KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp the House Whisper on demand on the iHeartRadio app. Hey did you know? This very program is also known as the House Whisperer podcast that you can listen to anytime anywhere on Planet Earth on demand. Hundreds of episodes, all searchable by topic. It is a home improvement reference library at your fingertips or your ear tips, or however.
It is that you actually do. Ears have tips pointing ones do.
And if you're thinking, hey, that's all great, Dean, but I really need you and Tina in our house looking at that thing, telling us what are we going to do with that? Well you can do that too. If you live in the greater Southern California area, you can book an in home design consult with me and t Just go to house Whisperer dot design. All right, we're going to dive back into our list of the best
of the International Builders Show twenty twenty five. It just wrapped up this week in Las Vegas, Nevada, as it does every year at this time of year, and it is massive. It fills the entire Las Vegas Convention Center, a million square feet of exhibit space, nearly two thousand major exhibitors over an well over one hundred thousand in attendance, the largest builders show in seventeen years. As far as attendance and exhibitors, it's just the It is the gathering
for a building innovation and design on the planet. So I'm bringing you just tidbits highlights things that I think that you would find relevant and worth taking a look at for you and your home. One of which is and you know, if you know me, you know that Dean's not gonna talk about a builder's show without taking a look at what the latest and greatest in fireplaces are.
And even in.
California, where we are limited in what we can do in a new construction or a major remodel, in terms of fireplaces, oh, the industry is just finding every workaround possible and there are so many creative options. I would say the limitations that the environmental protections in California have placed on traditional fireplaces have in some a lot of ways been a good thing because it forces the industry
to get creative, and I love creativity. I can tell you this a Stellar, which is a heat and glow brand. Stellar that's kind of their custom brand. They have made a name for themselves basically saying what kind of a fireplace do you want? We'll build it for you. I mean, honestly, we'll manufacture that fireplace for you. Want it twenty feet long, one twenty foot row of flame, Yeah, we can do that,
no problem. You want to mount a TV six inches above the firebox and not have a heat problem, Now we got that.
We got you.
It's true. Them and Stellar and Da Vinci are in my opinion, the absolute leaders in custom fireplace design, and they were all on display here at the Builders Show. We're talking horizontal fireplaces, more traditional looking firebox setups. Vertical fires yeah, vertical like tubes running up six feet up a wall in built into the wall, Spiral vertical fire elements,
any length, any configuration. And so I'm just using this as a jumping off point for you to be aware that if you're planning a remodel, you don't have to just deal with the old fireplace, and you don't have to give up on fireplaces, even if you live in California, because there are so many innovations out there. Why am I so big on fireplaces when when you know we don't need them? To heat our houses anymore and anything
like that. You know, because as a designer, I know the power of fire, open flame, and it's built into us. I mean, it is evolved into our DNA two million years of US and fire and safety and tribe and conversation and storytelling and all of these things. It is simply you know, there there's a reason why, just on a basic level, we all love to, you know, gather around an open fire. There's a reason why the quintessential romance is the candlelight dinner. Right, It's just that thing.
It's that kind of a thing. Also, Da Vinci not to be outdone by Stellar this year, Da Vinci has got on the electric fireplace bandwagon and release their own and I think probably right now maybe the best out there that there is their own electric fireplace, which is which uses the effect that I call Pepper's Ghost. Well it's not that I call it. Pepper's Ghost is a is a long time special effect that Disney actually developed
early on. When you go to the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland and you're riding the through the Haunted Mansion and you just get into the big ballroom and all the ghosts are dancing and through and you're like, wow, that is so cool because they're all transparent and they're all dancing around that and you know you're looking into a real room. Where are those ghosts coming from. Well, it's
a special effect. They're actually being projected from up above through a four five degree piece of glass that you don't see, and it overlays onto it. And that technology, that concept has been used now to create electric fireplaces. And by electric, I mean that you're actually looking at
real flames. Well they're not real flames, but they are actual high res video productions of real flames, not some sparkly flamy effect, but real flames with sparks coming off of them and smoke rising out of it being projected onto physical three D logs.
And so you got to check it out.
