Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kf I am six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp
the house Whisper on demand on the iHeartRadio app. We're
talking about new stuff today. But guess what's the top
of the second hour, which means it's time to go
to the phones. I want to talk to Lee. Is
(00:20):
it Lee?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
It's Lee?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Hi?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Lee?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
How are you welcome home?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I'm doing okay? You know, I just turned a d
and I'm living in the three thousand square foot house
on a big property, and I'm wondering how I'm going
to be able to deal with this as I age.
Are there some tips or some rules that you know?
I'm thinking? Should I be downsizing? I love my house.
(00:51):
I actually rent out my kid's bedrooms to travelers here
in town because it helps me and it helps them.
But it's just getting to be an awful lot.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Yeah, I can understand that. Okay, Well let's talk about
let's not you know, let me ask you when you
say it's getting to be an awful lot, you know,
I mean the real question of should you downsize or
how do you handle the home that you love and
how do you see yourself growing into that home in
(01:25):
the future, and by the way, congratulations on eighty You
sound amazing.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
So oh well, thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
And bravo for renting out part of your home to travel.
I mean, just we need to make a visit over
to your home. But here's the thing. Here's the thing.
It's a very very personal issue, and so I would
love to talk to you about some of the things
that you can do, but I need to know a
little bit more what parts of your home are getting
(01:57):
to be a little much as you say.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Well, there's just a lot. Well, there's a lot of
it to keep up. The yard is hard to keep up.
I haven't ever had a yard service person, and I'm
not real good at the outdoor stuff. I've never had
a green some I think I've had. You know, I
have trees, I have plants, and they do grow, but
(02:22):
they have to they have to be strong to grow
in my yard. But I live up in Lompoke, if
you know where that is, absolutely and yeah, just the
soil that we have up here makes it a little
harder to garden when you don't know what you're doing
(02:43):
and keeping the weeds down and all that. I'm just
not too sure how to look at everything. My house
is paid for, my ex and I built it in
the eighties and it's in good shape and all that.
It's just it's just a lot of work.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
A lot I get it. Now. Let me ask you
not to get too personal, but I got to get
a little bit personal. Would a gardener service or or
an outside maintenance service is that? Would that? Is that
something that could be affordable? Could that be in the budget?
You know where? With where things are at right now?
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Well, I'm wondering if if I got on a lot
of the services don't seem to do what I think
they should be doing. I think weed should be pulled
up and make sure you get the roots, you don't
just weed whack them. Yeah, you know, I don't know.
I just don't know how to judge some of these
workers sometimes.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Understand you and everybody else in the Southern California. One
of the most rarest things to find in Southern California
is an actual gardener, not a landscape service, not the
mow and blow guys, but an actual gardner. All right, Lee,
I'm finding this fascinating, and I do want to give
(04:08):
you some suggestions, and I want everybody else to participate
in that. But we're up against a break. So if
I have your price, can I pop you on hold
and we'll come back right after the break.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Okay, thank you?
Speaker 1 (04:21):
All right, you hang tight, my friend, and we're going
to figure out how to help Lee downsize or at
least get her arms back around this property. And the
answer the big question maybe does she let go of
this home that she has loved for so long and
move some into something smaller? Or is there a way
of managing what she's got. We'll do that and more
(04:42):
of your calls when we return.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
I've been talking to Lee and I want to get
Lee back on the line. Lee lives out in Loam
Poke and she just turned eighty years young and she
is trying to make some big decisions about the relatively
large house and property that she has and where does
she go from here? How does she take care of it?
(05:14):
How does she get some help? Lee? Are you back
with me? Bud?
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Oh? Yes, I'm still here all right?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
So here here's the thing. You certainly have options, right,
I would assume we've got options. But the big question, well,
first of all, you know, I wouldn't worry about being profitable.
Is the house is paid off? How big is the house?
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Three thousand?
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Okay, so you got a three thousand square a lovely
three thousand square foot house out in Lompo, which you
know is nestled right up into Santa Inez wine country.
There's definitely no question that there's profitability there. If you
sell the house, it's paid off, there's plenty of equity.
That would be a pretty easy path to travel, But
(06:05):
I don't know if you want to travel down that path.
There's questions like do you have help, can you get
help with the house, can you afford help with the house?
What money is available without selling the house? And if
we sell, do we sell, do we rent? Do we stay?
