You're listenings KFI AM six forty the Bill Handles show on demand on the iHeartRadio.
App HI AM forty live streaming in ad everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. Dean Sharp The House Whisper also sometimes The Chicken Whisper, live every Saturday and Sunday mornings. Yes, I took. I took like three minutes to talk about chickens. Yes I did.
People like that.
They do not so much the callers who are like, uh, can we get back to talking about houses? But you know, it's just part of life. I talked about chickens a little bit, so you never know what you're gonna find. You never know what kind of they're gonna pour out of the treasure trove that is Home with Dean Sharp, The House Whisper. And of course you know, this very program is also The House Whisper podcast that you can listen to anytime, anywhere on demand, hundreds of episodes, all
searchable by topic. We literally are building a home and proof and reference library for you, including this very program. This broadcast, right after it goes off the air, becomes the podcast, and that's the way it always works with us. So we do live broadcasts and then they become forever, evergreen podcasts that are waiting for you to listen to again and again. Also, if your home is in need of a little bit more personal house Whisper attention, you
can always book an in home design consult with us. Yeah, with us, with me and the tea who is sitting right here smiling at me. All you have to do is go to house Whisperer dot Design for more information house Whisper dot Design. All right, it's an all calls Saturday morning. By the way, tomorrow's show. Color one of the most basic concepts in all of home design, architecture and decorating, and yet oh the problems people have with color.
I Am going to spend three hours with you tomorrow from nine to noon, demystifying, decoding, and helping you master the art of color, color theory, color on your walls, paint swatches, paint samples, the whole thing. Tomorrow morning. Don't miss tomorrow's show all about color on the Big Show. All right, it is an all calls weekend. The number to reach me eight three three two. Ask Dean eight three to three the numeral two ask Dean. Let's go
back to the phones, and I want to talk to Frank. Hey, Frank, welcome home.
Oh, thank you very much being for taking my call. So I have the flighting glass doors. There's the house that's about twenty nine.
Years old, and.
I'm getting moisture between the dull pained outside and the inside, you know, siding glass litl pain. Is there on a way to repair that or I need to be thinking about replacing the sliding glass door.
There is a way to repair it. There absolutely is a way to repair it. Now whether or not you you'll have to just evaluate the cost of repairing it versus a new door. But typically typically it's going to
be less expensive than replacing the sliding glass door. So assuming that you like your sliding glass door and that they're functioning well, and that the rollers and the track and everything is just got you satisfied, and you've only got you know, condensation building up inside the glass units, it's going to be less expensive for you to fix the glass problem. And here is how you fix it.
In fact, well you don't fix it. You don't fix it, and it doesn't get fixed in the field per se, because what you've got there any modern dual glazed window and uh is those two panes of glass that you have on your sliding door are a factory sealed unit. In fact, it's called an IGU, an insulated glass unit. So both of those panes of glass are fused together in a zero moisture environment in a factory, used together with zero moisture inside of them. In fact, there's not air,
and there's not supposed to be air inside them. There is a form of gas, usually ar gone gas inside those units. And over time, and you know you're looking at what thirty years or so, over time a unit can fail and when you see condensation forming on the inside, that means that the seal of that IGU has failed. But a lot of people misunderstand. They figure out, well,
they don't really see where the stop biz. They don't see where it is that that IGU got inserted into the sliding glass door, and they just assume the whole thing's got to go. But no, a glass company, the manufacture of the sliding glass unit can and will produce a new IGU and they'll bring it out. It has
to be produced. You know, you can't just remove one of the panes of glass, clean up the stuff, seal it because in the field, there's always moisture in the air out here, you know, no matter what happens, even on the hottest of hot summer days, there's always a degree of moisture in the air. You trap that inside that glass, and then when the weather gets cold again, then all of a sudden, that moisture will condensate and you'll see it dripping and forming on the inside of
the glass again. So it has to be produced in an absolute zero moisture factory environment. But they can bring out a new IGU and change it out for you, And that's basically the moral the story.
All right, Well, thank you very much for sharing that.
You're very well bet Frank. So yeah, you don't it's not the end of the world. And if the rest of the frame and everything else on your sliding glass door is functional, then just get a hold of manufacture or a rep that deals with that brand of door and you can have it changed out. Talk call your local glass company. They've got they've got you know, inroads and uh and referrals for you. But yeah, you just got to order a new IGU, the insulated glass unit.
