KFI AM six forty.
You're listening to Dean Sharp, the House Whisper on demand on the iHeartRadio app. Hey, welcome to home Where. Every week we help you better understand that place where you live. I am Dean Sharp, the House Whisperer, here with you live like I am every weekend. Saturday morning, six to eight Pacific time, Sunday mornings nine to noon Pacific time. Welcome to the Sunday Morning Show. Welcome to the second
hour of our show. We are talking about the home monitoring revolution that has taken place over the last few years. All of your options for monitoring your home from from AFAR, both energy, safety, security, and on and on, so many options. We're going to try and cover as many of them as possible today so that you are aware of of all the amazing things that you can do with your home to take care of it better. What right now is our custom. It is the top of the hour,
and it is time to go to the phones. And when it comes to phone calls, you set the agenda. Anything you want to talk about regarding your home. I want to talk to Wayne.
Wayne, let's get it started, Hidane.
Yeah, we're doing some un wanted home remodeling, and in the kitchen we're looking at replacing ranite countertops with recycled glass countertops. I want to get your thoughts on that.
Okay, first of all, though you've piqued my interest unwanted home remodeling.
What happened fire fun?
Oh?
Oh all right, I'm sorry about that.
Okay, kitchen counter tops glass versus granite or quartz or quartzite or whatever.
Yeah?
Uh, what what got you intro interested in glass?
By the way, I love glass. I do glass work, I do letted glass and fascinated with blown glass, but also as a marine biologist. Our home has an ocean theme. So this men only has glass in it, but it has oyster shells.
I see. Excellent, excellent.
Well, okay, I'm not sure ive been asked that question directly before. I mean, we talked, we've talked about glass when it comes to our hard surface stone materials in those shows, but I don't think a listener has actually
directly asked about glass countertops. Right off the top. As soon as I say that word glass countertop, people are cringing because they're just fearful, because they're like, that's exactly what I need I need to spend a lot of money on a very fancy countertop and then drop something on it and have it shatter or break, and then you know I'm screwed. So what's the truth behind glass countertops. Well, one thing you should know for certain is that not
all glass countertops are made the same. Some are tempered, some are not tempered. Some are mixed with concretes and resins to make them strong, others are not so much. The thing with glass countertops is that glass is such as you know if you've worked with it. It is such a malleable material. You can do so many things with it. It's unlike stone in the sense that you know, here's a piece of granite.
There, it is, there, it is, that's the color, that's what it is.
But when we say glass, we can be transparent, we can be semi transparent. We can be back painted glass so that you've got color, but the color is coming from the far side of the glass, and the whole thing kind of glows in a three dimensional style. We can run led lights through glass in order for it to glow uniformly. We can put things like seashells into glass, suspended as if we were doing, like you know well,
technically in the area of design and building. Glass falls under the category in this case of functional art, in which we're doing a design in something a medium that becomes a functional thing. But as a whole, a well designed, well manufactured glass countertop can in fact compete and even exceed stone in its usability and durability. They can be very,
very tough. They are without question, incredibly temperature resistant. You can usually trust that they are at least fourteen fifteen sixteen hundred degrees fahrenheit resistant about anything being put on it. The other advantage that they have over a natural stone like granted, especially Granted, it's very hard, but it's very porous, meaning that if you don't keep it sealed, you're going to lose bits of stuff down inside the granite that
you can't get to to clean. It's why Granted is actually not permitted in most executive kitchens in restaurants because health department says, you know, you can't keep that thing clean enough to keep the standards up. Glass is completely non porous, so nothing gets down in it, and as soon as you wipe it and clean it on the surface, it is sterile and clean and ready to go. So it can be fabricated in just about any shape and size. Like stone, you can put just about any edge on it.
And yeah, so I'm a big fan. I'm a huge fan of glass. Glass is not a common topic though, that gets brought up these days, just because it takes somewhat of a courageous homeowner even be thinking in that direction because of all I think the innate stuff in
the back of our heads saying oh it's fragile. And I will say, this glass is going to be typically more expensive than granite, stone, quartzite or so on, just because of the manufacturing process that it goes through in order to get it to that point of durability and usefulness on a countertop. But it can be absolutely stunning. It's bold, but it can be incredibly incredibly beautiful.
Oh yeah, this is a recycled glass and cement using oyster shells, Georgia marble and architectural class.
Yeah.
