Getting Control of Sound | Hour 2

you should go ahead. Take a look. Oh it's gorgeous. Just managing myself there right now. Anyway, follow us on social media you will find it there. Home with Dean. That's the handle for all of them, all of them.

neither one of those are correct. The truth falls somewhere in between. Mass loaded vinyl is a fantastic form of insulation. It's very thin. It's a thin layer, a roll of it. It looks like a roll of rubber, almost like a big roll up yoga mat. But you will find it's yat not a yoga mat when you go to pick up that role because it is heavy. I mean it is dense, thick rubberized vinyl material and because of that, sound works

extra hard to get through it. It is a fantastic insulating thing that takes very little space, and I mean like eighth of an inch thick, that can be applied or stapled to the inside of studs or walls, or in between layers of drywall, what have you. MLV great product, very expensive product, but when getting another layer of sound control is critical and space is limited, MLV is a great way to go, however, just to avoid So that's my full endorsement of it. Okay, we use it. Okay,

it has its application. If you go to the Builder Show International Builder Show and you see MLV being displayed there there's a guy standing behind a table and there's a box, like a two foot by two foot by two foot cube, and it's covered in MLV. It's just a tiny little box covered in MLV and just sitting there on the counter. And the guy's like, hey, did you know MLV controls sound and an unbelievable way? And you're supposed to say no, I did not. Now are

you demonstrating it? And he's like, just go ahead and lift up the cube. So you reach over and you lift up the cube and you find that there's a speaker underneath blaring I mean blaring with sound that you did not hear because the MLV was shutting it down. And that is quite an impressive display and you can

find some of those online as well. Here's the problem, Okay, the only problem with that is that that is an optimal situation in which not only have we got complete control of the insulation area of the cube, but the cube is also allowing zero air penetration. In other words, that cube sits flat on that table, no air makes it out, and that is not how your room is

going to work. Okay, So the idea that it goes from super loud to almost inaudible has as much to do with shutting down the airflow between those two spaces as it has to do with the wonder that is MLV. So all I'm saying is the demonstration is quite effective, but the idea that, oh my gosh, I can take this home and it's going to make my room sound the exact same way. No, no, not as long as oxygen moves in between your room and the next room, or there's a gap under the door, or there are

windows and what have you. Just wanted to let you know that. Okay, all right, let's go to the phones. Get started with the calls, because it's time. I want to talk to Mollie. Hey, Molly, welcome home.

that outside. Or uh you install what's called mini split, which is just a small cassette based fully functional air conditioner and a mini split of most mini splits these days come configured also as heat pumps, which means they can work in reverse and they can gently heat the room during the coldest months as well. But here's the thing. The spa is putting off, the jacuzzi is putting off a lot of humidity in the room, okay, and a air conditioner will dry that out, will help to dry

that out. The fans are fine, But again I'm gonna just for educational purposes. I want everybody, as we're rolling into summer here, I might as well say this. I was saving some of this for our HVAC show, which is coming up very shortly. But a fan. Fans are great, but fans do not cool the air. They cool you.

So you can put ten fans inside high power fans inside a room and look at the thermometer and come back three hours later and find out that the air is the exact same temperature then when you left it, because all we're doing is moving the air around the room. Now on a human being who has skin, who is made up of over seventy percent water, and we perspire through our skin. I'm not just talking sweat. I'm talking about moisture, leaving every square inch of our skin all

the time. A fan blowing across our skin accelerates the evaporative process, and that cools us. So fans when they're pointed at you, make you feel cooler. But they have no illusions about this. That fan is only cooling you. Off your sense of cool. It is not actually reducing the air temperature in the room. So if we really want to get control of the air temperature environment in a room, we actually have to take heat out of

the room. And the only thing that's going to do that is an air conditioner.

It's all relative, but relative to the US. Yes, you and I have smaller homes, and when it comes to smaller homes, design is even more important than in larger ones. And that shocks some people. Here to here's the thing. I mean to take this. Take this from a guy who regularly works on jumbo houses. All right, a state

level homes. If I've got ten, twelve, fifteen thousand square feet to work with, does it matter whether the hallway is five feet wide or six feet wide or seven feet wide or you know, not really, I got a lot of room to waste and that doesn't make me a lazy designer when it comes to those things. But the reality is, you know, we can fill around with lots of things and it doesn't have a tremendous effect, but the smallerest space gets It's why I love designing

small spaces because it's truly a challenge. It's a game of inches and layout and flow. And so when it comes to a smaller space, design is everything. It can make all the world of difference. So if your question is, you know, how do you make how do you learn to make more efficient use of the space? Well, how would you learn that? You can do some studying on it. You can keep listening to this show because I talk about that all the time. Or you turn around and

get yourself a designer. I mean, Tina and I can do a design consult for you, but you hire a designer to actually help you utilize all of that space to its utmost. And it's going to take some time and effort and some creative brain power to do it. But the good news is once it's done, man, it's a life changer.