All right, We've got plenty of calls on the board, and we're going to get to them. Camp Hie seen sharp the house with her at your service. Thanks for joining us on the program this morning. We are talking all things your home, your home. Yeah, I'm talking about your home. You didn't even know that. And I am not legally required to call you and let you know that I'm talking about your home today.
But we are.
So I'm glad you're here now. UH, all things home. We are here alive every Saturday morning and every Sunday morning to talk all things home, to turn ordinary houses into extraordinary homes, whether that is uh DIY concerns, construction questions, architectural and design issues, whatever the case may be. Uh, you give me a call and UH and we put our heads together and we handle it and like we do on Saturday mornings, which are all call Saturdays. So I want to go back to the phones, and UH,
let's talk to well, let's talk to Eileen. Hey, Eileen, welcome home.
Hi.
I love your program. I've listened to it since you've first been on there, and I've learned so much and I've sent I've told a million people to listen to you.
Oh my gosh, a million people, all because of Aileen, leave your address and we.
Will find you at text.
They address. I'll have to give it to you in a minute because I'm a new address and I have a hard time remembering it. Catch me after I get up.
I do not want you to read your address on the air. I was just kidding. I was just kidding. Well, no, I was also kidding about saying you a check.
Anyway, my my grandson's my grandson's built a new house about three years ago on about three acres, which is fenced with chain length for the most part, with one sliding wrought iron gate. But this is and we have grown to six dogs, a couple of Great Pyrenees and a couple of smaller dogs. And I forget what else, But anyway, rattle snakes are just a real problem. And some of our neighbors losing dogs because of the rattlesnakes. And you know, they tell you not to kill them,
they need them. And but yet you have kids playing there and dogs playing there. What do we do? Maybe if we could get a road runner to stick around, possibly, but I.
Keep a road runner in the yard as a constant monitor. Okay, well, you've called the right place because I grew up in a large open space, multi acre open space right here in southern California, actually in a landfill. And by the time I was twelve years old, I was responsible for rattlesnakes intrusions into our.
Property up there.
By the time I was twelve, I had a extra large jar of skippy peanut butter and empty peanut butter jar filled with the rattles of my victims. And it wasn't because snakes, right, No, no, no, just the rattles. I collected the rattle and it wasn't being killing rattle snakes.
I didn't.
But you know, when they come they come in too close to the house, you know, it's not it's not good when they're in the yard. It's exactly so I will tell you this. Uh, snake fencing, Uh, it's not that expensive. It comes in rolls. Uh, this is the first line of defence. Okay, that chain link isn't stopping anybody. And and so snake fencing, and what I would do. I know it's three acres, so there's a lot of fence.
But what I would do is a snake fencing is just small nylon you know, vinyl mesh that is too small for a snake to crawl through, and just tall enough for a snake not to be able to climb up and crawl over. And so this alone will radically change the game as far as snakes in on the property, if you're consistent and you do it in an unbroken manner.
Okay.
And I also recommend that not that snakes dig. They don't dig, okay. And when we talk about snake holes, those are old golfer holes that other animals have dug that snakes utilize to burrow in. But I recommend just bury the bottom of the snakeproof fencing, you know, three or four inches, so just a tiny little trench, just to get it buried so that they can't nose underneath it. That's the whole idea. A snake, a rattlesnake, well, all snakes for the most part, they're not excellent climbers, but
they usually can raise themselves up. Okay, they have to have support to do this, but they can raise themselves up roughly a third of their body length.
Okay.
So let's say we've got a big old rattlesnake and a big rattlesnake in southern California terms, or in Western States terms is like, you know, a six foot rattlesnake. Okay, that's a big, fat, old rattlesnake that has survived well. So you think about that one third of their body length. So for the biggest of rattlesnakes, we're talking twenty four inches that they could actually raise their head up about two feet up a supported structure and in theory get over.
So a three foot roll, three foot tall roll of snake fencing that you roll along the inside or the outside of the chainling fence will pretty much shut down the biggest of beasts and keep them out of the yard.
That's one thing.
