[00:00:00] Eric Goranson: It's around

[00:00:05] Bill Maurer: the house, I believe, a 2200 square foot addition to their property in a historically African American neighborhood in Seattle, so that her kids and her, another one of her relatives can live there in. Afford to live in Seattle and not have to way out into the suburbs, and the city was saying either to, to build housing units, which she, she can't afford to do or pay the city $77,000 Just to be able to get the permit to be able to construct the additional housing, which when you add that money onto the cost of building in Seattle, makes the entire project uneconomic.

[00:00:50] Eric Goranson: When it comes to remodeling and renovating your home, there is a lot to know the we got you covered. This is around the house. [00:01:00] Welcome to Around the House Show. This is where we help you get the most outta your home through information and education every single week. Thanks for joining us today. We have one of my favorite organizations out there that is protecting all of us, the Institute for Justice, and we've.

[00:01:17] Eric Goranson: Bill Maer on from the Seattle office cuz he's got an amazing case here. Welcome back to the show, brother.

[00:01:24] Bill Maurer: Oh, thank you. So happy to be back.

[00:01:27] Eric Goranson: This is great. This is great. And man, this Adams versus Seattle case. I tell you what, this is stuff, if you're not living in the Pacific Northwest, these are things that pop up and I live in the Portland area.

[00:01:38] Eric Goranson: I used to live in Seattle. Let's talk about what's going on because this mandatory housing affordability program, they got. Really putting general homeowners in a bind.

[00:01:50] Bill Maurer: Yeah, that, that's exactly right. Like a lot of cities, Seattle has seen increasing housing prices and they've been driving out [00:02:00] a lot of middle class homeowners and property builders and generally leaving the city or threatening to leave the city is being comprised of entirely the very rich or the very poor the way.

[00:02:14] Bill Maurer: Seattle has decided to address this situation is to actually, they've tried to make the housing more affordable by making it more expensive and the, what they've do, what they've done is they've passed this ordinance called the Mandatory Housing Affordability Ordinance, and a anybody who know. About basic economics or common sense knows that if you wanna make housing affordable, if you wanna make housing cheap, there needs to be plenty of it.

[00:02:45] Bill Maurer: But instead of creating incentives for people to build housing, relaxing zoning rules to allow people to, uh, to have more people in their homes, for instance, what Seattle has done is restricted the [00:03:00] housing market using regulation, but at the same time, mandate. That if any developer, and that can be anything from a multinational corporation based on in the Middle East, building a huge power block.

[00:03:18] Bill Maurer: To someone who is just adding a single residential unit to their home. Anybody who's adding housing units in within certain zones within the city of Seattle has to either pay a, an exorbitant fee to the city, or they have to construct more housing units that they don't want and don't need, and the amount of.

[00:03:44] Bill Maurer: Amount of that they're charging. People can go anywhere, can be up to 35 or $39 per square foot. And or the alternative is you construct housing you are not going to use that you don't want. [00:04:00] Uh, and for single family residence, this is particularly difficult or single family property owners is particularly difficult because you're essentially turning your house into a, into a, an apartment.

[00:04:13] Bill Maurer: With residents that you know that in, in, in, in a choice that you don't particularly want to make. And in the city is doing all this in the name of affordable housing, they take the money that they're charging people and they're using it to affordable housing units elsewhere, or they're allowing people to move into the affordable housing units.

[00:04:38] Bill Maurer: Owners are forced to construct when they add a housing unit. And what this has done is it squeezed a lot of middle class people out of being able to add housing, basically any units to their homes or to their property. And it's a condition of your building [00:05:00] permit. You have to pay, you either have to pay this a fee, or you have to build this additional housing, or you don't get your bird building permit.

[00:05:08] Bill Maurer: And we're representing Anita Adams and her family. We're attempting to add a, I believe, a 2200 square foot addition to their property in a historically African American neighborhood in Seattle so that her kids and. Another one of her relatives can live there and afford to live in Seattle and not have to move way out into the suburbs.

[00:05:32] Bill Maurer: And the city was saying either you, you need to, to build housing units, which she's, she can't afford to do or pay the city $77,000 just to be able to get the permit. Yeah. To be able to construct the additional. Which when you add that money onto the cost of building in Seattle makes the entire project.

