the last couple of years that when I last looked at it, I would have to say it was just a bit uneven, you know, not open to anything, Just a crack across the floor and just a tiny bit uneven on each side, if that makes sense.
Okay, So, so it hasn't actually opened up. It's just a crack. It's it's just a crack. That's running. And uh, you know, the cracks can typically be a little uneven with each other. I mean, you know, once once a crack occurs. But when I'm talking about uplift, is one side like an eighth of an inch or a quarter inch or worse higher than the other or uh is it just you know, uneven concrete? Uh, you know, on each side of the crack.
Not even an inside of an inch re quarter of an inch right in that area.
Okay, it sounds to me like this is not an issue of any significant concern. People are always shocked when they find cracks in their concrete slab, and people quite often get really concerned that, oh no, okay, my foundation is failing. But here's the thing that we say in the industry, there are there are only two kinds of concrete in the world, concrete with cracks and concrete that hasn't cracked yet. It's just the nature of concrete for
it to experience that kind of stuff. Probably everybody listening to us right now who has a concrete slab in their house has got a crack somewhere, if not more than one place. That doesn't mean the house is failing. So what we look for when we get word of a crack that has to be re paired, we want to hear if the crack has opened up. I mean like, if there's a gap now from one side to the other, that's something that is that has to be looked at.
Or if one side of the concrete has raised up above the other side of the concrete what we call uplift, uh, then that's something to be concerned about. That that at least has to be looked at. Even those, by the way, does not mean that it's a failure and that can't
be fixed. When there's when there is a spreading of a crack, an opening of a gap, but there's no uplift and the and the spreading of the crack is minimal, but there is a gap there, then we can come in with with high pressure concrete epoxy and simply fill that crack over and you end up making that crack actually stronger than the concrete around it once it gets filled. If this though is not opened up, if there's no gap and there's barely any disturbance or uplift at all,
then it's what we would call a spider crack. And if you're concerned at all about like an uneven level there. Then a little bit of flooring leveler can be applied to the concrete just to hit the edge that's a little disrupted, and then feathered out over a foot or so to nothing, so that any flooring that you want, be a tile or hardwood or something that glues down, will have a smooth surface to work on. But if you're planning on putting in a floating floor, you know,
carpet was a floating floor. It lays there, floats over the surface of the of the concrete and only connects on the edges. A luxury vinyl plank floor is a floating floor basically lays there like a carpet, so is
a laminate floor. If that's the plan and this is a minimal, minimal, minimal disturbance edge, then the fact of the matter is you probably don't have to do anything at all or worry about it in any way, shape or form, because the floor is just going to float over it, cover it over and it shouldn't be an issue.
So don't be alarmed just because there's a crack. Only be alarmed if we have a crack in which the concrete is gaping open, or one side is uplifting from the other, because that becomes an indication that there may be some deeper concerns that have to be looked at by a professional, but not just typical spider cracking, especially on an older slab, because it's gonna happen, my friend, It's going to happen.
Thank you so much. I appreciate all that information.
You are so welcome, Jeff, thank you for the call.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty.
All calls weekends are great because we can kind of catch up with everybody and just have fun listening to what's going on with your home. If you didn't get through today or I didn't get to you, then just stick with us. Give me a call next Saturday, next Sunday. You'll get through. Persistence matters, you will make it through. But I do want to get back to the phone, so let's talk to Evan. Evan, welcome home.
So my problem is I had a waterline break the other night in my house. It's flooded the square bedroom and bathroom and the hallway all the way into where the dining room and living room is. It bought the floor and so my insurance adjuster is telling me they can't match it. I won't be able to match it. So they're going to pay to replace the entire wood floor area in the house.
Yep.
And my question to you is people are telling me to go with Vinyl laminae, to go with a hard another hardwood, and I'm asking what your recommendations might be.
Okay, really good question. So Evan, what was the water line that busted? Is it in the slab? Is it something overhead? Tell them give me a little more specific overhead.
It was overhead.
It was over fine, and the joint failed and it was raining in that My wife boke bea but ten thirty at night and said, the house is flooding and it was just literally flooding out of the Yeah, the overhead fan, the air conditioning vent around it. It was just raining water everywhere.
What a mess. I'm sorry to hear that. Okay, here's the thing. If you are if you guys wanted hardwood, if you've always wanted hardwood, if hardwood is the thing, I know your gun you're feeling gun shy because of this disaster that just happened. But if we're confident that we've addressed the problem, addressed the leak. If we're confident with the rest of the system, then you don't go
back with hardwood again. I'm not a I am not a big fan of compromising the design of a house just because we get gun shy or we're afraid as the result of an accident that has happened before. You know what I'm saying, It's kind of like it's like, it's like, you know, the kids on the skateboard outside, he falls and and he broke his leg. Okay, we
get it. We're riding a skateboard that can happen. Once the leg heals, the parents who now wrap that kid up in like six layers of insulating foam on all the legs and has an oversized helmet and goggles, and you know, it's kind of like the kid who wears a helmet and goggles when they goes to chess club because the chance there's there's a chance one of those pieces could fly off the board and put an eye out.
