June 25, 2024 • 28 mins
Have you ever wondered how you can slash your summer cooling costs while keeping your home comfortable? Our latest episode of the Carolina Contractor Show promises to reveal practical, budget-friendly strategies that will help you do just that.
But it's not all about entertainment. We're committed to equipping homeowners with actionable advice to enhance energy efficiency and reduce utility bills. Donnie and Eric Smith shed light on the importance of proper insulation and air sealing, especially in older homes, to prevent AC units from overworking. They delve into the nitty-gritty of air distribution, heat transfer, and breaking thermal bridges, ensuring your HVAC system operates more effectively and lasts longer. From using low expansion spray foam around windows and doors to installing programmable thermostats and ceiling fans, we cover a range of easy-to-implement solutions.
We round off the episode with valuable tips for outdoor home upgrades that can contribute to substantial energy savings. Learn about the benefits of installing a radiant barrier in your attic, upgrading to multi-stage HVAC units, and maintaining your system for optimal performance. We also touch on thoughtful tree management for natural shade and the impact of replacement windows and insulated garage doors. Don't miss out on this treasure trove of tips to transform your home into an energy-efficient haven. Visit thecarolinacontractor.com for more resources, past episodes, and to submit your questions and topic suggestions!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to the Carolina Contractor Show with
your host, General ContractorDonnie Blanchard.
Donnie, ever watch Beavis andButthead in your earlier days.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I sure did.
I probably spent way too muchtime during the summers.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
but yes, sir, I never saw it when it was originally
on.
I listened to other people talkabout it and I learned to do
the voices.
It came out a couple of yearsago.
I think they did a series ofnew episodes from it and I
couldn't believe that.
I found me, my wife, my son,laughing when it used to make me
cringe to think about my kidsever watching that show.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Oh, for sure.
Yeah, it's definitely not ageappropriate for a little kid,
but I can see where a teenagerwould find some humor in that.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Well, if you get some time this summer which you
never have time, it seems sitback and watch that Again.
We went into Siskel and Ebertof contractors.
I guess Donnie, this is theCarolina Contractor Show.
My name is Eric Smith.
I do inside sales with HomeBuilder Supply.
Donnie is like big time.
He's a general contractor.
He owns Blanchard BuildingCompany, he owns Sure Top
Roofing and you can sometimessee him on TV.
(01:11):
You can see him on Hulu and Iguess soon A&E Network.
Oh, is that in the fall?
That's going to pop.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yep.
So A&E Network originallyproduced the show and the film
crew was all from A&E Network.
But we finished filming lastAugust and Hulu swooped in and
bought three.
They bought the rights to threedifferent shows from A&E
Network and ours was one ofthose.
So when they bought the rights,that meant that they had the
rights to debut the show insteadof A&E, and I think the
(01:38):
stipulation they had in place isthat it'll still drop on A&E,
which will be a lot moreexposure than Hulu.
But it dropped February 7th onHulu and six months later, which
would be around October, it'ssupposed to drop on A&E and my
understanding is it'll rerunafter those 10 straight weeks.
It'll rerun for the next yearor so, but really exciting and I
don't know what's going to comefrom that.
(01:58):
But all of it's a good thing,it's kind of cool.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
So if you want to see the Carolina contractor show in
action, we have approximately37 seconds, I think, out of
something that took us whateight hours to film the radio
station.
And then you're in everyepisode and, uh, your son's in
it.
Who else is your dad in it?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
now.
Yeah, my dad, my brother, myson, my daughter, uh, one
daughter did not make a cameobut she could care less.
I tried and anyway.
But yeah, got the whole familyin there multiple times.
I think episode eight it's allin the family is the title and
everybody gets a little piece ofthe action.
Pop's got a speaking part andso you know that's the nicest
I've ever heard him talk toanybody, so it's pretty cool
(02:38):
there.
But it was, yeah, very goodexperience and I'm glad I did it
.
I will say that for anybody thatever gets a chance to do
anything like that for a TVnetwork, it's a lot of work and
you're marching to the beat of aproduction crew schedule.
A lot of times we didn't getour call sheet for the next day
until seven o'clock that night.
And where it made it tough isthat I had about five other
(02:59):
custom builds going and a fewroofing crews running every day.
Custom builds going and a fewroofing crews running every day.
So having your finger on thepulse for all that, along with
seven flips for the TV showsimultaneous is is almost an
impossible task.
So I'd say about 80 plus hoursa week is what I had to work to
pull all that off.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
And what we're talking about is the show 50, 50
flip, and again it debuted likefour months ago, back in April
on Hulu and it's going to becoming up this fall on a A&E
network.
So if you want to check thatout and see Donnie in action and
even see, like I said, just afew seconds of our show on the
air in the radio station, you'llbe able to find that.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
By the way, we're on season two.
Everybody asked me that theydon't think about going to
season two.
Season one they only pulled offabout six episodes because of
course they had a differentcontractor and they made it look
pretty good.
But season two is definitelymuch better.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
But again, we're not pushing this show exclusively.
What we do want to talk abouttoday on the Carolina
Contractors Show is some thingsabout your house and we're going
to focus on summer, but we liketo say that we're the sports
center of DIY and homeowners,because that's what we focus on
is your house and, again, donniebeing a general contractor and
(04:06):
building them and updates andsupplies and materials and
things like that.
The website,thecarolinacontractorcom is
where you want to start.
You can download past episodes.
We've got links to the YouTubesite so you can watch these
shows.
You can find information on theshow when we talk about
specific topics and if you'vegot an idea for a show, please
let us know.
Someone you think we shouldinterview, let us know.
(04:28):
We love to do that.
Also, I can't believe I almostforgot Donnie, the very popular
Ask the Contractor button.
You hit that If you have aquestion about your house,
donnie gets them and he answersthose.
He'll usually respond to youdirectly, but then we sometimes
do a questions only show which Ithink we're a little behind on.
We'll have to do a new one ofthose in the near future.
(04:49):
But today I want to talk aboutsomething we're experiencing at
the recording of the show, whichis very hot weather here in the
middle of June, talking abouttriple digit indexes, and what
we tend to do is stay inside andrun our AC and try to stay cool
, and one thing happens and thatis your utility bill tends to
(05:09):
go up.
We thought let's talk aboutsome ways you can maybe lower
that utility bill, because whenyou get inflation and you have
grocery prices and everything'sup high, cutting 10 bucks here,
15 bucks here, 20 bucks therecan make a big difference and
there's some little things youcan do that a lot of them don't
take any really new investmentor it's a small investment that
(05:31):
can have an impact on that.
So, donnie, let's dive right in.
First step someone can do tolower their cooling expenses.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Well, it really all starts with insulation.
That's the biggest part of theequation and if your house is
poorly insulated, chances areyour AC unit never can catch up
to that called for temperatureon your thermostat.
So that means that if it can'tcycle off until the sun goes
down, that that's a lot of wearand tear on your unit and you
know if the same thing'shappening when we have a cold
(06:02):
snap in the winter, that reducesthe lifespan of that unit
tremendously.
So I'd say insulation isprobably the most important
thing, and what goes along withinsulation is air sealing.