[00:05:56] Bill Maurer: Uneconomic and consequently she's not [00:06:00] able

[00:06:00] Eric Goranson: to do it. Sad. Cause this isn't something that's just happening in Seattle. This is something that's happening around everywhere in Portland, Oregon, here where I live, just south of you guys. If somebody has a house fire and their house burns down and the insurance has to come in, the city can charge them $60,000 in development fees just to get the building permit to put the house back.

[00:06:21] Eric Goranson: So it's great that you're fighting some of this because this is one of those things that is so counterintuitive to actually helping someone. Yeah. It's

[00:06:31] Bill Maurer: really, it's creating the circumstances where people are either disincentivized to build or they're prohibited from building what at all. And that makes the supply of housing less, which makes the cost of housing.

[00:06:47] Bill Maurer: And somehow the city thought that this would result in more housing units for less money when what it's doing is resulting in fewer housing units for more money [00:07:00] as common sense would've in instructed And, and because of, of this, this isn't just bad public policy. Bad public policy. Sure. But it's not just that.

[00:07:10] Bill Maurer: It's also constitu. Um, because the government can do things like if you're building, say you own a lot, undeveloped lot, you build a house there. Because of that, the government has to extend a sewer line there or a water line or additional utilities. The government c can charge you the amount of money that your construction is costing it.

[00:07:34] Bill Maurer: Sure it can. They're called. Because of the impact of what your construction has. That's the cost of things in the city itself. But the U US Supreme Court has made clear for decades, uh, those impact fees, the they have to have a proportionality and a relationship to what it is your project is doing, because otherwise you, the government is simply [00:08:00] coercing people out of money or property simply because they need a building.

[00:08:06] Bill Maurer: And that is un fashioned constitutional. Yeah. It's co It's that it, it is a shakedown and it's unconstitutional. And it's, and we're, we believe that the federal courts will strike this down because it's, it is not consistent with the holdings of US Supreme Court cases dating back decades.

[00:08:28] Eric Goranson: And this isn't the first issue that you and I have talked about, just the city of Seattle, these guys.

[00:08:35] Eric Goranson: And sorry for City of Seattle people, you're listening on the radio right now, but man, they are not good with housing and constitutional rights these days with this, with the development office over there because it seems that they just keep stepping on their own toes every turn they make a new policy.

[00:08:50] Eric Goranson: It's, can't do that either. Can't do that either. And this is just another one on the pile.

[00:08:55] Bill Maurer: Yeah, it, it all goes back to my first point, which [00:09:00] is that what makes housing affordable is that there's plenty of. And certainly violating someone's constitutional rights does not make housing affordable. Yeah. And conditioning a building permit on a, essentially take holding a building permit hostage in a, in response or in expectation of a payment that doesn't make housing affordable.

[00:09:23] Bill Maurer: No. And for big developers, they can handle this fee and can pass it on to the, they can pass the fee onto. The type of people who are able to buy condos or rent expensive apartments in Seattle in large, in in large buildings, but it for small. Builders and small property owners who want to add housing units this effectively shuts that door to them.

[00:09:50] Eric Goranson: Don't go anywhere around the house will be right back.[00:10:00]

[00:10:04] Eric Goranson: Welcome back to The Round The House Show. If you wanna get ahold. Head over to around the House online.com or just look for around the House Show on social media. Now let's get back to Bill Meher from the Institute for

[00:10:15] Bill Maurer: Justice. Yeah. And conditioning a building permit on a, essentially take holding a building permit hostage in a, in response or an expectation of a payment that doesn't make housing affordable.

[00:10:28] Bill Maurer: No. And for big developers, they can handle this fee and can pass it on to the, they can pass the fee onto. The type of people who are able to buy condos or rent expensive apartments in Seattle in large, in in large buildings, but it for small builders and small property owners who wanna add housing units, this is effectively shuts that door to them.

[00:10:55] Bill Maurer: It puts us stop sign in front of any [00:11:00] small development. And you would think that the city would want. The largest amount of people developing properties and would want small developers to develop properties, and so that you have a, a greater diversity and a closeness between the people building the homes and the people buying them.