and an architectural designer or an architect. The difference is how much of the structure we are fiddling with as designers. I am what In every other state other than the state of California, I freely refer to myself as an architectural designer because because I'm not a licensed architect, but I'm a designer who works in the residential realm, which is fully you know, allowable to do and you know, I design homes from the ground up, roofs, walls, the

whole thing. Right, Other states embrace the term architectural designer. In the state of California, you can actually get in trouble for saying that, even though I just did, so come at me, come get me. It's the truth anyway, Sorry about that. An architectural designer is somebody who or an interior designer is somebody who's willing to change wall configurations or room configurations if that's what the flow problem requires. A decorator is somebody who's only dealing with superficial things.

And I don't mean that as a as a dig on decorators. I'm just saying decorators don't move walls, they don't rearrange bathrooms, but they they reappoint them furniture, wall coverings, paint colors, flooring surfaces, all of that kind of thing. So they're all and Tina's commenting here, but I can't hear, so I'm turning your mic up.

I want to get back to Jamie, but Judith called in last week, couldn't get through, and so I'm going to honor Judith. Keep our promises to give you a fast pass to the front of the line and then we'll get back to Jamie right after that. Judith, welcome home.

before I do redo the cabinet and everything. Oh, I have to wait for the flooring in the kitchen until the cabinet and everything is done. That's my question.

you can make the adjustments of time. The nice thing about luxury vinyl plank is that it's a floating floor. It goes, It lays over the top of your slab or your subfloor, like carpeting does. It's click locked into place, which means it can also be unclicked and removed and

changed and reconfigured without tearing up everything. And so if there's going to be a substantial gap in between the work that you're doing on the house right now and the work that is coming later for the kitchen, Go ahead, run all the floor, enjoy it, live in your new stuff,

and just to you know, enjoy all of that. And then when the time comes, you know that you've got a couple boxes of planks, you know, in the garage waiting in case you change the cabinet configuration on the ground in the kitchen, and you know that it's no problem. We can take up what's there and if there's something in the way, and then I've got extras that we can lay down that are going to match and it'll

fit to the new configuration. And there you go. You have my full permission to enjoy one half of your remodeling now and the other when it comes. Judah, thanks for the question. Really good question. Good, good, good, good question. All right, Uh, Jamie is back with me. Jamie are you there?

undo those screws and lift that cover off. But if we're talking about a standard kind of exterior drain deck drain, then there's a very good chance that that is a insert. That grill is an insert that's that's sitting down inside

the pipe that it's slid into place. Now it's not glued in, it's just slid in, okay, and so in it may have never been removed and the whole time that it's been there, and it might, you know, because of grit and grime and age and expansion and contraction and heat and cold, it might be a bit what we call frozen in place there. So if it's that kind of a of a grate, you could get a pair of pliers. Gotta be careful if it's PVC as

opposed to metal. If it's metal, you can be a little bit more aggressive with it, but if it's if it's a plastic sort of grill, then you want to be a little bit more gentle. So there's two ways

to approach this. You can get a pair of plyers and grab on to one of the slots with the plyers, and you know, give it a little twist and tug and see if you can't get any movement out of it as it in order to lift it out of there, or or if if that doesn't affect anything, and I don't want you to chew it all up with the plyers too visually, then another trick is to take a wire coat hanger or a strong piece of wire, kind of bend it into a hook shape, slide it down

through one of the far edge slots all the way to the edge and see if you can't, then lift it back up so that the little hook that you've created comes up through the other, you know, one of the other far edge slat. In other words, we've kind of looped down underneath through the slats. Pull the wire up good on both sides, and then either grab that with your hand or grab that with a pair of pliers and pull so that it's pulling tension more evenly

across it. But I guarantee you that thing will come out. It is probably just what we call a tension insert down inside the pipe that it is serving, and sometimes if they haven't been removed regularly, it just takes a little bit of effort and tugging and so on in order to get it done. But there you go, Jamie, I'm right up against a break. Thank you for the question. Thanks for calling back. I don't know if it was us or you who cut us off, but I'm glad

we got back to it. That's your best shot. When it comes to that, you'll either see the screws that need to be removed. They won't be hidden, or it's a tension fitting. You just need to get something looped in underneath it and give it a good tug. All right, y'all when we return more of your calls.

coverage of all of that starting at noon. From noon to two it'll be Tiffany Hobbes and Michael Monks and from two to four Gary Hoffman. So stay tuned. We've got coverage of everything that's happening out there. And I am I'm just glad that we get to not be preempted right now and spend the time together doing what we normally love to do with you you here on Sunday mornings, and that is talk about that very special

place where you live. We're going to get back to our conversation on the controlling sound just after the next break. But I still have another segment here to take a call or two if we can. I want to talk to Wendy. Hey, Wendy, welcome home.

