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The House with Eric G.

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Whether you're a DIY enthusiast or just looking to make your space shine, Eric G.

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Eric G.

Welcome to the Round the House show, the next generation of home improvement.

I'm Eric G.

Thanks for joining me today.

This is our midweek update.

This is where we talk about the stuff that didn't make it into last weekend show and of course isn't going to make it into this weekend show.

So we try to fill in the gaps here in the middle of the week so we can talk about topics that are coming up and things like that.

This hour is brought to you by our friends at Monument Grills.

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If you're looking for all those luxury features without that luxury price, check them out@montymcrolls.com today I wanted to talk about a few different things.

First off, I wanted to give you an update of my read of where we're at with the tariffs, stock market, home construction.

First off, this is not investing advice.

So I'm not some broker or something like that.

So take it for my take, Tom.

But this is what I see so far.

Now the first thing is you got to be careful of your news sources out there because the sky is falling at some places another news source will be celebrating things and the public is generally in the middle going, all right, can someone at least give me the facts of where we're at now?

If you look at the stock market index out there and take a look at that, everybody is freaking out about their 401ks.

And yeah, those are some scary numbers.

You're seeing people with 20, 25% losses sometimes and they're really scared by that.

And I totally get it now.

How does that affect you?

Unless you're literally pulling that money out tomorrow, you're gonna be fine.

These are cyclical things and when they're trying to do a big economy shift right now, that's the first thing to go.

It will come back.

It always has.

And if you start looking at where the numbers are today, they're very similar to the way they were back in May of 2024.

So yeah, we've lost a ton of it out of there and it has dropped in the last month where we've lost a years of progress of growth.

But that also can come right back up that fast.

So we're going to have to write it out and see what's going on.

Now my thing on the tariffs is I'm not freaking out over it.

I get what they're trying to do.

They are trying to get us back on track from a lot of years of manufacturing and jobs going overseas.

Now do we want to have all those literally child labor that we see over in China and other southeastern Asian countries come back in the US and now we're trying to find stuff.

Now we really don't.

Is that something that we could be doing with robots over here, that we could use technology?

Maybe, maybe, maybe we can bring that back over here.

Would that be better on the environment?

Yeah, probably would be.

We're not putting everything on a ship that's running on fuel, oil running across the ocean, having to haul it, move it.

Is that good for the port people?

No, it's not.

But it could be good for great jobs for people.

So we'll have to see what happens.

Are we in the middle of a game of chicken of business negotiations that happens in corporate America all the time?

Yeah.

This stuff happens every day.

This is just on a world scale.

So I think four months from now, three months from now, I think this party will be over.

I think there'll be enough bloodletting from other countries that they're going to go, whoa, we're going to fix this.

Now here's the bonus for this.

Yes, it's going to cost some money to us as a homeowner, as a middle class person.

Yeah.

This is where we pay a little pain for a few months.

But on the other side I see it is that we could be in a different financial situation and not have trillions of dollars of debt.

If we can get the people we put in office to run it like their own personal checkbook instead of just free money for everyone.

So if we as voters can hold them into account to do the right things and not overspend and balance that budget, we'll be in a much better spot and our kids will be in a much better spot.

So I do that part of it.

Now, is that going to be affecting construction projects?

Yeah.

Are there a lot of things, if you read deep into the tariffs that are exempt or lower because they affect housing, there are.

You start looking at some of the lumber, you start looking at things like appliances.

There are some exemptions out there that will keep us from getting hit as hard.

But we'll see what happens.

We're going to have to be a little patient to see what goes on.

So that's the big thing.

And next up, if you're getting ready to build a house, maybe tap the pause button for 90 days and see what happens, see how this plays out.

You could end up being something that saves you money in the long run, because that's really what's going to happen.

As soon as we see this get turned around, I think we'll see prices go back down again.

We'll have to see what happens.

Oil prices are low, which means our shipping costs will be lower as soon as we see that turn up at the pumps.

Now, these companies out there that had, you know, for the last three or four years that had the upcharges or surcharges for fuel that's coming down, once we see that, that will start lowering prices drastically because shipping has become such an expense.

I just shipped a box that wasn't that heavy from my house to my son's place in North Dakota.

UPS ground 85 bucks at the UPS store.

Absolutely insane.

So I think we'll start to see some of those numbers come down when we can affect fuel prices and get them down where they should be.

So let's see what happens with that.