I don't think that for yearspeople put an emphasis on the
air seal part of it.
But you know, when your returnkicks on, it's pulling air from
anywhere it can get and it'ssort of like electricity takes
(06:25):
the path of least resistance andthat return pulling air.
If you have leaks or gapsaround your doors and windows,
that's where it's going to pullthat air in.
And not only is it pulling inthe hot air, it's pulling in air
with high humidity ratio.
So basically that means thatwhen your system's trying to
cool that air down it's fightingway harder than it has to fight
because you're constantlyintroducing that outside air and
(06:46):
say that the return is locatedin a room that's close to the
south-facing elevation of yourhouse.
You know the south-facingelevation gets the most sun
exposure, so that's going to bethe hotter rooms that it has to
contend with.
And again it all goes back tothe insulation and the air
sealing.
If you're insulated well andyou have the proper seal around
your doors and windows thatcomes along with a lot of the
houses in new construction thenyou're in much better shape than
(07:09):
what would be found in an olderhome.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
And insulation is a permanent upgrade.
It's not something, it's not atemporary fix.
So you can do that any time ofyear and you'll reap the
benefits season after season.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
That's exactly right.
And a lot of people shy awayfrom doing insulation and they
do upgrades on their house thatyou can see before they do the
insulation.
But that's probably the bestselling point is that insulation
it's there, it doesn't degrade,it doesn't have a lifespan when
you put it in place, andespecially if you're talking
about spray foam we'll get intothat a little later but it's
definitely the gift that keepson giving because it will bring
(07:42):
your utility bills down fasterthan any other any other thing
that you can do to the house.
But when I rate insulation Iusually say, hey, insulation is
for efficiency and the airdistribution is another thing
that helps out and that's moreof a comfort thing.
But say, you have a unitlocated in your crawl space and
it's towards one side or theother, because crawl spaces are
(08:02):
usually on a slope and you wantto put the unit in the tallest
part of the crawl space.
So the the lot, the lay of thelot, will dictate that in most
circumstances.
But you know, if you have theroom that has the supply line
the furthest away from the airhandler, then it's not a bad
idea If you have an HVAC serviceperson out there to say, hey,
can you check the airdistribution?
And they have something thatwill check the CFMs coming out
(08:25):
of each supply register and theycan install a damper on that
supply.
That will choke off some of theair to the rooms that are
closer to that air handler andit'll push more air to the rooms
that are further away.
So that air distribution,especially if that room further
away is one of those southernfacing rooms that we just
mentioned earlier, that'severything.
So if you get the rightinsulation in place and get your
(08:48):
air distribution dialed in, Ithink that's the best case all
the way around.
While we're talking about that,I'll get into heat transfer and
I won't go too deep on this.
But you've got convective andconductive heat transfer and
basically one is caused by airpushing on your house and then
the other is caused by just thesurface of your house, the
surface area outside warming upand that heat passing through
the walls.
(09:08):
But again, that goes back toinsulation, because you know the
heat passing from outside ofyour house to the inside.
The effect is called thermalbridging is the proper term.
The insulation breaks up thatthermal bridge so it won't let
that heat pass through easily.
That is If you want to do aquick check on your insulation.
(09:31):
You know the minimum for yourwalls is an R13, but a R15 will
fit in a regular two by fourcavity.
Kind of hard to check theinsulation in the walls unless
you just know, unless you havean area that you maybe have an
exposed insulated wall in thegarage, or you know on the attic
side where you can see what'sin there.
But under the house it shouldbe an R19 and the current code
for the attic is an R38.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And not long ago we did a whole show on spray foam.
As you said, we can get thespray foam in just a minute, but
little stuff that you can do.
Windows it's the number onesource of loss of heat, or cool,
depending on the time of theyear.
What are the cheap fixes onthat that someone can do?
Speaker 2 (10:08):
So with a window, if you're handy you know you could
go room by room and this mighttake you a few weekends.
But they have low expansionspray foam and the keyword there
is low expansion.
If you put regular great stuffor what have you from the big
box store, it is high expansion.
It's going to really blow upand it will almost crush your
windows.
You'll never be able to openthose again.
So the low expansion spray foamis a much less aggressive
version and and that does a lot,and you would basically have to
(10:30):
pop the casing off of yourwindows and the window skirt and
the window apron.
Those are kind of hard to takeoff if your windows are trimmed
out like that.
So the sides and the top areprobably the most important
because when they set thosewindows they're making a hard
connection to that rough openingon the framing on the bottom.
But the sides always have thegap and the top always has a gap
.
No-transcript.
(11:03):
Same thing applies to yourexterior doors and when I say
that, it really causes your HVACsystem to work a lot less hard,
a heat pump and people getconfused when you're talking
about an air conditioner that'snamed a heat pump.
I know it sounds crazy but aheat pump works either way.
You know your house loses heatin the winter and it gains heat
(11:24):
in the summer and that heat pumpis pulling the warm out of the
air.
So it's pumping the heat out ofthe air to give you cool air
inside and I believe that ruleof thumb is it normally cools
the air down that's going intothe return by about 15 or 20
degrees.
So that means that if you turnyour AC off and go on vacation
and you come back in your houseis 80 degrees, don't expect it
(11:44):
to get down to 70 very fastbecause it has to cycle all that
hot air through and cool itdown by 20 degrees at a time and
it's just really hard for yoursystem to catch up in a quick
manner.
Pretty cool thing that I did awhile back and I made a
spreadsheet and I showed that ifyou make some of these
improvements to your house, youknow just um how you can save
just $100 a month on yourutility bills.
(12:05):
And the cool thing that I foundis when you put the square
footage in there, you can saveon, say, a 1,200-square-foot
house.
It's pretty easy to get yourutilities down by about $100 a
month.
But if you go into a4,000-square-foot house built in
1960, they have unreal utilitybills.
It's not out of the question tolower their bills by three or
(12:26):
$400 a month.
And when you put that number inthere and you project that out
over the life of a 30 yearmortgage, I used to tell people
if you don't build efficiently,you can either pay for the house
once or you can pay for ittwice because the savings you
know it was a hundred thousanddollars over a 30 year mortgage,
on just a hundred dollars saveda month.
And uh, the price per kilowatthour is only going to go up.
(12:47):
Duke Energy has never came downon their bill as long as I've
been paying it.
So it just all makes perfectsense.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
We've always talked about programmable thermostats.
I thought I was the last one onthe train, but I found a fact,
government statistic that onlyhalf of homes in the US have a
programmable thermostat, whichmeans they probably have either
the old mercury switches or theyjust have one.
That's a might be digital butyou can't do any programming
(13:17):
with it.
And I priced them out and theaverage cost for a digital
programmable um thermostat isabout 125 bucks.
If I installed mine myself andif trust me if I can do it, it
ain't that hard.
But if you'd rather have a prodo it, you'll find them.
Put it in, put them in two ofthem.
If you have a twin system, acouple hundred bucks.
(13:38):
So talk about a three $350investment and you literally
average 20 to $25 savings in amonth.
So your return on theinvestment of a thermostat is a
year and change.