The second thing, just for safe measure, is that there actually is several companies produce granular repellents that are made from certain essential oils and things that snakes just do not like. And you know, not a lot of people think that that would be something that's effective, but it is. Snakes are all about They don't have that great of Okay, snakes are all about odor sensing. Their tongue is essentially their nose. When they stick their tongues out, they are
sampling what's going on in the air around them. They are super super odor sensitive creatures. That's how they track. They literally will track and find their prey based on sampling, chemical sampling as they go. It's not because that they've got egalized they don't. They really don't. So there are a lot of companies everybody from I think Ortho to Well. If you go online and just put in snake repellent granules, you'll find them. They're not expensive, and those can be
distributed kind of shaken out. They're safe for the kids and the dogs. Those can be shaked and established around the perimeter of that fence as well. So those two things combined, I think you'll see a marked reduction in the you know, I mean it should, it should shut down snake. I'm not saying a snake can't get through like under the gate, but in three acres worth of fencing, if there's just one sliding gait, you're radically reducing the chances of a rattlesnake getting into the yard.
Okay. In addition, we've had dogs snakeproofs in the past, which worked pretty well. I cannot find a snake doing that recently. I've tried to. You know, of course the internet you can find anything, but I haven't been able to find anybody just snake poof the dogs again, because a couple of these are proposits that haven't gone through that experience before.
Yeah.
Yeah, And when Eileen is talking everybody about snakeproofing a dog, it's about training a dog so that it understands not to attack a snake, but to be worn and to stand back and not to put itself in that kind of danger. I Leen, the best bet there is call your vet, call your local veterinarian, because they have they have references for that kind of stuff. I know our vets in our area will refer you out to services
that help prep dogs for rattlesnakes as well. In fact, it's like around here around where I live in eastern Ventor County. Uh, It's a thing and there are there are classes and things being taught all the time because we've got so much open space where people hike during the spring and the summer, and the snakes are out right now. They're not out in full force yet because the weather's been wonky, but with this recent heat spell, they're waking up, they're coming out and they're going to
be around, so everybody needs to be aware. I lean thanks for the call. Just know you can. You can snake proof of yard for the most part if you do it right. You've got to be consistent. It's not like they're trying to get into the yard, you know, with full force and intent. It's just they're just wandering along, picking up scents as they go and h and they end up in the yard. And don't I know, I've had to deal with I've had to dispatch too many in my lifetime and they are terrifying. I mean, it's
scary because you know it's a venomous snake. So anyway, but it can be done. Good luck, Eileen. I hope that helps along the way. All right, y'all, more of your calls when we return your home with Dean Sharp the House Whisper. You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty, if I AM forty live streaming and HD everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Hey, your home, Dean Sharp the House Whisper.
That is me. It is Saturday morning, and as is our custom, it is an all calls Saturday morning. We're taking calls answering questions about your home. Yeah, everybody is calling in and asking questions about your home. What's going on with you? No, I mean you can call in and ask questions about your home. How's that sound? That's better?
All right?
I want to go back to the phones. Let's see here. Let's talk to Marsha. Hey, Marsha, welcome home, Good good.
Morning, Dean. I have a forty year old home and I need a recommendation for a company that does.
Will repair the wheep screed at the base of the walls, of the outside walls.
Okay, what's going on.
We're all breaking down. They're all all breaking down.
Yes, okay, well that's this is an easy one. It's a stucco company, okay. Weep screed is a is a flashing. It's a flashing that goes properly at the bottom of a stucco wall. And so it is the stucco company.
The stucco guys that come in and install it. They paper it in when they're putting on the the building paper on the side of the house and they're putting on their stucco laugh wiring, and then they transition all of that down and overlap it onto a bottom flashing, that triangular flashing with the holes in the bottom It's called a weep screed for two reasons. One, it's a screed in that it sticks out just far enough for them to run their trowels against it to create just
a nice, even layer of stucco at the bottom. That's what we would call a screed. It's a guide and it weeps because on the bottom, where you can't see it, it's got holes, and those holes allow moisture that build up inside the stucco wall to trickle down and escape instead of popping the finish of your stucco out and screwing it all up.
But there are times when weep screen it will eventually.