You got to go to Da Vinci and look for the green smart electric fireplace. You'll see exactly what I'm talking about and what the advantage is there's it's it's a basically a video multimedia unit. There's no flu there's no vents. They can heat if you want them to heat, but you get realistic fireplace fire in your room anywhere with anything above it because you don't have to treat it like a regular fireplace, but the effects are tremendous.
You can also change the color of the flames, you can change the lighting inside.
You know what.
They've come a long way, That's all I'm saying. Do I still love real flames, of course I do, but this, this has come a long way, solves a lot of problems. So yes, more innovations for fireplaces, which is an essential part of being human in this reporter's opinion. All right, when we come back, I got some more for you. Why don't we talk about mosquiters and staying warm out on your patio in an unconventional way.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Yeah, I'm here. I am here for you like I am every Sunday morning live from nine to noon Pacific time, Saturday mornings six day Pacific time. We're here all weekend long, helping you take your home to the next level. And one of the ways we're doing it today, it's always fun. I love to do this every year here right after the International Builders Show finishes up, which it did just
on Thursday of this week. I love to look through all the new innovations, and there's no way, I mean, there's no way I can even begin to scratch the surface of what goes on at the Builders Show for you. But I can bring you some relevant things and kind of the best of as far as your concern for your homes and things that I find interesting as well. And that's what we're doing today. Today is part two of a two part series. Yesterday's broadcast Saturday's broadcast, which
is just the previous podcast episode. Make sure you catch that too, because there were some juicy nuggets there as well that I'm not repeating today. So part one and part two today. Okay, let's get out on the patio for a couple of minutes, shall we. Skeeters, Especially in springtime, mosquitoes all an issue everywhere for everyone. I mean, it's
just universal, right. If you live in one of the coldest places in the US by the time warm weather hits, with all that moisture soaked into the ground, with all those lakes and rivers and streams around you, with all of that everywhere, the mosquitoes. You know, probably the best most effective mosquito repelling device is a tennis racket because
they're like the size of small birds. It's true throughout the Midwest, you know, in the South and so on, but even here in dry southern California, where our relative humidity hovers at about fifty percent most of the time, we've got our own issues with mosquitos here, especially in spring and summer months. And you know, because we've got a lot of standing water around too, and we've got the new eighties a Gypti mosquito, not new to the planet,
but new relative to North America. And you know, the ankle bider. Yeah, that's what they are. They're really tiny, they stay low to the ground. They're even out during the day. So anyway, mosquitos, as you well know, are a problem. And there are a gabillion so called mosquito remedies out there. And I have, because I design custom homes for people, we have tried just about everything that is claimed to be the amazing end all of mosquito repellency.
I've only found two things, two two that actually work, okay, one being a mosquito attractor, not a repeller.
Okay.
And in order for this to work, you've got to have a big enough piece of property to legitimately get mosquitoes attracted away from your entertaining space to an area of the property where it doesn't matter that there are a bunch of mosquitoes, but those would be carbon dioxide emitting mosquito attractors, because that's what mosquitoes are largely zeroing in on. The they're zeroing in on our human exhaust, the plumes of carbon dioxide that we are breathing and
coming off of our bodies. So there are you know, you can hook an emitter up to a propane tank, like just a regular old barbecue tank and set it on the far corner of your property, and basically the theory there is that, well, you got ten people here who are emitting their own plumes, but you've got something even bigger over there, and so that's where the mosquitoes are going to be primarily attracted to. Is it fail safe?
No?
Does it tend to work? Though? Yeah, you know, yeah they do, But again, those are the preconditions you need for that. Apart from that, instead of an attractor attracting them to a tastier meal than you, you have to work with repellents. And of course we're not talking about there are a lot of really good these days, you know, insect repellents that you can just put on your skin. But let's face it, it's never pleasant for people to, you know, to have to do that every time you
go outside. It's never pleasant to hand it out amongst your guests. Is there a way to create a zone of entertaining space that is relatively mosquito free? I would say these days are qualified yes, And nobody has done
that better than the company called therma Cell Thermaicel. If you read the reports, if you read the independent reviews, if you read the New York Times talking about you, they're going to say the same thing that I'm essentially saying, which is there are a million different so called solutions out there, but thermo Cell act actually works. It does now here. I don't have this fancy thing that I'm
about to mention to you, the higher end version. But here, I've got four or five thermicell small battery operated Thermicell units that I'll take out and set around my deck area, like around the fire pit or around the outdoor dining table, and get them going before we entertain. And you know, our guests find it amazingly pleasant and not a problem.