[00:11:24] Bill Maurer: But for some reason, this is the. The path that the city decided to take so hard

[00:11:30] Eric Goranson: for any middle class homeowner to turn around and get a loan, which most people will do, to do an addition or a new A D U or whatever to the property, and then to tell the bank that, oh yeah, by the way, we have to pay $77,000 in fees on top of this, that the bank is going well.

[00:11:48] Eric Goranson: I don't get that money back. That's not an asset to me. That's a fee. Trying to get that, you basically have to have 80 grand in your back pocket just to pay fees. Cuz most banks in most situations are [00:12:00] gonna go, yeah, you, you're gonna have to pay that out pocket. You can't finance that. Yeah.

[00:12:04] Bill Maurer: Ms. Adams husband already works two jobs and his basic response to this was, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna work three jobs so that I can pay the city of Seattle this money to get a building.

[00:12:17] Eric Goranson: Yeah, let's talk about what they're trying to do. Cuz it looks like she's got just a noble project that she's trying to do to help out her family.

[00:12:25] Bill Maurer: Yeah, it is. Her children are college graduates. They wanna live near their family. They're, the current house is too small to, for the entire family to live in comfortably.

[00:12:39] Bill Maurer: And this was going to be a way for Ms. Adams, who's the first homeowner in her entire. This was gonna be a way for her to be able to keep her family intact, have her children live in Seattle, and have them be able to afford housing without having to commute massive amount of miles [00:13:00] to be able to get to their jobs In the, for a city that seems to be concerned about climate change, forcing people to commute to the city from cities that are 20, 30 miles away every single day, doesn't seem to be a very.

[00:13:16] Bill Maurer: Climate conscious way to do that. And it also, what's inconsistent with the city's stated desires for density, I was just gonna say that

[00:13:27] Eric Goranson: it's con total contrarian to what they say that they wanna do is, okay. We want density. We want people to not have to travel. We want people to jam in. We want to see multiple house houses on lots zoning could get thrown out the corner.

[00:13:42] Eric Goranson: Oh, by the way, we're gonna make it financially nearly impossible for you to.

[00:13:46] Bill Maurer: Yeah. And, and it doesn't, the, the treatment of this as an impact fee doesn't make any sense either because what they're saying is that if you build more housing, it's going to be more expensive for people to [00:14:00] live in the city of Seattle.

[00:14:02] Bill Maurer: I don't see how that can work. . But even if it, it does in some instances, which it doesn't, um, it still has to be tied to the actual impact that a particular or specific construction is making to the costs. Yeah. And there's no way that Ms. Adams building a small. For her family members on her property is causing $77,000 worth of harm to housing.

[00:14:33] Bill Maurer: Affordability in the

[00:14:35] Eric Goranson: city of Common Sense says if the city of Seattle wanted to promote density and people building, they'd be giving her a $77,000 credit on her taxes to build in here and be more dense versus charge her for that because that just makes no sense to me. And you're right. That's crazy.

[00:14:55] Bill Maurer: Yeah, I, I, the, the [00:15:00] theory behind this is one that's difficult for people to understand, and I don't really, I think you have to have a certain mindset of the idea that the construction of private housing is inherently a bad thing in order to come up with the idea that we're going to have forced people to pay a fee, an extra fee, because, Dare to build additional housing units on property that they own.

[00:15:30] Eric Goranson: Yeah, and it is a great example here too, is if the city wants to go out and pay for affordable housing for people, at least in my situation down here in Portland, I watched them spend some of their money to build affordable housing. There is not a more expensive way to build affordable housing in a town, is to have your city do it for you versus a private developer, cuz they did that.

[00:15:50] Eric Goranson: Portland recently, and I was having some discussions with people. It was twice the cost of what it would've been if they would've said, Hey, Mr. And Mrs. Builder, we want you to give us a bid on [00:16:00] affordable housing. Housing. And that would've built to a better grade than what they were doing.

[00:16:05] Bill Maurer: Yeah. The housing units that they've been constructing, using these, using the fees, have I.

[00:16:12] Bill Maurer: Come in around 1.2 million per housing unit, which is higher than the cost of the entire building that Ms. Adams is, is constructing.