So to make that mean, we just just had new carpet and new wood grain ceramic tile put in the bathrooms two weeks ago. Okay, it's like, well, do we match the ceramic tile, and I'm like, well, the people that insallve it with the price is going to be like thirty grand to do it, So I don't think the wood forest thing replaced that.
Yeah, so you know you, insurance is going to pay for and should pay pay out for the replacement of what you've got. So if it's hardwood, they should write you a check equivalent to redoing it all in replacing hardwood. If you want to move up to the ceramic tile. From a design perspective, that kind of, you know, kills two birds with one stone in that a ceramic plank floor is going to be bomb proofed throughout the whole house and continuous flooring so that there's no change in
between the house proper and the bathrooms. But again that isn't a necessity. So yeah, if you put in luxury vinyl plank, that's what we're talking about. If you put in luxury vinyl plank, yeah, it is now waterproof and bomb proof throughout the whole house, and if there was another accident then it's not going to ruin a luxury vinyl plank floor. However, luxury vinyl plank is not the same as real hardwood. It is an emulation of hardwood.
It's really good looking stuff. It's also way cheaper than hardwood. So I think you guys just have to sit down and make a decision of both financially and design wise, which way you want to go with this. I can't really push you one direction or the other because there's no right answer to it. The fact of the matter is, if we were always afraid that a pipe would burst in any house, we'd never put hardwood in any house ever, right because it's moisture sensitive and there's just no way
around that right now. We don't have the technology to get around that right now. So I want you to have confidence in your plumbing system. I want your plumbing system rechecked, okay, especially if it's a peck system. Those joints should not be failing. So if you're confident that, okay, the plumbing issue has been resolved, then I know, you know, it's always natural to feel gunshy after a big blow,
but you know, why not put hardwood back? If hardwood is what you really want, Luxury vinyl plank is great. So just to be clear, the insurance company should is obligated to replace everything at the cost of the hardwood. If you want to turn around, then and do the luxury vinyl plank and save yourself some money as you go great, Or take the payout for the hardwood and then throw a little extra of yours in and go
porcelain plank everywhere. That's a good way too. Both of those choices would be bomb proof, and the hardwood choice gets you back to where you would go. So those are really your three options, and it's ultimately a design decision for you and your wife to work out. Just try to avoid feeling gun shy because you just had this disaster. I know that's a hard thing to do, but do your best with it. Evan, thanks for the call, buddy. How about some more of your calls when we return.
You are listening to Home with Dean Sharp the house Whisper.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty.
It's an all calls day. It is it you set the agenda. Anything that is going on with your home, whether it be construction issues, DIY questions, design concerns, anything at all. The phone lines are open. I am here to help you sort it all out. We'll put our heads together and we'll get it sorted. I promise. Here is the number to reach me, and these lines are open now. The number to reach me eight three three two. Ask Dean eight three three two, ask Dean. You see
it just rolls out the dump, So let's get to it. Ronan, welcome home.
Thank you, sir, Thank you for taking my call. Well, we had the house bolters underneath the house and they told us that the shower in our boys room was leaking. They could see that with the water damages. So we brought in a team and they did the demo on the shower pan. The problem is that the whole bathroom the house was built probably in the late twenties, early thirties, and the whole bathroom has the same beautiful tile that
I want to keep. It's, you know, it's not just in the shower, it's and then the rest of the bathroom and the floor and the walls and all that stuff. So I was hoping to try to save the tile in the shower, and I had them take off the first couple of feet so they can do the hot mop and you know, and rebuild the base and do the hot mop and then we'll just do a different tile, just a black tile on the floor because there's some
black tower in the shower. But my buddy had any very worried that I'm making a mistake and the water can still potentially get inside. Oh no, if it's a mistake.
