Foreign.

Coast to coast, it's the nation's number one home improvement radio show and podcast with certified kitchen designer Eric G and co host John Dudley, a former contractor and online technology expert.

Delivering real fixes, smart tech and trusted advice.

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We've got your answers.

It's around the House.

Dive in and get inspired.

Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Thanks for joining us today.

John Dudley.

Good to see you, my friend.

What's happening, brother?

Man, it's been a busy week for this last week with the new YouTube channel coming out and everything else has been fun to watch.

With our new 4K channel.

We're going to see a lot more interviews and stuff up on there, but having fun building that this last week and get that out there for people.

And everybody's been flocking over to that.

So having some fun this week, brother.

Yeah, it's cool to watch the numbers.

It's growing quick already.

I'm like, Whoa, that was two yesterday.

Now it's 52.

Now it's 102.

And yeah, it just keeps going.

So it's fun to watch that happen.

And that one's for you guys out there because we had so many.

I was talking to my buddy, Cam Anderson, Blacktail Studio, and he was like, you got like almost 700 videos on the old one, but they're so old that there wasn't really a great way to grow that without having to do 10 times the work.

So time to start out with our new channel, which is around the House hq, so you can find it over there.

God bless algorithms.

Yeah.

Every time they change it, we gotta change.

Today I thought we would tackle some controversial subjects since we touched on it maybe just a little bit last week.

I wanted to talk about old homes and how people will say.

Some people will say, they sure don't build them like they used to.

And it's always a controversial subject.

So I thought let's dive into it because in full honesty, I love old homes.

They look beautiful, but I think a blanket statement, like they don't build them like they used to.

Ah, that's maybe 50% accurate.

I don't.

Yeah, absolutely.

But here's for the radio listener, so they know he's saying all this and looking specifically and very directly at me because I'm one of those guys.

Yeah.

So here's the thing, here's the thing.

Here's my take.

Yes.

Did they create a lot of beautiful handcrafted woodwork did they do all this beautiful plaster work inside, beautiful staircases?

Absolutely.

But they also did a lot of things that were the best of its time.

But technology has come so far along the way that our homes, I think are better built today because there's an engineer involved than they did back then.

Okay, can I start?

Yeah.

First of all, right.

It's 57 Chevy versus A87 Metro.

Geo Metro.

Yeah.

As far as design and customization, everything goes right now these postage stamps come out and they build 100 of them in one neighborhood, one of which my mother had built, I don't remember, 20 years ago or something.

That whole piece of lakeland hills, like taps all that new development.

Right.

And the only reason, I will not the only reason, there's a dozen reasons, but I will say those homes are falling apart.

Sidings falling off that.

Right.

All kinds of problems with them in the first five years.

Now, you know me, dude, I've dealt with a bunch of turn of the century homes and restored my own.

That was built in 1890.

That thing was sitting there for 100 plus years.

Incredible how toenailing and sturdy lumber kept that thing standing for 100 plus years.

Meanwhile, my mom's brand new house has fallen apart after five.

There is validity to the claim.

And is it because of the engineering?

No, probably not.

I think we have the right ideas.

I think we're doing some great things and making some huge leaps in technology, especially right now, not even talking about the 90s.

But do they get built?

Does everything get followed?

And are things doing what they're supposed to be doing?

That's the bigger question.

Right?

Yeah.

So let me go with structure.

Let's just start with structure first.

We won't get into the windows and siding thing just yet.

Let's talk structure.

Foundations don't count.

Some of those foundations were rough.

Right.

And a lot of those guys were mixing stuff in a wheelbarrow and going in there.

So mine didn't even have one back then.

And now isn't close.

No.

I had 10 by 10 posts in dirt, which is.

Right.

Okay.

But it's 100 years, come on.

Oh, yeah.

And what would happen?

Would a builder show up out there with his set of canned plans that he went from the architect from.

And there wasn't a permit pulled many times, or if there was, it was just very basic and there weren't building codes to follow.

It was just like, looks good.

You pulled a permit.

So we know there's a house at 123 Anywhere Ave. Yeah.

In 1890.

I don't think there was much of that going on.

That was literally one of the first streets in Tacoma.

Yeah.

That people took baby strollers down and stuff.

And the biggest lumber mill was like two blocks away from there.

Like where Brent's dad's house used to be.

Homes now are tied down to the foundation.

They've got shear walls.

You've got all the Simpson strong tie clips holding everything together.

