December 22, 2024 • 29 mins
In the first hour of All Calls Weekend, Dean Sharp hands the reins to his listeners, letting their questions and challenges shape the show. Joined by his better half, Dean dives into a variety of home improvement topics. He explores the complexities of raising and vaulting ceilings, including practical principles, insulation options, and the transformative impact on a space. The hour wraps with a critical reminder about calling Dig Alert (811) before starting any digging projects to ensure safety and avoid costly mistakes.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp The
House Whisper on demand on the iHeartRadio app Welcome Home.
I am Dean Sharp the House Whisper. I design custom homes,
I build custom homes, and today, most importantly, I am
your guide to better understand that place where you live
(00:23):
today on the show. I love these weekends. It's an
all calls weekend. It's the weekend before Christmas. Right, Christmas
is coming on Wednesday. It is December twenty second. Do
you know what that means? By the way, today is
the first full day of winter as well? Did you
know that?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
The solstice last night yesterday. I think I think can
we get it's either the twentieth or the twenty first
every year. Yeah, this is not a you know, a
deeply researched top, big air in the studio. But the
point is I know this. I know it's winter. That's
what I know. It's the twenty second of December and
(01:08):
winter has arrived. Can you tell? Can you tell from
the snow outside here in southern California? No, you can't,
but you know we're loving it. Nonetheless, I hope you're
having a great weekend. When we put together an all
calls weekend. It's kind of a weird thing to say
put together, because the truth is, you're putting together this
(01:30):
weekend for us Today's show three hours nothing but your calls.
And you know, maybe I'm sharing a little tidbit of
this or that along the way, but it's all about
your calls. You set the agenda today. The number to
reach me eight three three two. Ask Dean eight three
three The numeral two ask Dean eight three three to
(01:52):
ask Dean. The phone lines are open now. Producer Matt
Toffler standing by. He is ready to take your He
will tell you everything you need to know, and then
you know what You and I we can put our
heads together. We can figure out whatever is going on
with your house design construction, DIY, whatever's got you scratching
your head about your house. We will figure it out together.
(02:16):
I promise you. I promise you. I will do everything
to help you. As we do. We take calls every week,
but every few weeks we just clear the decks so
that you have extra time to call in. So phone
lines are open now, eight three three two, ass Dean.
Let's talk to our awesome team Elmer on the board.
(02:38):
Good morning, Bud, Good morning Dean. How's it going good?
You know, holiday season, so fives are up? Cracks me up.
Elmer just cracks me up. Hey, turn your mic on.
I wasn't sure. I was like, holiday season. Maybe you're sad,
maybe you're happy. Not sure. Well, he's got that mystery voice.
(03:02):
You can't that's the thing. Elmer's got that voice. You
have no idea what direction he's about to turn right. Oh,
and you just heard her in the background there. Eileen
Gonzalez at the news desk. Good morning, Eileen, Good morning, Sunshine.
How's it going Your wife laughs, because she goes this
(03:26):
guy's not Sunshine. Diena knows. Diena knows the truth. Tell
him the truth. Go ahead, your Sunshine. Sometimes you are
I am right now. Oh yeah, thank you, thank you,
(03:50):
Thank you. Everyone calm down. Sitting across the table from me,
my better half. Yeah, uh wow. The elephant in the room,
she's not an elephant. It's just one of her favorite animals.
Tina is here, welcome home. Good morning, Good morning. Tina
(04:12):
and I were sitting by the fire this morning. I know,
I almost lost myself and didn't get up here. It
was a little. It was a little it was it
was it was a little rock Wellian, Norman rock Wellian.
That's a little scene by the fire this morning. It
was nice coffee fire, lovely. There's a dog laying around
somewhere in the room. Twinkling lights. We went to uh
(04:38):
Christmas light uh candy cane lane, kind of strolling last
night with the family. That was a good time. That
was a good time. It was extra festiveness. What what
is it. That's the second one that we've seen.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Christmas closer to the I mean it's closer to the
official holidays, I know, but I mean more houses did
it in.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Our neck of the woods. It seemed to me that
things are a little bit more. There's a little festive
boost this year. And I don't know why.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
I like it.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
I'll take it. I think maybe people are just feeling
a little bit more like they need it. Maybe I
don't know. I don't know, but yeah, a funny year
for a lot of people. Yeah, it's been a weird
year for us. A lot of hard things. Yeah, a
lot of hard things. A lot of hard things, and
you know, for our friends and like I say, you know,
at the holiday season, it's not a time to get
(05:29):
depressed because there are hard things in your life, because
that's what's celebrating. The holidays have, literally since the very beginning,
have been about It's about kind of holding out and
finding your way in the dark. Right, more on that later,
All right, we got started late, so I got to
get out of here for just a second. The phone
lines are open. We got some calls coming in, but
(05:50):
there's room for you. Eight three three two, Ask Dean.
It is an all calls Sunday, this Sunday morning before Christmas,
your Home with Dean Sharp, the house whisper.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
It is an all calls weekend. It's an all calls
Sunday morning, Sunday before Christmas, right here in southern California.
Eight three three to ask Dean. Is the number to
reach me? A three to three the numeral two, Ask
Dean eight three three two, ask Dean. I don't want
to waste any time. Let's get right to it. Let
(06:31):
us talk to Kathy. Hey, Kathy, welcome home.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
Hi Deane. I was wondering how you vaulted the ceilings
in your home. How you knew what they would look
like before digging into the drywall, I guess, and how
you insulated them?