They don't notice them at all. They don't smell them at all, they don't really even give any note to them, but they do notice that there are no mosquitoes around.
Now.
The downside of it is emitting a small amount of repellent that's atomized into the air around you. The downside to it is if it's breezy, If there's a breeze blowing, the effectiveness drops down quite a bit. But if it's a still night, if the air is relatively calm, then these things really work. Now, if you want to take it to the next level other than the portable battery charge versions, then Thermicel has introduced their live line l IV Thermicel Lift, and what that is is building into
your deck or your patio area these live emitters. They are actually run on low voltage and so they're not stuck in up power, and they are operable by smartphone. They can be integated into your smart home system. There's an app where you can control them and balance them and utilize them. And they basically look like tiny, little, relatively small, attractive looking landscape lighting pillars, okay, coming up about six inches up off of the ground and maybe
two inches in diameter. This little this little cylindrical item that's like a dark bronze. It blends into the landscape. And these are emitters. And the cool thing is each one of these emitters has a twenty foot radius radius twenty foot radius, in other words, a forty foot spread. So if you put five or six of these built into your decking system or built into the edges of your patio, then you can essentially turn on the thermo cell system and know that your entire entertainment area will
be for your entertaining night mosquito free. And they really are. They really do work when the wind is not blowing gusty. They really really work. So thermicell pro insect solutions for professional builders, which translates to insect solutions for the serious homeowner who has issues with mosquitos. Take a look at the live system. It works, It's all I can tell you. It works, all right. I also want to talk to you about a this is more. I don't know. I
don't know if I got my interest. I think it's pretty cool. I don't know what you want to do with it. But I want to talk about a way of staying warm on a cool evening out on your patio without being right on top of the fire pit, but without covering yourself over with blankets or having a big space heater above you.
How do we do that? Let's talk about it.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI Am six forty.
Live every Sunday morning from nine to noon Pacific time. Here to help you take your home to the next level. And the way we're doing it today is we're talking about some things fun and breakthrough and innovative from the International Builders Show that just wrapped up this last week in Las Vegas, Nevada. All Right before the break I
teased you a little bit. We're talking about patio life outdoors, and I wanted you to consider what it might be like to stay warm on a cool evening without a blanket or without bellying up to the fire pit or having to put on, you know, extra layers or clothes. How would you do that? Well, some of you have already figured it out. There's a company called Warmth, which is not spelled without the A, so I'm already suspicious.
No, just check it out. The company is spelled w r m th warm Warmth, Warmth, Warmth.
I guess all right, anyway, they have developed the Summit. The Summit is a heated Adirondack chair. Now what does it look like. It looks like an Adirondack chair. It is not an Adirondack chair with special panels or this
or that built into it. They have developed a kind of synthetic material that the Adirondack chair is made out of that conceal on the seat and the back heating panels and you know, kind of like heated car seats, and those heating panels are I mean, they're they're completely inconspicuous. You just look at it and you're like, it's an
Adirondack chair. The only thing that gives it away is that this Adirondack chair has a small cord coming off the back of one of its back leg supports that travels, you know, a few inches or a few feet depending on I guess how long of a tether you wanted to have into you know, an in built electrical outlet or sourced out of the patio or the deck or what have you. So no, I haven't really thought through completely how I might integrate this into a deck for
a client. Because it's brand new and nobody's asked me to do it. But I think the big challenge here would be that, you know, we don't want to yank these chairs to just go anywhere. I think if it's an easy, plug and play kind of thing, and there are multiple spots around a deck there where you could move it to, that would help things a lot. There is a there's a there's a little shopping.
Center near my house. I'll just tell you this.
And one of my favorite little gelato slash coffee places called Tifa, is in the corner of this little shopping center. And this is not Tifa's fault, by the way, so I'm not please don't misunderstand.
This is the shopping center.