That house structurally, generally speaking, is going to be stronger because an engineered look at it.

Those houses 50 plus years ago didn't have engineers looking at it most of the time.

And I'll back you 100% on that.

All that stuff is smart.

All that stuff makes sense.

All that stuff makes for a stronger structure for sure.

1930s two story box house that you saw that was out in the farmland and it's laying in the turn lane in the middle of the four lane highway out in front because that road's grown up and it looks like they just literally lifted it up and dropped it in the street.

Where a Newer House post 1970s in many cases across the country, mid-70s is where you really started to see people starting to tie things down maybe a little bit, which really isn't that long ago.

Yeah.

And maybe those things get blown over and blown away, but at least it didn't blow up and end up in the middle of the street.

Yeah.

With a cow.

Absolutely.

Hey Johnny, real quick.

We always want to start going out to the to our tip and this is our new one this week.

We have got some great stuff thanks to our friends at Red Wing.

We have got a safety tip.

Let's run out to that real quick because it's that time of the show.

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All right.

And we're back.

Johnny, I love those guys, man, with their new clothing line out there.

Super trick stuff just come out this last week and you can find that at all your Red Wing shoe local retailers, which I love, or even jump online and get it.

So love those guys.

Talk about old school boot manufacturer and now they're doing clothing.

Yeah.

And just pure quality for over 100 years.

It's.

Yeah.

A pinnacle in the industry, if you will.

We're going back to houses here.

It's one of those things that I understand it.

The problem that I see is that these new homes that we're building now.

Yeah.

Our house is built in the 80s engineered.

Yeah.

Many.

Are they the most reliable house?

Oh, no.

When they started putting in cpc, CPVC pipe, when they started using all the particle boards and in trying to energy proof homes and cause these really sick mold homes.

Absolutely.

80s and 90s homes.

Not my favorite as far as construction wise.

Yeah.

We did a lot of stupid stuff.

We did.

We did.

And they required it.

Yeah.

But even after we figured it out, we still required it.

Or I didn't.

But they did.

They.

And so to speak to the point, I think, I think the bigger issue, right.

Engineering wise, structural wise, a lot of the decisions, codes that we've made make for a smarter, better, sturdier home for sure.

But then you go, then you get to materials and application and I think that's where a lot of fault falls.

Go ahead, let's run out to break real quick, brother.

We'll go out to break, we come back, let's talk about materials because that is the plus and the minus where this stuff is.

And we'll do that just as soon as around the House returns.

Change that dial.

Welcome back to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

If you want to find out more about us, head over to our beautiful website at aroundthehouse.online.com.

and you can find everything from our new YouTube page over there with all our 4K content to stories we've written and everything else over there.

So it's a smorgasbord of home improvement information.

There we go.

See, I'm putting it on you.

All right, here's the thing we've been talking about.

Do they build old houses, new houses like they used to?

Old houses.

There's that debate.

You get the old house people going, they sure don't build them like they used to.

And the new people going, yeah, but they're built pretty well now and it's just not a.

A one zero.

Kind of like there's a lot of boxes to check in this conversation.

Oh, for sure.

And you brought up materials, and that's huge.

One of my pet peeves on social media is the post that shows up a couple times a year in every social media page except for ours, the around the House Nation.

Because I have banned that.

It's just.

We've covered it.

It's done.

But they take the Roughon VG fur that is 2x4 actual dimension from 70 years ago or 100 years ago, and they put it up against a Hemlock 2x4, which is way smaller.

Yeah.

And you get all of these people going, oh, see, houses were so much stronger back then.

The problem that people don't realize.

And this is where the.

I guess the uneducated public gets into this.

If you were to go pull up engineering tables, I'm going to go figure out a beam, for instance, or what's the span of this?

Because I'm building a deck.

Right.

You get into that stuff and that whole system is based on the current lumber.

So it's not based on old growth, new growth.

It is that hemlock.

Is it southern yellow pine?

Is it vertical grain fir?

What species is it now?

If you go back and look in history, for instance, when you go back and look at that, have those tables changed as new lumber came out?

Yeah.

So NDS is the specification gods out there as far as this, which is the national design for specification for wood construction.

They're the geeky people on that.

If you go back a hundred years and look at what they had back then.

Yes.

Lumber back then.

Way different as far as the PSI loads and all the geeky stuff that makes for bad radio.

We're not going to get into that.

Enough science.