No, I don't think it's a mistake. What you're doing. You just have to make sure that the people who are doing the work know exactly what they're doing. I don't think it's a mistake at all, because I totally get you. I mean, you've got a century home. You want to preserve that beautiful ben but you got to replace the shower pan, right, and so the way to do that is the shower pan has to go. That has to be redone. And then, you know it sounds
like you've done it exactly right. Go a couple of feet up the wall, remove that tile, make a clean break, and then the wall itself, the wall tile has got it's got roofing paper behind it. Basically that is shutting
down water. If that has not been a source of leaking or any issues like that, then carefully laying your your new hot mop, shower pan, or whatever material you decide to use under you know, tucking it up underneath that upper course of roofing paper and then just ceiling the heck out of it, uh and fixing any potential cracks and or tears that occurred in the roofing paper in the whole process. In other words, if you can get that tucked up underneath so that the overlap is
is solid, then you should be good to go. You really should be good to go. And and here's the here's the thing. You don't have to wait until you retile to find out if you've done it right. And that's really really important for you to know. Again, this is a situation where, uh, you know, the tile was never the thing that was waterproofing the shower. It was simply you know, the first line of defense. But water gets behind tile, water gets into the grout lines, and
it gets into the thin set the mortar behind the tile. Ultimately, the thing that's waterproofing that shower is that paper, is that roofing paper that's running up the walls. So once the new shower pan has been repaired and put in, before the new tile goes in, okay, before any tile goes in, you can run the water in that shower and run it at length, let water just directly hit that roofing paper and the tie in and the new hot mop or whatever it is that you're doing there.
Let it run, Get somebody underneath the house to make sure that there are no leaks, no sign whatsoever. You could run it for an hour or two and simply let the water run to make sure that the tie in has no leaks in it. And if you don't see any water intrusion after that period of time, then you've got the green light to go ahead and put the mortar and finish tiling up that job.
That's a great idea. I did never would have thought of that, and I feel so yes.
There you go, yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't have to go into it blind, just to go ahead and test it once you're at the membrane stage, because the membrane is the thing that's doing the work anyway, and uh, and that way, if you get a leak, you can deal with it right then and there, uh and not be you know, worried about about it. But yeah, we do that kind of thing all the time, just fyi wan, especially when it comes to a century home restoration and repair.
So I understand your friend's concerns. Totally understand it. But it can be done right, It can be done properly, and it shouldn't be a problem down the road. Ronan, thanks for your question and for your call. All right, let's dive back in. Let's talk to Karen. Karen, welcome home.
Is there a way to stop cats from jumping on the roof? Okay, I have it. There's a we have a flat roof, and they they climb on the fence and then they jump on the roof and they're really loud. It sounds like a person walking up there. And they also have.
Cat Oh my gosh, a cat cat fights on the roof. Yeah, it's a really good question. I'm not sure that I've encountered that question before. All I could think of is if there's somehow that you could put some kind of a barrier up on the roof that isn't going to be I mean, when we say a flat roof, do you have a parapet is there like a parapet wall around the outside of your roof? Or when you say flat roof, it's just flat and visible for everybody to see.
There's like an obstruction. You can't really see it totally just from certain angles is where you can see it better, like the size and stuff, or it's flat.
The best thing I could think of is, you know, there are those wires that have the small current in them that we use to keep other pests outside of the yard. Maybe there's a way of mounting it one up there that would keep a cat from having access to the roof. But of course we don't want to do something that you know, looks ugly from the street. So if it's something that you could pull off without anybody else seeing it, then you could get creative in
that regard. But if I mean, if this is a roof that everybody can just kind of clearly see, I don't know, put a dog up on the roof. I'm I'm not sure.
Yeah, it's a condo.
So you know.
Oh I got you, I got YOUA Yeah, I'm not sure I know how to advise you on that one, Karen. Yeah, No, that's a that's a good one. I think you stumped me on that one. Yeah, I'm I'm not sure how to keep cats off a flat roof. You got me? There you go, you got me. I surrender, all right, Kerry, good luck, Okay, thanks by bye. Bye. I'm so glad you join him in this morning. Hang tight, there is more to come.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM sixty.
Good morning to you and welcome home. We are doing an all calls weekend. Anything that's going on with your home, construction, design, issue, DIY, concern, anything at all. You said the agenda. We'll put our heads together, we'll figure it out, you and me. Okay, sound good? All right, all right, we're going back to the phones. I want to talk to Jason. Hey, Jason, welcome home.
Hey, thank you. I'm an original homeowner and as such, I have all the original photos of the framing, plumbing, electric. The house is about fifteen years old, three thousand square feet, two story. I'm in Orange County. We want to do a modest extension or expansion of our existing dining room, so that we would push out an exterior wall to basically capture an existing outdoor alcove type area that also has there's an exterior entrance to the kitchen that goes
into that ste area. So if you can imagine a first story, little maybe hundred square foot alcove, there's an exterior door from the dining room to that alcove. There is an exterior door from the kitchen to that alcove, and I'm like, well, hey, if we just pushed out that wall maybe eight feet, we could have a way to get into the kitchen from the dining room and we'd gather up another hundred square feet. I reach out to various contractors and they're like, hey, do you have
the drawings? I'm like, well, what do you mean? Well, if when you go to get permits, they're going to want a drawing of the entire house, not just that little section. And I'm like, gosh, I'm yours aloner, but I don't have any drawings. Well, you know, you either have to get a firm to draw up the entire elevation of the house as it's existing and the plan for that wall, or find another way to get them. I'm sort of perplexed on like, a does the whole house really have to get drawn up just to move
one wall? And secondly, do I, as like an original homeowner, do I have any sort of entitlement to maybe those drawings. Because I'm learning to hire an engineering firm to come in and draw the whole house. It's quite expensive a small project like this.
