Calls and News of Interest | Hour 2

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If you've said to yourself, you know, we really need Dean and Tina standing here looking at this trying to figure this out with us, you can do that. You can book an in home design consult with us at house Whisperer dot Design and there you go. All right, we're I'm just sharing some news with you on some various topics this morning, anything that I can get to. But also I promise to take calls if we've got calls on the board. And look at that, we got calls on the board. Hey, we've got a call from

Bill who said he actually lives near Wayfarer's chapel. I'm sorry, just because I was talking about that, I got to take Bill first. Bill, welcome home, Hidine. How are you sir, I'm well, thank you, How are you good? Good? I got a note here that you live just a few hundred yards from the chapel and that you were happy to talk about landslides in the area.

it's been built on. And in that area, you know, there's uh, you know, depending upon where you build at greater or lesser depth, there is uh, you know, basically solid rock, and the ones that seem to be closer to that solid rock have less movement than the ones that were built in area that you know, maybe it was fill or you know, it had a lot of uh set you know, silt settlement, you know, in a canyon or something like that. So ours, thankfully was overbuilt

for whatever reason. And our although we inch closer to beachfront property every day, ours has not sustained a lot of damage. But we've had our close neighbors have to leave because their houses are total.

great variants. But I truly think out of this is going to come at least I hope engineering that will allow, you know, structures to exist in places kind of like this, kind of like a surfboard on a wave in a way, because the you know, it's not the first time the land has moved back there, and so there has been some engineering done on some of the houses that is completely avant garde and yet completely affect and allows them to remain essentially untouched, you know, throughout all of this.

So I'm I think that that will be the case. But no, we uh, we have lost gas, We've lost electricity. We've lost our electricity second of September, so we're essentially completely off the grid with solar and wow, you know, propane and pellet stoves and wow.

the you know, surrounding conditions. It's another area to build a conventional house with a conventional foundation in an area that has unconventional ground movement and you just didn't know about it, and that's That's one of those significant problems, uh, in that area, is that so many of those homes were built just normal without really being conscious of what was going on deep underneath.

out to, you know, just be a fallacy. And you know, so those people, you know, have have really suffered because they moved into an area where they were hoping to have their dream and through no fault of our own, but I do believe through fault of maybe geologic reports, city allowing building to exist where it shouldn't, you know, they've they've you know, had that dream the least compromised, if not you know, changed altogether. And it's really a shame.

thanks so much, buddy. I really appreciate the call, and thanks for listening.

first day of February. I'm allowed. I'm allowed. Actually every week people count on it. Deane's going to say something stupid today. Let's just wait and see what it is. All right, h we're taking calls and I'm going to get back to the phones. I want to talk to Sherry. Hey, Sherry, welcome home.

They're doing the same orn thing. So then he said it was a switch that I the himmer switch was incompatible with the LEDs, so he just replaced the switch to a normal just switch and guess what one of the lights is doing it? Again, I have no clue.

or these days cheaper LED lights. They have a luminescent layer built into the bulb structure, and it's not uncommon at all after you flicked off and the switch for an LED to see it actually still glowing, but that that lasts a minute or two and then it just

fades away. That's kind of like almost like a bioluminescent battery that was still stored in the light lens itself, and it has a little bit of glow, like a glow in the dark kind of one of those things, and it lasts for a little while and then it goes off. But you're talking about a different kind of ghosting or after glow, which is not something that fades away. You turn the light off and then you get up in the middle of the night and you can still

see it on there. That and that almost always all I mean. There could be something wrong with the wire, but I really doubt it. I really doubt it. It's hardly ever a wiring issue. Ever. It is usually either a fixture itself or b the switch, especially a dimmer And so all I can tell you is that that unit that's still glowing might need to be changed out yet again. Or here you could try this instead of

using a dimmer switch. You can just put a standard switch in there and see if after turning that off whether you get any after glow whatsoever. Okay, because that the thing is with this, people don't realize that a dimmer switch has a lot of dimmer switches, depending on how they are constructed. They have a low end and a high end. That's what allows them to dim and

increase the light. And sometimes the low end literally LEDs are so sensitive too, They're so sensitive to current that the low end of a dimmer is just literally not low enough. In other words, it has dropped it down.

