Calls & Conversations | Hour 1

the House Whisper. I design custom homes, I build custom homes, and on the weekends here I am your guide to better understanding that place where you live today on the show, very very simple, We're just going to spend a couple hours together, taking your calls and also having some conversations about some issues that are still around and in the news and have been on my heart and mind lately

that I want to share with you. So just a relaxing Saturday morning, handling whatever is that may be going on with your home, and having some conversations that are pertinent to every who is a homeowner, especially if you live here in southern California, but everybody in general. I think we'll find interest in these things. Here's the number. Let me give that out eight three three two. Ask Dean A three three the numeral two. Ask Dean one more time, A three to three two Ask Dean. It's

just that simple. Producer Matt is standing by, ready to take your calls as the board is open. So we are ready here for you early risers on this dark, cool, cloudy Saturday morning here in southern California or wherever you are across our great land. We're ready for you. Let me introduce our awesome team. Sam is on the board wrangling. Are not so live to your audience?

I'm here, and I'm good. I'm gonna say I'm radiant today. Oh my goodness, I've always liked that word. That's a great word. That's a great word. That's fantastic. No, well, now I feel like the sleepiest person in the room. Clearly need more caffeine.

about pouring coffee. You guys, listen to this. So that first bit of the coffee hitting the cup, that hollow sound, it's critical that part right there, because after that, see, without the first part, it just sounds like somebody's been and nobody wants that. Nobody wants that at all. All right, sitting across the table from me, my better half. I better let her talk. My design partner, my best friend in all the world. Who says that I'm handsome in

this light. There's barely any light in this room. That's the thing that cracks me up. I'm like, yeah, I would just like to go in the dark and just yeah, because you can't really see me. That's false, it's not anyway. Tina is here. Good morning to Tina. Good morning you guys. Welcome home. Okay, what are you? Are you effervescent? Are you radiant? What are you this morning? I'm eferradiant? Oh my good all right, we had to get out of here.

Efor radiant? I don't know. That's not a it is now. Jeez, I'm gonna be holding over my head the rest of the day. All Right, y'all, here's the thing. Have we got a call coming up? Yeah, we've got room on the callboard for you. The number to reach me eight three three two. Ask dean A three to three the numeral two. Ask dean. By the way, did I say this anything? You need to talk about your home today?

Whatever's got you scratching your head? We can talk design, we can talk construction, we can talk diy quandaries inside, outside, landscape, decre whatever the case may be. You know I'm here and I'm going to help you figure it out. When we return, I want to talk to you about a win. How about this Southern California. How about a win for once in a while. Yeah, we'll talk about that and more.

And your calls can't fine he can sharp the house clipper. Hey, it doesn't matter whether your home for you is a condo, cottage, or castle. I'm here to help you take it to the next level. We're taking some calls this morning. I'm going to give you the number eight three three two. Ask Dean. Eight three three the numeral to ask Dean, since we've got a couple of cah, we got one call on the board, but we got plenty of room for you. So just saying eight three three two ask Dean.

All right, let's dive into something I promised you, a win, a win for southern California. Hey, Yi, it's been it's been the beginning of a year, has it not. Yes, it has fires everywhere. I actually have some more news on that this morning as well. But first, I don't know if you saw this. This has been out for about a week now. We just didn't get a chance to talk about it yesterday, and that is I'm sorry last week. Water usage. Water usage is down overall in

southern California forty five percent. Forty five percent down water usage. That's great news. It is well you remember, of course you do. Wasn't that long ago? Right, We're gonna find you if you water your lawn on the wrong day or if you water too long. You remember that, Tina, I mean, come on, tear out your lawn. We're all gonna die. That's what was going on not too long

ago in regards to water here in Southern California. And now now everybody got very very serious, buckled down, doubled down. And this report out from the Metropolitan Water District, per person water usage in southern California has dropped to its lowest in thirty five years. That is just a win.