But if they're in your home like they were in Wendy's chimney or something where they shouldn't be, then don't call a pest control company called bee Catchers because they will take care. They'll remove everything that needs to be removed. They'll also save the bees and give them a new home, which, in Wendy's case is my backyard. So there you go. I had no idea that's the world, right, six degrees of separation or less? You know I have it is I've adopted your bees.

don't want to use the plywood. And then there are all these processes like whether it's cold pressed, or it is cured with smoke, or it's cured with ammonia. Can you tell me what all that means and what's going to be the greenest, the most resilient. I don't want scratches, even though we don't have any pets or kids and we take our shoes off. But I'm really, you know, having a hard time de signing.

a real hardwood floor. The old, the old idea of like old solid hardwood, we have let go of that a long, long, long long time ago. And and I will tell you that, as far as in terms of green is considered, any any high quality hardwood floor is a adequate and green option for you. And I'll tell you why.

Because traditional hardwood floors, and traditional I mean going back one hundred years, three quarter inch thick solid wood floors, white oak, red oak, whatever the material might be, that is a kind of floor that eats up a tremendous amount of tree, a lot of tree in order to

get those right. And they are also very very susceptible to moisture, to cupping, to bowing, because it's one piece of wood and moisture gets into the grain and there's nothing there to resist that wood doing what it naturally does, which is if moisture gets on one side, it expands that side, and then the other side, which is dryer, ends up cupped, okay, because one side literally grows larger than the other side, and we get this curved thing,

which is disastrous. There's this old school thought. They're like, that was real hardwood floors, not this plywood these days. Okay, But here's the thing. There's a reason for it, all right. Number One, Not only does an engineered floor, which is primarily made out of what we call plywoods, an engineered floor is a far superior floor. Number one, it's far superior because it uses less tree. Okay, that's a great thing.

In other words, with all those thin layers. Number two, the whole point of an engineered floor is that the layers of plywood are set at forty five degree angles to each other, each layer each succeeding layer, and so as moisture attacks that piece of flooring, every layer wants to expand in a different direction, and every layer is pressed and glued to every other layer, and therefore none of the layers get to do anything because they're all expand against each other, and as a result, it's a

far more stable piece of flooring. Third thing is that right on top of that plywood base, that engineered base is a real solid layer of whatever you're finished wood is. And the point that I make to people all the time is that three quarter inch old red oak floor that you think, Yeah, that thing's so thick it could

be resanded fifty times. No, no, it can't be. Because the only part of that floor, even though it's one solid piece of wood, the only part of that floor that can that determines how much it can be resanded and refinished through the years is the is the amount of that floor which sticks above the tongue and the groove, because we can only finish this, We can only stand this floor down until we run the risk of exposing

the tongueung in the groove, and then it's done. Which means that the average old school traditional hardwood floor has about three sixteenths of an inch of a ware layer, of a true wear layer that is actually interactive with you the homeowner, and with refinishing, and a really good quality modern engineered floor has in fact a six millimeter ware layer. Those are got the best that they come in six millimeters, which is essentially pretty close to three

sixteenths of an inch. And so the point is an engineered hardwood floor, this is what you're looking for, you're looking for low VOC glues that that'll be advertised with the brand cold pressed. It can be cold pressed, it can be hot pressed. But my main concern is low VOC volatile organic compound off gasing. That's as green as it gets low VOC grooves. But here is what we're looking for. The best quality hardwood floors that have ever

existed on planet Earth have these components. They are you want the thickest ware layer, so you want a minimum of four millimeters of war layer, ideally six millimeters of ware layer. That's the actual finish wood. And then underneath that you want the most plot layers of ply. And that's really what makes the difference. There are cheap hardwood floors out there that have a thick ware layer on top and there's three layers of ply. In other words,

three layers underneath. That's not enough. When I say multiple layers of ply, I'm talking nine to eleven layers of ply. Okay, that's a stable hardwood floor with a thick ware layer. It is gold. It is just it's as good as it gets, and it's good as it can be. And by definition UH it is UH. It is a green product because we are using UH more of uh, I don't want to say scrap, but more of ancillary wood from every tree in order to get those thin layers of ply and less of the heartwood.

about amusing a name brand? And I know you don't endorse them, but I'm just giving you an example in case you've seen it, Cosablanca and it has one really thick layer of wood and it uses no formaldehyde and it's glue and no voc but it has one really really thick piece of baby plywood underneath that four millimeter thick, which I'm going to try and find a six milimeter brand. Is that any better for the sustainability I mean, sorry, the longevity of the wood?

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