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very very easy to find us. And of course 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, your Home Improvement reference Library. I mean truly hundreds and hundreds of episodes about every imaginable facet of your home and understanding it better and making the best decisions design and construction decisions when it comes to your home. Okay, as promised, it's time to go
to the phones. Let me just say this. I have one call on the board, just one, so I'm gonna take it and then we'll if it's just not the morning for calls. We'll move on to the rest of our getting ahead of the holidays material. No problem. I got plenty, always have plenty to talk about. But I'm just letting you know that the boards are still open and it's open for you to call. It's a good time to call in because normally, normally, and you know, there's always an odd day every once in a while
in which it's not going to happen. But normally I leave a lot, lot lot of callers unanswered on our phones, and people are like, oh wait, it's so long and I didn't get a chance to talk to you about it. Well, you know what, so this morning you got a pretty good chance right now. It's all I'm saying, eight three three two, ask Dean a three three the numeral two, asking I know, I know it's not good radio. When do we ever say that we did good radio here?
I'm supposed to like always act like there's like there's eight hundred calls on the board and it's just not life. Okay, we're just very we're very honest and transparent.
Here.
There's one call here. I know there's a ton of people listening. We know that for sure, but just one caller. So I'm I'm not begging for calls. I'm just letting you know you got a chance. Okay, let's talk to Robert. Hey, Robert, my one caller this morning. How you doing, Welcome home.
Thanks, good morning.
Dean.
Got a little question on my backyard. I've got a typical southern California track home. I got about a six hundred square foot backyard, and during COVID, we put in the sod, you know, we did the sprinklers in the sod and put in the grass in the backyard. Well, now, over the several years, it seems to have had has like maybe I didn't compact it enough, but it's got a lot of dips and valleys and little holes and stuff under the grass where you can't see it, but
when you walk across it you can feel uneven. Yeah, I was wondering what your recommendation would be to kind of maybe or if there is a fix.
There is actually now you know, unfortunately it's a little bit tedious if you got a lot of these going on. But here's the thing, Robert, what you need to understand about your grass. Yes, grass is like every blade of grass is technically kind of its own plant. Okay, but as you know, you did sod, right, you didn't grow it from seed, you did sod.
Yeah, we did the sod.
So as you know that that beds of grass they have, they've got about a one to two inch root base of soil that they're hanging on to. And uh, you know that grass was just happily growing in another field somewhere, you know, a day before they cut it and removed it and brought it to your house. Okay. So the fact of the matter is you could do the exact same right now with your own grass, uh, if you
wanted to. So, let me explain two ways. Number one, everybody should know you can rent a sod cutter these days at a good rental yard. I think you can rent them at like if your local home depot has a has a rental tool rental department, you can rent a homeowner version of a sod cutter that will literally do exactly what they did to your grass when they
cut it and brought it to your house. You can cut your sad, lay it aside, roll it up, lay it aside, and do whatever you need to do, whether it's leveling the ground better underneath it, or doing more prep work, or because you had a broken sprinkler line and you had to get in there, or some you know,
whatever the case may be. For whatever reason, that plant can be transplanted, which means cutting it, rolling it up, keeping it moist, getting the work done, and then rolling it back down and treating it like brand new sad again.
So you just know that you could pull your whole yard up, you know, in a portion of a day with a sad cutter and get back to the soil if there are things that if you wanted, if there were so many of these divots and unevennesses, you could just pull up the whole yard and re level the subsoil underneath it so that you know, make sure it's nice and compacted well, and and so you know you're ready to lay it back down. It's going to be smooth. If it's just a few you can do it by hand. Okay,
you can use just literally. There's a there's a there's a tool car called a gardening knife that basically looks almost looks like a six inch gardening spade, but it has like saw teeth on one side, and it's not really as fully a spade. You can cut around a
section of grass. Cut. Let's say you cut out a two foot section of grass and then start sliding it underneath down at that two inches, get you know, a good amount of soil underneath where the roots are really grabbing, and you can remove a square oh grass and deal
with the affected area and then lay it back down. Okay, And you got to do it carefully, and you want to do it wisely, and then you want to make sure that it gets extra water, you know, because you have cut some of the roots, uh, and just nurture it back into shape. But the fact is, yes, you can go ahead and repair the worst of the divots by hand if you want, or just roll up your lawn, fix the whole thing, and roll it back down again.