So out in front of Tifa there, it's kind of the corner unit of the shopping center. There's a little setup of adiron deck chairs there and that's provide by the shopping center, not Tifa.
Love you Tifa.
I'm going out of my way not to diss on Tifa, but I'll get my coffee or our gelato and we'll go and sit in this Adironda chair. And I always do this because I always love just like re orient myself toward whoever I'm with to talk with, and I want to grab the autor Adironduck chair and I just want to turn it a few degrees to And it always frustrates me because I forget that they're bolted to the ground and you can't move them. So there they are.
And I get it, you know, they don't want somebody stealing these chairs and they don't want to have to put them away at night. I get it, but it is a bit of a frustration to me. I like chairs that move, and I don't know how I'm gonna feel about warm warmth, warmth warmth, summit heater adirondeck chair because it has a tether and now you can move it, that's the nice thing. But you can't move it very far without yanking at that cord. So I don't know
how that's gonna work. But I do know this. People are sitting in this chair and they're like, oh my, this is lovely. In other words, I could spend an evening on a cool evening out on the patio not having to worry about bundling up or getting a blanket or turning on the fire even because this chair, I mean, it's just coming through my tush and my back and I am as snug as a bug and a rug. Essentially, it is a warm chair and it is a luxurious experience.
And the question of tethering it, you know, well it remains to be seen. But I'm just letting you know. You can go check it out. Warmth warmth wr wr MT warmth no A so warmth without the A look for the Summit heated Adirondeck chair.
All right.
In more serious news, Lennox, the air conditioning HVAC manufacture really blowing up. The heat pump world. Heat pumps are something that I've talked to you about a lot on the program, especially here in southern California. Heat pumps an air conditioner that essentially can work backwards and provide heating in a home without using an open flame gas furnace. Heat pumps are great, and they're very energy efficient, and they do a great job, and they don't dry out
the air like a gas furnace. They don't introduce allergens into the air like a gas furnace.
There.
I mean, they are really really a very high tech approach. The achilles heel of heat pumps traditionally has been that heat pumps because they use relative temperature change outside. That if it gets too cold outside, the heat pumps efficiency to heat the inside of the house drops down considerably. And that was the case, was the case for many years, and that's why you would find more heat pumps in warm climate areas like California or southern California and not
in South Dakota or places like that. But if you're listening to me from anywhere across the country, hear this. Lenox has introduced the best energy efficient product finalist, the world's most efficient HVAC heat pump system efficient at heating a home with an exterior temperature dropping down to five degrees fahrenheit five degrees, yes, sub freezing temperatures. This is a heat pump system that does not have to rely
upon fossil fuels natural gas. It is a heat pump system that is capable of remaining energy efficient and heating a home when it's five degrees fahrenheit outside. That is a big change, I mean a big change, and that is worth noting, and bravo Lenox for doing that. Heat pumps are not for everybody. I'm not trying to broad brush across the board. I'm just saying what has long been the reason to not get a heat pump is now being quickly diminished. And Lennox is not the only
company out there. But this is about as good as I've ever seen it, and I think they're not being inaccurate when they say it's the world's most efficient residential HVAC heat pump system because of its five degree fahrenheit capability. Wow, along that line, I can squeeze this one in before
we get some news. I'm this is something that does touch a lot of folks who work with me, and that is people are interested in introducing radiant heating to their home floor heating, and one of the things that is always tricky is how much is that going to change floor levels? In other words, I'm remodeling a bathroom, I'm thinking about radiant heat in the bathroom, and so
it'll probably have to go electric. So, but even electric radiant heat systems might raise the floor a quarter inch or three eighths of an inch up above the pre existing floor because the pad uses resistive wires inside most pads that cause that radiant heat to come out of the floor. Okay, all right, so is there a solve
for that? Well quiet Warmth. The company Quiet Warmth introduced this week at the Builders Show a heating matt that is completely customizable for whatever size floor anywhere in a home. It is electric based and it does zero raising of existing floors. In other words, you could pull up the tile and put this down and put the tile right back down floating floor, whatever the case may be, with
no flooring change for the area that's being heated. And the reason is is that this entire heating system matt is printed on a specialized kind of mylar film. And get this, the conductive element is not a wire. It is exactly what they call it. It is conductive ink ink that conducts the heat. Radiant conductive ink is painted on or printed on to this mylar in bars and it does the exact same thing that a standard radiant
floor does, except it doesn't have wires in it. It has heat condunctive ink printed on the mylar surface that is impressive. So it is literally paper thin a radiant heat system for a remodel of a kitchen or a bathroom or the whole house if you want. Now, it's electric, so it still has the issues of how much water is it actually taking up to do that.