Yes.

The old stuff said that you had a 1700-2100 psi for dense Douglas fir.

But if you look at it now, It's a thousand to fifteen hundred.

Yeah.

But the house is engineered for that, so it doesn't matter.

Yes.

And right to speak to that.

You brought a balloon framing before we started.

And I was just like, it's crazy.

That is standing after 100 years.

Because it is the most ridiculous idea for.

Right.

For building a home.

And if you have a fire in the wall, it's super.

Yeah.

No, yeah.

It's just a chase for the fire to run up.

It's that new chimney.

Super bad idea.

Super bad idea.

The fact that they had two by fours that long back then and we couldn't find one now if we needed to.

Impressive.

But yeah.

Horrible engineering idea.

And as much as I support and tout the lasting capabilities of these old houses, I assure you, at every corner when I'm redoing those old places, I'm like, how in the world did that stay there for a hundred years?

That looks like it should have came apart, fell down something.

What?

Yeah.

After day two and it's been there 100 years.

It's mind blowing.

Yeah.

We were talking materials, concrete, for instance.

There is about a 20 year era in here.

And I think it's like the 30s, 40s, like 20s, 30s, 40s era here in Portland where they screwed up.

The concrete manufacturer, they did not use washed sand, they used beat sand.

So it's easier.

Yes.

But the problem with that was that

salt gonna be a problem on there.

Yes.

Because I tell you what, if I go into those old homes and working with foundation companies, I could go in there with the edge of my measuring tape and dig a hole completely through the wall in 45 seconds.

Yeah.

And those homes we had to do a lot of work on, we actually had to go in and pour.

You know, you don't have to lift homes up anymore.

You can just pour an interior foundation that uses that old foundation as the outside forms.

You come in and pour a new 6 or 8 inch thick foundation wall down there.

Yeah.

And you form it up on the inside, you pump it in there and you lose a foot around the outside.

But you didn't have to jack the house up and people can live in it.

And you're not having to go in there and fix the foundation and lift up the chimney and all the stupid stuff that happens when you have to lift a house up.

But some of those things, and depending on how the concrete guy was that was doing it, which is usually the framer, they're in there mixing it up, they go take an hour lunch.

That thing's setting up and they're three feet up the wall and they just keep going and they come back and it doesn't end up very well.

It's not okay to just terminate and then add on top.

Just keep going every 2 foot or 6 inches or 3ft or.

You could sure see the lines in it.

Yeah, you can.

Yes, you can.

And they don't always exactly line up either.

And of course, you can see where they used two by sixes for the forms.

There wasn't plywood on there.

And then if you go up and look or two by eights or whatever they had.

Many times, you would see the roof trusses or the floor joists have concrete on them because they were like, oh, we're gonna use those for framing, but we're gonna use them first as a concrete forms.

Yeah.

And they're really fun to carry when you're doing demo.

Oh, yeah.

And the other problem that I see too is.

Okay, so you've got technically a lighter duty lumber now because it's faster growth and everything else.

But the other issue that I see is that when you're doing this, we've got all these other things that we're seeing out there from laminated beams and all that stuff that they didn't have 75 or 100 years ago.

Yeah.

Which serves those.

Serves a weaker framing system.

Right.

Like it's carrying most of the load.

And again, to credit, take a door frame, for example.

Back 100 years ago, there was one 2x4 on either side of a 46 inch wide door.

Had one.

Absolutely.

Right now we stack three 2x4s on each side with a double header or depending on whatever.

So.

Yeah, that's hard to compare.

The difference is we've made leaps and bounds on the engineering level of things.

And there's no question there.

I. I think we've made some huge mistakes with materials.

But you brought up CPVC, various different types of siding.

I won't.

Yeah.

1980s.

Exciting.

Sorry.

I'll be still on that one.

But yeah, just.

We made some bad errors sealing the house so tight that we got mold issues.

Like we.

But I think we've learned a lot.

And you're right to call out like the 80s 90s, man.

We.

There was just some bad stuff going on.

It gave me a lot of work.

But I think.

No.

And.

And Elise and I have been out kind of house shopping looking for something here.

Maybe later this year when things get a little better around here.

But if they do get better around here in Portland.

But I've just told her let's stay away from the 80s 90s houses.

I'd rather have a 60s house than an 80s house, you know what I mean?

That's real talk.

Yeah, yeah, I much rather have it because I can go through and fix the things I can go through and tie down to the foundation.