But if there's still a trickle, just a tiny, tiny trickle of energy running through the dimmer switch in any way shape or form, an led may pick it up and show a tiny bit of a glow, not perceivable like during the daytime, but in the middle of the night, in pitch darkness, you can see that there is still this tiny little glow happening. It's nothing serious, by the way. It's not a concern like, oh, something's wrong and my house is going to burn down or anything like that.

But you know, so, So here's the thing I would if you've already changed out the light fixtures once and there's still one that's doing it, I wonder, I would wonder actually if that one in the chain of lights that you have up on your ceiling is I wonder if it's the first one in line by way of wiring. You wouldn't be able to tell just by looking up on the ceiling because you don't know where the wire

goes to first. But I wonder if it isn't the first one in line with the output from the switch, because that would typically be the case and whatever tiny little trickle of energy is still there, then it's picking it up and the others aren't getting it. So I would say, attempt to replace the dimmer yet again, go with a different brand. Definitely had an LED compatible, but if the lustron switch, go with a different brand of switch.

If it's not a loutron, then try a loutron. Try a new dimmer switch in there and see if you can't get it to shut down completely in for a test. You could pop in just temporarily in a standard on off switch, no dimmer, okay, because an on off switch is a total power cut total, So you click it

off and it's off. And if you find that you that you put an on off switch in just for one night, go back into the bathroom at night, look up and if there are if there's still a glowing light, then there's power trickling in there from somewhere else, and it is a wiring issue. But I would my guess is ninety nine percent sure if you put a standard switch in there, then all the powers been cut off and there will be nothing. You'll see darkness on your ceiling,

just like you would expect. And what that tells you is to is that, for whatever reason, the dimmers that you've been using aren't dropping the voltage for those LEDs all the way to zero, and there's been a trickle of charge passing through, So try another dimmer because the right dimmer will shut it down.

So it is something wiring that needs to be looked at, a wiring issue, because there is some because an on off switch cuts the power, and if that is detecting any kind of residual glow, then there is power into that circuit apart from the switch access and so have electrician look at it. Whether you're electrician or whether you want to talk to somebody else, I'm not sure, but have them take a serious look at where else power could be getting into that line, because it's on or

it's off, the power is there or it's not. And if it's if there's still residual power. LEDs are super sensitive they might pick it up. And so there you go. That's the best I can tell you, Sherry, thank you so much for calling. I think you're on the right path there for the hunt though. All right, when we come back, more of your calls. Your Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper.

of reasons. The whole point of a smoke detector is hopefully to alert you to the presence of something starting to brew that you can deal with without calling the fire department. So smoke detectors never communicate directly to communic emergency services. Some fire sprinkler systems are set up to do that, and I couldn't tell you whether yours is

or not. You should look at the branding plate or any information that you've got on your specific system at the manifold, call the company and say, hey, this situation am I hooked up to Actually does this go to emergency services? Or is this just happening inside my house? That part I couldn't tell you, but you can find out pretty easily. As far as smoke detecting and fire sprinklers go, I can explain that to you super simple. Smoke detectors have what's called an obscuration rating. So what

does that mean. It means that there's a tiny light emitter and receiver inside a smoke detector and a space in between, and what it's waiting for. The receiver is sitting there reading one hundred percent of the light that's coming across this little gap and smoke gets up in the detector and it obscures that amount of light. Now,

how sensitive are they. Well, different smoke detectors have different levels of sensitivity, but most, i am told, work under obscurations of just under one percent up to about thirteen percent. Now you can get different details from other people, and you know, this is sort of just like a science trivia fact. It's not like, oh, I see thirteen percent, Well that's very meaningful to me. Well it's not clearly, But the point is this smoke gets up in there

and it obscures the vision. That's why. Sometimes it's not even smoke. It's not like these things are smelling for smoke. Sometimes a smoke detector gets set too close to a bathroom and you take a hot, steamy shower, open up the bathroom door, all that steam pours out, and suddenly the smoke detector goes off. It's steam, it's not smoke, but it's capable temporarily of obscuring that little light beam, and therefore it goes off. And they are very sensitive,

and so that's their job. That's the smoke detector. And as far as your sprinklers go, a lot of people think that sprinklers. A lot of people don't want to get sprinklers in their house because they're scared that if they burn the fish on the skillet in the kitchen, that all of their fire sprinklers are going to go off and flood their house. Fire sprinklers don't work off