Do you have specific health or mobility concerns at eighty
that you're you know, other than just it's a lot
(06:26):
to handle. All of these are questions that should be
asked and should be answered. But at the heart of it,
my friend, is one one central question, okay, and it's
the question that as a home designer, as a custom
home designer, because I only design custom homes, that I
(06:47):
have to ask every single client that we have, and
that is, what do you really really want. Okay, now
you may have conflicting wants or desire. It's like, you know,
you probably don't have any desire to leave this house behind.
But the question of what do you really really really
(07:09):
want for your life may may you know, tip the scale.
So what what are you really really looking for? What's
the most important thing for you for the years ahead?
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Well, I want to be able to not work, you know,
have so much work. I do have a housekeeper once
a month at this point. And I love my house.
And a lot of my friends that left their nice
houses and moved to smaller houses are not very happy,
(07:43):
you know. They miss they miss what they had. And
I have a very nice house and it's hard to
think of living somewhere else since I helped build this,
build this house, but the upkeep is just getting Maybe
in the next five years, I maybe need to make
some big decision here. And what I've heard of people
(08:07):
building on their property a smaller house than just renting
the big house out. But I don't know that i'd
be happy doing that. Hard to say, what are.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
You people doing to my house? Get out of my house? Yeah,
I mean, yeah, those are all those are really are
big decisions. They really are the biggest decisions of all.
And so let me ask you this. If money were
no option, what would you do? It sounds like you
would just stay put.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Well, I think maybe I have to look at paying
the help a little differently than I'm used to. I'm
not used to getting help, you know, so maybe I
need to look at it as a fixed bill a
month instead of you know, sometimes i'd call someone that
I you know that come before, and it's three hundred
dollars just for for wig blacking and stuff like that.
(09:02):
I mean, it looks nice when you gets stunned, but
it isn't anything that stays nice. Can a yard stay? Yeah?
You know, it's not sustainable.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
So here's my advice here. It is okay, for having
known you for nine and a half minutes, Okay, take
it for what it's worth. But I'm just trying to
listen really carefully. Here is my advice for you, Lee.
I believe that that your maybe your first best option
(09:36):
is to do exactly what you just said, which is,
let's get serious about whether you can afford maintenance, regular maintenance. Okay,
let you I think it came out of your own mouth.
There you said, I think I need I think I
need to change the way I think about about how
(09:57):
I pay help and just even the idea of getting
help to begin with. So, and here's why I think, Like,
if I was a concerned family member sitting at the
kitchen table with you, I think this would be my
first approach, because you can always sell. Okay, It's doesn't
change the fact that you know, three years from now,
(10:17):
two years from now, five years from now, if if
plan A doesn't work the way you hope it will,
then you can always turn around and sell and downsize.
But if there's a way to not have to do
that in the home that you love, then the first
step would be, Okay, you're going to have to do
the work of finding a decent regular weekly you know,
(10:45):
landscape maintenance service, and then maybe weekly, by weekly or
bi monthly. I always get confused what that means, but
you know, every couple of weeks, maybe you know, have
the housekeeper come in or maybe increase that. In other words,
who can you pay to reduce the workload for you?
Can you afford to have that happen? And do you
(11:07):
like the results? It seems to me, given your desire
and your hesitation about selling. It seems to me that
that would be the first course to pursue and to
see if that can work. And if it does, then boom,
there you are. You have found a new way to
(11:28):
stay where you are, without the stress and without all
the work, and you've essentially gotten your arms around it.
And if it doesn't work, then what have you lost
other than the experiment has proven that maybe it's time
to sell and to downsize. But I think if it
were me that situation, I love my home very much
like it sounds like you love your home. I think
(11:51):
I would be finding every imaginable way to stay here
without letting go. And and so that's my advice to you,
my friend.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Okay, and I had one other question, what what about
putting an elevator? My bedroom's upstairs? At some point that
may not be as easy for me. I can go
upstairs just fine now. But is that something that I
just wait until I have to do?
Speaker 1 (12:22):
I think so, because you're not interested in resale right now,
And and I will tell you this, and for everybody
who's listening, elevators retrofit into homes are completely feasible. And
every year you wait is a year that the cost
of doing that goes down, not up. Elevators. That's good here, Yeah,
(12:43):
residential elevators are only getting more common and less expensive,
and including elevators that are just like like my little favorite,
the little retrofit elevator, which is a vacuum tube elevator
that literally lead needs about four by four area of space.
(13:03):
It can be located just about anywhere in the house
where we can get from the downstairs to the upstairs.