But radiant floors are the bomb. I mean, they're just awesome.
So all right, you're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty.
I want to push this all the way through the end and just give you just a little goodbye at the end because I just want to make sure I get as much of this content in for you as possible. So let me get back to the list. Now Here is one attention di I wires. Okay, here's a truth about anybody who does any work in the garage. You got a workshop, anything like that, and you're the person, you're the person who's getting some stuff done around the house.
There has been many times, or there will be times in which you're out there trying to work on a piece of material and you need a second set of hands, and there are not a second set of hands around, or even if there were a second set of hands around, you need a stronger grip on this material. And so what does that equate to let me hear you say it, Yes,
a bench vice? A vice okay, vice is just one of the most useful things that you can have on a workbench mounted to a workbench and usually almost exclusively. Vices are very very bit there. They're thick, they're heavy, they they do their job. You know, you can crank them down, you can grid a really good grip on a thing and it'll help you helps you loosen things, it helps you work on you know. Just vices have
universal application. However, a vice, and by the way, you can get a good vice out there, I mean a usable, workable vice for just a little under one hundred dollars and I would say like a pro grade workable vice. But here is the downside of the vice. A vice usually has a horizontal mouth opening to it. Some of them might rotate in one degree ninety degrees, but that's it and that's what you got. And so those are your options with a vice, not anymore. The company is
known as work Iq. Work Iq and I've seen this. This is so impressive. I'm actually gonna get one for myself, maybe this week even and this will definitely know this, this is definitely making it on this year's House Whisper Holiday Gift Guide. Okay, now, is it one hundred dollars piece of equipment, No, it's a two hundred and seventy dollars piece of equipment, so granted, But what is unique about the I work or the work iq IQ vice. It is a rotating ball and socket pressure eye design.
In other words, the vice portion is mounted onto a steel ball that sits inside a fully articulated, fully rotatable socket that can be cranked down and cam locked on the benchtop. And what that means is that this vice can sit at a forty five it consider at any angle you want. It can hold something vertically, it can hold something horizontally, It can hold it at an angle.
It can accommodate just about any possible configuration. It also comes with soft grip accessories, so that if you need to hold something that's tender and easily marred by the steel teeth of a vice, you can function that way. If you've got to super I mean you've got to put like one hundred and fifty pounds of torque on a thing, then this ball cam has notches in it where pins slide across it lock it into place, so
it literally cannot be moved. But it's real genius is that it mounts in just a minute onto a workbench and from there it can move in just about any position.
It is brilliant it is a great design. It comes highly reviewed, It has passed every one of my wishless tests for a workshop vice, just because it is so so functional, and it also happens to come with a whole bunch of accessories like a plug in clip in magnifying glass articulated are magnifying glass for fine work, or a plug in clip in led light for lighting up details on what you're working on. All of it articulated, and all of it in every single direction that you
could possibly go in. So big props to work IQ for their IQ vice. That's a tool that many I hope di wires will have the pleasure of mounting on their workbenches inside their garage or their workshop as they go all right, what is up next? Oh and don't let me forget to say this. Tina has got a lot of these images instructional for you, so you can get a little bit ter look at some of the things I'm talking about. A lot of these images are now up on social media. They're on Facebook and Instagram.
So go to Home with Dean, find the post, the latest and greatest post there, and you will see them clumped altogether in a collage of multiple images you can see get your eyes on some of the things I'm talking about. One of them is one of my favorite window and door companies, Sierra Pacific. They tend to be a custom company because they can do a lot of things.