To put that in.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Oh, no doubt, yeah, and it's nice if you get the
ones that will talk to your wifisystem, you can control those
from your phone.
So several advantages.
If you do go on that vacationand turn your system down, you
can have your house cool or warmwhen you get back.
And you know what that means isyou don't want to turn your
system off during the day whenyou're at work because it has to
work that much harder to coolthe whole house back off.
(14:14):
So that kind of.
That kind of cancels out theefficiency.
But if you just let it go a fewdegrees during the day and then
program it to come back to thedesired temperature, say around
you know, an hour before youcome back home, then that's
that's totally doable.
And and what that does is yourHVAC system.
It cycles off and on fewertimes a day.
And when you consider that yousay what three to six cycles a
(14:35):
day and multiply that over a 15year lifespan of an HVAC system,
you may get an extra couple ofyears just from having a
programmable thermostat.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Now, I've mentioned this also before on previous
shows.
I don't do this for anybody butmy own house.
But I'm the ceiling fan installmaster.
I've put seven ceiling fans inmy house.
Three were replacements, theothers were brand new installs.
I love them.
Do you have any in your house?
Oh yeah, everywhere.
You know the two directions howto determine what time of year
(15:05):
to use what direction of the.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
You know the two directions, how to determine
what time of year to use, whatdirection of the.
Isn't it counterclockwise topush the air down in the summer?
Yeah, okay, I don't know if Ihad that backwards.
I always have to look it backup because I forget.
No, you got it right socounterclockwise.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Yeah yeah, it's got a little switch.
People don't even know this.
I was surprised that yourceiling fan has a switch to
change the rotation and whatyou're trying to do is either
keep cool air down or pull warmair up and distribute it through
the house.
So having a ceiling fan on inthe winter and you have it set
in the right direction in thesummer, it's an instant impact
on a room.
It will cool a room down by afew degrees and again it means
(15:38):
your system doesn't have to runnearly as hard you ever put one
in.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Yeah, yeah, I have, and I didn't like it.
It's not it.
Yeah, yeah, I have, and Ididn't like it.
It's too many pieces and parts.
It's like a piece of furniturefrom Ikea.
When you open it up, you'rethinking how am I going to do
this?
It's Legos for grownups.
You know Food for thought.
Say you live on a slab and youhave your air handler and
everything in the attic, soyou're blowing the air out of
(16:02):
the ceiling.
Or say your air handler is inthe crawl space on crawl space
foundation and your air iscoming from the registers in the
floor.
I wonder how that impacts thefan direction.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
I don't know, I'll have to look that up.
I don't know if it would havean effect.
I guess once the cold air is inthe room, the goal is to keep
it down.
So maybe it doesn't matter andcold air would fall anyway.
We're getting into physics andstuff that I'm I'm not smart
enough to talk about, all right.
Well then, then bail me outhere, donnie.
Uh, what's something else wecan do?
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Um, well, that you know that's on the cheap, and so
that that programmablethermostat and fan, both of
those are two things that youhave the minimal investment with
, with a pretty significantimpact.
Um, I'd say the only otherthing that I would focus on is
having, you know, some prettygood blinds and curtains.
If you're not a curtain person,you know they have things
(16:50):
blackout blinds and blackoutcurtains and I think if you were
going to consider those, maybeentertain something like that on
the south facing elevation.
I hate to keep harping on that,but that's where most of your
heat loss and heat gain takesplace.
And well, heat gain, especiallyin the summertime.
But you know, blinds are asaving grace.
I can sit in front of my windowin the mornings in my living
(17:13):
room drinking my coffee and youcan tell, you can put your hand
up to the window there with theblinds open and you can feel the
heat when the sun is directlyon that and you can close the
blinds and it basically doesaway with that.
So there has to be something toit.
You know, storm doors areanother thing and I have a storm
door on my back deck and, youknow, in the mornings I don't
(17:33):
even open the back door becausewhen you do you get wafted with
really hot air and so there's alot going on between that
insulated fiberglass door andthat storm door right there.
But definitely storm door canhelp.
I just think those you knowprogrammable thermostat fan
direction and blinds or curtainsto block the direct sunlight
(17:54):
are three easy, cheap thingsthis time of year.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Someone cooks a meal, especially if it's the oven.
You heat up the whole oven.
That's kind of an obviousappliance that generates heat.
But a lot of appliances kind ofgenerate heat and cause you to
run your AC longer or increaseyour utility bill.
What are some of the applianceswe don't think about that?
Do that?
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Well, in all fairness , the appliances have improved
so much in efficiency.
You know you used to hear aboutEnergy Star this and Energy
Star that, where now I'd sayeverything is Energy Star
compliant, just about becausethe energy code dictates that,
and they all pull so littleelectricity compared to what
they used to that that's not asmuch of a problem as you would
have had as 15, 20 years ago.
(18:36):
But refrigerators stillgenerate heat.
You know, washers generate alittle bit of heat.
Your dryer generates heat.
I will say this warning sign Ifyour laundry room gets
excessively hot, uh, dryers aresupposed to.
They're made so that the air issupposed to make its way to the
outside, so there's an exhaustline and all that is put
together with, you know, hvacequipment.
(18:58):
So if your dryer is heating upyour laundry room, you probably
have a bigger problem, but itcan increase the degree by a
degree or so, and I have athermostat located pretty close
to my laundry room, so I reallyhave to watch that.
But I would say that if therewas a solution to that and you
do have older appliances, thenmaybe try to wash clothes and
(19:21):
not in the peak hours when yourother systems aren't working as
hard.
It just makes sense that youshould do that early in the
morning or later at night.
I put something down as a quicktip, and I think we've talked
about this in the past.
We used to advise folks to, interms of appliances, the one
appliance that you could savemoney on is your water heater.
So if you go out of town, weadvise people to flip your
(19:42):
breaker, and we've since beentold by a couple of plumbers
that that may not be a greatidea.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Yeah, it's um, there's a little bit of an
opinion back and forth, but forthe most part they don't think
there's a cost benefit byturning the breaker off, because
you're still going to have toheat it back up.
Uh, number two if you have alittle bit of an older water
heater system, they don't liketo necessarily be turned off,
cool off and then restart.
Everyone that I've talked to sofar said they don't know of any
(20:12):
true benefit of turning itcompletely off.
But some of the newer ones havevacation mode which drops the
temperature down.
It might save you a few pennies, but there's there's no
consensus that it's a good thing.
It could potentially cause moreharm than good by turning off
your water heater completelywhen you go on vacation.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Wait, wait, wait.
Okay Question for you.
All, right, you're saying thaton the newer models they have an
efficiency mode or vacationmode, where you push the button
and it just allows the water tobe warm and not hot.
Is that what you're saying?
That's what I'm saying, okay,so everybody listens to the show
.
Eric's pet peeve is whensomebody says hot water heater,
(20:52):
because you don't heat hot water, it's already hot, right, so I
think what you just described tome would be labeled as a warm
water heater.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
It's a hot water heater that doesn't get as hot
when you don't want it to.
I didn't catch that, but welldone.
You will spend the rest of yourlife trying to counter that
time that I said that about you,because now everybody else says
that to you, about calling it ahot water heater, and you just
can't let that go without tryingto get even with me.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
It's everybody's's, everybody's favorite.