And but it's still an expense, okay, And you know
right now they're running about, you know, just going to
people will be like, that's not inexpensive being but you know,
somewhere between forty and sixty thousand dollars. Okay. But when
you think about that, you think about the home that
(13:25):
is your home for the cost of you know, which
at home is paid off, and so if you were
to get another little loan or have a way of payment,
but basically for the cost of financing a car payment
to stay in your home, uh, that is a relatively
small cost. And but my point is that cost is
(13:47):
also going down every single year. So my advice to
anybody who's thinking about the future in that regard is
you know, if you see yourself realistically getting to the
point where yeah, I'm not getting up and down those
stairs as well anymore, then then do it. I don't
think everybody, just because of their age should automatically get
(14:07):
an elevator in their house. In fact, I would make
the argument against it that if it's keeping you healthy
getting up and down the stairs, it may be the
best thing not to do an elevator. Just you know,
keep doing the StairMaster every day and it's improving your
health and your longevity through that instead of just taking
the easy way, only do that if it's simply going
(14:30):
to become an impossibility, and at that point it will
be at its lowest point of cost and the most
effective ease of installation. So you would just I would
just say, have that in mind, press pause on that,
don't act too soon on that, and just wait wait
for the time to come. Lee, I've got to go.
I would love to talk to you for the rest
(14:51):
of the morning, but it's time to go, so good luck.
Get your arms around, try and rethink the way that
you are living in the house so that you can
pay others to take care of the hard stuff, to
do the heavy lifting. For you, and if all else fails,
you can always sell and downsize and hold off on
(15:11):
that elevator until you absolutely, really really need it. Good luck,
my friend. All right, everybody, when we come back, more
of your calls. Your Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI Am six forty.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
You are Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper. That's me.
We're right in smack dab in the middle of our
Sunday Morning live broadcast, which well, of course will become
The House Whisperer podcast as soon as we are done,
and you can listen to it anytime, anywhere, whenever, and
how often, however often you like. This is Home with
(15:53):
Dean Sharp and we are in the middle of taking calls.
I'm going to go back to the phones. We're going
to be taking a couple more calls before we get
back to new stuff, which is the theme of today's show.
Got some new stuff to share with you, good stuff already,
more new stuff to come, But first I want to
talk to Gabe. He Gabe, welcome home.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
Thanks Teine, Good morning, Happy.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Sunday, Happy Sunday to you. How can I help you?
Speaker 4 (16:22):
Thank you. I have a custom two story built in
the mid nineties. It's built with a hip style roof
framing on what I think is a twelve twelve pitch,
not a lot of overhang. I literally have zero eves vents.
(16:45):
The roof on the second story has a few dormer vents,
but there's not a lot of air exchange I think
happening in my attic. And my garage has zero eves
or former vents. I mean, there's no air exchange in
the garage, and I've always thought that was weird. The
(17:06):
fires have have made me rethink that a little bit.
But I'm just wondering if you have recommendations about how
to optimize thermal efficiency given that situation.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Yeah, I do, all right. So, so a roof in
standard building parlance, in standard building code, optimally should have
low vents and high vents in order to allow convection
(17:41):
to take place and air exchange to happen. Okay, that's
the traditional code approach, all right. So you've got a
roof that has eves that have some level of overhang.
In those eves we put vents or in the eve
blocking and the rafter blocking we put small vents enough
to you know, half the venting requirement of the attic space, which,
(18:03):
by the way, if it's if you have high and
low vents, is you know, one square foot of venting
for every one every three hundred square feet of flat
attic space. And if you don't have high and low
then there should be a square foot of venting for
every one hundred and fifty square feet of attict venting space.
(18:24):
But you're right, just the presence of vents, just kind
of centrally located like a dormer vent is not the
most efficient way thermally to get hot air out of
the attic. The ideal way is to have the vents
upper vents as high near the ridge as possible and
then as low as possible fifty to fifty so that
(18:46):
you get this convection current happening the eves, sucking in
cooler or cooler air down below and replacing the hot
air that rises up out of the attic, which can
get you know, in the summertime easily up to one
hundred and thirty plus degrees. Get that stuff out of
the attic because it affects the cooling properties of the
rest of the house. So ideally that's the thing. Every
(19:09):
roof is different. You've got nothing. You're saying, it's a
hip roof, which for everybody else to understand, there's no big,
flat triangular gables on the end of this house or
roof anywhere that would be. And I'm glad you said that,
because that would have been my first suggestion. If you've
got an end gable on your roof, then that's an
(19:29):
opportunity to put very low vents and very high vents
in place on both ends or everywhere you've got a
flat gable end, and that could go a long way.