Now I did see. Now I don't know if this might just be for different climates, like maybe back east they've taken like a sand and kind of gone through the grass and kind of added sand and then it kind of grows back up through Is that an option?
Is that it's it's it's a it's a procedure that I wouldn't recommend for a homeowner to do. And uh, and it's it's yeah, it's kind of a it's a it's a weird kind of situation where they lay sand, they kind of massage it into the scalp, as it were, to use the the uh hair analogy for your lawn. Massage it into the scalp, and then they'll grab certain sections and pull it up in the hopes that the sand actually it gets underneath. Okay, So and sand is a good way of doing it. It's an easy way
of leveling. I just think you're better to pull a flap back, okay, as opposed to trying to massage it in from the surface, because the problem is if too much stays on the surface, then you could be getting in the way of sunlight and water penetration and that kind of stuff. And we've seen people try that method and they're like, oh, I've got now, I've got a yellow patch of dead grass here and it didn't work out. It's level, but it's dead. So I'd rather have you
make a nice, clean incision as it were. I'm sorry, I've got surgeries on my mind because of Tina this week, But make a clean incision and pull that back just like regular sod. And that's really the message that your lawn is still no matter how long it's been there, it is still entirely a flexible living skin, as it were, that can be carefully pulled back, things fixed underneath and put back in place. We do it, Robert, all the time, in order to install soaker lines underneath and eliminate the
need for sprinklers altogether. So it's totally totally doable, my friend. Just do a little research, take a careful approach, and uh yeah, get it leveled out.
Well. Thank you, and you guys have a great Thanksgiving.
Oh, thank you so much, Robert, you too, and thanks for your call. And guess what I asked for calls? Now we've got like ten plus on the board. So when we come back, more of your calls. Your home with Dean Sharp, the house whisperyambye, Dean Sharp, the house Whisper, at your service. We're talking getting ahead of the holidays today. But suddenly, because I asked, we've got a board full of calls.
Now.
Now I'm not going to get through them all, but I'm gonna try. I'm gonna do my best, all right, So we're gonna to go back to the phones. Let's talk to is it Marissa? Marissa welcome home, Hi, Geene, appreciate you, Thank you so much. How can I help?
I have property in the Conejo West facing hot and sunny and dry, and we get the mustard every year that we need to clear out. And I'm wanting if there's any ground cover, like under two feet that I could plant throughout hardy and and I need some suggestions for that chow.
Okay, So we're not talking about lawn, and we're talking about like back slope of your property or where exactly side hillside.
It's like a slope off the property.
Okay. So you've got a typical kind of pushed up against open space. You got to slug, you got your yard, and then you've got the backslope. And of course, yes, sir, you are constantly being invaded by mustard plants.
Yep, we have to cut it every years. It's pricey hassle. But I'm just wondering if we could choke that stuff out somehow.
Yeah, you can certainly reduce it quite a bit, quite a bit of reduction. I'm not I'm not going to give you any panacea here that like, oh, this will solve the problem completely, because you know, because here's the reality. About weeds. Uh, they've just learned to survive better than normal plants. This is literally, I mean if you were a plant, you know, as a human being, we would think, oh,
nobody wants to be a weed. But if you were a plant, and you'd be like, yeah, oh, by the way, I'm a weed, which means I know to grow way better than you guys, and I can grow anywhere at any time and survive all the other You know, weeds are like the cockroaches of the plant world in that they want to survive the nuclear holocaust, right.
They have.