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Uh? Okay? Are you thinking about maybe possibly doing this
in your place?
Speaker 4 (06:59):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Okay? And what kind of a home do you live in.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
I just live in a single level tracked home that's
twenty oh gosh, twenty five years old, and I don't
know if the pitch is correct for that, and I
wondered how you knew that. I kind of look at
(07:25):
the angles of the roof and I wonder if the
angles are correct. And I think it would just be
so lovely to have, you know, a roof a ceiling
that's higher, But I don't know how you did inside
and how you remove all of that support and then
create more support.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Gotcha? Okay? All right, So here is the thing. Every
home is different, every room is different when it comes
to vaulting a ceiling. But vaulting a ceiling is without
question one of the best ways I mean of utilizing
your remodeling dollars in my opinion as a designer, simply
(08:07):
because volume volume in a room is one of those
ways that gives a room a more spacious feeling as
opposed to the need to push out and actually get
more square footage, you know, just the sense of volume.
So just raising that ceiling is just a tremendously wonderful
(08:29):
thing that can open up even the smallest of homes.
And we have a very small home, and you know, certainly,
certainly by you know us standards, we have a small home.
I say that, you know, always in a qualified sense,
because I don't want to I don't want to come
off ignorant of the way that lots of people live
(08:49):
around the world. I've got friends from Sheffield, England who
come over and spend time with us, and they think
my home is quite expansive because because things are just
tighter and smaller there. So anyway, so the point is
this the very first concern that you have. Okay, So
I'm gonna have to disappoint you a little bit here
(09:11):
because because it's gonna change for everybody. But I can't
specifically tell you how you should vault your place, but
I will give you the general principles. The very first
thing that you've got to do is you've got to
get it engineered the right way. Okay. So every room
is different and and some rooms are are well supported
(09:35):
enough from the exterior walls that when you go up
into the attic, you realize there's not a lot of
support of the roofline coming down onto walls inside this room,
and that frees you up. That gives you a lot
of freedom. But that's not the end of the story.
Because a simple ranch style tracked home, I think like
the one you probably live in and our little cottage here.
(09:59):
I think of a triangle, right, and if you put
your fingers, you know, your index fingers and your thumbs
in a triangle out in front of you. You've got
the two sides of the triangle that are ascending up.
That's let's call that your roofline. Those are the roof rafters.
In a smaller home. Chances are those roof rafters don't
(10:21):
have midspan supports on them. So that's good, it's all good.
But the key is by removing the ceiling, which is
what your thumbs represent, that flat part at the base
of the triangle. By removing the ceiling, you're actually taking
away a structural element, and that element is the tie
between the ends of the roof. Because the roof really
(10:42):
that triangle wants to collapse. It wants to just kind
of fall in on itself, and it is the base
of the triangle essentially that's holding that triangle erect and
those that would be your ceiling joist. So taking away
ceiling joist means that we've got to make sure, absolutely sure,
without any question whatsoever, that the weight of the roof
(11:05):
above is not going to push out, you know, and
push the walls out as it wants to, you know,
come down on its own weight. So normally what that
means is a beam across the ridge that's supported by
posts coming down on each side. Sometimes it can be
different than that, but normally that's what that means. That's
(11:28):
the first consideration. So how do we vault a roof? Well,
the very first call I make once I decide that
I want to raise the ceilings in a room is
to my structural engineer, and I want to hear from
him exactly what the consequences are if I start to
pull out the ceiling joys and how he suggests that
(11:50):
we overcome those consequences in order to have no ceiling
in there and have the basically the roofline project up
as the new ceiling of the roof. But that's not
the end of the story, because there are some other considerations,
like you said, insulation and various things in the attic,
and you know what we're up against a break, Kathy,
(12:11):
if I can pop you on hold for a second,
this is an interesting question. I want to finish the
answer on the other side of the break. Can you
hang tight?
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Thank you?
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Okay, you hold tight, and we're going to talk about,
you know, what are the practical principles or the basics
of vaulting a ceiling inside a typical room. We will
do that and more of your calls.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
It's an all calls Sunday eight three three two. Ask
Dean a three to three the numeral two asking that's
the number to reach me at. Just taking your calls now.
Before the break, we were talking to Kathy. I want
to make sure I didn't hang up on her. Kathy,
you're still with me, I hear all right?
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Great.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Kathy asked a really great question that a lot of
people wonder about. I'm not sure I've ever been asked
this question directly, and that is, how do we vault
a ceiling in? You know, in a typical little, single
story tracked home, and vaulting a ceiling is such a
great idea, So how do we go about doing it well?
It can be an involved process, just because every you know,
(13:27):
home is different, every room condition is different. And I
said the first before the break, I said, the first step,
the most important step, of course, is consulting with the
structural engineer to make sure that we are may whence
the ceiling goes. Okay, the ceiling is not just a comfort,
(13:47):
it's not just a thing that holds the attic insulation
up in place. But quite often ceiling joyce running across
the room from one exterior wall to another, or from
one wall to another are performing a function of tying
in the bottom of kind of a structural triangle. And
if you take that out, that triangle wants to collapse down.
(14:08):
Of course, we do not want that happening. So that's
the first step along the way, figuring out how are
we going to support the And it's not a difficult
thing to do, okay, but we've got to figure out
how to do it right. How are we going to
support the roof rafters if the ceiling joyce themselves that
were there originally are not there. Now, once that is handled,
(14:31):
once that concept is resolved and we have a plan
for that, the second thing, the story doesn't end there.