And it's an expensive way of getting your attic vented
without having to disrupt roofing materials. So, my friend, you
are left with essentially two options. If you have no
(19:50):
eve overhang, then you've either got to if you want
to improve the the thermal conditions in the attic, there
are two approaches. One is to find a way to
put low profile vents very low on as many sections
of the low roof as possible, and a low profile
(20:12):
vent uh might be like an O'Hagan vent that is
really relatively low profile. There are some low profile vents
out there, but it's going to mean disrupting some roofing materials,
and the labor cost of installing that both low and
then high. You know it's not going to be insignificant. Okay,
(20:33):
the other direction, and you know, I don't want to
bust your budget or spend money. But you've already mentioned
the idea, like you're concerned about wildfires, and maybe it's
not such a bad idea that you've got, you know,
minimal venting coming into your attic. Of course, like my
(20:54):
friends at brand guard vent, any vent into any roof
and attic area can be protected against wildfire embers with
an ember resistant vent. Okay, but but there's also an
option of building an attic that is completely ventless. And Gabe,
what I've got to do here so I stay on
(21:15):
track with time, is I got a popy on hold
and have everybody just hanging there. What in the world
is this idea of a ventless attic and what will
it require? Because in your case, it might actually prove
most cost efficient initially and long term way more cost
efficient to at least consider or investigate the idea of
(21:38):
a ventless attic. Are those even allowed? Yes, they are.
How do you achieve them. We'll talk about that right after.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI Am six forty.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
We're talking about all things your home today. I'm actually
talking about I've got my list of news stuff that
I'm sharing with you here. For the first part of
the year, I just collect new things, new insights, and
new products and technologies that affect the building and the
residential home industry. When I get enough of them to
make a show out of them, boom new stuff. That's today,
(22:16):
and of course there'll be another one later in the
year as well. But right now I've been taking calls
and I've got Gabe on the line. I'm going to
get back to Gabe here. Gabe's still with me, yes, sir,
all right. So Gabe's got a house, He's got a
relatively high pitched roof with no eve overhang to speak of,
(22:39):
and he's concerned that he has a gross lack of
attic ventilation. And the question is how do how does
he get it or how does he deal with it?
Or in the bigger question that I love that he
asked was how does he make his attic space more
thermally efficient for the house. And I've already explained in
the last segment what high and low attic do in
(23:00):
the traditional way of doing that, and then I left
you all hanging with the idea that there is such
a thing as a ventless addic. Is it code approved?
Yes it is? Is it cutting edge, yes it is.
Is it the kind of attic that Dean would tries
to design for all of his clients these days. Yes.
(23:21):
Is it the kind of attic that if I built
myself a new house, that I would have for myself,
Yes it is. And so what exactly am I talking about? Well, Gabe,
in your case, and you're going to have to weigh
the financial upfront cost versus you know, the long term savings,
and there is a massive amount of long term savings
with it. But here's what you do. You've got, first
(23:45):
of all, you've got an attic. If it has a
twelve and twelve roof pitch, that's a forty five degree angle,
that's a steep roof pitch. That means that you have
a significantly navigable attic space up there. And so that
being the case, these are the steps that you take.
You move the attic insulation from the attic floor to
(24:07):
the rafters, so that the rafters and the roof line
itself becomes the edge of the thermal envelope, not the
floor of the attic. Okay, everybody who has a traditional
attic has insulation on their attic floor, and their attic
is essentially as far as the code is concerned, very
much like the garage, which is, yeah, it's covered, but
(24:29):
it's technically outside. Okay, it is not a conditioned space.
But by moving the attic insulation from the attic floor
up into the rafter line, that becomes the edge of
the thermal envelope. No vents needed, no vents wanted, because
that makes the attic space itself part of the conditioned
(24:53):
space of the house. What does that mean. It means
that we also step two. We direct an AC duct
or two into the attic and an AC return duct
or two into the attic, and yeah, we air condition
and heat the attic like we do the rest of
the house at that point. Now that at first seems like, well,
(25:14):
that's a waste of air conditioning and heating. No it's not. Actually,
because if the thermal envelope of the house is the
outside edge of the roofline. If the roofline itself the
rafter line, then what happens is during a heat wave,
the attic is just and we don't have to keep
(25:35):
it absolutely as cool as the rest of the rooms
in the house. But let's say the attic that at
most gets to the mid seventies. What it means is
as the day starts to cool off, the attic then
does not sit there and radiate heat down into the
rest of the house, forcing you to air condition the
house for longer every day. And the same holds true
(25:57):
during the winter. If the attic is as or relatively
so as the rest of the home, then we don't
have to keep piling in heat into the house to
compensate for this thing radiating out during the day or
at nighttime. It has been proven that these systems are,
in fact, as far as the future is concerned, the
(26:20):
most efficient by far thermally efficient homes. So now here's
the trick. You can't just grab the attic insulation. Let's
say you had bats up there and throw them up
into the rafters, because roof rafters aren't deep enough with
standard insulation. Okay, with regular batted insulation, fiberglass rock mineral
(26:43):
wool insulation, whatever the case may be, cellulose insulation, there's
usually not enough depth in the roof rafter itself in
order to create that R thirty barrier that we need.