They've simply evolved to do it. So so the idea of like we'd free we'd free gardening, eye, I don't know, we'ed reduction garden. That's the thing. And so yeah, for you, the key is, I think you're thinking the right way. There are a host of I mean so many more than than I could even begin to mention to you, of plants that are going to grow in the in the one to two foot high category. So when it comes to a back hill you what you want is
some kind of rugged chaparral kind of plant. There are there are if you go to your local nursery and I don't mean, let's see you live in the Caneo Valley. I'm going to recommend that you go to Elegant Gardens. Elegant Gardens off the twenty three and Tierra Rahata. It's a wholesale nursery that contractors and designers like ourselves buy from all the time and talk to them about and they're going to show you like ten different very very easy to care for, drought resistant, full sun, doesn't burn
in the heat of the summer, kind of shrubs. But here's the key. You're on the right track. That's how I'm gonna encourage you this morning. Because most people think groundcover. They're thinking thin, thin, relatively thin ground cover, whether it's ice plant or this or that, you know whatever. These one to two inch groundcovers, those are the hardest ones
to keep weeds from invading. Because you think the little seed of a weed falls into the ground and it starts to grow, and if it gets even the smallest, little one inch tall sprout up through the ground cover into its own light, then then it's on its own. Then it's now it's it's got its head above water, and it's got its own source of sunlight and it's going, and that weed is going to go. But on a hillside, especially, you know, an untended area, you do you want something
between a foot to two feet of cover there. And the reason is the weed seeds are going to fall in just like they do everywhere else, but they're going to be in the dark. They literally have to find a way to be in darkness, which is not how they grow for the first twelve inches of their growth. It's virtually impossible, but it still does happen, but really
really super rare. And so the number of weeds that will survive that first twelve full inches of growth before they get their own leaves above the shrub line so that they can continue to prosper on their own vastly, vastly, vastly reduced. And so it's a long list, and that's the good news. You can also check out Theodore Paine Foundation in Sun Valley. They exist solely solely for the purpose of propagating native southern California plants. And I'm telling you, mersa, there,
there are there. There's at least ten different kinds and that you can choose from to put there. But that's the right idea. The right idea is to have height above these weeds so that they don't have a chance to get started in the first place. You're not going to stop the seeds from falling, but you can stop the plant from finding its way up because it's got to go so far before it breaks out. I hope that makes sense, right, everybody? Right? The logic of that, Yeah,
as opposed to like a half an inch of growth. Yeah, that's why. All right, Thank you so much for your call. More calls when we return. I'm running late already. Your Home with Dean Sharp the House Whisper.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six FORTYFI.
AM six forty live streaming and HD everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're Home with Dean Sharp the House whist Where. We're back at it now. I got a board full of calls, so let's get back to the phones, shall we. I want to talk to you ann ay An, Welcome.
Home, Good morning, Well, thank you, good morning, Gane. We live in San Diego in a two story home about eighteen hundred square feet. I'm wondering about the most reasonable economical solution for attic insulation, and once we get attic insulation about nine hundred square feet up there. Should we at the same time, do the interior walls, particularly the second floor.
Well, okay, attic insulation best attic insulation that well, yeah, the best attic insulation that is the best value for what it does, is going to be blown in insulation. A nice, big, old, thick blanket of blown in. It's counterintuitive as to what people normally see when they dream of attic space, because they're like, I would like my attic to look like that. You know that Hallmark Christmas movie, you know when they go up in the attic and they sit there and they search through the chests and
they find the old photos. That's all well and good. But in the real world here in southern California, especially, leave your attic messy, don't worry about that, don't store stuff up there. Put the insulation up there. And blown in is best because it covers everything. It gets all the way out to the edges, it covers all the tops of the wood ceiling joists. It truly makes an
effective blanket. Whereas some people would think, well, I just want to run it again, nice and neat and clean, so I'm gonna use roll bat insulation in there that fits in between all the wood, and at least that means I could put a plywood platform and have some things and whatever. The problem is that that bad insulation number one is very very difficult to get it all the way over to the edge of the where the roof joins the top of the wall, so it leaves
a hole. It's very very difficult to get it around recess can lights and other things, so it leaves a hole. And every single bat that fits in between the wood joists doesn't go over the wood joist, so the joist itself is essentially an insulating hole. And to maximize insulation in a house, especially at an insulation, we don't want any holes. You think of it like a boat, an
inverted boat. We don't want anything leaking through. You could have the most brilliant, thickest strong titanic, like you know, hull of a ship, but you know, once there's a hole in it, it's going down and so blown in, which also happens to be the least expensive way of getting insulation in your attic. In fact, blown in these days a lot of people decide to di wyatt because places like well big box stores like Lows and Home Depot.