That's easy to do an earthquake retrofit, that's easy.

Yeah, Not a big deal.

But the 80s stuff, man, just the use of the particle boards and we were starting to tyvek things up and wrap things up and get things too sealed up and we didn't have anything.

And I'm almost worried a little bit moving forward now with our current building code.

Are we doing enough for that?

And when we come back, I want to talk about that because that is one of the things we're seeing this huge shift again for energy efficiency and little warning signs in my head go up and go, oh no, here we go again.

Yep.

We've had a couple conversations with a couple different people and I thought the same thing.

We're doing it again.

Why?

Here we go, here we go.

All right, we come back guys.

We'll talk more about that.

Stay tuned to around the House.

We're just getting started.

Foreign.

Welcome back to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

I'm here with John Dudley.

We're having a great time today.

And hey, if you want to find out more about us, check out our website aroundthehouse online.com.

our social media channels are over there.

Take a look at our new YouTube which is around the house HQ.

Our new 4k brand new content YouTube page just got released this last week.

So we got some new stuff over there.

That thing is jam packed already with good content for you guys.

And Johnny and I are having the debate of old houses versus new houses and what's better, what's not.

Where have we gone wrong?

What have we done right?

And we were just talking about some of the new construction stuff that's coming out and you know, it's interesting because I, I see a lot of, I don't know, I'm on a lot of different social media pages as kind of a expert or moderator and Canada is kind of going one direction, we're kind of going in another direction.

But you're starting to see a new building code out there where you have to put in on the outside of the sheathing.

So if you frame this up, let's say you're building a two by six wall, you put in your half inch plywood out there or OSB or whatever you're doing, they now want an R value on the outside that is continuous around the outside of the building.

And I get that because two by fours, two by sixes are heat sinks in that they go right through it.

It's not an insulating.

You do get those spots where you see it.

But I'm starting to get concerned that if we don't do this part right, and I drive around and see some major builders in my area that can't even get the Tyvek part right, let alone putting on.

I mean, yeah, somebody borrowed their child's stapler from third grade to put this stuff up.

And it's not taped, it's not flashed right.

It's just like.

And I drive by and go, how did that pass, guys?

Throwing windows in.

I'm like, how did that pass inspection?

And it shouldn't.

But if that slips, what happens when we're getting into this deeper building science stuff that most people yet don't understand, and that concerns me that we're looking at 1980s all over again.

Yeah, you brought that up the other day about this entire insulated wrap that covers the entire.

And alarms went off.

Right.

And especially after talking with our buddy over at Panasonic and, like, hearing everything they're doing for airflow and keeping pure air.

And we're talking about healthy homes.

And now we're right back to sealing it up.

So people get sick and gas leaks kill and mold grows and guys, like, don't.

Yeah, I don't know.

We're.

Don't do it again.

We're human.

Or just sometimes we're not the smartest.

No.

And the thing that I see here too, brother, that drives me crazy is great example.

You know, I was watching one of those.

One of those Canadian guys was on there and he was like, oh, yeah, I'm building all these high tech homes up in Canada, and I'm using the ERV system as the.

He's venting all the bath fans out of that.

He's.

Oh, it's 120cfm.

That's great.

And I came back and went, okay, brother, got a question.

Well, you got, You're.

You have it.

So when somebody walks into that bathroom, that.

It goes perfect.

If you got three bathrooms, let's say you got four bathrooms.

What do you got?

Maybe 35 CFM in there.

And we're not counting elbows and things going outside.

Maybe 30 CFM.

I'm like, dude, you got a moldy room now because you're trying to do the better thing.

It's like just exhaust it, send it outside, put in your 110cfm Panasonic and just kick it outside and get the.

Get the water out of there versus trying to get all tricky with it.

Yeah, we're complicating things.

Is.

Has been our demise how many times in the building industry.

Right.

I don't know if that ever stops because we're always trying stuff, right?

We're always like, oh, man, CPVC is the solution.

This is the best idea ever.

Right.

Ad nauseam.

There's about 100 of those things.

How many times did they tell you before that you had to put sheet plastic up between the drywall and the insulation and then they come back, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Can't do that.

Yeah, let's create a bunch of condensation and grow plants inside the walls.

So we got terrarium.

Yeah, it's just like islands in kitchens.

You don't probably know this one.

They have now made it illegal to put the outlet on the side of the island.

Yeah.