I people say that to me all thetime, People who listen to the
show every week.
They always say hey, man, youwill never believe I heard such
and such say hot water heaterand I corrected them right in
front of everybody.
So whatever, whatever stick.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
four-year-old joke and it's still going hey, uh,
let's move outdoors.
Um, obviously you don't want toheat up the kitchen in the
middle of the summer when it's105 degrees, and turn on the
oven and do all those things.
Of course, that would be agreat time to grill out, but
what are some other quick thingsyou can do outside your house?
Speaker 2 (21:50):
OK, I'll start with the.
Neither one of these are cheapand but if you're going to make
an upgrade to your house, it'sgoing to save you money in the
long run.
Both of these work really well.
And I'll start with the leastexpensive of the two Radiant
Barrier.
We've talked about it on theshow several times, but Radiant
Barrier is almost like a.
It looks like tinfoil with afiber woven into it.
(22:11):
So it's like a very thicktinfoil that you can't tear.
And I started a weatherizationcompany back I don't know 15
plus years ago and weretrofitted a lot of old houses
with this radiant barrier.
And where it goes in a retrofitsituation is on the bottom side
of the rafters.
So you basically go row by rowit comes in a three foot roll.
You go row by row in an atticand you put it on the bottom of
the rafters and you encapsulatethat entire attic on the bottom
(22:34):
side of all the rafters and wewould follow up with that with
blown in insulation and that.
And, like I said, that wasbefore spray foam had come down
in price.
Now if you do the spray foambetween the rafter cavities, I
don't know that radiant barrierwould be necessary.
But radiant barriers is peanutsin price compared to the spray
foam.
So if you're wanting to dosomething yourself, it's totally
(22:55):
DIY and I will say that itworks so well that we would do
one side of the attic and theone side of the attic would
would cool off.
You could feel a temperaturedifference before you even did
the other side.
So this stuff works great.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Let me add to that when you said the cost for it.
You can do about a thousandsquare feet for under 200 bucks.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Big, big payback on that and and your attic is going
to love you for that.
So the other item that I wasgoing to mention is just a new
HVAC system.
Average lifespan on those about15 years on a good system.
But if your HVAC has seen itsbest days and you're just going
to do a new system, I alwaystell people now's the time to do
(23:35):
it because the energy coderequirements keep making the
price go up and up and I thinkthat's some kind of conspiracy
between the manufacturers andthe people who write the code
book.
But I want to say the minimumSEER rating is a 16 now and for
years it was a 13 and eventuallyit moved up 14, 15.
Now it's a 16.
And I would advise people todefinitely entertain a
multi-stage unit.
(23:56):
And what the multi-stage unitis.
Basically, if you have a fourton system, it doesn't need to
run four tons in the spring andthe fall.
So you might need four tonsright now.
In the hottest part of thesummer or the coldest part of
the winter you might need thattonnage, but for the most part
where we live, you do not.
So that's a similar concept toa car that has an eight-cylinder
engine.
It gets on the interstate,downsizes to six because that's
(24:18):
all it needs.
So definitely multi-stagedoesn't require a zoning board.
If you want to zone it, youmight have a couple thousand
dollars extra in that and thenmaybe a thousand or so dollars
in the multi-stage part,depending on how big the unit is
.
But I have that in my house.
So I have a master bedroom zoneand my son has a zone and my
daughters are on their own zoneand we all well, as they get
(24:40):
older, we live on differentschedules.
So, uh, it definitelycontributes to lower utility
bills because you're not usingnear what you would need if you
didn't have that.
So you know the lake house thatI mentioned.
I want to say that it'sinsulated so well and he has a
multi-stage unit, four ton unit.
I don't think that we've ranmore than two tons ever and the
cycle time on and off is lessthan an hour all day long.
(25:04):
So it barely runs because itholds heat and cold so well.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
And if you have a new system or your system's running
fine, be sure to keep it cleardebris and grass and bushes and
make sure it has airflow.
Of course we mentioned earlierhave somebody take care of it.
We've always talked abouthaving someone keep it
maintained.
But you can go around it andpull away debris, because
blocked airflow on an AC systemthat outside unit is never a
good thing.
Some people say you can planttrees.
(25:30):
That's not going to do muchgood for quite a while.
I would rephrase it Instead ofworrying about planting trees,
be aware before you cut one,because it might be giving you
more shade than you realize.
Be aware before you cut one,because it might be giving you
more shade than you realize.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Yeah, you've got my wheel spinning, eric.
Uh-oh, we were outside.
I thought of two things outsidethe house and, as you were
saying that, a couple otherthings.
I want to mention.
Replacement windows big ticketitem, but the old windows I
don't think even qualified as anR1.
One alternative you may getinstead of a replacement window
is what's called a sashreplacement kit.
We've done tons of those andeverybody's been happy with them
(26:06):
.
Never had anybody tell me theydidn't make a big difference and
those are much cheaper than afull-blown replacement window.
If you don't have an insulatedgarage door, my garage faces
west so that low summer sun onthe west-facing elevation of my
house will definitely heat mygarage up.
So insulated garage door ispretty darn cheap to retrofit or
you could just get an entirelynew garage door.
They're not that expensive.
(26:27):
I gave this speech to somebodyat a roof inspection this week
but the skylights were alloverhauled in 2010.
So if your skylights predate2010, you may consider getting a
new skylight.
And they have the low E coatingwhich is kind of like an
invisible tent.
And they have the low E coatingwhich is kind of like an
invisible tent.
And they also have the argongas between the panes to meet
the new code.
So I've had people tell me thathad skylights in their kitchen.
(26:48):
They've told me that we can'teven use our kitchen in the
summer because it heats it up somuch.
But all the new skylights solvethat problem.
And if you needed to retrofityour insulation I know we
mentioned spray foam in theattic and retrofit your
insulation, I know we mentionedspray foam in the attic and of
course, spray foam under a houseis easy enough.
And a common question I get ishow can I add insulation to my
walls?
And most insulation companiesdo what they call drill and fill
.
So, especially if you havesiding, that's a possibility.
(27:10):
But they can even do it withbricks.
So I would recommend contactingyour local insulation company
to get a quote for that.
It's not as much as you mightthink.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
I had a friend who bought an old farmhouse and he
did drill and fill himself.
He was cutting holes in theside and he was back filling it
with insulation and then he kept.
It was wood siding.
He'd take the piece that he cutout, put it back in and then he
caulked it in.
Or wood caulked it in, sandedit smooth and then he repainted
(27:41):
everything.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
There's ways to do everything, and I guess that
just comes down to what makessense for your house there.
But yeah, drilling feels kindof scary, but it can be done.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Yeah Well, we hope these tips help.
Again, you're not going to geta big deduction.
There's no way to drop yourmonthly utility bill by $100 or
$200 instantly.
But some of those retrofitsconsidering spray foam
insulation the sash kits, by theway, that Donnie mentioned can
also kind of update the look ofyour window.
If you're tired of your griddesign or something, that's a
(28:12):
great time to do that too.