[00:16:24] Eric Goranson: Ah, I just, it just blows my mind again that, uh, that they're trying to do this. So I really appreciate, man, with what you guys are doing at Institute Justice for this, cuz these people here take it on a city like you guys do and help people like, Is really important cuz it, not only does it change her situation, it changes all across the country when you start to get this kind of case law out there.

[00:16:48] Eric Goranson: Because now we can report back and go, hey, in the Adams versus Seattle case, they said this. And that helps people, especially when the way you guys are doing this. So it hats off to you guys for [00:17:00] helping out the public with these type of development cases.

[00:17:04] Bill Maurer: Well, thank you. And that's the idea is. We wanna create precedent so that other people who are being abused by other municipalities elsewhere in the country, I can point to that and say, look, you can't do what Seattle did.

[00:17:22] Bill Maurer: And Seattle's program is unique because there's a lot of cities that have these kinds of development or housing affordability impact fees. But Seattle's the only one that doesn't have. So the, the, as small as you can possibly get it, they treat the multinational billion dollar development corporation the same as the small middle class person who wants to add the dwelling unit.

[00:17:49] Bill Maurer: And that's unique and we don't wanna see that spreading to other cities because the end result is going to be both, is going to be a less. [00:18:00] More expensive housing. Sure. And more violations of people's constitutional rights. That's the big part

[00:18:06] Eric Goranson: right there is that's getting stepped on. People can find out more information on this case over@ij.org.

[00:18:13] Eric Goranson: Correct?

[00:18:14] Bill Maurer: Yes. Yeah, we have a whole case page. We have the complaint, we have background information about our client and photos of the house, and when

[00:18:22] Eric Goranson: we come back we'll wrap this conversation up quickly and then we'll jump into my craziest things that were at the Consumer Electronics Show last week.

[00:18:30] Eric Goranson: That are for your house. In some of these, you're gonna either laugh or be completely horrified around the house and be right back.

[00:18:59] Eric Goranson: [00:19:00] Welcome back. The House show. Now let's get back to our discussion and wrap this up quickly with Bill Maher from the Institute for Justice. And then we're gonna talk here about the craziest things and some of the cool things that were at the Consumer Electronics Show this last week. It was pretty wild.

[00:19:14] Eric Goranson: Now let's get back to our talk with Institute for Justice.

[00:19:17] Bill Maurer: And that's unique and we don't wanna see that spreading to other cities because the end result is going to be both, is going to be a less. More expensive housing. Sure. And more violations of people's constitutional rights.

[00:19:34] Eric Goranson: That's the big part right there is that's getting stepped on.

[00:19:39] Eric Goranson: People can find out more information on this case over@ij.org, correct? Yes.

[00:19:44] Bill Maurer: We have all case page, we have the complaint, we have background information about our client and photos of the house and what they wanna build. It's all right there.

[00:19:55] Eric Goranson: And there's one important thing on this page up there that I want you to take a look at as our [00:20:00] listening audience that I can give a request for.

[00:20:02] Eric Goranson: There's a little yellow button that says, give now up there. These guys can always use the help because they're fighting for people like you out there to make life a little bit easier and to protect those rights that you've. Here in the United States. So Bill, thanks for coming on today, man. I really appreciate it.

[00:20:18] Eric Goranson: And you guys just keep up the work. You guys worked with me 15, 18 years ago when we were trying to stop interior design legislation here in Washington State when I was a resident there, and you guys helped us through that and that was a huge battle that we won and that was really nice to do that. Hats off to you guys and thank you for doing the good.

[00:20:39] Bill Maurer: Oh, thank you. My pleasure for being on, and I appreciate you spreading the word about the lawsuit and what it is we're doing. Thanks

[00:20:46] Eric Goranson: for coming on today, brother. Well, let's get over to talking about the consumer electronic show. Now, this is down in Las Vegas every year, and this is kind of the first really big live event.

[00:20:58] Eric Goranson: That happens in Las Vegas. [00:21:00] Each year we've got, uh, consumer Electronics Show. The next typically is the world of Concrete. And then of course there is the show that I attend to, which is the, uh, design and construction week, which will be later on this month. Now, the Consumer Electronics Show is where people come out and, and pretty much bring out the latest of technology each and every year, and there was a lot of different themes and I.