The second thing is how are we going to properly
insulate this room? Okay, and this is much easier than
it seems as well, or I should say, you have
more options now. In a big home, and I mean
a big home, there's a good chance that the roof
(14:55):
rafters are significant substantial inside now they might be made
out of two x ten something that big, and those
are actually easy to insulate because there's enough depth in
the roof rafter to get the necessary insulation. Because what
we want, what we need, what we got to have
(15:15):
is our thirty rated insulation up there in what is
now not an addicts lay so, but there are ways
around this in a smaller home like my home. My
home is an old like the beginning of this concept
of in the nineteen fifties of a truss home, which
(15:35):
means the rafters quote unquote of my roof are actually
two by four and two by six, which is not
deep enough. And maybe Kathy, you may have that, or
you may have at most I'm guessing two by eight,
but still that's not enough depth. Seven and a half
inches is not enough depth to get standard our thirty
(15:57):
insulation in there. And you can't just take Arthur the
insulation and squeeze it in because the thickness of the
insulation is what keeps it at its insulation rating, and
so if you compress insulation down, it loses its insulation rating.
So we've got to have that depth. And how do
you do it well. One of the things that is
(16:18):
easy to do is when you're planning on vaulting, you
just don't commit to a full vault, meaning this I
have taken. Once we opened up the rafters in our
family room area and supported the ridge so that it's
all stable now. I then took another set of rafts
(16:40):
and what you call a false vault, another set of
rafters that aren't the roof rafters, and set them below
the rafters and to the sides, what we call sistering them,
so that we ended up with the depth. Now, what
it did was and nobody ever notices this, No one
ever walks into my house ever comments on this. But
(17:02):
instead of an eight foot ceiling right at the wall line,
my ceiling is more like seven foot six right at
the wall line. The reason that doesn't matter is because
it immediately starts heading upwards at an angle, and so
no one cares. And so what we've essentially done is
created another ceiling underneath the roof rafter line that enables
(17:27):
us to have enough room to get the insulation and
any duct work or anything else that we need fiddling
around up in there. All that people know when they
walk into our home is that that room, the dining room, entryway, kitchen,
and family room area has a vaulted ceiling. And everybody
looks up and you just assume that's the bottom of
(17:50):
the roof. But it's not the bottom of the roof.
It's a few inches below the bottom of the roof.
And because of that, it's all snugly insulated, nice tight.
I got cables running back and forth across it. I've
got all the room I need to do all the
things we wanted to do, and yet it is a
vaulted ceiling. And so, my friend, that is kind of
(18:12):
the process you go through in order to do it.
Number One, you've got to make sure that structurally the
house is in no way, shape or form compromised by
the removal of the ceiling. And once you do this,
by the way, today here's the nice thing. You live
in a twenty year old home. I live in a
sixty year old home or seventy year old home. And
(18:39):
once an engineer has fixed up how to vault the ceiling,
that is twenty first century, twenty twenty four engineering. It
actually makes the house stronger than it was without the vault,
just because the engineering standards are so much higher. So
that's a great thing. And then once that's handled, then
(19:00):
it's all about being tricky with the framing so that
esthetically we get the full effect of the vault, but
you still get the chambers up inside there to get
all the adequate insulation and stuff running. Now, if you
want to do a pure vault into the roof rafters,
you can do that too. I'm just going to share
this last little bit. The difference is you're going to
(19:22):
use spray in insulation, closed cell spray in insulation it's expensive,
but spray in closed cell insulation can give you that
R thirty in a relatively shallow area of a roofline.
That's another way of doing it, but it's actually less
expensive to drop in a false ceiling and use standard
(19:45):
insulation to get your R thirty then to go spray in.
And that's my story.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
Thank you so much. I really appreciate your help.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Does that help give you some perspective on how you
approach yours? Does?
Speaker 4 (20:00):
Thank you? And I have a small house too, and
I thought that would be really pretty if I did that.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Oh my gosh, Kathy, it will. It's it's a it's
a game changer. It truly, truly is a game changer.
All you have to do, I say, all you have
to do if you ever get the time to spend
any time traveling through Europe and find these small rooms,
you know, eight by ten rooms, ten by ten foot
rooms with fourteen foot ceilings in them, you realize how
(20:27):
important it is that the volume up above your head,
how it changes the feel of a small space. And
so that principle holds true, and it's why vaulting a
ceiling in a home is just a really cool maneuver
to do, especially especially in a smaller home. That's it, Kathy,
Thank you so much for your call. Great call, great question,
(20:49):
and we're going to have more of them. I see
you all lined up here.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
It is an all calls Sunday morning here on the program,
the Sunday before Christmas twenty twenty four. We're just chilling
and we are talking with you. You're setting the agenda.
You didn't know when you woke up this morning that
you were actually in charge of my show, but you
are because whatever it is that you want to talk about,
that's what we're talking about today. So let's get back
(21:21):
to the phones. Sound good. Let's talk to Sally. Hey, Sally,
welcome home.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Hi, thank you. I have a question about my nineteen
fifty seven got home. I keep getting these letters in
the mail from I think the gas company asking me
if I want insurance for my gas and sewer lines
that go from my home to the street. Yeah, And
I just want to know is that I mean I
kind of worry about the sewer line, the gas line.