But we'll put some details upat the website, the
carolinacontractorcom, and wehope these help out and you can
stay cool in the heat.
And coming up in the nearfuture we're going to be
interviewing Dennis from builderbrigade, so keep in tune for
that.
And, of course, look on TV, seeif you can find Donnie.
It's like where's Waldo.
You can find Donnie on atelevision show 50, 50 flip and
(28:37):
we appreciate you taking time totune into today's show.
We and we appreciate you takingtime to tune in to today's show
.
We hope to catch you next weekon the Carolina contractor show.
Have a good day everybody.
Thanks for listening to theCarolina contractor show.
Visit the Carolinacontractorcom.
Welcome to the Carolina Contractor Show with
your host, General ContractorDonnie Blanchard.
Donnie, ever watch Beavis andButthead in your earlier days.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I sure did.
I probably spent way too muchtime during the summers.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
but yes, sir, I never saw it when it was originally
on.
I listened to other people talkabout it and I learned to do
the voices.
It came out a couple of yearsago.
I think they did a series ofnew episodes from it and I
couldn't believe that.
I found me, my wife, my son,laughing when it used to make me
cringe to think about my kidsever watching that show.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Oh, for sure.
Yeah, it's definitely not ageappropriate for a little kid,
but I can see where a teenagerwould find some humor in that.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Well, if you get some time this summer which you
never have time, it seems sitback and watch that Again.
We went into Siskel and Ebertof contractors.
I guess Donnie, this is theCarolina Contractor Show.
My name is Eric Smith.
I do inside sales with HomeBuilder Supply.
Donnie is like big time.
He's a general contractor.
He owns Blanchard BuildingCompany, he owns Sure Top
Roofing and you can sometimessee him on TV.
(01:11):
You can see him on Hulu and Iguess soon A&E Network.
Oh, is that in the fall?
That's going to pop.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yep.
So A&E Network originallyproduced the show and the film
crew was all from A&E Network.
But we finished filming lastAugust and Hulu swooped in and
bought three.
They bought the rights to threedifferent shows from A&E
Network and ours was one ofthose.
So when they bought the rights,that meant that they had the
rights to debut the show insteadof A&E, and I think the
(01:38):
stipulation they had in place isthat it'll still drop on A&E,
which will be a lot moreexposure than Hulu.
But it dropped February 7th onHulu and six months later, which
would be around October, it'ssupposed to drop on A&E and my
understanding is it'll rerunafter those 10 straight weeks.
It'll rerun for the next yearor so, but really exciting and I
don't know what's going to comefrom that.
(01:58):
But all of it's a good thing,it's kind of cool.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
So if you want to see the Carolina contractor show in
action, we have approximately37 seconds, I think, out of
something that took us whateight hours to film the radio
station.
And then you're in everyepisode and, uh, your son's in
it.
Who else is your dad in it?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
now.
Yeah, my dad, my brother, myson, my daughter, uh, one
daughter did not make a cameobut she could care less.
I tried and anyway.
But yeah, got the whole familyin there multiple times.
I think episode eight it's allin the family is the title and
everybody gets a little piece ofthe action.
Pop's got a speaking part andso you know that's the nicest
I've ever heard him talk toanybody, so it's pretty cool
(02:38):
there.
But it was, yeah, very goodexperience and I'm glad I did it
.
I will say that for anybody thatever gets a chance to do
anything like that for a TVnetwork, it's a lot of work and
you're marching to the beat of aproduction crew schedule.
A lot of times we didn't getour call sheet for the next day
until seven o'clock that night.
And where it made it tough isthat I had about five other
(02:59):
custom builds going and a fewroofing crews running every day.
Custom builds going and a fewroofing crews running every day.
So having your finger on thepulse for all that, along with
seven flips for the TV showsimultaneous is is almost an
impossible task.
So I'd say about 80 plus hoursa week is what I had to work to
pull all that off.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
And what we're talking about is the show 50, 50
flip, and again it debuted likefour months ago, back in April
on Hulu and it's going to becoming up this fall on a A&E
network.
So if you want to check thatout and see Donnie in action and
even see, like I said, just afew seconds of our show on the
air in the radio station, you'llbe able to find that.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
By the way, we're on season two.
Everybody asked me that theydon't think about going to
season two.
Season one they only pulled offabout six episodes because of
course they had a differentcontractor and they made it look
pretty good.
But season two is definitelymuch better.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
But again, we're not pushing this show exclusively.
What we do want to talk abouttoday on the Carolina
Contractors Show is some thingsabout your house and we're going
to focus on summer, but we liketo say that we're the sports
center of DIY and homeowners,because that's what we focus on
is your house and, again, donniebeing a general contractor and
(04:06):
building them and updates andsupplies and materials and
things like that.
The website,thecarolinacontractorcom is
where you want to start.
You can download past episodes.
We've got links to the YouTubesite so you can watch these
shows.
You can find information on theshow when we talk about
specific topics and if you'vegot an idea for a show, please
let us know.
Someone you think we shouldinterview, let us know.
(04:28):
We love to do that.
Also, I can't believe I almostforgot Donnie, the very popular
Ask the Contractor button.
You hit that If you have aquestion about your house,
donnie gets them and he answersthose.
He'll usually respond to youdirectly, but then we sometimes
do a questions only show which Ithink we're a little behind on.
We'll have to do a new one ofthose in the near future.
(04:49):
But today I want to talk aboutsomething we're experiencing at
the recording of the show, whichis very hot weather here in the
middle of June, talking abouttriple digit indexes, and what
we tend to do is stay inside andrun our AC and try to stay cool
, and one thing happens and thatis your utility bill tends to
(05:09):
go up.
We thought let's talk aboutsome ways you can maybe lower
that utility bill, because whenyou get inflation and you have
grocery prices and everything'sup high, cutting 10 bucks here,
15 bucks here, 20 bucks therecan make a big difference and
there's some little things youcan do that a lot of them don't
take any really new investmentor it's a small investment that
(05:31):
can have an impact on that.
So, donnie, let's dive right in.
First step someone can do tolower their cooling expenses.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Well, it really all starts with insulation.
That's the biggest part of theequation and if your house is
poorly insulated, chances areyour AC unit never can catch up
to that called for temperatureon your thermostat.
So that means that if it can'tcycle off until the sun goes
down, that that's a lot of wearand tear on your unit and you
know if the same thing'shappening when we have a cold
(06:02):
snap in the winter, that reducesthe lifespan of that unit
tremendously.
So I'd say insulation isprobably the most important
thing, and what goes along withinsulation is air sealing.
I don't think that for yearspeople put an emphasis on the
air seal part of it.
But you know, when your returnkicks on, it's pulling air from
anywhere it can get and it'ssort of like electricity takes
(06:25):
the path of least resistance andthat return pulling air.
If you have leaks or gapsaround your doors and windows,
that's where it's going to pullthat air in.
And not only is it pulling inthe hot air, it's pulling in air
with high humidity ratio.
So basically that means thatwhen your system's trying to
cool that air down it's fightingway harder than it has to fight
because you're constantlyintroducing that outside air and
(06:46):
say that the return is locatedin a room that's close to the
south-facing elevation of yourhouse.