So now you have to put a pop up because people could walk by, catch the cord, and pull the deep fryer or the coffee pot or of the island.

So they want that up on the counter now.

Or a kid could pull it down.

The reason they made you put the outlets on the island is because people would run the extension cord across the walkway and do the same thing.

What happened to personal accountability?

I mean, like, do we have to account in our engineering specs and code specifications for.

And I don't want to be.

Yeah, I don't want to be rude, but just blatant stupidity.

And again, Right.

Like having traveled for the last 12 years and now living in Colombia for the last nine.

Like, all these places I go, man, there's potholes in the road, there's rebar sticking out as you walk past.

There's so many dangers, nobody complains, nobody sues, nobody.

It just doesn't happen.

If you're stupid enough to not pay attention because you're staring at your phone and you trip over the extension cord that's coming out of the island, that's kind of on you.

Come on.

Well, that's because you and I are Gen Xers.

You know, we were out there, we were watching Evel Knievel jump on abc.

And then we go out and build our ramps with our bikes and do it ourselves.

Right?

Yeah, that's how it's.

I don't know, cuz here's the thing.

That's that whole Another rabbit hole almost went down.

I'm leaving it.

Here's the rabbit hole.

I'm just going to touch on.

I walk around, I see kids all the time.

I mean, we are just at Disney World, right?

There's no bigger concentration of kids than a Disney World.

How many kids with casts I see?

None.

Yeah, I know.

How boring.

What's wrong with you kids, man?

Always two people in each class with a broken arm or a broken leg or something.

I was always jealous because I could never break anything, man.

I took so many bad hits on

skateboard ramps, and I did it right,

I couldn't break a damn thing.

I was like, rubber bum me out.

I always wanted a cast for people to sign.

I never got.

I was happy.

I mean, I broke my leg in second grade playing soccer.

I broke my wrist playing soccer.

You know, I broke the other wrist playing soccer.

You know, you break easy somehow, right?

I think I just played hard enough.

We've had three doctor trips just this week.

Elbow, finger, shoulder.

True.

And a cold on top of it.

I don't know what you're talking about.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And they don't make them like they used to.

That's all I'm gonna say.

Here's the thing, though.

I'm paying for the stuff I did 20 years ago, and they don't make them like they used to.

Fair point.

Fair point.

But that's the truth, though, you know?

And, you know, it's.

It's one of those things that I think that we need to, as building science people out there, get involved with our homes we've had so many times with energy efficiency.

I get that we want to have energy efficiency.

I mean, I get that at the.

At what expense, though?

You know, sometimes we're getting into it now where I think some of this stuff is getting so ridiculous that you're just making it harder for people to get into affordable housing.

Well, that's exactly what it is.

Right?

It's.

It's.

And I'm going to relate it just because I'm mainly doing computer work now.

Right.

So I'm going to.

I'm going to relate it to the fact that I was talking with AI last night.

I'm like, the more resources and the more tools I find, I realize I could legitimately just say, start this business, assign three agents to run it and send me a check.

I mean, that's kind of where we're at with technology.

And we're still creating rules like, no, you need to put the nails every two and a Half inches now instead of every three.

We're just making stuff up because they've kind of ruled themselves out of rules.

Yeah.

Right.

So now how do we keep the money flowing?

Well, we just keep making stuff up.

Whether it's stupid or not.

Let's make it up this year.

In 10 years from now, we can remake up something else to fix it.

And we already know it's a bad idea.

Right.

And that goes right back to you talking about wrapping these houses again, like they're talking about.

Well, we also have to fix expectations because you look back in the 30s and 40s, entry level homes were 900 square feet.

There were two bedrooms, one bath.

Yeah, right.

Everybody wants 2500 to 3000 now.

They want 3000.

They want.

They want level five finished in the walls, want the latest H vac system.

That's $35,000.

And then they're wondering why that house is at $550 a square foot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think that it's one of those things that we need to get.

Great example, Oregon.

Right now they're just getting ready to pass some stuff here in my state, which I just saw.

And I'm like, I think it might have already be passed start in two years.

You can't even put in a gas furnace because everything has to be a heat pump.

Really?

Yeah.

And I'm like, I like my gas furnace.

Wow.

That's, you know, again, it's kind of just making stuff up at this point.

It drives me crazy.

Drives me crazy.

All right, brother, we come back.

Let's dive into one more piece on this which we're going to start talking about, which I love.