I never even gave a second bot to being the
(21:53):
age of my house and have no idea what kind
of pipes it has. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Yeah, so yeah, yeah, I you know, I think everybody
it is a really good question, because I'm pretty sure
everybody in southern California has consistently received those letters, now,
I mean we get them. I don't know how how
often do we get a letter from the gas company,
Tina saying do you want insurance on the exterior lines?
Like it once a year, a couple of times anyway.
(22:20):
So I think they're covering, They're they're reaching out to everybody.
Uh okay, So I don't have a definitive answer for you,
but I can tell you this you just got. It's
as with all insurance. Uh, you've got to read the
fine print, because my understanding of this situation, it's actually
(22:41):
not the gas company that's doing the insuring. It is
a partner company, an insurance company, I believe, so cal
It's Home Serve is the name of the company that
is right Home Serve. So they're a mega, mega insurance company.
And uh and and it's it's inexpensive. I think it's
(23:03):
just a few dollars a month, Okay, So you weigh
that against whether or not you know there are enough
you know, coverage areas to make it worth your while.
And what I mean is, as with all insurance policies,
especially when it comes to homeowner insurance of any sort whatsoever,
(23:24):
usually the list of exclusions is like four times as
long as the list of coverage. Okay, and so, and
that's the thing. I'll tell you this. And now I'm
gonna by saying this, I'm gonna lose any potential endorsement
from the gas company. So this call is costing me money, Sally.
(23:45):
That's all here. Uh, we have not opted to do
it at our home. And it's not just because well
you know, I'm a builder and I know how to
do it. It's not about that. It's just that I
found for us that the list of exclusions, I mean,
it just went on and on and on and on
as far as like acts of God, flood fire, this
(24:08):
nothing gets covered nuclear war like like I would be
concerned about my sure lyne after the nuclear bomb goes off.
But the point is so so all I can tell
you is we did not pick up that coverage, and personally,
that was our own personal decision. I'm not saying it's
(24:30):
a ripoff. I'm simply saying that everybody has to evaluate
their own situation and and read the fine print because
at some point, uh, you know, what's left over after
the list of exclusions, that's what you have to evaluate.
What are the odds of this happening to me in
just this way so that this gets covered. Uh, and otherwise,
(24:52):
you know, And isn't that all insurance really? I mean,
all insurance is essentially a gamble. It's a pull of
the of the slot mash wheel, like gee, I for
the money I put in, I hope the disaster that
happens is the is the one that's covered. So that's
the best I can tell you. Just read it, read
the fine print, check the exclusions, and you know, maybe
(25:15):
you'll find the six bucks a month is you know,
no big deal. And yeah, why not? Why not?
Speaker 2 (25:20):
I had a guy come by about ten years ago.
Two guys come by, and oh, they were going to
replace my my sewer line. It was like fifteen thousand
dollars or something. I thought, holy crap, you know, not
that far away from the street. Yeah, yeah, well I
will say maybe insurance is good.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you this. Uh, you know,
replacing a sewer line is no joke. It's no joke
because they go deep. You got to cut through your yard.
You know. Maybe for a lot of people you end up,
you know, cutting through a driveway. You know, depending on
where where it is and how it's running and what material.
(25:58):
I mean, there were still homes out there with clay
sewer lines that are just begging to shut down at
any moment today.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Wow, what you have to do though, And here's the
I mean, I'll put I'll put a bright spin on it.
Here's the nice thing about having to make an insurance
decision about that kind of stuff. You should take it
as an opportunity to uh figure out exactly where all
of this stuff is in your yard, Okay, what it's
(26:30):
made out of, and where it goes. And I will
tell you this. If I asked one hundred listeners right
now where their sewer line leaves their house and joins
up with the street, I'm thinking that I'm going to
get seven d homeowners saying oh uh and uh, And
that's something you should just you should you should know,
(26:50):
you should know, and you know what. One of the
ways that you can do that is by calling a
service like dig Alert, by calling eight one one, and
they'll come out in the three days no less than
no more than three days from your call, maybe with
the exception of Christmas week, and they will flag and
locate all the stuff that's buried in your yard for free. Okay,
(27:12):
So no, no, kiddie, This is they beg you to
do it because if you're about to dig in your yard,
they don't want you hitting gas lines, sewer lines, They
don't want you hitting public utility lines that happened across
your property and you didn't know it. They don't want
you disrupting the neighborhood's cable service and all of that
kind of stuff. So these companies, all of these utilities,
(27:36):
they pay at their cost to be a part of
the dig Alert program and so and you don't have
to justify. You don't have to show them a building permit.
You say, listen, I am planning on having work done
in my yard. In your case, it's an emergency sewer
repair in the future, and they will simply notify all
(27:56):
of the utilities. They do as a scan on your
pro public records, and they'll notify all the utilities and
cable providers and all of that, and they'll all be
out and they'll put little flags in the yard this
is where the sewer is, this is where this is,
and you can start to learn and see. So that way,
my point is you can evaluate, like, wow, does my
(28:18):
sewer line run underneath my driveway or is it in
a place where if I had to replace it it
wouldn't completely tear up my yard for tens of thousands
of dollars. That kind of stuff. Everybody should know that.
But getting back, and I got to run here because
we're right at the top of the hour, Sally, But
such a great question, and again, just you know, after
(28:40):
all the exclusions, does the insurance cover enough of real
life potential circumstances to be worth the few bucks a
month that you're going to pay for? And then that's
the best advice.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
I can gray. Excellent advice. And thank you for the
eight one one number.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
You're very very welcome. Thanks Sally for the call. Mary Christmas,
nice holiday.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
Okay, bye bye bye bye.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
All right, y'all, more of your calls when we return.