Yeah, so that's a typically very very durable combination, very beautiful. And you know, at the end of the day, my friend, if you are loving the look, you can trust the durability of that kind of piece, whether or not it should be on every single counter serve in the kitchen, or whether it becomes a center piece kind of sitting on the island or on a peninsula, and then you run complementary stone elsewhere. These are all the kinds of design decisions that you have to make, but feel free
to make them. There's absolutely nothing wrong with doing the whole kitchen out of it, but you can also, you know, limit your budget somewhat and also maybe get as much bang for the buck as possible if you've got an island or a peninsula, to make it a focal point and let everything be the supporting actor as it were with it at center stage.
We're putting on the island and the kitchen countertaps and there's an overhang. So what's the strength compared to granted.
Well, you know, tempered glass. If it's a tech well in your situation that resin mix. I think it competes with granted in overhang strength though one to one, if not a little bit stronger. That is where you need to check with your fabricator or the actual manufacturer and ask them those specific questions, because that's the kind of question that I can't answer because glass comes in so
many different forms. Because it is a manufactured item. It doesn't have just a standing rating that applies to all glass countertops. That's something. Check with the manufacturer. Check with them and say, all right, we need to know, we need to know exactly where it rates in tensile strength versus granted, how much does it need to be supported? How vulnerable will it be depending on their mix and their structure as they manufactured it. So again, check with
the manufacturer. You'll get your questions answered there. Wayne, good luck on that. Sorry about the fire, but sounds like you're putting together a gorgeous redo, a great comeback for your house and for your kitchen. Keep us posted as to how well it goes. All right, y'all when we return more of your calls. You are Home Sharp the house Whisper.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI Am six.
All right, we're talking about the home monitoring revolution, but right now we're taking calls. We're going to come back to monitoring in just a bit, but right now, go into the phones. Joe, Hey, Joe, welcome home.
Thank you, Dean. I have a shower valve that leaked in my shower and the water is now or was coming out the wall where it meets the floor and then the adjacent wall at about thirty two inches. It would weep out real slowly, and I put sands, cut open all the dry wall, put sands on it for about four days five days, and it seems like it's slowing. I mean, it's stopped. Do I have to pull out the floor to fix us?
All right? So what floor are we talking about?
It?
We upstairs, we downstairs. We're in a raised foundation. Where's what tell me what the dynamics of the floor is.
It's a it's a raised foundation mm hm. And it's on the first floor and the floor joaces when I looked underneath were wet and the skip sheeting was wet, but it wasn't so wet that it was getting, you know, drifting on the dirt. And there was mud and so I don't know how long it's been leaking, but it wasn't horrible, I didn't think because they didn't have a big puddle in the mud.
Okay, okay, So leaky valve.
It's dropped down, it's kind of spread out onto the floor, and but it seems to be slowing now or stopped.
Right, it's it seems like it's stopped after about five four or five days.
Okay, that's a lot of wonder yes, Okay, So I don't want to suggest anything radical yet. I just want you to be patient and wait and just keep monitoring it.
Okay.
If you can get a fan underneath the house blowing up against those joice and the sheathing from below, that will help as well. So I get as much air, as much exposure to it as possible, and then be patient, be patient and wait. If you don't see any deformities, if you don't see any bubbling, if you don't see any excessive soft spots on the floor as a result of this, if you don't see anything bizarre happening down below. We just want to make sure it gets thoroughly, thoroughly
dried out. A little heat underneath would also be of benefit if that's feasible, but it's not critical. Airflow is the most critical part. The evaporative process is the most critical part. And now we play a waiting game. I say this a lot to people. It's true, and I don't want to give you false hope.
Okay.
At the same time, because there may be some stuff there that maybe has to be dealt with, but it's never a problem usually that wood gets wet. Now, when I say that, I'm not talking about your one hundred year old hardwood floor that has just got soaked with water and now is cupping and that kind of that's a problem. But I mean structural wood in a house. It's very very very very rarely a problem that wood
gets wet. It's a problem when wood stays wet. And I don't mean stays wet for a couple of weeks. I mean simply stays wet, because that is when dry rot starts to kick into play. That's when mold and mildew become an issue, and that's when we get systemic problems in that regard. So when wood gets wet and then it dries out, if it hasn't warped, tweaked, or lost its structural integrity like an applywood situation because adhesives have been affected or it's delaminated. If those things have
not happened, then just be patient. Dry it out, see what you get in the end, and then even afterwards, if you feel like you know what, it's all dry, it's just dry. Everything's dry. Now come back in, you know, two months, six months, get up underneath, poke around, make sure nothing else has started, make sure it's still dry, and you should be good to go. So it's the
kind of thing that now is a waiting game. Take the right action and wait, as opposed to just getting worried and tearing up a bathroom potentially unnecessarily in order to fix a floor that really probably didn't you know, that may not need fixing to begin with. It will tell you you just keep an eye on it, and it'll send signals there's not that much house there hiding from you in a raised foundation, especially if you've already opened up the walls and you're drying out the wall
cavity and you've replaced and fixed the valve. You know, you've resolved the water leakage problem, so there's no more additional water coming in.