of rain. By the way, I don't really call this storm weather, but yeah, we've had a couple of days of rain. And where does that rain go. It ends up in storm drains, running off properties into larger storm drains. It ends up in the La River pouring out into the ocean. Perfectly good, cleanable reuse water. And in years past, well the whole history of southern California, we have pretty much just let that stuff go. We need to hold

onto it. You would be shocked how much water actually runs off into the La River during just a normal three day event. How about this on average, when it's just an average you know, not a monsoon or anything crazy, just an average rainy three days in southern California, the La River will probably deposit into the ocean an entire year's worth of water supply for the residents of the city of Los Angeles, not the county, but the city. That's a lot of water, and so we need to

do a better job of recapturing that water. We need to do a better job in general of holding on to what falls on the land. That's that's government, and they're doing better. But you and I we're doing better too. And what is leading that is changing our irrigation patterns, Changing our irrigation methods from open old school you know, spray missed in the air sprinklers to drip and micro

irrigation of specific plants. Changing what we plant. Not no, no, no, not desertifying our lawns in our yards, not tearing out our lawns and putting in fake grass. That is the wrong move. I'm sorry, don't mean to offend you, but it's the wrong move. That does not help, It hurts, It just creates more heat island here in southern California.

But the right plants, native plants that are verdant and green and beautiful, and native friendly plants that don't need eight thousand gallons of water every five minutes in order to stay alone live here in this climate. Making all of those wise decisions incrementally has had a tremendous effect on water usage in southern California. Also, something we've talked about a lot which is now it's code for California

for a new construction and a major remodel. But also a lot of homeowners have been changing this out for pure luxury convenience, which is bridge valves and recirculation pumps. And if you've never heard me say this before, if you've never heard this before, a bridge valve is a tiny, little brilliant invention. It's about six inches long, and itmounts underneath a sink and it connects the hot water line

underneath the sink to the cold water line. But it's a one way valve, so cold water can't get into the hot but the hot water line can be pushed into the cold And you combine that with a pump, a tiny little pump that can be set in that low that is also monitoring the water temperature in the hot water line. Now why would it do that, Well, it would do that because you know, when you sit there and you haven't used a faucet in hours, the hot water that was in the hot water line is

just sitting there and it's cooling off it's getting cold. Hence, this is why we turn on the shower in the morning, or we turn on a faucet and we sit there and we let it run for two minutes or three minutes or four minutes to allow the hot water to arrive new hot water from the water heater. Well what

this little bridge valve does. And of course, by the way, that water that's running down the drain is lost, and that accounts for just waiting on an average of two minutes for hot water to arrive in the southern California region in every home everywhere. That accounts for hundreds of billions, at times trillions of gallons of water usage just literally

down the drain. So it's now code in the state of California for a new home construction and for a major remodel to install a one of these bridge valves and a pump at the fixture furthest away from the water heater. As long as that fixture is further than

fifty feet, well that's the requirement. You can do it anywhere you want, but the point is, if there's more than fifty feet of pipe in between the water heater and that fixture, it is a requirement, and that what that little pump does is it notices that the water temperature in the hot water line has dropped, and so it actually draws hot water toward it, and it takes the water that's in the line and it's already cold anyway,

pumps it into the cold water line. So instead of going down the drain, you still have that water on your property ready to use. It's just in cold water form, which means it's going to find its way back to the water heater and get heated up for hot waterge. So the point is the bridge valve in this little research pump does a brilliant job of saving in an aggregate way, billions of gallons of water across the region.

And what's the conclusion of it all? You with the right plants, you with the right irrigation, you with these bridge valves and these recirculation pumps. Per person, water usage in southern California at its lowest in thirty five years of forty five percent reduction in water usage. And so to that, I say, well done. Well, don't don't change, don't change, don't go, you know, just don't turn every valve on in the house. As a celebration. Just keep

on doing what you're doing. Here's a little bit of good news that we're headed absolutely without question, in the right direction. All right, when we return, we got some calls on the board. I'm gonna take a few calls and then and we'll get back into some of these other conversations and we'll do it all.

couple hours talking about your home. I'm taking some calls and having some conversations about some items that are in the news. All of that this morning. Just a friendly place that's informative, A little bit entertaining, I hope, and a good place to spend some time. You've got calls on the board, and so I want to go and honor that. I want to talk to Laura. Hey, Laura, welcome home.

for project basis. So what I'm about to say to clarify what you're wondering about, Laura, is what I'm about to say is not a law. It's not a universal rule, and it doesn't apply to everyone's house. But but having spent a great deal of time helping people reinvent their homes, especially the average, you know, kind of mainstream tracked home. This is a pattern of design that I think is a mistake for most people. That is common, It's common here,

it's common everywhere. Hearing something, it's common just everywhere. And that is the the the classic you know, asphalt shingle roof and you know, white or bright facier board trim and bright eaves, and then the rest of the house color after that. And here, and this is the reason why I say most most right would look far far better. The roof itself would be far more substantial looking if we took a deep dark color out of the roof material. Right.