You are Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper 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
(29:24):
anytime on demand on the iHeart Radio app.
KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp The
House Whisper on demand on the iHeartRadio app Welcome Home.
I am Dean Sharp the House Whisper. I design custom homes,
I build custom homes, and today, most importantly, I am
your guide to better understand that place where you live
(00:23):
today on the show. I love these weekends. It's an
all calls weekend. It's the weekend before Christmas. Right, Christmas
is coming on Wednesday. It is December twenty second. Do
you know what that means? By the way, today is
the first full day of winter as well? Did you
know that?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
The solstice last night yesterday. I think I think can
we get it's either the twentieth or the twenty first
every year. Yeah, this is not a you know, a
deeply researched top, big air in the studio. But the
point is I know this. I know it's winter. That's
what I know. It's the twenty second of December and
(01:08):
winter has arrived. Can you tell? Can you tell from
the snow outside here in southern California? No, you can't,
but you know we're loving it. Nonetheless, I hope you're
having a great weekend. When we put together an all
calls weekend. It's kind of a weird thing to say
put together, because the truth is, you're putting together this
(01:30):
weekend for us Today's show three hours nothing but your calls.
And you know, maybe I'm sharing a little tidbit of
this or that along the way, but it's all about
your calls. You set the agenda today. The number to
reach me eight three three two. Ask Dean eight three
three The numeral two ask Dean eight three three to
(01:52):
ask Dean. The phone lines are open now. Producer Matt
Toffler standing by. He is ready to take your He
will tell you everything you need to know, and then
you know what You and I we can put our
heads together. We can figure out whatever is going on
with your house design construction, DIY, whatever's got you scratching
your head about your house. We will figure it out together.
(02:16):
I promise you. I promise you. I will do everything
to help you. As we do. We take calls every week,
but every few weeks we just clear the decks so
that you have extra time to call in. So phone
lines are open now, eight three three two, ass Dean.
Let's talk to our awesome team Elmer on the board.
(02:38):
Good morning, Bud, Good morning Dean. How's it going good?
You know, holiday season, so fives are up? Cracks me up.
Elmer just cracks me up. Hey, turn your mic on.
I wasn't sure. I was like, holiday season. Maybe you're sad,
maybe you're happy. Not sure. Well, he's got that mystery voice.
(03:02):
You can't that's the thing. Elmer's got that voice. You
have no idea what direction he's about to turn right. Oh,
and you just heard her in the background there. Eileen
Gonzalez at the news desk. Good morning, Eileen, Good morning, Sunshine.
How's it going Your wife laughs, because she goes this
(03:26):
guy's not Sunshine. Diena knows. Diena knows the truth. Tell
him the truth. Go ahead, your Sunshine. Sometimes you are
I am right now. Oh yeah, thank you, thank you,
(03:50):
Thank you. Everyone calm down. Sitting across the table from me,
my better half. Yeah, uh wow. The elephant in the room,
she's not an elephant. It's just one of her favorite animals.
Tina is here, welcome home. Good morning, Good morning. Tina
(04:12):
and I were sitting by the fire this morning. I know,
I almost lost myself and didn't get up here. It
was a little. It was a little it was it
was it was a little rock Wellian, Norman rock Wellian.
That's a little scene by the fire this morning. It
was nice coffee fire, lovely. There's a dog laying around
somewhere in the room. Twinkling lights. We went to uh
(04:38):
Christmas light uh candy cane lane, kind of strolling last
night with the family. That was a good time. That
was a good time. It was extra festiveness. What what
is it. That's the second one that we've seen.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Christmas closer to the I mean it's closer to the
official holidays, I know, but I mean more houses did
it in.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Our neck of the woods. It seemed to me that
things are a little bit more. There's a little festive
boost this year. And I don't know why.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
I like it.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
I'll take it. I think maybe people are just feeling
a little bit more like they need it. Maybe I
don't know. I don't know, but yeah, a funny year
for a lot of people. Yeah, it's been a weird
year for us. A lot of hard things. Yeah, a
lot of hard things. A lot of hard things, and
you know, for our friends and like I say, you know,
at the holiday season, it's not a time to get
(05:29):
depressed because there are hard things in your life, because
that's what's celebrating. The holidays have, literally since the very beginning,
have been about It's about kind of holding out and
finding your way in the dark. Right, more on that later,
All right, we got started late, so I got to
get out of here for just a second. The phone
lines are open. We got some calls coming in, but
(05:50):
there's room for you. Eight three three two, Ask Dean.
It is an all calls Sunday, this Sunday morning before Christmas,
your Home with Dean Sharp, the house whisper.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
It is an all calls weekend. It's an all calls
Sunday morning, Sunday before Christmas, right here in southern California.
Eight three three to ask Dean. Is the number to
reach me? A three to three the numeral two, Ask
Dean eight three three two, ask Dean. I don't want
to waste any time. Let's get right to it. Let
(06:31):
us talk to Kathy. Hey, Kathy, welcome home.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
Hi Deane. I was wondering how you vaulted the ceilings
in your home. How you knew what they would look
like before digging into the drywall, I guess, and how
you insulated them?
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Uh? Okay? Are you thinking about maybe possibly doing this
in your place?