Now.
It's a question of just making sure it dries out, and you know, you can talk to remodeling contractors or you know, a restoration conscious. Some of them will come in and say, you know, because they would love to make a buck, and they're like, oh.
Just tear it all out. That's the only way, you'll know. Just be patient, just be patient.
Nobody's going to walk in the bathroom and fall through the floor because it's rotted overnight. It's a very very slow process even when something is going wrong in this kind of situation. So dry it out, be patient, keep an eye on it, and you'll know you'll know it.
So there was there's skip sheeting agents boards and they I went underneath and they're dry. I had a friend look and pretty knowledgeable, and he says, it's dry here because we weren't sure if we had the six leap six because it kept weeping. But now the weeping has seemed to stop. So how long did it? I mean, it's it's dry now, with it dry rot? I check in a month, two months, did you say?
Yeah?
I would check in a month or two and just see if there's any other side of moisture or softness or discoloration other than the discoloration of the staining of the water.
Okay, just to go up.
Under the there, take a take an all you know or a sharp flathead screwdriver or something, and just poke around and see if what you're feeling is just dense wood, or if all of a sudden you're hitting a soft spot okay, but there's really not a huge mystery to moisture and damage with wood. If it's held on to it for a long, long period of time, that's when dry rot begins to do its work in a dark,
moist environment. But if it's already feeling dry, I think you're probably you've moved out of the danger zone and you're in the clear. But being patient, giving it extra air, waiting even longer than it seems is not going to do you any harm.
Well, And some people say the silicone the grout on the floor, we're or the wall going down, And then I've never siliconed, I've only sealed it in the past.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's a moot point. It's a moot point. It's like putting a band aid on a gaping wound. You've fixed the moisture problem. I don't worry about siliconing grout on the floor because you know, waterproof areas, they either have a moisture protection under them or they don't. And we don't rely on the tile and the grout
to keep moisture away from the framing. And so if there's there's probably at least some elementary building paper under there, and in that case, it's going to do its job. So yeah, the rest of it just becomes this kind of futile attempt to seal up a floor that isn't going to be sealed unless you completely redo the thing, in which case you could make the whole bathroom floor a shower pan if you wanted to. But it's really those are heroic measures beyond the scope of what is
normally needed. What's important is that you fix the leaky valve now, let it dry out, and get back to your life. That's my advice to you. And don't worry about all of the possible don't look on web MD about your house. It's like, if anybody wants to find out that they're about to die because of the cut on their elbow, look on webnd.
You'll find out that.
Chances are you know you've contracted a rare disease in that cut, and you know you may have to amputate. Don't do that. Don't do that. You're on the right path, my friend. Thanks for the question, Thanks for the call, buddy, and good luck. I think you're on the right path, and I doubt that you have much to worry about.
There, all right, joall.
When we come back, why don't we dive back into the home monitoring revolution.
We will do that.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty.
You are Home with Dean Sharp, the house whisper.