They actually will rent you a blower, and if you rent the blower for a day, they even throw in a few cubes of insulation for free to get you started. So you can control the depth. You can overdo it, which is never a bad thing, and it can be one and done and you're set. And when it comes to blown in, fiberglass is fine. I've got no particular
issues with it. I prefer cellulose myself as the material to blown in to blow in, But either way, blown in blanket of insulation in the attic is your best value, and I believe your overall best form of insulation unless you're going to do something much more expensive like filling up the rafter bays with foam insulation. So blown in that's the way to go.
Okay. And then so the cellulose, is that the kind that they blow in and it expands that foamy stuff that it spans.
No, No, that's that's that's a whole different animal there. Cellulose and fiberglass. They will blow in and they will essentially look the same. One is made out of shreds of fiber. As you know, shred fiberus shreds of glass. The other is made out of a paper product that is treated with borates and acetate that are that are you know, moisture resistant, rodent resistant, uh and a little bit more dense. And so for for lesser inches you can get you know, higher R value of insulation up
there plus no glass. So there's dust, there's dust, there's a dust content up there, but there's no glass shreds, so that if you have to get in the attic or somebody has to get up there and service it, it doesn't make you itch and irritate the skin the same way got it.
And for the interior walls, we have a guest bedroom closet that butts up against the guest bedroom bathroom the wall in between, so I was thinking for noise baffling of maybe having that insulated and then the guests. The other wall of the guest bathroom blots up against the master bath. That's where the plumbing chase is. So I was curious about insulation in those two walls. So essentially it's bedroom, guest bath, master bath, you.
Know, master bedroom. I'm a huge proponent of interior wall insulation, but just to be clear, for everybody. We're not talking about thermal insulation. When it comes to interior walls, we don't need to worry about thermal. But it's all about sound and just keeping a room quiet, one room quiet from another room, and layer upon layer room for room from I mean, it's a brilliant thing and it's something
that we always do with all of our clients. It's one of the things that kind of sets them apart and gives them that much more of an awesome house when it's done. So any wall that you can do problem walls, and then in the future, you know, anytime, anytime you've got drywall off the wall, do not put that wall back together without slapping some insulation in there.
And the insulation you want is rock wool insulation, and I think it's rock Sol the brand that we normally use ro o x ul, but but you know they've changed names a little bit recently. But here's what your mineral wool insulation. And I believe the kind that you want is safe n sound, safe and sound and it's literally there doesn't have a massive R value, but it's there intentionally designed to be sound baffling insulation.
Perfect.
Well, I thank you so much.
All right, and I think we'll get it.
I'm sorry, professional installation, and we're getting quotes anywhere from seven dollars per square foot to fourteen dollars per square foot, any price point we should be aware of.
You know, it varies for house to house. So the thing you should do is just do what you're doing. Get those multiple quotes, Get as many quotes as you can tolerate getting, and you will find the right price points. Starts to form up for you. And it's like a big ven diagram, so you know you'll see it as it develops. That's the best way of knowing what the right price is because different conditions vary from house to house, so I can't just quote you it should be this.
Just get a bunch of quotes from reputable companies. You'll see them starting to clump together in one zone and you'll know like, oh, yeah, it's clearly it should be this price. And thank you so much for your call, my friend, and thanks for listening to the show. And when we return, I'll try and tackle at least a couple of more can't buy ben chart of the house Whisper welcome home. We're wrapping up another Saturday together. I asked for calls. You gave me calls. I got a
board full of calls. I want to try and take at least one more before we're out of here, maybe two, who knows. Let's go to Terry. Hey, Terry, welcome home.
Oh yes, see, my house is coald. I have no attic, and I close off the vents and the rooms we don't use. I have to go outside to get warm. I understand. The only thing I can do is poke holes in the wall. Is that right?