Speaker 4 (06:59):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Okay? And what kind of a home do you live in.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
I just live in a single level tracked home that's
twenty oh gosh, twenty five years old, and I don't
know if the pitch is correct for that, and I
wondered how you knew that. I kind of look at
(07:25):
the angles of the roof and I wonder if the
angles are correct. And I think it would just be
so lovely to have, you know, a roof a ceiling
that's higher, But I don't know how you did inside
and how you remove all of that support and then
create more support.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Gotcha? Okay? All right, So here is the thing. Every
home is different, every room is different when it comes
to vaulting a ceiling. But vaulting a ceiling is without
question one of the best ways I mean of utilizing
your remodeling dollars in my opinion as a designer, simply
(08:07):
because volume volume in a room is one of those
ways that gives a room a more spacious feeling as
opposed to the need to push out and actually get
more square footage, you know, just the sense of volume.
So just raising that ceiling is just a tremendously wonderful
(08:29):
thing that can open up even the smallest of homes.
And we have a very small home, and you know, certainly,
certainly by you know us standards, we have a small home.
I say that, you know, always in a qualified sense,
because I don't want to I don't want to come
off ignorant of the way that lots of people live
(08:49):
around the world. I've got friends from Sheffield, England who
come over and spend time with us, and they think
my home is quite expansive because because things are just
tighter and smaller there. So anyway, so the point is
this the very first concern that you have. Okay, So
I'm gonna have to disappoint you a little bit here
(09:11):
because because it's gonna change for everybody. But I can't
specifically tell you how you should vault your place, but
I will give you the general principles. The very first
thing that you've got to do is you've got to
get it engineered the right way. Okay. So every room
is different and and some rooms are are well supported
(09:35):
enough from the exterior walls that when you go up
into the attic, you realize there's not a lot of
support of the roofline coming down onto walls inside this room,
and that frees you up. That gives you a lot
of freedom. But that's not the end of the story.
Because a simple ranch style tracked home, I think like
the one you probably live in and our little cottage here.
(09:59):
I think of a triangle, right, and if you put
your fingers, you know, your index fingers and your thumbs
in a triangle out in front of you. You've got
the two sides of the triangle that are ascending up.
That's let's call that your roofline. Those are the roof rafters.
In a smaller home. Chances are those roof rafters don't
(10:21):
have midspan supports on them. So that's good, it's all good.
But the key is by removing the ceiling, which is
what your thumbs represent, that flat part at the base
of the triangle. By removing the ceiling, you're actually taking
away a structural element, and that element is the tie
between the ends of the roof. Because the roof really
(10:42):
that triangle wants to collapse. It wants to just kind
of fall in on itself, and it is the base
of the triangle essentially that's holding that triangle erect and
those that would be your ceiling joist. So taking away
ceiling joist means that we've got to make sure, absolutely sure,
without any question whatsoever, that the weight of the roof
(11:05):
above is not going to push out, you know, and
push the walls out as it wants to, you know,
come down on its own weight. So normally what that
means is a beam across the ridge that's supported by
posts coming down on each side. Sometimes it can be
different than that, but normally that's what that means. That's
(11:28):
the first consideration. So how do we vault a roof? Well,
the very first call I make once I decide that
I want to raise the ceilings in a room is
to my structural engineer, and I want to hear from
him exactly what the consequences are if I start to
pull out the ceiling joys and how he suggests that
(11:50):
we overcome those consequences in order to have no ceiling
in there and have the basically the roofline project up
as the new ceiling of the roof. But that's not
the end of the story, because there are some other considerations,
like you said, insulation and various things in the attic,
and you know what we're up against a break, Kathy,
(12:11):
if I can pop you on hold for a second,
this is an interesting question. I want to finish the
answer on the other side of the break. Can you
hang tight?
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Thank you?
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Okay, you hold tight, and we're going to talk about,
you know, what are the practical principles or the basics
of vaulting a ceiling inside a typical room. We will
do that and more of your calls.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
It's an all calls Sunday eight three three two. Ask
Dean a three to three the numeral two asking that's
the number to reach me at. Just taking your calls now.
Before the break, we were talking to Kathy. I want
to make sure I didn't hang up on her. Kathy,
you're still with me, I hear all right?
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Great.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Kathy asked a really great question that a lot of
people wonder about. I'm not sure I've ever been asked
this question directly, and that is, how do we vault
a ceiling in? You know, in a typical little, single
story tracked home, and vaulting a ceiling is such a
great idea, So how do we go about doing it well?
It can be an involved process, just because every you know,
(13:27):
home is different, every room condition is different. And I
said the first before the break, I said, the first step,
the most important step, of course, is consulting with the
structural engineer to make sure that we are may whence
the ceiling goes. Okay, the ceiling is not just a comfort,
(13:47):
it's not just a thing that holds the attic insulation
up in place. But quite often ceiling joyce running across
the room from one exterior wall to another, or from
one wall to another are performing a function of tying
in the bottom of kind of a structural triangle. And
if you take that out, that triangle wants to collapse down.
(14:08):
Of course, we do not want that happening. So that's
the first step along the way, figuring out how are
we going to support the And it's not a difficult
thing to do, okay, but we've got to figure out
how to do it right. How are we going to
support the roof rafters if the ceiling joyce themselves that
were there originally are not there. Now, once that is handled,
(14:31):
once that concept is resolved and we have a plan
for that, the second thing, the story doesn't end there.