But I love the fact that Sierra Pacific has now introduced a line of patio sliding glass doors, a single sliding door and what they call an offset, which basically means when you think of a sliding glass door for a patio, you can imagine it comes in different sizes. Some are five feet, some are six, some are you know, up to eight or ten feet. And what is it you're looking at it? I picture it in your mind, your sliding glass door. It's a fifty to fifty proposition.
In other words, if it's a six foot wide sliding patio door, then three feet of it is fixed glass and three feet of it is the sliding door. Fifty to fifty three and three okay, And that is true. If it's an eight foot slider, it's a ten foot slider, they're almost always fifty fifty okay.
Well, see the air.
Pacific knows that people are gravitating towards more glass, more light coming into the house, but you don't necessarily need a bigger walk through opening, and so they have customized what they call the sliding door offset. The one that I'm staring at right now is actually, I'm gonna say it is a ten foot sliding glass unit, three feet of which is the sliding door unit and the other six feet one solid, unobscured, clear glass panel. That's not for everybody, but you just.
Need to know.
We live in a world in which anything is possible, and manufacturers are responding to those kinds of things. People, thank god, are doing more and more customization of their homes for themselves. And so if what you're really looking for in a big glass door unit is not necessarily big door openings, but clear, beautiful vista glass, then Sierra Pacific has got offset door units where the majority can be glass fixed in place and still be an operable door for you as you go.
How's that? Yep?
I got time for one more, but all right, you know what here let me I'm gonna finish out by talking about one of my favorite tool manufacturers. Stiletto is a long time participant in the International Builders Show. Stiletto makes tools, They make hammers, they make pride bars. They make squares for carpentry, and for a long time you've heard me talk about the Stiletto titanium hammer as, in my opinion, maybe the finest carpentry hammer on the planet.
I love mine, absolutely love it titanium. It's lightweight. And because of its lightweight, because we learned this a long time ago. Used to be when I back in the day, when I was framing hoses, we used to use stone clubs. Literally, I mean my Vaughan framing hammer was a thirty two ounce hammer and if you didn't think that, you out by the end of the day. But we used to think we needed that weight in order to get nails
driven efficiently. Well, we did need that weight in order to do it for that, But it turns out the faster you can swing a hammer through the air, then you can equate the same amount or greater amount of force with a light hammer that you can swing faster than with a heavy hammer that swings slowly. So Stiletto
has been at the forefront of that. They make these beautiful titanium hammers, and yes they cost like a couple hundred bucks, and so the problem has been not necessarily that you wouldn't be worth investing in a lifetime hammer that cost a couple hundred dollars if it was the last hammer you literally ever had to buy. Here's the problem. The faces of hammers, if it's a waffle faced hammer or even a smooth faced hammer, they get marred up.
They stop funking. You know, the more you beat them against a thing, the more that the that the little waffles go flat, or a smooth finished hammer gets scratched up and isn't smooth anymore, and it doesn't matter that the rest of the hammer is bulletproof and the grips wear out. But now Stiletto has introduced their t bone
fifteen ounce titanium hammer with replaceable hammer faces. It can be your finished hammer and your framing hammer, and when those heads wear out, you can switch them out and replaceable grips. And so now now Stiletto has made the one hammer the last hammer you ever have to buy for the rest of your life.
And there you go.
All right, that's just an inkling of everything that happened at the International Builder Show. But I hope it gives you a good idea inspiring idea of some of the things that are available out there for you again. You can find them online on our social media at Instagram and Facebook, where Tina has put some of the images for these posts. Follow us on social media at Home
with Dean. Remember, the House Whisper podcast is everywhere your favorite podcasts are found, and if your home is in need of some personal house Whisper attention, you can book an in home design consult with us. Just go to house Whisperer dot design. Hey, thanks again for spending the morning with me. It is a privilege. As always, I'm just going to leave you with this tiny thought. We are all hoping and looking to live an extraordinary life.
And you know what I have figured out through trial and error, there's no getting to an extraordinary life until you have figured out how to live successfully an ordinary life. And so you know what, Look to the small things, master the small and the mundane around you, and you will be set on a trajectory to go as far as your gifts can take you. I'll leave that with you and tell you to get out there and get busy building yourself a beautiful life, and we will see
you right back here next weekend. 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