of smoke at all. Zero fire sprinklers are only a temperature sensitive situation, So no fire sprinkler is going to fire because too much smoke built up in the house. A fire sprinkler fires off a little glass vial that with a liquid in it is plugging the whole of the fire sprinkler head individual heads, not the whole system. It's head for head for head. So if there's a fire in the living room, the sprinklers in the bedroom

are not going to fire and flood the bedroom. It is looking for a temperature somewhere between one hundred and thirty five to one hundred and sixty five degrees fahrenheit. So up at the ceiling line where that fire sprinkler is once temperature and the theory is that this is temperature rays because there's actually a fire down below, not just smoke, a flame producing that kind of heat boom the vial, The liquid in the vial boils, it bursts the vial, and the sprinkler head is then free to

douse the area where the fire is burning. That's how fire sprinklers work versus how smoke detectors work. Smoke detectors are warning only. Fire sprinklers are an active action against a flame and have no relationship to smoke. You can smoke all around, you can burn the toast right underneath a fire sprinkler. You're never going to set it off.

inside the attic. Embers being stopped by getting in the attic. That's what ember resistant vents are all about. That's the first line of defense. Eight out of ten homes won't burn because of mber resist in vents, because eight out of ten homes burn not because the fire is there, but because the embers have blown in from nearby. So the fire resistant vents are number one. That's what keeps the flames from starting in the attic. But otherwise one

the fire actually arrives at a house. Now, the flames are just outside the outside of most homes. You know, some homes are made out of wood siding and need to be protected and upgraded, but most homes, like a stucco home, a stucco home is a fire raided hoading on the outside of a home. So I've said this before. Heat will heat up a window and the glass will shatter if it's not fire rated glass. And now the

flames have a chance to lick inside. But even at that flames licking inside a room, that's where the interior fire sprinklers would fire. They would feel that temperature heat, they would activate and they would keep the flames from coming inside the house. The inside of the house is the vulnerable spot. The outside of most homes not that vulnerable, Okay, not relatively speaking. I'm not saying that they don't burn, but they're not that vulnerable. Far far more vulnerable the inside.

So if you've got a sprinkler system inside damping down anything that gets inside the house, your chances of that structure surviving are excuse me, frog in my throat, your chance of that structure surviving are significantly, significantly increased. Okay. You don't have to go through all these wild gizmos and creative a so called creative ideas about how to protect a home. You just have to follow the basics, execute the fundamentals, okay, Ember resistant vents, fire, sprinklers inside

a home. Brilliant idea. And there you go, John, Thank you so much for your call, buddy, really really great questions. All right, more, when we return your home with Dean Sharp, the house whisper kaf I, Dean Sharp, the house whisper, Welcome home. Well, here we are at the end of another couple hours spent together, always a pleasure and a privilege. I really wanted to talk to you about another historic structure in some design News. I think maybe I'll start

tomorrow's show off with this. I wanted to talk to you about Notre Dame, the cathedral in Paris and what it has undergone. I wanted to kind of set it up as a parallel to Wayfarers, but I also wanted to take calls and give you all the info about Wayfarer's chapel and what it meant to me and what

it still means to me. So we will we will find the time to do that, and we will do it in the big show tomorrow, by the way, Tomorrow, in addition to that little bit of design insight in news, we're going to be talking about the Consumer Electronics Show, which, if you live in southern California, just Bruise, you know, just blue By, because our attention has been focused on wildfires.

Tomorrow the best of CES for Homes. It happened just a couple of weeks ago, and I'll give you my full review on all the cool stuff that came out of CES. There. Big year, Big year for CES. You're not going to want to miss it. All the new smart home technology that's coming. Plus we'll start with talking about Notre Dame Cathedral and some thoughts on that, and of course your calls that all happens tomorrow. That's it

for us today. Follow us on social media TikTok, Facebook, x at Home with Dean The house Whisper podcast is everywhere your favorite podcasts are found. And of course, if your home is in need of some personal attention by the house Whisper, you can book an in home design consult with us at house Whisper dot Design. We're right back here tomorrow nine to noon. Until then, get out there and get busy building yourself a beautiful life. 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