The second thing is how are we going to properly
insulate this room? Okay, and this is much easier than
it seems as well, or I should say, you have
more options now. In a big home, and I mean
a big home, there's a good chance that the roof
(14:55):
rafters are significant substantial inside now they might be made
out of two x ten something that big, and those
are actually easy to insulate because there's enough depth in
the roof rafter to get the necessary insulation. Because what
we want, what we need, what we got to have
(15:15):
is our thirty rated insulation up there in what is
now not an addicts lay so, but there are ways
around this in a smaller home like my home. My
home is an old like the beginning of this concept
of in the nineteen fifties of a truss home, which
(15:35):
means the rafters quote unquote of my roof are actually
two by four and two by six, which is not
deep enough. And maybe Kathy, you may have that, or
you may have at most I'm guessing two by eight,
but still that's not enough depth. Seven and a half
inches is not enough depth to get standard our thirty
(15:57):
insulation in there. And you can't just take Arthur the
insulation and squeeze it in because the thickness of the
insulation is what keeps it at its insulation rating, and
so if you compress insulation down, it loses its insulation rating.
So we've got to have that depth. And how do
you do it well. One of the things that is
(16:18):
easy to do is when you're planning on vaulting, you
just don't commit to a full vault, meaning this I
have taken. Once we opened up the rafters in our
family room area and supported the ridge so that it's
all stable now. I then took another set of rafts
(16:40):
and what you call a false vault, another set of
rafters that aren't the roof rafters, and set them below
the rafters and to the sides, what we call sistering them,
so that we ended up with the depth. Now, what
it did was and nobody ever notices this, No one
ever walks into my house ever comments on this. But
(17:02):
instead of an eight foot ceiling right at the wall line,
my ceiling is more like seven foot six right at
the wall line. The reason that doesn't matter is because
it immediately starts heading upwards at an angle, and so
no one cares. And so what we've essentially done is
created another ceiling underneath the roof rafter line that enables
(17:27):
us to have enough room to get the insulation and
any duct work or anything else that we need fiddling
around up in there. All that people know when they
walk into our home is that that room, the dining room, entryway, kitchen,
and family room area has a vaulted ceiling. And everybody
looks up and you just assume that's the bottom of
(17:50):
the roof. But it's not the bottom of the roof.
It's a few inches below the bottom of the roof.
And because of that, it's all snugly insulated, nice tight.
I got cables running back and forth across it. I've
got all the room I need to do all the
things we wanted to do, and yet it is a
vaulted ceiling. And so, my friend, that is kind of
(18:12):
the process you go through in order to do it.
Number One, you've got to make sure that structurally the
house is in no way, shape or form compromised by
the removal of the ceiling. And once you do this,
by the way, today here's the nice thing. You live
in a twenty year old home. I live in a
sixty year old home or seventy year old home. And
(18:39):
once an engineer has fixed up how to vault the ceiling,
that is twenty first century, twenty twenty four engineering. It
actually makes the house stronger than it was without the vault,
just because the engineering standards are so much higher. So
that's a great thing. And then once that's handled, then
(19:00):
it's all about being tricky with the framing so that
esthetically we get the full effect of the vault, but
you still get the chambers up inside there to get
all the adequate insulation and stuff running. Now, if you
want to do a pure vault into the roof rafters,
you can do that too. I'm just going to share
this last little bit. The difference is you're going to
(19:22):
use spray in insulation, closed cell spray in insulation it's expensive,
but spray in closed cell insulation can give you that
R thirty in a relatively shallow area of a roofline.
That's another way of doing it, but it's actually less
expensive to drop in a false ceiling and use standard
(19:45):
insulation to get your R thirty then to go spray in.
And that's my story.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
Thank you so much. I really appreciate your help.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Does that help give you some perspective on how you
approach yours? Does?
Speaker 4 (20:00):
Thank you? And I have a small house too, and
I thought that would be really pretty if I did that.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Oh my gosh, Kathy, it will. It's it's a it's
a game changer. It truly, truly is a game changer.
All you have to do, I say, all you have
to do if you ever get the time to spend
any time traveling through Europe and find these small rooms,
you know, eight by ten rooms, ten by ten foot
rooms with fourteen foot ceilings in them, you realize how
(20:27):
important it is that the volume up above your head,
how it changes the feel of a small space. And
so that principle holds true, and it's why vaulting a
ceiling in a home is just a really cool maneuver
to do, especially especially in a smaller home. That's it, Kathy,
Thank you so much for your call. Great call, great question,
(20:49):
and we're going to have more of them. I see
you all lined up here.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
It is an all calls Sunday morning here on the program,
the Sunday before Christmas twenty twenty four. We're just chilling
and we are talking with you. You're setting the agenda.
You didn't know when you woke up this morning that
you were actually in charge of my show, but you
are because whatever it is that you want to talk about,
that's what we're talking about today. So let's get back
(21:21):
to the phones. Sound good. Let's talk to Sally. Hey, Sally,
welcome home.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Hi, thank you. I have a question about my nineteen
fifty seven got home. I keep getting these letters in
the mail from I think the gas company asking me
if I want insurance for my gas and sewer lines
that go from my home to the street. Yeah, And
I just want to know is that I mean I
kind of worry about the sewer line, the gas line.
I never even gave a second bot to being the
(21:53):
age of my house and have no idea what kind
of pipes it has. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Yeah, so yeah, yeah, I you know, I think everybody
it is a really good question, because I'm pretty sure
everybody in southern California has consistently received those letters, now,
I mean we get them. I don't know how how
often do we get a letter from the gas company,
Tina saying do you want insurance on the exterior lines?