[00:21:22] Eric Goranson: I sat through a lot of the online presence of these big rollouts, you know, for Samsung and all these different people, lg, they had their different rollouts that were online that I could take a look at. And of course I had people on the field down there taking a look for me as well. Cuz quite frankly, I'm getting ready for my TV show right now.

[00:21:39] Eric Goranson: So I couldn't make it down to Vegas when I'm gonna be down there in just a few weeks. There were some cool things. I was talking to Nick Miles from our auto expert. You've heard him on here before that show, and he was talking about the Dodge pickup, the electric one that's just coming out. That is gonna be something to watch, you know, Dodge, um, on these ram trucks.

[00:21:58] Eric Goranson: They were well behind the game [00:22:00] cuz Ford came out with their lightning and Chevy GMC came out with theirs. Dodge Ram decided to bring out, and I guess it's Ram now, decided to bring out their truck. They reimagined. This electric truck, and I like it when a company and I, I've probably owned one dodge in my life.

[00:22:18] Eric Goranson: So by, I'm by no means a a Dodge flag waiver, but I like some cool stuff with this. Some of the things that I thought were neat from a work truck perspective is they reimagined how a truck works. And you think about that. There's that firewall right between the engine compartment and the. That's that big piece of metal right there.

[00:22:38] Eric Goranson: Well, if you don't have an engine up front and then you've got, uh, you know, electric motors, you don't need that firewall. So what they did is they created a tunnel pass through from the front bumper all the way to the back. So you could literally put in 16 foot lumber. Inside the cab, underneath the, uh, to cover in the back and keep it dry and haul it cuz it goes under [00:23:00] the driver's console there between the front, the front seats thought that was pretty trick.

[00:23:04] Eric Goranson: The next thing that I thought was really cool was that they had, and this was I thought, amazing for so many people out there that are contractors, they have, the seats are on these rails, kind of like what you see, rails that a airplane seat are on. You kind of notice those little tracks that they slip on.

[00:23:20] Eric Goranson: This is the same kind of thing with these automotive seats that are in this truck, but you can adjust them so they slide on the rails, and that means you can also remove them. So if you're a contractor and it's just you running around, but you want to have maybe the dog in the back or the dog in the front, or you want to have your toolboxes in the back cuz the floor is now flat because you don't have that hump in the middle for the drive.

[00:23:41] Eric Goranson: It's pretty trick. You can now stack all your stuff and use that as inside protected storage. So those seats pop right back out. You can unload the tools, snap the seats back in and keep going. So I thought that was really, really cool. That was one of those things that I was like, all right, that's good.

[00:23:57] Eric Goranson: And of course there was lots of, uh, different [00:24:00] companies that had infotainment systems and all the different stuff and all the different smart car, you know, concepts that are out there. That are all electric. So something to think about coming forward. But that's not really what we were there for to take a look at.

[00:24:13] Eric Goranson: And now the other thing is too, I thought that was interesting. Traditionally, when you sat down for these big presentations, you would sit there from start to finish if they were an hour, 95% of it was talking about new products. What was interesting this year is there was a gen general theme from a lot of the product manufacturers.

[00:24:33] Eric Goranson: About 40% most of the time. It was the first 40% of the time they talked about their sustainability practices and what they were doing to remove, like post-consumer waste and all those different things. They started out probably the first 20, 25 minutes on almost every one of these talking about their platform and what they're going to do to be more efficient.

[00:24:53] Eric Goranson: So there was a little bit less products that came out that they discussed only because. [00:25:00] Many of them were using that time to talk about, uh, what their, uh, you know, in-house initiatives were for doing that. So that was kind of interesting. But there was a lot of other smaller companies that were very interesting out there.

[00:25:14] Eric Goranson: Um, what I liked is there's a lot of more, a lot of the robot vacuum series. I love Robot Vac. I have one of the, uh, smart things, Samsungs at my house, uh, for my dogs. It is great cause I have hardwood floors and it goes around and picks up hair. I can set it to go. The house, you know, once or twice a day, charges back up does a pretty substantial job of getting all that stuff off the ground.

