@WakeUpCall – Waking Up with the House Whisperer

The host of ‘Home’ on KFI, the House Whisperer, Dean Sharp joins the show to talk about the do’s and don’ts of electrical work around the house.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let's say good morning now to the host of home
on KFI, the house whisper Dean Sharp. So it's going
to cost us more to keep those houses lit, and
that brings us to electricity.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Electricity, electricity, that's the stuff we're paying more money. It's
a great argument, by the way, for solar, for people
for getting solar on their house, because even if you
just lease your solar, the fact is that it'll level
out your utility payment as everybody else's is going up
and up and up and up, which it always has

(00:34):
and always will do by the tune of about seven
percent a year on average. That sucks, Yeah, it does.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Okay, So now we're going to talk about does and domes,
because there are some things you can do yourself, and
there are some things you probably shouldn't. I know, one
time at I remember this my first house, and my
boyfriend Dean was doing something with one of the electrical outlets,
and he came back into the kitchen and his eyes
were really big and his hair was a little bit puffy,

(01:04):
like he shocked the crap out of himself.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah, it happens when you're fiddling around with stuff that
you're not entirely familiar with, So yeah, Sunday on the
Big Show on Sunday, you know, and I you know,
just send me best wishes. I do this every year,
you know, any of our electrical shows. As a it's
a heavy lift because people just don't understand even what

(01:29):
electricity is. It's this magical stuff that comes out of
the wall makes our lives possible. But it's not the
easiest thing to explain or to guide homeowners through. But
we're going to do it because it's important, and there
are things that homeowners should absolutely not be fiddling with,
and we're going to go through that, the dos and don'ts.

(01:51):
When do you pick up the phone and call the electrician?
But there are definitely things that a lot of homeowners
can do better at, and one of them is as
simple as figuring out the breakers on your electrical panel.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
It's probably important, Yeah, can you throw a breaker or
trip a breaker? And then you look at this panel
and nothing's labeled right, and you're like, I have no
idea what I'm supposed to.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Do here exactly. And I don't have this as an
absolute fact, but general, anecdotally speaking, I personally have experienced
so many electrical panels I'm going to say that nine
out of ten electrical panels are mislabeled or poorly labeled,
or not labeled at all. And so you open it

(02:37):
up and you take a look at the breakers, and
somebody has scribbled with a sharpie next to it, or
there's some old list in written in pencil that nobody
even can read anymore. And God only knows how many
changes have taken place since that was written in the
first place. So here is my suggestion. My suggestion is,
just forget about trying to write on the panel, forget

(02:58):
about trying to use that old piece of paper that
they paste it on the inside door of the panel.
Just you know, get out your phone, open up a document,
a page's document or a word document on your phone,
and have a friend help you out and walk through
your place and identify by flipping breakers on and off,

(03:21):
what is turning on and off, all the receptacles, all
the switches, all the lights, and make a list, make
an exhaustive list of those things in a document. And
then when you're all done and you know that, yep,
we've covered it all. This is the you know breaker
A does this, breaker B does that? Then just print

(03:41):
it out, get it laminated, and stick it inside the panel.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
Oh that's a good idea.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
And now you've got a complete list of everything that
every breaker does, so that when the breakers fire off
or when you've got to do something like change out
a switch or change out a ceiling fan or a
light fixture or something like that, a lot of things
that that anybody with a little bit of DIY knowledge
and UH and safety precaution can do. You don't have

(04:08):
to call electrician to you know, to put up a
new light fixture, per se h. Then you know you're
turning off the right breaker and you're making it safe
for yourself.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Okay. And then Dean for something like that, you're saying,
it's okay if you're a DIY like you can replace
an outlet or a switch by yourself. Are there good
instructions on how to do that online? Now?

Speaker 2 (04:28):
There are? There are, there are there are a lot
of you know, and I hesitate to say, because there's
also for every you know, one great instruction video online.
There could be three really wacky ones. But here is
my uh, it's very simple. Uh. First of all, you've
got to make sure that the that let's say it's
an outlet that the outlet is dead. That says break

(04:50):
the breaker. The breaker is off, not just a switch
on the wall, but the breaker is off. And so
there's no risk of that, okay.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
N of the reason to have a good list of
what your breakers do exactly.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
And then as there are two screws, there's a screw
that holds the plate on, you take off the cover plate,
and then there are two screws that hold the outlet
into the wall box. And if you remove those, you
can very gently pull the outlet forward because they're slack
and the wires there. And then you stop before you
do anything else, and it's super simple. You get out

(05:22):
your phone and you take a picture of the left
side of the outlet and the right side of the outlet,
so that you see exactly where the black wire, the
green wire, and the white wire, what they're attached to,
what nut on the side of the outlet they are
attached to. Now you have a record of it, and

(05:44):
then you can detach those wires, put the new outlet on,
and simply connect those wires to the exact same place
on the new receptacle as the old one, push it
back into the wall, and you're good to.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
Go take the guesswork out of it. Such great advice.
It's so important because again we've all tried to do
these little things in our house, right, so let's do
it safely or know when to call the pros. And
you're also going to have a segment on red flags
like when you see something, this is when to call somebody.
Don't mess with this, call somebody. And you're gonna also
address the GFCI, those ground fault.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
Round fault circuit interrupters.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
There you go, all right, So it's all coming up
this weekend. We've got the host of Home Dean Sharp,
with us now, but you can listen to him tomorrow
from six to eight am and then the big electrical
show on Sunday from nine to noon. You can also
follow him at Home with Dean. Thank you, Dean Sharp.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
Thanks Amy