You mean as far as adding insulation. Are you saying you don't have insulation in the house?
No, I have no attic.
Oh you got no attic? Right? Okay?
Ceilings. It's a four bedroom, so I close off rooms, and I closed the vents in the rooms we don't use, and I try to conserve the heat.
Yeah. Well, first of all, I wouldn't do that, Okay, I would not. When it comes to your your heating system, it was designed to breathe fully through all of those rooms, as opposed to it being shut down, so longer term use of heat.
Now.
I know it sounds a little counterintuitive, but your heating system really is designed. I don't want to put undue stress on it. And when we close off a duct at the vent at the very very end, back pressure can build up and it can affect the way the entire system is working in the house. So I wouldn't close off the rooms. Right, You've got a leaky house, I understand, I get it, But I would keep the whole house breathing for the sake of your heating as
far as that is concerned. Now, as far as insulation in your attic is concerned, which you don't have. You don't have an attic space. Yes, the way to insulate a ceiling up above you, you're going to have to get access to the space in between those rafters. And the only way, there's only two ways to get access. Either you've got to drill a hole into the dry wall and pump insulation in. There will be multiple holes
to do that to pump insulation into that void. Or the drywalls just got to come down and then and then fill those rafter bays with bats of insulation and or foam and close it all back up again. And I know that's inconvenient and it's pricey, but that's simply the truth about how to get how to get insulation in the house.
Where is that area where you have to go into.
Well, it's literally every every bay, every space in between the roof rafters up on your ceiling there, and it's literally every sixteen inches. Yeah, it's a whole thing. It's a whole that's why. That's why I'm so upset with homes that were built without insulation in them when they were built, because it was so easy to add when it was all opened up. In the meantime, though, Terry, let me tell you this, in the meantime, you don't
choke off the heating system for the house. Okay. And here's a good piece of advice for anybody who's living in a leaky place and you want to stay warm. You should not have to go outside to stay warm to get warm, all right, So here, but here's the reality. Space heating in each room or or a portable space heater you can carry with you. And and let me be really clear about this. What you want is you
want to get a infrared space heater infrared, okay. And the reason is this, You want to get a good infrared space heater because infrared waves they don't heat the air, they heat you Okay, So when you're in a room with an infrared space heater, you will be warm. You will get warm even without the heavy lift of having to bring all of that cubic air of in the
room up to temperature. Okay, when you go out, when you eat at a restaurant, okay, and I gotta, I gotta rush out of here because we're literally at the edge.
What you know, when you go outside and you eat at a restaurant at night, right, and those space heaters that are out there, not just the ones with the flame, but you know, the free standing ones with the little cap on top, or maybe there's those bar heaters that are running underneath a patio wanting if you ever thought about this, those heaters are not heating up the air it's outside. Okay, that would be a massive heater to actually heat the air outside. But what they are infrared.
Infrared waves get under your skin and uh and warm you up. So infrared heaters heat you and that's why it's comfortable to sit out on a patio with one of those heaters nearby. If you were actually to measure the air temperature around you, it's not that much different than the rest of the cold everywhere outside of that patio.
But you your plenty warm because they heat you. And so if you live in an impossibly leaky cold space and it just literally is going to you have to mortgage the house in order to pay the heating bill. Number one, Save up and think about what it takes to retrofit insulation. Call insulation companies get quotes. But in the interim, and you're in a cold room, infrared space heater, get it near you. You'll be cozy even if the room doesn't increase in temperature. Thank you, Terry for your call.
That's all I had time for today. I am so grateful for those of you who respond. You know, at the top of the show, I'm like, you know, only got a couple of calls here on the board, and you've got room, and now I have to let some of you go. Just know, if you call back, then you let producer Richie know that you were on hold before and I didn't get you, and you get you get priority access to the front of the line. All right, Tomorrow our Holiday Home Show live from iHeart Studios in Burbank.
It's gonna be a hoot. You're not gonna wanna miss it until then they drive today and get out there and get busy building yourself a beautiful life. We'll see you tomorrow. 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