[00:25:37] Eric Goranson: So it, it's, it's really enjoyable. Getting that kind of dialed in right there so we can keep the house a little bit cleaner and we don't have to do it ourselves. So being a person that has all hard surfaces in the house, the Rob Rock S eight, it looks like this new series is a two on one type thing. So it's a two on one robot floor cleaner, which empties the dust bin [00:26:00] and it washes its own mopping cloth and refills the water tank.

[00:26:04] Eric Goranson: But it's really cool. So now they have warm. Mop drying, so it'll dry the mop as well. So now you can have it mop and clean the floor and vacuum all at once. So I thought that was really trick. That was a really cool thing. And it's not too bad. I mean, these things are expensive, so don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to downplay that at all, but we're, you could spend over a thousand dollars for the Samsung one.

[00:26:28] Eric Goranson: This is pri, and that's just a vacuum. This is priced at about 750 bucks. So you can get it on Amazon, Rob Rock in uh, April. So that's something pretty cool. Now LG came out with this new refrigerator, it's called Mood Up and LG had some pretty wild things this year and I've got LG appliances in some of my house here and it, you know, great products.

[00:26:50] Eric Goranson: Haven't had any problems with 'em. But this is crazy. This is a very flashy fridge because it's got color changing l e d door panels. So Samsung came out [00:27:00] with their bespoke line that has the kind of multicolor panels you can swap out. LG pretty much said, okay guys, and those two are uber competitive.

[00:27:10] Eric Goranson: Some people think that they're the same company. No. I, it appears they hate each other from the things that I've seen personally, but those guys do not like each other, so they are not well competitors on the same page. So LG came out with their new one and with the uh, think Q Mobile app, you could actually change.

[00:27:30] Eric Goranson: The panel color just by using your app. So if you want it to be bright orange or blue or, or red or pink or whatever, you can change that. Uh, that'll come out here later on this year. But you can actually change it with your phone on that LG uh, think Q Mobile app. So that's gonna be pretty crazy. I thought that was pretty wild as well.

[00:27:49] Eric Goranson: And then one more before we go out to break. Chillax roll. You parents out there, they have their giraffe. Thermal ai, smart baby monitors. If you're that person that's worried about your baby going to sleep and having an eye [00:28:00] on it, they have got the monitor for you Made by Chillax, it's about 400 bucks.

[00:28:05] Eric Goranson: But man, it is gonna give you all the alerts you'll ever need to, uh, make sure that, uh, baby's moving right. Temperatures are right. Everything else. It is literally sitting over the crib looking down, and it is giving you all the information and warning you. When things don't go right. All right everybody, we'll be right back after these important messages.

[00:28:24] Eric Goranson: More from the Consumer Electronics Show, just as soon as around the house returns.

[00:28:56] Eric Goranson: Welcome back to The Round The House Show. This is where we helped you get the most outta [00:29:00] your home for information and education. All while we're having fun. Thanks for joining us today. Well, before we get to the Consumer Electronics Show, Steph, that we found out from this last week. Let's talk about how you can get ahold of us.

[00:29:11] Eric Goranson: Make sure you follow us over on social media. That's gonna be around the house show. And then make sure you join over on Facebook around the House Nation. That is our close group where we're, uh, still building that. We've got about a thousand people over there, but that is where you can share your projects and basically show your hand.

[00:29:27] Eric Goranson: You work in a safe space that we patrol and make sure that, um, you know, the trolls get kicked. . So it's a really good place. And if you want more information about us outside of Social Media, head over to around the house online.com and you can find us over there. And then on the podcast we've got, wow, almost a thousand episodes up.

[00:29:47] Eric Goranson: So if you're looking for some specific information, Go over it around the house online. You can click on the, the podcast right there on that website. That'll take you over to the main one cuz I love Apple Podcasts, but a lot of these [00:30:00] companies only put up 299, 300 episodes and then they want you to go back to the original.

[00:30:05] Eric Goranson: That's where the original is, where we've got all those different episodes. Now let's talk about some of the cool stuff that, uh, that I saw. The Consumer Electronics Show, if you like. You know those hummingbird feeders and bird feeders? They have a cool one. It's the bird buddy camera. It is an embedded bird feeder.