Right, Okay, all right, so let me help you kind of break this down. First of all, your contractors are right ish, but they're probably correct. It changes municipality to municipality. But generally speaking, if you are doing a structural addition onto a house just for context sake, right, the city is going to be bare minimum. They're going to be looking for an exterior elevation of that three sides of
that push out and three sides meaning three cardinal directions. Right, So if you're pushing out on the south side of the house, they're going to want the south elevation looking straight on. They're going to want the east and west elevations looking at the sides of that alcove. As a pushout, they won't care about the other side of the house, Okay. They basically want context, and they want context in relation
to where this alcove is in relation to the first floor. Now, if you're not affecting anything on the second floor, they your city may not need second floor drawings. Okay, they may not care about that, or they may feel like, okay, what is this affecting upstairs? If anything, So that's the first thing you need to know, and the answer to those questions reside at your local building department, not with contractors, but actually just making a trip down and saying, hey,
this is what we're planning on doing with our home. Secondarily, your city may may it's getting rarer these days, but they may actually have your original house plans on file, especially if it's only been fifteen years since the house
was built. So while you're there, you should also ask the city at the planning department do you have the original blueprints for my home or at least my tract, And maybe they've got blueprints for your floor plan that are flipped that have been submitted by the builder of the day developer back in the day. Those will work. That gives you a massive head start. Now sometimes the city will say, well, yes, we do have that. We can't release it to you though without notifying the builder,
the original developer, or the architects first. That's just a technicality. And most of the time what happens is they'll tell you, listen, we're gonna do the official notification and we will let you know in seven days if we haven't heard back from them, we're going to release the plans to you and you can have them on you know, usually a digital file that you can then turn into a PDF, and you're off to the races. As far as plans are concerned for your home, at least somebody doesn't have
to pay. Somebody's still going to have to draw the plans, right, You can't just work off of those original plans, but you can use those original plans instead of somebody having to remeasure the whole house and go to that expense, So it's going to reduce the cost. Finally, the thing that I want to tell you is that never ever hire an engineering firm to draw your house. The engineers come in after the fact and just pay them to deal with the specific engineering issues that this thing involves.
As far as the rest of the plan, whatever the city tells you the rest of the plan has to be. You can hire a draft I mean technically, Jason, you can do this yourself. You are a homeowner and you could actually draw the house yourself, but that is a headache for a lot of people. You can hire a drafts person. There are people out there for hire who will give you a really good price to draw up the layout of your home and draw the elevations for it. Believe me, there are a lot of drafts people out
of work and looking for work. It's a good time these days to hire a drafts person. It does not require a licensed architect or a licensed engineer to draw your home. I am not a licen architect, right and yet I design and build custom homes and have for the nearly forty years now. Because in the state of California, you do not the city. The state does not require a licensed architect to be involved in most cases up
to three stories in a residential home. Okay, so when it comes to residences, anybody who knows what they're doing can draw and submit those drawings generally speaking, as a general rule in most municipalities. So it all starts with you go into the city, getting the info you need from them, finding out if your plans are on file. If they're not, Yeah, you're going to have to break down to follow whatever they are looking for, and you just give them the minimum of what it is that
they're looking for. They're not going to be super impressed if you give them extra extra ectorate. They just want what they want and you start it there, but don't hire an engineering firm to do it. Because yeah, those guys are Those guys are engineers and they make engineering money. Hire and don't hire an architect. Hire a drafts person who work for engineers and architects in order to actually
put the drawings together. By the way, you hire an engineering firm to draw your house, they're going to hand it to their drafts person to actually do the measurement and the drawing. The engineers aren't going to do the drawings themselves until engineering time comes around. But you're going to get charged engineering prices for the whole thing. So there you go. You sub it out as you need to as you go along. Does that help?
Thank you?
That's great, all.
Right, buddy, Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, you can get that done for way less, okay, and get it done well all right, So but start with the city. That's the key. Jason, Good luck, my friend on that remodel. Hope everything turns out really really well. More of your calls when we return. You are Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisperer 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 iHeartRadio app