You know the south-facingelevation gets the most sun
exposure, so that's going to bethe hotter rooms that it has to
contend with.
And again it all goes back tothe insulation and the air
sealing.
If you're insulated well andyou have the proper seal around
your doors and windows thatcomes along with a lot of the
houses in new construction thenyou're in much better shape than
(07:09):
what would be found in an olderhome.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
And insulation is a permanent upgrade.
It's not something, it's not atemporary fix.
So you can do that any time ofyear and you'll reap the
benefits season after season.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
That's exactly right.
And a lot of people shy awayfrom doing insulation and they
do upgrades on their house thatyou can see before they do the
insulation.
But that's probably the bestselling point is that insulation
it's there, it doesn't degrade,it doesn't have a lifespan when
you put it in place, andespecially if you're talking
about spray foam we'll get intothat a little later but it's
definitely the gift that keepson giving because it will bring
(07:42):
your utility bills down fasterthan any other any other thing
that you can do to the house.
But when I rate insulation Iusually say, hey, insulation is
for efficiency and the airdistribution is another thing
that helps out and that's moreof a comfort thing.
But say, you have a unitlocated in your crawl space and
it's towards one side or theother, because crawl spaces are
(08:02):
usually on a slope and you wantto put the unit in the tallest
part of the crawl space.
So the the lot, the lay of thelot, will dictate that in most
circumstances.
But you know, if you have theroom that has the supply line
the furthest away from the airhandler, then it's not a bad
idea If you have an HVAC serviceperson out there to say, hey,
can you check the airdistribution?
And they have something thatwill check the CFMs coming out
(08:25):
of each supply register and theycan install a damper on that
supply.
That will choke off some of theair to the rooms that are
closer to that air handler andit'll push more air to the rooms
that are further away.
So that air distribution,especially if that room further
away is one of those southernfacing rooms that we just
mentioned earlier, that'severything.
So if you get the rightinsulation in place and get your
(08:48):
air distribution dialed in, Ithink that's the best case all
the way around.
While we're talking about that,I'll get into heat transfer and
I won't go too deep on this.
But you've got convective andconductive heat transfer and
basically one is caused by airpushing on your house and then
the other is caused by just thesurface of your house, the
surface area outside warming upand that heat passing through
the walls.
(09:08):
But again, that goes back toinsulation, because you know the
heat passing from outside ofyour house to the inside.
The effect is called thermalbridging is the proper term.
The insulation breaks up thatthermal bridge so it won't let
that heat pass through easily.
That is If you want to do aquick check on your insulation.
(09:31):
You know the minimum for yourwalls is an R13, but a R15 will
fit in a regular two by fourcavity.
Kind of hard to check theinsulation in the walls unless
you just know, unless you havean area that you maybe have an
exposed insulated wall in thegarage, or you know on the attic
side where you can see what'sin there.
But under the house it shouldbe an R19 and the current code
for the attic is an R38.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And not long ago we did a whole show on spray foam.
As you said, we can get thespray foam in just a minute, but
little stuff that you can do.
Windows it's the number onesource of loss of heat, or cool,
depending on the time of theyear.
What are the cheap fixes onthat that someone can do?
Speaker 2 (10:08):
So with a window, if you're handy you know you could
go room by room and this mighttake you a few weekends.
But they have low expansionspray foam and the keyword there
is low expansion.
If you put regular great stuffor what have you from the big
box store, it is high expansion.
It's going to really blow upand it will almost crush your
windows.
You'll never be able to openthose again.
So the low expansion spray foamis a much less aggressive
version and and that does a lot,and you would basically have to
(10:30):
pop the casing off of yourwindows and the window skirt and
the window apron.
Those are kind of hard to takeoff if your windows are trimmed
out like that.
So the sides and the top areprobably the most important
because when they set thosewindows they're making a hard
connection to that rough openingon the framing on the bottom.
But the sides always have thegap and the top always has a gap
.
No-transcript.
(11:03):
Same thing applies to yourexterior doors and when I say
that, it really causes your HVACsystem to work a lot less hard,
a heat pump and people getconfused when you're talking
about an air conditioner that'snamed a heat pump.
I know it sounds crazy but aheat pump works either way.
You know your house loses heatin the winter and it gains heat
(11:24):
in the summer and that heat pumpis pulling the warm out of the
air.
So it's pumping the heat out ofthe air to give you cool air
inside and I believe that ruleof thumb is it normally cools
the air down that's going intothe return by about 15 or 20
degrees.
So that means that if you turnyour AC off and go on vacation
and you come back in your houseis 80 degrees, don't expect it
(11:44):
to get down to 70 very fastbecause it has to cycle all that
hot air through and cool itdown by 20 degrees at a time and
it's just really hard for yoursystem to catch up in a quick
manner.
Pretty cool thing that I did awhile back and I made a
spreadsheet and I showed that ifyou make some of these
improvements to your house, youknow just um how you can save
just $100 a month on yourutility bills.
(12:05):
And the cool thing that I foundis when you put the square
footage in there, you can saveon, say, a 1,200-square-foot
house.
It's pretty easy to get yourutilities down by about $100 a
month.
But if you go into a4,000-square-foot house built in
1960, they have unreal utilitybills.
It's not out of the question tolower their bills by three or
(12:26):
$400 a month.
And when you put that number inthere and you project that out
over the life of a 30 yearmortgage, I used to tell people
if you don't build efficiently,you can either pay for the house
once or you can pay for ittwice because the savings you
know it was a hundred thousanddollars over a 30 year mortgage,
on just a hundred dollars saveda month.
And uh, the price per kilowatthour is only going to go up.
(12:47):
Duke Energy has never came downon their bill as long as I've
been paying it.
So it just all makes perfectsense.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
We've always talked about programmable thermostats.
I thought I was the last one onthe train, but I found a fact,
government statistic that onlyhalf of homes in the US have a
programmable thermostat, whichmeans they probably have either
the old mercury switches or theyjust have one.
That's a might be digital butyou can't do any programming
(13:17):
with it.
And I priced them out and theaverage cost for a digital
programmable um thermostat isabout 125 bucks.
If I installed mine myself andif trust me if I can do it, it
ain't that hard.
But if you'd rather have a prodo it, you'll find them.
Put it in, put them in two ofthem.
If you have a twin system, acouple hundred bucks.
(13:38):
So talk about a three $350investment and you literally
average 20 to $25 savings in amonth.
So your return on theinvestment of a thermostat is a
year and change.
To put that in.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Oh, no doubt, yeah, and it's nice if you get the
ones that will talk to your wifisystem, you can control those
from your phone.
So several advantages.
If you do go on that vacationand turn your system down, you
can have your house cool or warmwhen you get back.
And you know what that means isyou don't want to turn your
system off during the day whenyou're at work because it has to
work that much harder to coolthe whole house back off.
(14:14):
So that kind of.
That kind of cancels out theefficiency.
But if you just let it go a fewdegrees during the day and then
program it to come back to thedesired temperature, say around
you know, an hour before youcome back home, then that's
that's totally doable.
And and what that does is yourHVAC system.
It cycles off and on fewertimes a day.