[00:30:24] Eric Goranson: My wife would love this, so they're really cool. But they've got a camera that's built, wireless camera that's built into the bird feeder. And so they had a, you know, couple different models there. So they had a liquid feed dispenser for hummingbirds. Another one is seed tray, but basically the camera sends a push notification to your phone when a bird arrives and the, uh, bird buddy apple even identify bird species.

[00:30:47] Eric Goranson: So you can store the information in the database for. Reference. So I thought that was kind of trick. That was pretty cool for all you bird lovers out there. Now here's another one that was kind of funky that I'm uh, [00:31:00] I wanna get your opinion on it, so make sure you comment over on, around the house and see what you think about this one here.

[00:31:05] Eric Goranson: This was kind of interesting, dandy the weed killing robot. You know, weeds of course are the bane of my existence in the lawn cuz I like to be. Cleanest yard in the neighborhood When I've got the yard going right now, I don't only because it's in the middle of, uh, a summer remodel coming up here, so it's going to be, uh, torn out and redone.

[00:31:25] Eric Goranson: So it's, it's, it's nice but it's not where it's going to be. And who likes to call across the, the grass and, and pull out your weeds? And, and I don't like to go do a bunch of weed killer all over the lawn either cuz it's not good for the environment, nor are my pets or anything else. So Dandy came up with this weed killing robot.

[00:31:43] Eric Goranson: So like the, the Dandy DT zero one, about 700 bucks for lawns up to a quarter acre. And for Largers, they have the DT oh one xl. It's about 800 bucks for lawns up to a full acre. It roams your turf. It hunts down broad leaf weeds. [00:32:00] And leaves the surrounding grass unharmed. And then they recommend using an organic iron based solution, uh, that's non-toxic really for you.

[00:32:09] Eric Goranson: So it's something that you could do without having too much stuff out there. But that's an interesting one. So you can actually send that out and it'll go out and, uh, kill the weeds in your lawn. You don't have to worry about it. So for all you that, uh, don't want to have to worry about that, that's an interesting.

[00:32:24] Eric Goranson: Now one of the stranger products out there is made by Dyson. And if you wanna look like Bain, you know, like DC Comics, Bain Vengeance of Bain, that kind of stuff. I know I'm probably over exaggerating, but, uh, I tell you what, this Dyson zone headphones and air purifier that goes over your face, uh, it is funky.

[00:32:46] Eric Goranson: And if you wanna really have, uh, you know, Comfort of having a air cleaner strapped to your nose and your mouth that goes around to the headphones that are big book blocky headphones. This is gonna be for you. [00:33:00] Um, it is not attractive. It looks weird and yeah, it's like a modern bane from DC comics, so that one to me wouldn't catch me dead in one of those.

[00:33:11] Eric Goranson: That one is, uh, that's a no-go. Uh, other stuff too that I thought was cool out there. There's a lot of, you know, O L E D stuff out there from TVs. All that stuff. Uh, Masonite came out with their empower door. I saw a little tease of that this last year that has a, uh, basically has the Yale Smart Deadbolt and a ring video doorbell built into the door.

[00:33:33] Eric Goranson: So it is a full smart door that way. And then moan came out with some sprinkler controllers. Uh, they came out with one, uh, with some soil sensors. I've been using the ratio. R a c h i o one for years. But, uh, Moen decided to come out with one, which is cool. And uh, they can do that. So that was, again, pretty impressive.

[00:33:52] Eric Goranson: And another thing that came out that was interesting was the ring car cam. Now this was a hot item. You probably saw this one on the [00:34:00] news. So if you've got the ring thing, you could actually put the ring car cam on your vehicle's dashboard and, uh, or snap it on the windshield and it plugs into the, uh, into the car's O B D port.

[00:34:11] Eric Goranson: And it will record what's going on both inside the cabin and in front of the car Will the vehicle's in motion and you can say, Alexa, and then the record and the camera will capture what's going on, even when the car is still. So that kind of seems creepy and, uh, It could be easy reassuring if you're, you know, you maybe get pulled over an fender bender or something like that.

[00:34:34] Eric Goranson: You could sit there and just go, Hey, record and, and deal with it that way. But, um, that, um, you know, it's one of those things that could be interesting, but it's gonna really track a lot of the information. So the newer the car, the more information. It'll get, because that O B D port will give that data from the vehicle.