And we're just going to tease it as that because this will be going to be another hot subject.

We'll do that just as soon as around the House returns to.

Don't change that dial.

Man, I had so.

Hey, everybody, thanks so much for hanging out with us today.

You've been listening to the around the House show.

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Don't change that dial.

Welcome back to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Thanks for joining us today.

Johnny and I are talking back in the Wayback Machine of how houses were built versus how we're building them now.

Were they better back then, Are they better now?

That answer is probably somewhere in the middle of this, depending on where you're coming from.

It's a pretty complex answer if you think about it.

But John, you were just bringing up something here in the break that's important.

I think we were just talking about the different cycles of economy and how things go out there.

Where are you going with that?

I'll tell you what I saw being a contractor in the 90s and 2000s, depending on whether we were talking earlier about application and materials.

And I think a lot of that gets affected by the economy because we were booming at one point.

Yeah.

And everybody with a Toyota Celica and a skill saw was a framer or a general contractor.

And you had to bid stuff at, oh, frame a 3000 square foot house for $1300 like it was insanity.

Like you couldn't pay for nails and people were doing it.

I think that affects a lot of.

Again, back to the engineering leaps and bounds we've created and done and found and instrumented.

Brilliant.

Yeah.

One jackass does all that wrong.

It doesn't pay attention.

Or one inspector lets it slide.

Or right, one bad material call that we thought was a great idea and we found out five years later.

But it was saving costs at the time and I had to build fast because the economy was booming.

Right.

I think it makes a huge difference and we need those cycles because what it does is it sifts out the riff raff.

Right.

You're like, okay, dude, work is scarce and only the right.

Only the good guys and the strong and the guys that are doing it right and honestly really survive that.

You got a Celica and a drug habit, you're probably not gonna make it.

You're the painter that's doing meth.

Yeah.

And when it's crazy, you just use those guys because you got no choice and you need a dude.

That's just it.

You got right.

Yeah.

You're like, man, I gotta get this done.

Whatever.

I'll just turn my head while you do your math.

But definitely affects how these houses last and stand.

And it's not the fault of engineering always for sure.

I follow this home inspection guy on social media.

Sigh.

And oh my gosh, he is down in the Phoenix area.

This dude only inspects brand new homes.

Uh huh.

Cy Porter.

Love this dude.

And oh my gosh, the stuff that gets passed off in the Phoenix area is mind blowing at how bad some of these big builders are down there.

And I get there in a boom.

We in the Pacific Northwest because of how they're running things here.

We're not in a boom.

Yeah.

So the people that are coming out of Washington, Oregon, California are going Texas, Arizona.

Yep, yep.

Going to those kind of places.

It's a perfect example because this guy goes through and does the either one year home inspection at the end of the warranty period or does the other stuff.

And he is almost getting in brawls even with gas companies because he'll go out and measure that there's a gas leak on the outside of the house.

Calls the gas company up and then the gas company goes and he's.

Every one of these meters I'm testing is leaking.

And he has the videos of them on his website.

And then the one gas company guy was like threatening him on camera.

Unbelievable.

And it was just crazy.

And the people, you're seeing stucco that you can still see the chicken wire and you're seeing roof trusses that were broken when they were installed.

It's exactly what I'm talking about.

We don't have time for that.

Meanwhile, 50 gas meters is leaking.

No big deal.

No big deal.

It's a non smoking community.

Oh man.

It is absolutely insane the stuff that you see.

And it drives me crazy to see that.

And I've wondered that because I had a buddy that used to work on this show as a board op years ago and he moved there and his buddies that were in the area were coming by and filming it and posting up on social media for his house being built.

Yeah.

And I'm seeing the whole house get built.

No windows in it.

Drywall's done on the inside.

Still no windows in it.

Wow.

I'm sitting here thinking about can you imagine the dirt and the dust from the wind blowing down there that's now in your air conditioning ducts?

Because there's all that stuff loves to go into the floor, into the field.

You know what I mean?

Oh, I do.

I lived there for eight years, brother.

I know exactly.

No, it's.

No, the dust is insidious down there.

It's crazy.

And I saw them pouring the concrete and they're out there with the concrete truck landing it on dirt.

It is the virgin ground that they're pouring it over the top of.

Yeah.

There's no foam going down.

There's no ground prep.

They just dug the footing out around the outside.

And there you could see they didn't even wet it down.

There was dust coming off of it as it was hitting the ground.