Fail, and you know, sometimes they rust out if they weren't the best quality to begin with and so on. But yeah, so the weep screed is critically important. I take calls all the time from people who are like, my stucco is failing on my house, and I'm like, well,
what's going on. They're like, well, it's popping off, perating, and I'm thinking, all right, does the stucco run all the way down into the soil just right into They're like yep, And I'm like, ah see, that was a house that was done before we figured out we got to put weep screed at the bottom of the stucco and hold the bottom of the stucco line up above the soil, because concrete collects moisture, and no matter how well you've sealed and painted your house, moisture still finds
its way into the concrete that is the stucco. That's normal, it's natural, but we got to give it a place to get out. And that's what the weep screed. It weeps. It weeps out moisture at the bottom. So the moral of the story, Marsha is it is a stucco company
that does weep screed, not roofers, not general contractors. So if you start looking for a reputable stucco company and get two or three in your area, they can come out and if the weep screed is failing, what they'll typically do is they'll cut about four to six inches up on the wall along the stucco line and remove that stucco, bang it out, and then they can have access to that weep screen flashing where they can pull it out, slide a new flashing underneath the existing paper,
get it all papered in really nicely and sealed and then they will stucco that bottom edge for you and then you know, fetter out to finish up against the wall. It is going to cause you know, some damage to the stucco, but it's well worth doing if the weep screed is failing.
Yes, I can sure see that. Thank you so much, Deean.
This is great.
And if you don't have a company, you would recommend a stucco company.
Well, I mean, I trust your judgment, I know, but here's the problem. Where are you at, by the way.
I'm in Englewood, California.
Yeah.
See that's the problem, is it.
Contracting is such a local, local, uh you know deal, especially for small homes, and so where I live and where we have some of our custom designs built within a you know, certain local radio of our home out here in eastern Ventura County. I could give references anywhere else in southern California and everywhere this show reaches. It's just it's impossible to keep up with references for good companies.
But you look for local Englewood stucco companies and you'll find them and vet them, you know, make sure that they have got all their ducks in a row, and they've got their license clean, and bonds and insurance to all of that good stuff, and invite them out and take two or three bids and you should be good to go.
Yeah.
I wish I could recommend the amazing contractors that are out there to everybody wherever you live. But that, if you think about it for a second, that that would be just that would be a monumental task. We'd have to set up an entire company just to monitor the quality of contractors and to make sure that they keep
doing quality work, just to give those referrals. So unfortunately, I can't give referrals out usually unless it's a company like one of our partners here on the show, one of the sponsors of the show that cover an entire wide area, and we keep our eyes on them. Sure they're doing it right, all right. I don't know why I'm growling at contractors. I guess I should be as a general rule, I am one more of your calls.
When we return your home with Dean Sharp the House Whisper, can if I Dean Sharp the House Whisper, Welcome home. Tim Conway is obsessed with traffic. He is obsessed with it and car chases which cause traffic issues as well. See it's all traffic. It's all traffic all the time with Conway.
I love that guy. I absolutely love it.
By the way, did you know that every Thursday evening I have a standing appointment with Tim. He and I start talking about all things. Well, we talk about everything, but six six twenty every Thursday evening until about six fifty or so, I'm on with Tim and we're just yacking it up, having a great time. You don't want to miss it. AnyWho. It's an all calls Saturday morning. Here we are wrapping up the end of another two hours. I've still got some calls on the board, so let's
see what we can get done. Before we are done, I want to talk to John. Hey, John, welcome home.
Hey Dean, how are you doing?
I am well, sir. How can I help you?
I have floor pops that are starting to drive me crazy. Where original owners? The home is about twenty one years old. It's the second floor. I was just in my son's room, but now I'm for getting some of the master and you know, I saw the construction of it. It's got those what do you call them? The engineered would I beam things?
Uh?
Huh? And uh, you know, I did some looking, and you know, I just is it something that can be fixed? Or am I just chasing a you know, to playing whack the mole with the stuff.
Okay, so describe to me what you mean by floor pops. I'm only asking because a lot of people have a lot of different, you know, definitions of what that is. What are you experiencing up there on the second floor.
When you walk on just certain areas, you will hear a pop, not a creek, a pop. And the it's not terrible upstairs, but downstairs it's a lot louder. So if you're downstairs and someone's walking around up there, it's it's irritating.
And what have you guys? What have guys tried to do about it thus far?
I researched it, and it's like, I better call the before I do the wrong thing.
Well, okay, so here's the thing.