That's me and we're talking about the home monitoring revolution today. Is it a revolution? It is a revolution because it's taken the world of homeowners by storm, and it's happened relatively quickly, so we're going to call it a revolution. At some point, all of our connected technology has kind of rolled together, and now we have such an opportunity to take care of and watch over our homes even when we are not there. We were on the subject
of security before. I just want to wrap that up because there are a couple of little devices and points that I wanted to communicate with you. Where'd I leave off garage doors? I left off with garage doors. Motion detectors, of course, are as things that can be placed anywhere inside the house, outside the house, outside the house, connected
to floodlights. Great idea inside the house for the sake of knowing where and if somebody is moving through an area of the house, to let you know and again we're talking about the kinds of systems that communicate back to your smartphone in addition potentially to a monitoring service if you want to pay that additional fee for that kind of thing. Remote access is part of the monitoring revolution. And by remote access we simply mean having the kind of hardware in your home that allows you to let
somebody in. This is the opposite of security. I suppose it is a security device that keeps you know, door is locked. But let's say you're you know, you're away and family member, a friend needs to get into the house for some reason somehow, maybe you have left your keys and you're the person who needs to get into the house. Here's your phone, and you can grant with the right kind of hardware. Schleg makes some quick Set makes some Baldwin makes some direct automated home hardware that
will unlock a door or lock a door. And this is in addition to what is now a keyless biometric I don't think we've got I don't trust facial recognition door hardware yet to do that, but biometric locks and where you you know, put your thumb on the pad and boomp, it opens up. Because it's you. These are things that are all available for your house. Remote communication is a big part of this as well. Communication meaning
well what most of you have. If you've got like a smart doorbell or ring or a Nest doorbell, not only do on your phone, can you actually hear the door chime when someone's there, And not only do you have a video feed, but you also have audio and you can talk back and forth to the individual who's on the front porch, at the front door and so on, because there are microphones that enable that kind of communication, not just listening, but two way communication so that there's
a speaker so that they can hear you things like you don't belong on my front porch and I've already notified nine to one one that kind of stuff, or hey, sorry, we're not coming to the door right now, or whatever the case may be, or just leave it there, we'll get to it in a couple of minutes, even if you're on vacation. So that kind of stuff very very useful again, just part of your arsenal Monitoring services have
their place, they really really do. They add that extra layer of security knowing that there is also another set of eyes looking at the house even if you've not carrying your phone around right now, or you left it somewhere else, or whatever the case may be. Remote lighting control. Now, I said earlier, this is the connected monitored home is not just about all the fancy controls that you can
do for inside your house. But the fact of the matter is all that fancy lighting control that you can put inside your house also can serve a really important security function because you can program smart lights in your home to go on and off at different times, and go on and off at different times on different days, so that anybody who's, as they say in the old detective speak case in the joint, if they're watching your home over a period of two or three days, they'll
notice the fact that, oh, the kitchen light turned on, and then it turned and now a bedroom line is on and that off, and it just simply implies that somebody's there, even if you aren't. Okay, the most amazing I've got to close with this one before we go to break the most amazing high tech security measure that
I am aware of. All Right, if you want the the ultimate or you just want to be entertained by this thought, Okay, the ultimate home security for you is a fog cannon mounted in the exterior rooms where egress into the house can happen. A fog cannon. There are fog cannon security systems. You owe it to yourself. If that sounds fun, to look it up. Okay, they're not cheap, Okay, but man are they effective? Okay, So think about this now. Think about You've got a dedicated criminal who's going to
get into your home. They don't care about your motion detectors, they don't care about your alarms because they've got a plan to get in, get to the thing they're getting to, and get out before it even matters. They're hardened. They're going in. So they open the window, they open the door, they step inside, and suddenly, from out of the ceiling comes a gush of fog. Theater fog, okay, the kind of stuff you know, special effects fog. It fills the
room and they see nothing. They can't They are blizzard blind. They cannot see two inches in front of their face.
Guess what.
A criminal that cannot see where they're going has no incentive to step further into the house and to get it done. They just freak out, especially if that's combined with lights and sirens and they are out of here. One of the most potentially the most effective security systems.
So if you're really, really committed, if you're really committed to home security on a passive level, meaning that you're not going to put bars on your windows and you know, booby traps on the front door or anything like that, fog cannon. Fog cannon is an unbelievable and we're talking about the kind of canon. Not a fog machine that slowly puts fog in, but a cannon that literally is size to fill the room with fog in less than
three seconds. I mean just literally go from from empty room to I can't see a thing, I am out of here in three seconds. Amazingly effective and fun to watch happen too. All right, when we come back, let's move on to safety, not security, but safety.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Welcome home, Thanks for joining us today. We are so so glad that you are here, especially considering I don't want to sell myself out of a job here. But have you looked outside? It is gorgeous outside. So when we're done, when we're done, not now. But when we're done, you got to get out there or you know it, put us on the iHeartRadio app on your phone, pop in your headphones and get out there anyway and take me out with you. Let's go together, Yeah, into the day.