Like it once a year, a couple of times anyway.
(22:20):
So I think they're covering, They're they're reaching out to everybody.
Uh okay, So I don't have a definitive answer for you,
but I can tell you this you just got. It's
as with all insurance. Uh, you've got to read the
fine print, because my understanding of this situation, it's actually
(22:41):
not the gas company that's doing the insuring. It is
a partner company, an insurance company, I believe, so cal
It's Home Serve is the name of the company that
is right Home Serve. So they're a mega, mega insurance company.
And uh and and it's it's inexpensive. I think it's
(23:03):
just a few dollars a month, Okay, So you weigh
that against whether or not you know there are enough
you know, coverage areas to make it worth your while.
And what I mean is, as with all insurance policies,
especially when it comes to homeowner insurance of any sort whatsoever,
(23:24):
usually the list of exclusions is like four times as
long as the list of coverage. Okay, and so, and
that's the thing. I'll tell you this. And now I'm
gonna by saying this, I'm gonna lose any potential endorsement
from the gas company. So this call is costing me money, Sally.
(23:45):
That's all here. Uh, we have not opted to do
it at our home. And it's not just because well
you know, I'm a builder and I know how to
do it. It's not about that. It's just that I
found for us that the list of exclusions, I mean,
it just went on and on and on and on
as far as like acts of God, flood fire, this
(24:08):
nothing gets covered nuclear war like like I would be
concerned about my sure lyne after the nuclear bomb goes off.
But the point is so so all I can tell
you is we did not pick up that coverage, and personally,
that was our own personal decision. I'm not saying it's
(24:30):
a ripoff. I'm simply saying that everybody has to evaluate
their own situation and and read the fine print because
at some point, uh, you know, what's left over after
the list of exclusions, that's what you have to evaluate.
What are the odds of this happening to me in
just this way so that this gets covered. Uh, and otherwise,
(24:52):
you know, And isn't that all insurance really? I mean,
all insurance is essentially a gamble. It's a pull of
the of the slot mash wheel, like gee, I for
the money I put in, I hope the disaster that
happens is the is the one that's covered. So that's
the best I can tell you. Just read it, read
the fine print, check the exclusions, and you know, maybe
(25:15):
you'll find the six bucks a month is you know,
no big deal. And yeah, why not? Why not?
Speaker 2 (25:20):
I had a guy come by about ten years ago.
Two guys come by, and oh, they were going to
replace my my sewer line. It was like fifteen thousand
dollars or something. I thought, holy crap, you know, not
that far away from the street. Yeah, yeah, well I
will say maybe insurance is good.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you this. Uh, you know,
replacing a sewer line is no joke. It's no joke
because they go deep. You got to cut through your yard.
You know. Maybe for a lot of people you end up,
you know, cutting through a driveway. You know, depending on
where where it is and how it's running and what material.
(25:58):
I mean, there were still homes out there with clay
sewer lines that are just begging to shut down at
any moment today.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Wow, what you have to do though, And here's the
I mean, I'll put I'll put a bright spin on it.
Here's the nice thing about having to make an insurance
decision about that kind of stuff. You should take it
as an opportunity to uh figure out exactly where all
of this stuff is in your yard, Okay, what it's
(26:30):
made out of, and where it goes. And I will
tell you this. If I asked one hundred listeners right
now where their sewer line leaves their house and joins
up with the street, I'm thinking that I'm going to
get seven d homeowners saying oh uh and uh, And
that's something you should just you should you should know,
(26:50):
you should know, and you know what. One of the
ways that you can do that is by calling a
service like dig Alert, by calling eight one one, and
they'll come out in the three days no less than
no more than three days from your call, maybe with
the exception of Christmas week, and they will flag and
locate all the stuff that's buried in your yard for free. Okay,
(27:12):
So no, no, kiddie, This is they beg you to
do it because if you're about to dig in your yard,
they don't want you hitting gas lines, sewer lines, They
don't want you hitting public utility lines that happened across
your property and you didn't know it. They don't want
you disrupting the neighborhood's cable service and all of that
kind of stuff. So these companies, all of these utilities,
(27:36):
they pay at their cost to be a part of
the dig Alert program and so and you don't have
to justify. You don't have to show them a building permit.
You say, listen, I am planning on having work done
in my yard. In your case, it's an emergency sewer
repair in the future, and they will simply notify all
(27:56):
of the utilities. They do as a scan on your
pro public records, and they'll notify all the utilities and
cable providers and all of that, and they'll all be
out and they'll put little flags in the yard this
is where the sewer is, this is where this is,
and you can start to learn and see. So that way,
my point is you can evaluate, like, wow, does my
(28:18):
sewer line run underneath my driveway or is it in
a place where if I had to replace it it
wouldn't completely tear up my yard for tens of thousands
of dollars. That kind of stuff. Everybody should know that.
But getting back, and I got to run here because
we're right at the top of the hour, Sally, But
such a great question, and again, just you know, after
(28:40):
all the exclusions, does the insurance cover enough of real
life potential circumstances to be worth the few bucks a
month that you're going to pay for? And then that's
the best advice.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
I can gray. Excellent advice. And thank you for the
eight one one number.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
You're very very welcome. Thanks Sally for the call. Mary Christmas,
nice holiday.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
Okay, bye bye bye bye.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
All right, y'all, more of your calls when we return.
You are Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper 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
(29:24):
anytime on demand on the iHeart Radio app.
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