[00:34:50] Eric Goranson: So, uh, it will give a lot more information than it's going to do. So that's an interesting one right there. And TVs were huge as we were talking about at the end of the day. [00:35:00] Now, here's the one that I thought was, this one, I think jumped the shark, and I get what they're trying to do here. But there's, if you're eating breakfast or you're having lunch, I'm sorry, this is not maybe the, the most.

[00:35:15] Eric Goranson: Delicate subject to deal with here, but, uh, made by Withings, the UCAN urine analyzer. Yes, this puck sits down inside the bowl of the toilet. And, uh, this ucan is a smart wifi connected puck that sits inside the toilet and it analyzes your urine. Comes with two types of, uh, replaceable cartridges. And so it'll do everything for the females and men and hydration and everything else.

[00:35:41] Eric Goranson: And uh, here's the weird part. This is where it jumps the shark. It can even test a, you know, basically tell the difference between various users and the family. Yes. And they call it the stream ID feature. Yeah. Yeah. We can't, I'm just not even gonna go there. That one, uh, [00:36:00] is interesting and, uh, yeah, it seems like outta some weird.

[00:36:04] Eric Goranson: Bad James Bond knockoff movie or something. Not cool. Not cool. But there are some other medical devices that I thought were pretty cool out there as well. Um, another one that I thought was nice, um, there's a, uh, made my valena cell. It is, uh, a compact version health monitor that, uh, basically gets worn on your fingertip and it can actually give you the.

[00:36:29] Eric Goranson: You know, your, um, geez, your, all your monitoring on that so you can get all the different, uh, uh, blood pressure and all that different stuff out of it. So pretty cool way to have a cuff less blood pressure monitor for you. So that's not a bad way to go either. Uh, as far as the healthy stuff, I like that.

[00:36:46] Eric Goranson: If you're trying to stay healthy, you don't have to go into the doc and pay those big fees. That's how you. Now, as you guys know, I live in the Portland metro area here in Oregon. And, uh, this is kind of the shoe capital of the, of the world here because we've got Nike and [00:37:00] Adidas and all the major shoe companies are here.

[00:37:02] Eric Goranson: You know, my Keen Boots, Columbia Sportswear, all these different sportswear companies are, have either offices here or like Nike, where they've got about half the state here. I think, you know, it's, it's the shoe central right here. LG decided to jump into this, which I thought this was kind of interesting.

[00:37:19] Eric Goranson: They brought, uh, for all you sneaker heads out there, and they brought this new tech for shoes. And basically what it is, I don't care if it's, you know, you got your dress shoes or your Air Jordans, these cubes are the new Styler shoe case and Styler shoe care products coming from lg. Now, I'll be honest, this is pretty wild.

[00:37:46] Eric Goranson: Uh, these are little, for instance, it's a little clear box that, uh, has a turntable on the inside and you, it's lit and you can basically stack these cubes up as display [00:38:00] cabinets. Yes, display cabinets for your shoes. And, um, then they've got their, uh, version of. Shoe Styler there, basically, which means that will steam them and deodorize.

[00:38:13] Eric Goranson: And, uh, if you've got smelly feet, this is actually one of those things that's gonna be probably smart for you because that is going to, uh, help deodorize those as well with steam, which is a good way. So, uh, anyway, the case keeps 'em at, uh, optimal humidity and, uh, protects 'em against UV damage. Uh, and it holds one pair of shoes.

[00:38:34] Eric Goranson: And then you can hook that into. You know, your app and things like that. There's no pricing out there yet for the Styler shoe or shoe care. But, uh, more information you can hit over to LG and find it over there. Uh, I've got the LG Styler, which is the clothes cleaner, and uh, it's basically is a steamer for your clothes.

[00:38:54] Eric Goranson: So if you need to shake out a jacket or something like that, you can hang it up in there and it'll, uh, steam it out without having [00:39:00] to wash that dry cleaning. It can save you on some dry cleaning, especially for suit jackets and stuff. Like that. All right, everybody, have a great rest of your weekend. We've had covered so much stuff.

[00:39:10] Eric Goranson: We've got so much more coming up in the next hour of around the house, and as always, thanks for listening to Around the House.