It is very likely not the joste, especially if it's eye beam shaped. Trust joices. They're very stable, they're very secure, they're very flat. They're actually designed to help eliminate this. But you know, there is no one particular piece of material that goes into a home that all by itself solves a problem. It has to be installed properly, and
I doubt that the floor joists are improperly installed. But the sheathing the plywood on top of those floor joys should have been nailed down and glued to the top of the floor joist everywhere, and if they were, then you wouldn't be experiencing that kind of noise. There seems to be This sounds to me like there is buckling happening, and that's that's not necessarily a structural issue as much as it is, you know, an audible esthetic issue. The seams of the plywood. It may be riding up and
down on nails. It may have been misnailed. In other words, the nails went in and they missed the joist altogether. Somebody might have left the glue off in some areas. And so when it comes to settling that down, yeah, you are going to have to chase it a bit,
I think, probably realistically. But here's the best thing you can do, and that is there are now there are some floor fix it kits that include injecting adhesive down underneath the plywood in order to get a little adhesive going on that you know, when it comes to hardwood floors, I recommend that a little bit more than just regular
plywood situations sheathing situations with sheathing. I like to just trace down the nature of the pop kind it, find it where you know, and and yeah, it's not a squeak, but it still could be the same kind of issue. And we just got to start with the minimum. And the minimum is a good wood screw and a screw gun and find in a in a stud finder, because what you want to be looking for, you know, pull the carpet up or pull up the flooring that's there.
You're going to look underneath. You want to find the lines of the nails and or the screws that are on the floor. I'm guessing they did not screw down that floor because it wouldn't be moving that way if they had, so you want to look for those.
I seem they recall there there were screws, but it was twenty one years ago. But I seem to recall they kind of had the head on them with like a square inset.
But yeah, might have been, might have been, But that's the thing. We just got to track it down. So track down the problem area and and add some screws to it. That's the cool thing is you can you can add some screws to it to secure that. Now you may put shit ten feet away when you do that. Okay, if it's a systemic problem, you may have resolved it there and you're like, oh great, great, Now now over
here it's squeaky uh. If you keep chasing it, and you keep dedicated to it, you will eventually probably trap the creature and and quiet it down. That's that's been my experience over the years. But it may take a little doing as you go.
Okay, so pulling up the carpet and pad for sure, yep.
And then you want to get a line on.
You got to find out where the floor joists are because screws just out in the middle of nowhere aren't doing anybody any So you want to see where the existing floor. You might even find snap lines, old chalk lines where they snap them out to try and hit the floor joist. And then you want to make sure as you screw that screw in, you'll feel it if you're hitting into If it's digging into wood all the way through, then you've hit the top of the joist. If the screw starts off uh slow, but then all
of a sudden just speeds in through. Then you've missed it. So that's why I uh and then just exploring along. But yeah, just just screw that sucker down. Add three or four in any area that it's uh you know that that it's causing you a problem, and then uh you know, I mean, I wish I could tell you something better, but then you're just gonna have to stand back and wait.
So so two questions should do I need to remove all the furniture from the room. And the other question is how long? So let's say, Okay, I find it, I screw them in, and now I've got to wait to see if it moves. Is that like within the same day or do I need to kind of it is.
Like it'll over Yeah, likely if it's gonna shift, it'll likely shift over you know, a week or so uh in time. So don't don't move anything unnecessarily. If you're feeling a pop. Just pull the carpet back. Just stay very very isolated, very surgical in your approach. You know, don't empty out rooms, pull out the carpet. I would just approach the area of the pop, expose it put
a couple of three screws down to secure it. See if it sounds differently, then cover it back up, cross your fingers, and hope that it doesn't move to another area, because you know, what you're doing is you're reapplying pressure and you're putting the tension somewhere else. But that may be the only problem. So it may not move at all, and you may just resolve it, but you may have to wait. So just be sensitive to it. And as you start to encounter them, knock those down.
You will.
I promise you, John, you will eventually catch up with it all and solve whatever is deficient up there. But it's just going to be it's going to be a little project for a while, very likely, John, Thanks for the call. We are literally right up against eight o'clock here. That's it for our show this morning.
Everybody.
For anybody who called who did not get through, give me a call tomorrow. Will put you, will fast track you to the front of the line tomorrow's show. It's all about color color theory. I know how much you wrestle with it, so don't miss it nine to noon tomorrow. Until then, get out into this beautiful spring day and get busy building yourself a beautiful life, and we'll see you tomorrow.
You've been listening to The Bill Handle Show. Catch My Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app