So that means, and here's the cost. That means that
we almost all always have to transition to spray on
(27:04):
spray foam insulation, okay, which is amazing stuff, but it's
more expensive. So it means clearing out all the yucky,
you know, all the gritty itchy insulation out of the
attic and then doing solid spray foam insulation in between
the rafters. Only a few inches of that stuff, four
(27:24):
to six inches at the most, gives you the R thirty.
It cleans up the entire attic, which in your case
for a tall attic, means you know, you got like
another room up there, okay, and plenty of room for
storage or even just fiddling around in. And then you
insulate that space and that becomes a ventless attic which
(27:46):
no exterior air exchange with the outside. Now, there are
some small venting issues for moisture that may have to
be taken into consideration, but it's very very very very minor.
The point is this if you were to move to
a conditioned attic space, you would be saving on heating
(28:09):
and air conditioning bills in a big way for the
rest of the life of the house. There are zero
vents to invite embers from wildfires. It's the fire safest
kind of condition to have a house in. But it
is a higher initial upfront cost. Why aren't all homes
built this way? Because builders do homes as cheaply as
(28:29):
they can and get past the code. Is this a
thing that's happening in California. Yeah, And if you want
to see the examples of it the building departments. Every
building department accepts this, by the way, and you want
to see the ones that deal with it most, they're
ones out in desert areas like Palm Springs. Most new
homes being built in Palm Springs now are being built
(28:50):
with non vented attic space because in extreme environmental conditions,
these are the kinds of addicts that prove most cost
effective and efficient long term, and that in and of itself,
Gabe should tell you how effective this is. So in
your case, my friend, there's some money to be spent
one way or the other if you want to maximize
(29:12):
thermal efficiency. You're either going to disrupt some roofing materials
and do vents high and low, or you look into
doing the a ventless conditioned space attic, which if you
can afford to do that upfront, could in the long
run be, in my opinion, be the ultimate solution for
your attic. You turn your attic into almost essentially a
(29:34):
habitable space, a navigable space, a clean space, a storage space,
and a thermally efficient space. How'd I do.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
Really really great ideas, Dean, I hadn't thought of those.
Really appreciate your expertise. The interesting thing is I still
have the original composite shingle roof, so it's time to roof.
I'm playing with I'm playing with the odds right now,
but it sounds like that might be a good project
to go ahead and lump in with a reroof at
(30:07):
the same time.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Yeah, it could be it, It really could be. And
so here's my point. My point is not to sell
you on one or the other, but to tell you
exactly what your best thermal options are. And here's the thing.
You know what, get pricing, Just get pricing. It doesn't
cost you anything to window shop to get estimates and
to look at all your options. And this is what
(30:30):
I beg our clients, and I forced my clients to
do this, and I beg our listeners to do this.
Window shopping is free. Education is free when it comes
to your home. It's out there. It's just waiting to
pile into your brain. Look at every option, price, every
option before you make a move, so that you know
(30:51):
that you're doing the right thing. Never once, never once,
And I'm very proud of this. In over forty years
of doing this, never once has a client ever come
back to me and said, Dean, why didn't we ever
talk about doing that? Because we do. We exhaustively talk
about every option. Every one of our clients knows the
(31:14):
decisions they made were fully informed. And that's the way
I want it for you guys too. All right, when
we come back, we're going to take some more new
stuff out of my list. We'll do that right after
we get the news. You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp,
the House Whisperer on KFI. This has been Home with
Dean Sharp, the House whisper. Tune into the live broadcast
(31:37):
on KFI AM six forty every Saturday morning from six
to eight Pacific time, and every Sunday morning from nine
to noon Pacific time, or anytime on demand on the
iHeartRadio app