And I'm going, that's gonna crack.

I don't care what you put in that mix.

It was just one of those.

You're like, holy smokes.

And you just keep seeing this stuff over and over again.

And this guy's got millions of followers, which I love that he's got that and he's exposing this.

But he does have a very cool touch that he does on this.

He never calls the builder out by name, but he tells the story.

Walking by the model home with the model home sign of the builder's name on it on the sidewalk.

Yeah, I'm not gonna say any names here, but you'll notice.

And if you notice the big sign over my shoulder, that's not reversed.

You know, again, I think that speaks directly to one of the biggest points of this entire conversation.

It's not necessarily that all this engineering is bad.

It's not necessarily that the older is better.

Back in the day, we rode horses when they were building those houses, and there was no television and there was no social media and there was no Starbucks, and, oh, yeah, I think the craftsmanship generally got the attention it deserved, which it oftentimes doesn't.

Now and again, we're back to 57 Chevy, 87 Geometro.

Like, does the Geometro go for 200,000 miles?

Probably?

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm going to show you up here on this guy's page on some of the stuff he catches up here.

And I tell you what, look at the pictures on that.

On the ceiling, there's an inch.

That ceiling is out by an inch in the middle of it.

And then he goes up here into.

There's a gas meter that's beeping.

Then you see the broken trusses that are in there, and I can stick my hand through that truss.

And so there's a lot of stuff that you see out there where they forgot to put insulation in.

But, oh, my gosh, they got the Energy Star certification done.

And that was the northwest in 2002.

3, 4, 5.

Like, it was just chaos.

Yeah, you can see here, he's walking past this house right here.

Oh, who knows what's going on here?

But you can sure see who the builder is.

So it's just wild.

And that's one of those things that I want to make sure that people are doing.

Especially if you're having a building, a new house, man.

Spend the time and get those inspections done.

And I would actually pay for.

If I was getting a new house built today, I would actually pay for a building inspector to go buy that does new builds, to go back and do the framing inspection or a pre drywall inspection and just make sure that stuff's done.

Because stuff gets missed by these inspectors.

Especially if you're in a boom area.

You're in a boom area.

It's 110 degrees out.

They're like, yeah, it looks fine.

Dude.

I've worked.

I worked in that heat for years.

Like, it's.

I know you did.

You can get a little careless and a little irritable and a little.

I don't give a. Yeah.

And there are so many great builders out there, but it's just like cabinet companies or flooring installers or anything else out there.

There's good ones and there's bad ones.

And you got to find the good ones to work with because the bad ones in the boom times show up because they were yesterday's handyman.

Now they're building homes.

And like right now in my area, we're on a 15 year slump in building and new construction starts right now.

Wow.

Because everybody's moving out of town.

That seems odd.

You know what I mean?

It's just what it is.

But that's what's going on.

So you're just seeing so many of those things happening out there.

And the other thing that I'm seeing too is materials.

You think about it.

Back then, before the 60s, really, FHA required for you to have either a asbestos floor, hardwood.

You couldn't use carpet because carpet was not considered part of fha.

That's why all those homes had hardwood floors.

Because if you had an FHA loan for a long time there, carpet, wall to wall carpeting was not a flooring solution that they would allow.

Wow.

That's why you have all these homes.

You go in there and go, oh, there's hardwood underneath there.

Huh?

Learn something new every day.

So that's why that's hiding under there.

I'll tell you what.

Honestly, I think that's another reason those old houses stay together.

So the sheer value.

And hardwood floors.

Yeah, it's.

I mean, it's pretty fierce, man.

And they've got a diagonal with cross lateral and it.

Dude, that's a sheer value of get out of here, get here.

Like you're not touching that thing.

My house built 1960, a lot of them that one from 1890 you dropped four and a half inches front to back.

Yeah.

Jacked it up slowly, one bit at a time.

But there's a reason it could drop four and a half inches and it was still okay.

Look good?

Yeah, it was, dude.

And that's the thing.

I look at my stuff here.

We're gonna have to run out to break here and wrap this up.

But my house had the 2 by 6 car decking with 3 quarter inch white oak over the top and it wasn't going anywhere.

Yeah, no, yeah, no, that's a boat.

All right, if you guys got comments on that, make sure you head to aroundthehouse online.com hit the contact us.

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Thanks for tuning in to the first hour of the show.

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I'm Eric G. And for John Dudley, you've been listening to around the House.

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