So you most, especially asphalt roofs, have several different tones

of color in them. If we take one of the darker tones, and we were to actually paint the facial board, that's the board right on the front at the end of the eve tails there and all of the eve up underneath, whether it's a flat sopet that goes across or whether it is just the eve rafters sticking out and they're start at what we call starter board up there, like tongue and groove when you look up underneath the eve, all of that would all of it from the edge

of the roof tiles down across the facierboard, back up underneath, back to the stucco or the siding or whatever is on the actual wall, every thing that is the roof overhanging. Generally speaking, as a general rule, I have promoted the idea that that roof will look far more substantial and better if we take a dark color out of the

roof tile and paint all of that that color. And here is the reason why there was a time, of course, before we were concerned about fire safety here in the US, there was a time when most roofs were you know, done with you know, wood shake shingles, and a wood shake shingle roof is a beautiful looking roof. It's also a roof that has substance to it in terms of dimensionality. In other words, you know, you stack We were just having this conversation with a client this week. You stack

wood shakes on top of each other. There are about three quarters of an inch to an inch thick on

the edge. So you see a roof like that, and it's got a lot of presence to it, but an asphalt shingled roof for and there's lots of great tricks that roofing companies do, manufacturers do to make their asphalt shingles look more dimensional with false shadows on them and all sorts of cool stuff like that, all very very good, But the reality is that an asphalt shingle roof is a very very thin layer, and having that dark, thin layer come down to a bright white facier board really

betrays the fact that the roofing material of itself is very thin, and so it makes a roof look thin and meeker in my opinion, if I'm being designed critical about it, but to take a tone out of the roofing material and to paint the facier board and the eve all that same tone, even I'm not trying to pretend that it's all the same material, but if it's all the same color, suddenly the roof is now the thickness of the facierboard and the rafters and the eve,

the whole roof belongs together. It all holds together, and suddenly it is substantive. It's literally, and no offense to you who are suffering from this, but it's literally the difference between the look of somebody who's got a full, rich, thick head of hair versus somebody who's struggling with thinning hair. That's the difference that this paint trick, and it is a trick, does to a roofline, especially a roof that has asphalt shingles on it, which is the majority, probably

eighty percent plus of roofs in Southern California. It's not necessarily the thing you do if you've got big, heavy concrete tiles. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, And it's not necessarily something you worry about if you've got a Spanish tile roof, because those roofs by definition, have their

own dimensional to them. But if you've got a composite asphalt shingle roof, you should really give a thought to what it would look like if we took a dark tone out of that roof and painted the entire facierboard and eat. So, Laurie, you were listening correctly. That's my explanation of it. It's not a should in the sense of like there's some construction reason for it. It's completely

a design concept. It's completely my concept. But I would say eight out of ten Southern California and your homes would benefit greatly if they applied it.

Bell Sketch for SNL. And so I feel like I've heard this song like fifty times already this week, just because that so it was funny that you played it there for the bumper music. But it's a classic, classic sketch.

It is such a classic sketch. It may be the the they were saying that it may be the classic SNL sketch, maybe the most popular, most watched sketch ever, and the But the funny thing was, I was listening really carefully there and the producers actually of the song were saying, yeah, it's a it's a woodbl it's a woodblock, and that's actually in the background, not a cow bell, and it's funny. And yet when they did so, you're gonna have to re listen to it and listen really carefully,

you'll hear it. But it's actually a woodblock. And they were saying, but you know, when Will Ferrell, who wrote the sketch, he's like, yeah, it just doesn't roll off the tongue. You know, you need more wood block. It just doesn't work. And so they went to cow bell because you know, it's cow bell. It works anyway. I know, I know, I like these things. All right, let's go back to the phones. I want to talk to Lucy. Hey, Lucy, welcome home.

this substance. It's made of soy, And I don't know how expensive it would be to have that done to my roof rather than have a roofing company kind of go on the roof and kind of just kind of take care of the shingles that are puffy. I don't know which would be better.

because there is an answer. But it's a little nuanced, and I want to make sure you understand the implications both ways.