And when you consider that yousay what three to six cycles a
(14:35):
day and multiply that over a 15year lifespan of an HVAC system,
you may get an extra couple ofyears just from having a
programmable thermostat.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Now, I've mentioned this also before on previous
shows.
I don't do this for anybody butmy own house.
But I'm the ceiling fan installmaster.
I've put seven ceiling fans inmy house.
Three were replacements, theothers were brand new installs.
I love them.
Do you have any in your house?
Oh yeah, everywhere.
You know the two directions howto determine what time of year
(15:05):
to use what direction of the.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
You know the two directions, how to determine
what time of year to use, whatdirection of the.
Isn't it counterclockwise topush the air down in the summer?
Yeah, okay, I don't know if Ihad that backwards.
I always have to look it backup because I forget.
No, you got it right socounterclockwise.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Yeah yeah, it's got a little switch.
People don't even know this.
I was surprised that yourceiling fan has a switch to
change the rotation and whatyou're trying to do is either
keep cool air down or pull warmair up and distribute it through
the house.
So having a ceiling fan on inthe winter and you have it set
in the right direction in thesummer, it's an instant impact
on a room.
It will cool a room down by afew degrees and again it means
(15:38):
your system doesn't have to runnearly as hard you ever put one
in.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Yeah, yeah, I have, and I didn't like it.
It's not it.
Yeah, yeah, I have, and Ididn't like it.
It's too many pieces and parts.
It's like a piece of furniturefrom Ikea.
When you open it up, you'rethinking how am I going to do
this?
It's Legos for grownups.
You know Food for thought.
Say you live on a slab and youhave your air handler and
everything in the attic, soyou're blowing the air out of
(16:02):
the ceiling.
Or say your air handler is inthe crawl space on crawl space
foundation and your air iscoming from the registers in the
floor.
I wonder how that impacts thefan direction.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
I don't know, I'll have to look that up.
I don't know if it would havean effect.
I guess once the cold air is inthe room, the goal is to keep
it down.
So maybe it doesn't matter andcold air would fall anyway.
We're getting into physics andstuff that I'm I'm not smart
enough to talk about, all right.
Well then, then bail me outhere, donnie.
Uh, what's something else wecan do?
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Um, well, that you know that's on the cheap, and so
that that programmablethermostat and fan, both of
those are two things that youhave the minimal investment with
, with a pretty significantimpact.
Um, I'd say the only otherthing that I would focus on is
having, you know, some prettygood blinds and curtains.
If you're not a curtain person,you know they have things
(16:50):
blackout blinds and blackoutcurtains and I think if you were
going to consider those, maybeentertain something like that on
the south facing elevation.
I hate to keep harping on that,but that's where most of your
heat loss and heat gain takesplace.
And well, heat gain, especiallyin the summertime.
But you know, blinds are asaving grace.
I can sit in front of my windowin the mornings in my living
(17:13):
room drinking my coffee and youcan tell, you can put your hand
up to the window there with theblinds open and you can feel the
heat when the sun is directlyon that and you can close the
blinds and it basically doesaway with that.
So there has to be something toit.
You know, storm doors areanother thing and I have a storm
door on my back deck and, youknow, in the mornings I don't
(17:33):
even open the back door becausewhen you do you get wafted with
really hot air and so there's alot going on between that
insulated fiberglass door andthat storm door right there.
But definitely storm door canhelp.
I just think those you knowprogrammable thermostat fan
direction and blinds or curtainsto block the direct sunlight
(17:54):
are three easy, cheap thingsthis time of year.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Someone cooks a meal, especially if it's the oven.
You heat up the whole oven.
That's kind of an obviousappliance that generates heat.
But a lot of appliances kind ofgenerate heat and cause you to
run your AC longer or increaseyour utility bill.
What are some of the applianceswe don't think about that?
Do that?
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Well, in all fairness , the appliances have improved
so much in efficiency.
You know you used to hear aboutEnergy Star this and Energy
Star that, where now I'd sayeverything is Energy Star
compliant, just about becausethe energy code dictates that,
and they all pull so littleelectricity compared to what
they used to that that's not asmuch of a problem as you would
have had as 15, 20 years ago.
(18:36):
But refrigerators stillgenerate heat.
You know, washers generate alittle bit of heat.
Your dryer generates heat.
I will say this warning sign Ifyour laundry room gets
excessively hot, uh, dryers aresupposed to.
They're made so that the air issupposed to make its way to the
outside, so there's an exhaustline and all that is put
together with, you know, hvacequipment.
(18:58):
So if your dryer is heating upyour laundry room, you probably
have a bigger problem, but itcan increase the degree by a
degree or so, and I have athermostat located pretty close
to my laundry room, so I reallyhave to watch that.
But I would say that if therewas a solution to that and you
do have older appliances, thenmaybe try to wash clothes and
(19:21):
not in the peak hours when yourother systems aren't working as
hard.
It just makes sense that youshould do that early in the
morning or later at night.
I put something down as a quicktip, and I think we've talked
about this in the past.
We used to advise folks to, interms of appliances, the one
appliance that you could savemoney on is your water heater.
So if you go out of town, weadvise people to flip your
(19:42):
breaker, and we've since beentold by a couple of plumbers
that that may not be a greatidea.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Yeah, it's um, there's a little bit of an
opinion back and forth, but forthe most part they don't think
there's a cost benefit byturning the breaker off, because
you're still going to have toheat it back up.
Uh, number two if you have alittle bit of an older water
heater system, they don't liketo necessarily be turned off,
cool off and then restart.
Everyone that I've talked to sofar said they don't know of any
(20:12):
true benefit of turning itcompletely off.
But some of the newer ones havevacation mode which drops the
temperature down.
It might save you a few pennies, but there's there's no
consensus that it's a good thing.
It could potentially cause moreharm than good by turning off
your water heater completelywhen you go on vacation.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Wait, wait, wait.
Okay Question for you.
All, right, you're saying thaton the newer models they have an
efficiency mode or vacationmode, where you push the button
and it just allows the water tobe warm and not hot.
Is that what you're saying?
That's what I'm saying, okay,so everybody listens to the show
.
Eric's pet peeve is whensomebody says hot water heater,
(20:52):
because you don't heat hot water, it's already hot, right, so I
think what you just described tome would be labeled as a warm
water heater.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
It's a hot water heater that doesn't get as hot
when you don't want it to.
I didn't catch that, but welldone.
You will spend the rest of yourlife trying to counter that
time that I said that about you,because now everybody else says
that to you, about calling it ahot water heater, and you just
can't let that go without tryingto get even with me.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
It's everybody's's, everybody's favorite.
I people say that to me all thetime, People who listen to the
show every week.
They always say hey, man, youwill never believe I heard such
and such say hot water heaterand I corrected them right in
front of everybody.
So whatever, whatever stick.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
four-year-old joke and it's still going hey, uh,
let's move outdoors.
Um, obviously you don't want toheat up the kitchen in the
middle of the summer when it's105 degrees, and turn on the
oven and do all those things.
Of course, that would be agreat time to grill out, but
what are some other quick thingsyou can do outside your house?