Listen to me and digital HD and hear all the tones of my melodious baritone voice. All right, we're talking about the monitored home. I want to get off of security and move to safety. What's the difference between security and safety. Security is about, you know, baddies trying to get in and do you wrong. Yes, baddies, that's a technical term, baddies. Safety is about mishaps in your home.
I'm talking about fires. We're talking about carbon monoxide, floods, freezes, and you know, electrical problems basically all of which nowadays we have a monitored solution to if you are interested in moving in that direction. Fire smoke alarms, and I'm not talking about fire sprinkler systems. That's obviously awesome, and those are by nature monitored. And if you go to the expense of having a fire sprinkler system installed in your home, you should definitely have it set up so
that you get at notice. Should any of those sprinklers go off for any reason whatsoever, but long before that happens. Far less expensively than that is your basic smoke alarm system in your home. Smoke alarms, one in every bedroom, one in a hallway or area leading to the bedrooms. These are the smoke alarm needs of a home, not in the kitchen, you know, anything like that. These days, though,
connected smart smoke alarms. We use Nests here in our home because again they feed into the same app that my cameras and thermostat all feed into. I also like the Nest alarms because they are combination fire and CO two carbon monoxide detectors, so they you know, they get you covered both directions. I also like the Nest, and they're not a sponsor of the show. I'm just saying I like the Nest because they can be battery operated or hardwired or both. And I also like the Nest
because they talk to you. They give you some options. So when our Nest smoke alarm first detects smoke, instead of just going crazy with an alarm, she and it is a she actually talks to me and says, smoke detected in the hallway, and what do you want to do about it basically, and so we can go wave it off, or we can, you know, find out what the real issue is. Wave it off if it just happens that I'm smoking up the steak a little bit too much in the kitchen, or go deal and see
what the real reason for the smoke is there. So and their networked and connected and all talking to each other and all talking to the apps that are on our phones. Another thing, now, this is not something that a lot of people are aware of, but now there are very very small devices about the size of a matchbook that can be placed under sensitive water leak areas, like one under the sink, one under the water heater area,
and so on. These are water detectors. They detect when any water or moisture hits the surface that they're sitting on, and they alert you to stop a potential flood or serious damage from taking place. In addition to the remote water detectors at each of these sensitive spots, you can of course also have a smart water main valve like a flow flo by Mowen, you know, the faucet company. You put a mow and flow valve on your maine.
It will actually monitor regular water usage and alert you if it feels like there's water just seeping, not a full faucet, not a full turn on of anything, but seeping. It will actually let you know if there's a leak somewhere happening, and if there's a full pipe burst or this chronic leak. It has the ability to shut off the main to the house before anything goes further than it needs to go. And you can remotely shut off the main to the house via your mow and flow valve.
So another incredibly incredibly useful tool. Now not so much in southern California unless you live in the mountains, then you need to listen to this. And if you live outside of southern California, in any area where there's a real winter that sets in there, there are now freeze sensors and basically it can either be built into your thermostat, your smart thermostat, or a separate sensor that you can
have inside the house. And what we're talking about is, Okay, your away from the house is really important if you're taking a trip during the winter, or if you are you've got a vacation home that isn't necessarily occupied during the winter. In freezing areas. It's the ever present problem of the temperature inside the house dropping so much that
the pipes freeze. And the problem with pipes water freezing inside your pipes is that water expands when it freezes, and as a result, it can burst open your pipes and cause major, major damage all over the house. Just one bad freeze that will result in leaks and lots and lots of plumbing issues. One of the reasons, by the way, that I like pecks as a pipe system as a plumbing system is it has a fifteen percent expansion capacity. It can actually expand if frozen water is
inside it. Now I'm not saying that you use that and rely on it as your safety. I'm just saying it's one of the pros of having a PEX plumbing system as opposed to a rigid system like copper or what have you. Anyway, the point is we can put a air temperature detector, you know often that's called a thermostat, but this is not necessarily in control of the rest of your system to alert you when the air temperature inside the house drops to a point where we're beginning
to be concerned about possible freeze. And then if you have a smart thermostat, you can remotely, you know, turn on the heating system, warm the house back up again,
so you can avoid that very very very costly mistake. Okay, when we're going to return to this subject, I want to talk to you about something that a lot of people are unaware of, and that is the transition that's taking place in the electrical community to smart electrical panels and even more importantly, smart breakers and what those do. But that's when we return to the subject. When we come back from the break here at the top of the hour, we're going back to the phones. Your Home
with Dean Sharp, the House Whisperer on KFI. 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.