So keep hope alive, guys.

It's gonna turn around.

I think we got 90 days of bumpy road is my guess.

Could be two weeks.

We'll see how well this goes.

We'll see how well this goes in the rest of today's episode.

I wanted to talk about three things you can do this spring to protect your foundation in your home.

Now, there are so many different types of foundations out there.

You've got a.

In some areas, like maybe mostly desert areas, California, Arizona, places in the Midwest, places in the Northwest.

You'll see slab on grade where they literally get there, level the ground out, pour a slab, one big pour, build the house from there on up.

There's no basement, no crawl space, nothing like that.

We also have houses with basements, which are prevalent in many places in the country that don't have the slab on grade.

And then there's crawl spaces where you've got that small space underneath the house for access underneath the floor system.

But it's definitely not a livable space.

There's others like post and beam, but we can treat those as like crawl space for this conversation.

Now, what I wanted to talk about with this are the things you can do to make sure that you're not hurting your foundation.

The first one is one of the most important.

Especially even if you're in an area of desert where you get monsoonal rains, it still matters.

I'd say 80, 85% of the people in the country deal with this problem.

This is controlling the water coming off your roof.

Each one of those downspouts, if you get an inch of rain, you could have 50 to 100 gallons come off of that.

That's a lot of water.

So those downspouts need to go down into the ground into a storm drain system and gets that water at least 10ft away.

If you've got a basement, I'd go 12 to 14ft away.

Get that away from the house going downhill into a solid pipe.

Once you get past that, you can put it into a.

Into a storm drain system that has, like a dry well where you can run it down the hill towards the street or the back.

Make sure you're not putting water into your neighbor's house.

I've made that mistake before.

Make sure you do that.

You can use pvc, you can use abs.

I don't like using the corrugated drain material because every five years you should be cleaning that out.

You should have somebody come in and hydro jet that out and make sure it's working great.

So that's a good one.

Make sure you got that.

There's one.

Number two, if you've got that taken into account, make sure that you've got grading.

I say three to six feet away from the house, you should have a clear slope.

So everything is running away from the house.

If you've got a patio that's tipping back towards the house, put a level on it.

Might need to have one of the slab jack people come in and make sure that's not putting water down there.

Number three is if you have clay soil in your area, if you've got clay soil and you have a dry season and a wet season, like here in my area, we have six months of wet, six months of dry.

If you have that situation, and if you walk out in your yard or around the house and you see those cracks in the soil, that will crack your foundation.

So always keep that soil around your house damp so it stays hydrated, the house won't move as much, which means it won't put those stresses on the openings in that foundation for vents or things like that.

That way, if you're just watering around the base of that house where the foundation is, the first three, four, five feet, that'll Make a huge difference so it doesn't drop down, it doesn't raise up and you won't put that foundation through all those cycles.

Those are great things for you to do to keep your foundation healthy.

And then take a look around.

Once a year, walk around your house, see if there's any cracks, measure them, mark them.

You can jump online and grab little stickers to put across that opening to see if they're moving or not.

Then if you have a crack or a break or a bow or a horizontal crack in a basement wall, don't call the foundation person first.

Call the structural engineer to come up and write a report.

Carbon fiber might work well for you.

It's an inexpensive solution.

Have them write the report and then go out and get that quote from your foundation experts based upon the report.

And yeah, you'll have to pay a little bit of money for the for the engineer, structural engineer to come out, but it's going to save you a ton of money in the long run.

That's where the savings are.

So if you do that, you'll be in a much better space.

There's some savings for you guys.

All right, I got to run.

I got so much to do today.

I got some great interviews.

We got a great show coming up this weekend.

I'll share it to you probably Thursday afternoon is my guess.

Looking forward to that.

We've got a great show coming up this weekend and a little one of ours a little bit different.

I think it fits into our different trade policies and business and stuff.

It's going to be a little more about consumer products and things about your home, but it all relates.

Excited to share this episode.

I bet you it's going to shock you, which I think is a lot of fun.

I'm Eric G.

To find out more about us, head over to aroundthe house online.com with our new website and make sure you follow.

I've got new videos going up on the YouTube and you can find that out.

Just head over to around the House online and follow so you're notified of the new videos that come up every week.

I'm Eric G.

Thanks for tuning into around the House.

Have a great week out there.

Keep that head up.

I think we'll be through this storm faster than we think.

We'll see you Saturday.

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We will see you next time.

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