Speaker 2 (21:50):
OK, I'll start with the.
Neither one of these are cheapand but if you're going to make
an upgrade to your house, it'sgoing to save you money in the
long run.
Both of these work really well.
And I'll start with the leastexpensive of the two Radiant
Barrier.
We've talked about it on theshow several times, but Radiant
Barrier is almost like a.
It looks like tinfoil with afiber woven into it.
(22:11):
So it's like a very thicktinfoil that you can't tear.
And I started a weatherizationcompany back I don't know 15
plus years ago and weretrofitted a lot of old houses
with this radiant barrier.
And where it goes in a retrofitsituation is on the bottom side
of the rafters.
So you basically go row by rowit comes in a three foot roll.
You go row by row in an atticand you put it on the bottom of
the rafters and you encapsulatethat entire attic on the bottom
(22:34):
side of all the rafters and wewould follow up with that with
blown in insulation and that.
And, like I said, that wasbefore spray foam had come down
in price.
Now if you do the spray foambetween the rafter cavities, I
don't know that radiant barrierwould be necessary.
But radiant barriers is peanutsin price compared to the spray
foam.
So if you're wanting to dosomething yourself, it's totally
(22:55):
DIY and I will say that itworks so well that we would do
one side of the attic and theone side of the attic would
would cool off.
You could feel a temperaturedifference before you even did
the other side.
So this stuff works great.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Let me add to that when you said the cost for it.
You can do about a thousandsquare feet for under 200 bucks.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Big, big payback on that and and your attic is going
to love you for that.
So the other item that I wasgoing to mention is just a new
HVAC system.
Average lifespan on those about15 years on a good system.
But if your HVAC has seen itsbest days and you're just going
to do a new system, I alwaystell people now's the time to do
(23:35):
it because the energy coderequirements keep making the
price go up and up and I thinkthat's some kind of conspiracy
between the manufacturers andthe people who write the code
book.
But I want to say the minimumSEER rating is a 16 now and for
years it was a 13 and eventuallyit moved up 14, 15.
Now it's a 16.
And I would advise people todefinitely entertain a
multi-stage unit.
(23:56):
And what the multi-stage unitis.
Basically, if you have a fourton system, it doesn't need to
run four tons in the spring andthe fall.
So you might need four tonsright now.
In the hottest part of thesummer or the coldest part of
the winter you might need thattonnage, but for the most part
where we live, you do not.
So that's a similar concept toa car that has an eight-cylinder
engine.
It gets on the interstate,downsizes to six because that's
(24:18):
all it needs.
So definitely multi-stagedoesn't require a zoning board.
If you want to zone it, youmight have a couple thousand
dollars extra in that and thenmaybe a thousand or so dollars
in the multi-stage part,depending on how big the unit is
.
But I have that in my house.
So I have a master bedroom zoneand my son has a zone and my
daughters are on their own zoneand we all well, as they get
(24:40):
older, we live on differentschedules.
So, uh, it definitelycontributes to lower utility
bills because you're not usingnear what you would need if you
didn't have that.
So you know the lake house thatI mentioned.
I want to say that it'sinsulated so well and he has a
multi-stage unit, four ton unit.
I don't think that we've ranmore than two tons ever and the
cycle time on and off is lessthan an hour all day long.
(25:04):
So it barely runs because itholds heat and cold so well.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
And if you have a new system or your system's running
fine, be sure to keep it cleardebris and grass and bushes and
make sure it has airflow.
Of course we mentioned earlierhave somebody take care of it.
We've always talked abouthaving someone keep it
maintained.
But you can go around it andpull away debris, because
blocked airflow on an AC systemthat outside unit is never a
good thing.
Some people say you can planttrees.
(25:30):
That's not going to do muchgood for quite a while.
I would rephrase it Instead ofworrying about planting trees,
be aware before you cut one,because it might be giving you
more shade than you realize.
Be aware before you cut one,because it might be giving you
more shade than you realize.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Yeah, you've got my wheel spinning, eric.
Uh-oh, we were outside.
I thought of two things outsidethe house and, as you were
saying that, a couple otherthings.
I want to mention.
Replacement windows big ticketitem, but the old windows I
don't think even qualified as anR1.
One alternative you may getinstead of a replacement window
is what's called a sashreplacement kit.
We've done tons of those andeverybody's been happy with them
(26:06):
.
Never had anybody tell me theydidn't make a big difference and
those are much cheaper than afull-blown replacement window.
If you don't have an insulatedgarage door, my garage faces
west so that low summer sun onthe west-facing elevation of my
house will definitely heat mygarage up.
So insulated garage door ispretty darn cheap to retrofit or
you could just get an entirelynew garage door.
They're not that expensive.
(26:27):
I gave this speech to somebodyat a roof inspection this week
but the skylights were alloverhauled in 2010.
So if your skylights predate2010, you may consider getting a
new skylight.
And they have the low E coatingwhich is kind of like an
invisible tent.
And they have the low E coatingwhich is kind of like an
invisible tent.
And they also have the argongas between the panes to meet
the new code.
So I've had people tell me thathad skylights in their kitchen.
(26:48):
They've told me that we can'teven use our kitchen in the
summer because it heats it up somuch.
But all the new skylights solvethat problem.
And if you needed to retrofityour insulation I know we
mentioned spray foam in theattic and retrofit your
insulation, I know we mentionedspray foam in the attic and of
course, spray foam under a houseis easy enough.
And a common question I get ishow can I add insulation to my
walls?
And most insulation companiesdo what they call drill and fill
.
So, especially if you havesiding, that's a possibility.
(27:10):
But they can even do it withbricks.
So I would recommend contactingyour local insulation company
to get a quote for that.
It's not as much as you mightthink.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
I had a friend who bought an old farmhouse and he
did drill and fill himself.
He was cutting holes in theside and he was back filling it
with insulation and then he kept.
It was wood siding.
He'd take the piece that he cutout, put it back in and then he
caulked it in.
Or wood caulked it in, sandedit smooth and then he repainted
(27:41):
everything.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
There's ways to do everything, and I guess that
just comes down to what makessense for your house there.
But yeah, drilling feels kindof scary, but it can be done.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Yeah Well, we hope these tips help.
Again, you're not going to geta big deduction.
There's no way to drop yourmonthly utility bill by $100 or
$200 instantly.
But some of those retrofitsconsidering spray foam
insulation the sash kits, by theway, that Donnie mentioned can
also kind of update the look ofyour window.
If you're tired of your griddesign or something, that's a
(28:12):
great time to do that too.
But we'll put some details upat the website, the
carolinacontractorcom, and wehope these help out and you can
stay cool in the heat.
And coming up in the nearfuture we're going to be
interviewing Dennis from builderbrigade, so keep in tune for
that.
And, of course, look on TV, seeif you can find Donnie.
It's like where's Waldo.
You can find Donnie on atelevision show 50, 50 flip and
(28:37):
we appreciate you taking time totune into today's show.
We and we appreciate you takingtime to tune in to today's show
.
We hope to catch you next weekon the Carolina contractor show.
Have a good day everybody.
Thanks for listening to theCarolina contractor show.
Visit the Carolinacontractorcom.
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